Pages

Saturday 25 June 2016

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight, Volume 4 Review (Charles Soule, Joshua Williamson)


Legends of the Dark Knight is a series of Batman short stories taken from various points of his career and, while the series hasn’t been bad, this fourth volume is turrible! 

You know how Batman disappears when people have their back turned? Well, now we’ve got an entire story about how he learned that trick - sort of. Because we don’t see him learning that trick, we just see him meeting the people who teach it to him. It’s a young Bruce/Alfred story set far away from Gotham that’s nicely drawn by Deadly Class artist Wes Craig and writer Joshua Williamson gives Alfred some nice moments, but it’s a completely pointless and quite boring comic - and that’s the best one in this collection! 

Charles Soule and Dennis Calero tell the story of why the Riddler got himself arrested - the answer will bore you! Frank Hannah and a series of artists provide the longest story here where a kid that young Bruce couldn’t save from a child molester grows up to be a serial-killing child molester, murdering yet another of Bruce’s “true loves” that are introduced and killed off within a few pages. Oh the tragedy, yawn… 

There’s a forgettable Two-Face story, a Clayface short that’s nicely drawn by Superman: Earth One artist Shane Davis, and Mike Barr returns to tell the worst story in this book where Batman and Tim Drake/Robin take on The Element King and Queen - good to see the guy hasn’t improved since giving us the godawful Year Two: Fear… The Reaper! And Justice writer Jim Krueger closes out the volume with some nonsense about the bats in the batcave being Bruce’s mother…!? So Krueger also hasn’t gotten better either - this is a real gathering of hacks! 

Some of the stories have good art but that’s not even close to being a good enough reason to pick up this crummy book. Legends of the Dark Knight Volume 4 hasn’t got anything worthwhile to offer Batman fans - avoid!

No comments:

Post a Comment