I get it. Bruce feels bad about himself. We know that. Telling us the same point over and over again, doesn't make the story more intersting. And the twist ending really doesn't have the impact that King probably meant it to have.

The whole issue until the last couple of panels is him trying to escape from Mr. Pyg, a villain that I truly hate, not love to hate, but just hate.

>In his attempts - Bats is slung upside down in a slaughter house like a slab of beef - Bats cuts himself to the bone with a hidden batarang to escape. He fights Pyg and only really does damage when he throws Pyg's knife at him. He notes that he really only hurt Pyg by using Pyg's weapon. Pyg easily catches the thrown batarang.

There's almost no dialogue. It's all Bats in text boxes talking in present tense.

While Bruce wonders how he got into his current troubles (again King is all tell, not show) he thinks the the tale of Pygmalion - a sculptor who fell in love with his own creation, but when that creation gained life, she rejected him.

Then when Pyg is unmasked, it's Damian reciting a line from the three pigs - hair of chinny, chin chin.

IT WAS ALL A DREAM. PSYCH. More like Yawn. The art is incredibly bloody. So while well-done, I found it off-putting. But that's me. If you like a comic literally dripping in blood in every panel and full of self-mutilation and horrific violence, then this is the book for you. Psycho.

I hate dream language. No doubt things like only using the enemy's weapon works and falling too much in love with your own creation are supposed to tell us about Bruce's mental health. But that's all King has been doing - driving home the same point over and over again.

It's boring.

I am so tired of psycho Batman. I miss the days when he was smart, self-aware and a true force for good. Now it's all just "you make things worse" and "you're a driven psycho that damages everything you touch" and blood, blood, blood, bodies, bodies and more bodies.

Enough. But that's me. I am a bit of delicate flower.

Or I could be wrong. more

A big pile of who cares. King has brought back his rip-off of Tommy King - little evil "Bruce Wayne."

The whole story is basically Little Bruce's dream of the real death of the Waynes and how Batman solves the crime.

Like I said who cares. It seems that today's writers have their pet characters that they love, but no one else does. These characters take up time and space in stories that don't work because the characters suck.

Little Evil Bruce is one such character. The sooner he's dropped in a wood chipper, the sooner King can get on with his life and we can stop reading these awful stories.

Or I could be wrong.

(I'm not. Little Evil Bruce is just another variation of the doppleganger concept, and not an interesting one).

The art was fine. more

More of the same. Batman using violence instead of brains. Beating ex-Arkham prisoners, who back up Bane’s story.

Penguin is being guarded by Alfred. They fill up space talking poems. Commissioner Gordon is through with Batman and we learn KGBeast is alive because he was under watch by Russian officials.

Story ends with Alternate Batman (Thomas Wayne, I think) clocking Bruce in the Batcave. That last page is the only page that matters. The whole issue is just a slight variance of last issue. Nothing happens. Decompressed storytelling at its worst.

Mixed artists, so the look isn’t even consistent. Just bleh issue.

Or I could be wrong. more

King makes the biggest mistake a Batman writer can make - he writes Batman as stupid.
Bats learns Bane is responsible for his troubles, bullies his way into Arkham, scaring SWAT and finds Bane pretending to be “crazy.” He beats Bane and when Gordon objects, he hits Gordon.

That scene reminded of the time Yellowjacket hit Wasp. That is the whole issue. Batman ones no detecting, no checking out Arkham, no investigating staff, no looking for the Bane cave. Bats used dumb brute force. I remember when Batman would put on disguises as the janitor and check things out. I get what King is trying to do, but that is the same plot Bane did 25 years ago. The writing is terrible.

But the art was nice.

Or I could be wrong. more

Nice art. But King uses a whole issue to tell us that Bane has ordered Penguin to kill or maybe hurt Alfred. The issue ends with Alfred at the Manor and we see a red dot on his forehead, telling us that a sniper has him in his sights. (By the way, as an ex-CIA agent, King should know that real snipers never use laser sights because they do tip off the intended target. It's just Hollywood nonsense.)

That's it. Also, another woman is killed by the "freeze" technique. The hit of Alfred was ordered to punish Bruce Wayne for interfering with the Freeze trial. Boy, I hope King has something clever up his sleeve with Freeze, because right now framing him makes no sense, except maybe to get Batman crazy for sending an innocent man to prison. But Freeze has killed so many people, he hardly qualifies as innocent.

Again, an issue where the pace crawls at a snail's pace. The action is hardly compelling and the dialog consists of poems. So King is letting other writers do the hard work.

Just get on with it. more

The art in the story is nice. King is a man of few words. Too bad words aren't a bad thing in a comic book.

The story picks up right where it left off. Batman goes to the cabin where KGBeast killed dad. Instead of doing something smart like throwing a flashbang stun grenade in the cabin to get an advantage over a villain that can go toe to toe with him, Batman says "Beast" outside the door of the cabin. Beast immediately shoots through the door, tags Batman with a bullet and comes out fighting.

They trade blows and the Beast has Batman on the ground and Batman takes out a grapple and fires it at Beast's head, breaking his neck. Beast is paralyzed and says help me and I will tell you who hired me. Batman says no, I'm the World Greatest Detective (copyright pending) and leaves Beast in the snow, presumably to die until some other writer wants to use the character.

Interspersed in the story is a Russian folktale about animals trapped in a hole who eat each other one by one until the last one starves to death. We see Beast's dad read it to Beast and it ends with Bruce being read the story by his father. Were their mothers both named Martha?

What to like. The art really good. But the fight scenes have no flow. They are just individual shots of big men hitting each other. Also, the use of "Bang" and "Pow" word effects is kind of in poor taste. Those graphics are associated with the 1966 Batman TV show, King's dark, cynical violent storytelling doesn't mesh with Adam West's Bright Knight stories.

What's not to like. The writing. Nothing really happens. Batman doesn't defeat Beast in a clever way. His giving Beast a sporting heads-up is really dumb. Having both dads read a real Russian fold tale to their sons really doesn't add up to anything.

Oh, having Batman say he has to walk 300 clicks, presumably that means 300 kilometers, to get to his transport is dumb. That's over 160 miles. He walked in the snow 160 miles to get to Beast's cabin? Dude Uber is a real thing. You have Batplanes.

Also leaving Beast to die? Really? I know that mimics what Starlin did 31 years ago, but it was controversial then, and Beast was proven to be an unstoppable killing machine. Here, he's just a big guy who can punch one handed.

Either kill the guy outright, with none of this coy "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" crap, or bring him in.

Character is not illuminated, and plot is not so clever that that doesn't matter. All in all, just a time filler until King gets his 100 issues plot line done.

Or I could be wrong. more

The art saves, well not save so much as make this issue not be a total waste of time.

King kills more time by not showing us anything we don't already know. Batman beats up a gun dealer who IDs the picture of the KGBeast. Batman says a witness saw a one-armed man near the scene of the crime. Richard Kimble no doubt is looking over his shoulder.

We next see Batman and Bronze Tiger beating up Ninjas. BT says he doesn't know where KGBeast is, but he might know someone who does.

It's Kanto. We see Kanto threatening to torture a tied-up, upside down Batman. Bats says I know you're wanted, tell me what I want to know and I won't snitch. Kanto caves in, says KGBeast is only close to his father, who is hidden somewhere in Russia. We next see Batman walking in the snow to the hidden cabin where KBDad is. Over the long walk we have a lot of text telling us that Batman has a contact, a former intelligence agent in Russia who is corrupt and gives the address.

That's Batman's story. All we see of KGBeast is him visiting his father and saying I am not weak and killing his dad.

What is to like. The art. Very good.

What not to like. Everything else. Like I said, this is just filling space. We don't actually see anything. We don't see Batman find the witness who saw the one-armed man. We don't how Batman picked that gun seller to threaten. Did he go to all the illicit dealers? Did he know this guy fronted for Russian mobsters? We don't know.

Why did Batman go to Bronze Tiger? Having them fight Ninjas should be exciting, but it isn't. I get the impression that it would have been just as exciting to have BT and Batman talk in a dark room.

How did Kanto capture Batman? We don't see. The whole upside down thing amounted to nothing. We don't see Batman do anything clever to escape, so his getting caught is a dead end.

We are told about how Batman gets KGDad's address. That's not exciting.

The talk between Beast and his dad takes up a number of pages but amounts to "you raised me to be strong, so I will kill you to cover my tracks." Again, not exciting.

Oh, by visiting his father KGBeeast exposes himself and I strongly suspect that's how Batman will catch him. So if Beast just stayed away from his father, Batman has nowhere to go, because it's obvious Dad and Son didn't keep in touch, they weren't even Facebook friends.

So this whole issue is a waste of time and money. We don't learn anything new. No exciting fight between Batman and Beast.

Also, with continuity rebooted 47 times in the last 31 years, I don't know what's canon and what's not. So I don't know the backstory between Beast and Bats.

Just a lot of treading water. Oh, we do know Beast was hired to Shoot Nightwing. Man, I wonder who could have done that, who could have been the Bane of Batman's existence?

Not a great issue. Or I could be wrong. more

What to say?

I get what King is trying to do. I just don't think he did it well.

We see Batman and Nightwing fight some mummy monsters. All during this Nightwing talks and talks and talks. He said Batman never liked his puns and then comes up with more puns.

Again, I get why. King is trying to show us that Richard is trying to cheer Bruce up. Good idea. The problem is with the execution. It's all surface and cute. We don't actually get a serious conversation. Your mileage may vary, but Richard came off as a dick. (See what I did there?)

Basically, it was just clumsy.

The second part of the story is KGBeast entering Gotham, buying a sniper rifle and setting up a sniper's blind.

The book end with KGBeast shooting Nightwing in the head when Batman and he respond to a call from the Batsignal.

What I liked. The art. Looks like Jim Lee, and was nice stuff. Really liked the art. I tend to like my Batman drawn this way - crisp and fairly realistic. I tend not to like the more abstract versions by people like Kelly Jones. But that's me. I concede that others may prefer more abstract.

What I didn't like. As I said, Richard trying to cheer Bruce up. It comes off as superficial, and I didn't find it funny. When something that is supposed to be fun and funny, and I don't find it that way, it can be annoying. But again, humor is subjective. This just didn't work for me.

Second objection. King has talked about his days in the CIA. I suspect the way KGBeast enters the country with a false passport, cover story and with contacts needed to buy a sniper rifle reflect King's real world experience. The problem is he needs to find a way to make talking to customs agents exciting. The tradecraft stuff was boring, but took up a lot of space. (An evil I suspect comes from having to write two Batman books a month. Decompression is the obvious result).

Third point. A sniper setting up a blind at the Batsignal makes perfect sense. Which is why in this day and age of burner phones makes the Batsignal really stupid. I know it's cool and his the weight of history behind it, but there's a reason they invented the Batphone for the 1960s TV show.

So Batman and Nightwing meeting in a public place at a predicted time when that public place has clear lines of sight for snipers to use is just dumb.

And Batman isn't supposed to be dumb. One would think he'd do a recon of the area before exposing himself. More realistically, which is a funny thing to say about a man who dresses as a bat and puts youths in danger by dressing them in red and yellow, one meets in a secluded area. That means when the Batsignal is lit, Commissioner Gordon and Batman go to the secret place only they know about that is nowhere near the Batsignal. These days the Batsignal could be activated with a Bat-app on the special Batsmart-phone Batman would give the commissioner.

Fourth point. I get it King. No doubt Bane is behind the KGBeeast's actions. It's all a part of Bane's plan to break the Bat. Eliminate his support system. Make him alone, so the big fight (another big fight - these guys must have had like 1,009,034 showdowns already) when it comes will have Batman alone. So when Batman wins, it's a great victory. (I predict he will win either by being awesome and beating everyone up, or two, Batman was never alone and all his Bat friends help him beat Bane and company. Either way is really predictable).

So overall I give this a 4 or 5. The idea makes sense. Friend helps friend. But the execution just doesn't work for me. It's full of holes and the humor doesn't work.

The art was great and that makes up for a lot, but still doesn't save the issue.

Or I could be wrong. more

I'll keep this short. This is not a terrible issue and has all the strengths and weaknesses of King's writing.

First the strengths. I am hard on the man and it's only right that I give him credit where credit is due.

Richard Grayson sticking around to cheer Bruce up after filling in as Batman is a right and proper plot. Showing how Bruce worked with young Richard after the Flying Graysons had their lethal dispute with gravity is not terrible. (Though I've seen this in Batman The Animated Series and Robin Year One, so not a lot of new ground plowed here).

Showing Richard has a cheerful person, also nice. Contrasting the two personalities makes sense.

But that takes us to King's weaknesses as a writer. A lot of his stuff is conceptual. In interview he talks about theme and such. But a theme is not a full story. There are things like dialog, show don't tell and structure that help make a story great.

Slavish devotion to any one of these literary conceits can result in an off-kilter story.

In this issue we get parallel story lines. We see Richard recreating the circumstances of Bruce helping him when he first came to Wayne Manor.

But this time it's Richard cheering Bruce up.

Short aside. I am not calling Richard Grayson Dick. The reason is not because Dick is slang for the penis. It's because no one under the age of 65 is called Dick anymore. Maybe the penis thing killed it, but if Richard is, say, 25, no way he's called Dick. Get with the times DC.

Back to critique. So we see King write a highly structured story, but without better dialog and without better exploration of character what we get is basically "Richard cheers Bruce up by recreating past."

What we don't see is Bruce actually break down and say thanks for being there my son. We don't see Richard say you were there for me, I'll be there for you. It's all allusion.

For example, we learn when Richard first came to Wayne Manor, he didn't like cucumber sandwiches. But Bruce said stick with them, you'll learn to love them, that's what my dad taught me.

Get it? Work hard and you'll overcome your awful past as illustrated with cucumber sandwiches. Get it? Get it?

Of course Bruce's lesson could just as easily be the stalker's creed. Wear someone down and they'll love you.

What we don't get is Bruce actually having any sort of epiphany. Richard gets him to laugh because he bets a penny that he bounce his billy club 36 times. (Physics doesn't work that way). Richard then says he wants the giant penny in the Batcave. Bruce laughs. This refers to an earlier flashback where Richard wants to bet a penny that he can stand on one hand longer than Bruce. Bruce said he doesn't bet. Richard said that his parents would make penny bets and a penny is a small thing. Bruce says not all pennies are small.

We don't see Bruce acknowledge that he is down. He doesn't realize he's not alone. We get almost zero sense of forward emotional growth.

What I didn't like. Again, King really likes killing people. We see Nightwing and Batman tackle Crazy Quilt and Condiment King. Nightwing mocks them for being losers. Batman points out that Condiment King has killed three people in seven robberies in a week. Again, told, not shown.

Why is this bad. Well as I've said in the past, death for the sake of death in a story depresses me. This is supposed to be a light-hearted issue and the Condiment King was absolutely created to be a joke. Making him a mass murderer isn't a joke. It harshes the buzz of the story as the kids who won't stop playing on my lawn say.

King loves his obscure joke villains. Fine. Just don't make them killers. Because being a killer is no joke, despite what you've seen in "A Fish Called Wanda."

Also, I found Nightwing's banter to be lame, but I will concede that is more a matter of opinion. (Though a review by its very nature is all opinion. I get confused).

So not a terrible issue. The art by Wagner was great. I guess the real problem is that reconciling the boy's adventure Batman of 1940 with the mass murder Batman of 2018 is difficult. It needs a light touch, and say what you will about King, you must concede he is not a subtle writer.

That's why I think it's best if Batman stories from different eras remain separate. Trying to reconcile different styles under one roof, as it were, hardly ever works.

But it was nice seeing Nightwing and Batman together, especially showing they didn't hate each other. (F*ck Teen Titans TV's F*ck Batman. That's what I say).

Or I could be wrong. more

Wow, I am not going to sugar coat this one.

This issue just plain sucks.

Bruce's entire explanation that Freeze is innocent is that Batmanis human and humans make mistakes.

Bruce talks to a juror about God and how Bruce's father wanted Bruce to believe in God, but when Bruce's parents were killed he stopped believing in God and was lost until he found Batman. But Batman is human and Freeze said something was off about Batman and Bruce was hurt and Batman was hurt and the whole world was hurt etc.

We are told this stuff and we see images of Bruce, but we don't actually see Batman make a mistake in the investigation. We don't actually see the investigation or all the other people involved - cops, DAs, medical experts, forensic experts. You know the people that exist to actually put together a homicide case.

So huge problems. First Bruce introduced not a bit of evidence to disprove or cast doubt on the theory of the crime. To make things worse in my mind, the entire case is a big MacGuffin. The death of three women amount to nothing in terms of story telling.

I am getting older and have lost my appreciation of random death and violence, even in fiction. Body counts don't strike as deep and dark and grown up. They just depress me.

King has killed three women and their deaths don't count. As I said, I know this is fiction, but in the old days when kids would stay off my lawn, life counted, even fictional comic book life. If three women were killed, by God the killer would be found, because life matters and the nice thing about fiction is that the dead can find justice.

Bruce's sad story convinces the jury to vote not guilty, but then who killed the women? Are we going to see that?

Also, idiot plot time. We do learn that Bruce got on the jury because of a bribe. Who did he bribe? The judge? Not cool, dealing with corrupt judges. Did he bribe the potential juror pool selector guy, the defense attorney? Saying he bribed someone doesn't cut it. Too many people are involved on the selection of jury for that to fly. Again, unless the defense attorney was bribed, and who want's a defense attorney who can be bribed, no way Bruce is on the jury.

Idiot plot point 2. Instead of this three issue "tell, don't show-athon" Batman could have gotten Freeze off by saying in public that he now has doubts about Freeze's guilt. Avoid all the kerfuffle of a trial and let the police look for the real killer.

Three issues to "show" that Selina leaving hurt Bruce. Wow, profound King. You're the man.

And don't get me started on the whole religion thing. I hate when comic writers try to give us their view on religion. Usually is ham-fisted and shows their prejudices. Very rarely, if ever, meets my high standards of good story telling.

Or I could be wrong. more