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Batman: Joker's Asylum - Arvid Nelson
by pmcds
To put Batman's name on the top of this is a bit unfair really - the Caped Crusader hardly features in this collection of short stories. If anything, this belongs to the Joker as he presents five short stories each featuring a different one of Batman's better known adversaries.
At first, I thought this to be a bit of a lazy ... cash-in, as if DC had run out of anything new and different to give the Dark Knight's fans to read. After the first couple of stories though, I realised that there are subtle psychological nuances with each one, as well as providing either background or furtherance to knowledge to each villain.
The first features Joker himself, presenting his own tale from a darkened location, evil green and white face and features galore as he impersonates a TV presenter to show the greed and obsession of execs and what lengths they will go to. The artwork wasn't to my liking, with blotchiness and unclear lines making the expressions hard to read. Things are somewhat more simplified in the second tale, which centres on the Penguin, Batman's diminutive thieving villain, as he uses his wealth to fuel his obsession with ladies, only to find that his physical deformities are easily overlooked by his latest love and his violent revenges don't go down too well. The artwork and tale here are less complicated, an interesting contrast to the Joker's tale.
Then comes Poison Ivy, a beautiful woman infected by a mad scientist resulting in her being green and able to control plants. She uses this to kill people who destroy nature, and this episode sees Batman try to stop her before she kills all three partners in a property development. This tale is a bit raunchy, the majority of frames featuring her in barely there clothes, revealing plenty without complete nudity, carefully placed wisps of hair and plant vines expertly drawn. Impressive artwork indeed. It's followed by another tale that teases in being equally raunchy to begin with before tailing off, as The Scarecrow (alter ego of a mad psychiatrist) sets about helping a teenage recluse exact her revenge against the bullying 'in' crowd at her school, as well as further his own scaremongering. I really liked the premise, but the darkness and limited conversation made it tricky to follow.
This mini collection finishes off with the uncertain world of Two-Face, former DA Harvey Dent who is facially disfigured following an incident involving acid. Two-Man, prisoner in Arkham, is visited by a similarly disfigured man who tries to show him how he can still be positive about his life. Dent in his own inimitable style tries to show him otherwise, with stark potential consequences. I liked this one the best of all five, I think.
Throughout the collection, Joker has a page here and there, before and after each tale, and it's well presented. I found the quality varied, and although I finished it with a more positive impression that after the first few pages, it still sits as a more disappointing publication that doesn't really do much to further the Batman tales other than refresh our memories as to some of his enemies. Worth the read in terms of a comic book, but perhaps not so great for the most ardent of Batman fans.
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Sound of My Voice: Boku No Koe Part 1 - Youka Nitta
by shroud
Wataru Jouchi's lifelong dream of being a voice actor for animé videos and CD dramas is about to come true. After a lot of hard work and very minor roles, he finds himself on the brink of a possible career breakthrough. he's also surprised to discover that among his senior work associates is someone he knew as a child: former primary ... school classmate Renji Kazama. Kazama is very offhand towards him, to the point of seeming hostile. Is it because they are now rivals for the same roles, or is there something else that has him pushing away Wataru's attempts at being friendly?
First written back in 2004, this is story lacks the angst and passion of her magnum opus, Haru wo Dateita (Embracing Love), but then again, it has not yet really had the time to develop past the heat of hard simmer in the initial volume. As always, her lines are smooth and flowing, her settings detailed, and her characters impeccably dressed and shown off to be best dramatic effect. Actually following two couples from the outset, Wataru and Kazama and two of their co-workers, we are thrown into the drama of one relationship and the fraught tension of another about to blossom if given half a chance. Unfortunately, this means we don't get too much time to dig into their psyche like we do in many of her other works, for example, as in The Prime Minister's Secret Diplomacy, Haru wo Dateita (again) or even her newest work, Otodama. Instead it's given in drips and drabs, which at times makes me feel rather impatient.
That brings me to another point. First of all, let me say I was thrilled to see this title appear in English once more. The storyline and art are fantastic as I have mentioned. We get an inside peek into the world of the seiyuu who voice the CD drama adaptations of manga as well as voice the characters in animé. We get Youka Nitta's exceedingly sexy men, who are genuinely men and not wimpy female substitutes. We get her detailed plotting and emotive storylines. What we also get is shafted.
This manga is already at three volumes in Japan and available in bound book form, yet Libre have decided to distribute it chapter by chapter at a price point of about £2.20 a chapter and only via the Kindle. That's right. This is only a single book chapter...about 37 pages of actual content plus ads. It chases all but the most dedicated fan away. And even then, I'm grumbling. Why? Well, bound manga volumes average about 6 chapters each. So, Paying £2.20ish a chapter means that the Kindle edition is going to cost you the equivalent of about £13.20 for a complete electronic volume, and it is a volume that has the chapters as separate entries on your Kindle to boot, so you have to go hunting about for the next chapter instead of a seamless reading experience. And this for a work they did not have to pay to translate or typeset, as they simply Kindle-ised the English edition put out by the now defunct former English language licensee Be Beautiful, who previously had this out in paperback as well.
You'd think they would know better. They published many of the defunct Deux Press titles as complete volumes for the Kindle, such as Future Lovers, and the price is spot on. It's not even like we are getting anything extra for the higher price point. The manga is scaled so that it doesn't completely fill the 6 inch screen, and the font is too skinny to read at original resolution in many instances. I had to use the zoom function to read some of the bubbles with more text and several of the aside texts, and that only works because the whole image gets slightly larger, in fact, to the size it should already be optimised at. This is a general fault with many of Libre's offerings though; the manga doesn't seem to have been checked on an actual Kindle for readability nor re-typeset for optimal reading experience.
While only the first volume is available in paperback from Be beautiful if you hunt around for it, the Kindle IS a great way to help get manga out to the masses without great cost to the publisher. But this price point policy and lack of e-reader optimisation make this a poor proposition for the consumer. Because of this, I'm going to have to knock off some stars from what is otherwise a very high quality manga. With regret, unless you are a die hard fan or money is no object, I can't recommend you shell out. It's simply too expensive for what you get, especially when other manga by manga from several other publishers (and this one) sells for more much attractive prices and with better digital presentation.
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Batman: Battle for the Cowl - Fabian Nicieza
by SWSt
After the death of Batman at the hands of The Black Glove (in Batman RIP), a void exists within Gotham City. A league of heroes - led by Nightwing (the first Robin) - attempts to stop Gotham being over-run by crime, but Gotham needs its Batman as a symbol of hope. As the characters slowly realise that this powerful symbol needs to be ... resurrected, the various candidates square up to decide who should take over the mantle of the Bat: Dick Grayson (Robin I), the newly-resurrected Jason Todd (Robin II), Tim Drake (the current Robin) or Damian Wayne (Batman's son). Place your bets as the Battle for the Cowl begins.
This is very much an old-style Batman tale, with the emphasis on action, rather than psychological issues or complex mysteries. Battle for the Cowl is unashamedly action-packed, racing from one face-off between would-be Batmen to another, barely pausing to allow the victor to wipe the blood of his fists.
This gives the story a breathless feel, a sense that everything is rapidly coming to a head and a lot of rivalries and tensions resolved. After the slower paced Black Glove and Batman RIP, this change of pace is a welcome shift. It's not particularly difficult to work out exactly who is going to emerge victorious, nor is it a challenge to guess the identity of the new, more violent Batman that appears early on in the tale. This doesn't matter, though. One of the strengths of the Batman stories have always been their ability to mix and match different styles and paces and still churn out a cracking tale.
It's true that there are some elements of the story which feel a little rushed or undeveloped. It would, for example, have been interesting to devote a little more time to how far Gotham has fallen, or for greater consideration on why the city needs Batman as a symbol of hope so much. Exactly why can't Nighwing's League of Heroes have the same impact as Batman? After all, he is just one men, they are several men and women; from a purely logical perspective, surely they should be more, not less effective. This would have been a very interesting aspect to develop and explore, but it is given somewhat cursory consideration before main action starts. In fairness, this would also have slowed down the overall pace of the book - and undermined one of its key strengths.
It's also true that the book never quite lives up to the way it was pitched in the original advertising blurb. This made it sound as if the story would result in former friends and allies falling out over their desire to be the next Bat. Certainly, there is an element of this, but only where tensions between characters already exist. For example, if you want a solution to that playground argument about which Robin would win in a fight, this is only going to partially satisfy you.
You also need to bear in mind that this is the final chapter in a tale which has been told over several months. Don't come to this one cold - you need to have read The Black Glove and Batman RIP to understand it properly. There is little time to explain previous events and it's assumed that you know who all the characters are and why they are fighting over Batman's legacy. This is fair enough, though - you wouldn't expect to understand Star Wars or Lord of the Rings if you started with the third part now would you?
At the end of the main story, there's also a series of short tales which follow up on the actions of particular characters. Some of these are well known (Commissioner Gordon), others perhaps less so (The Spoiler). To be honest, I could quite happily have done without them. They don't really tie in that well with the main tale and for the most part, are rather weak and dull. After the frenetic, action packed pages of the main Battle for the Cowl storyline, they lack spark and didn't really add anything to the quality of the overall volume. Clearly, they have been added to help the reader feel that they are getting value for money, given that Battle for the Cowl only consists of two relatively short parts. That tale though is so strong that I would happily have paid the cover price for this alone.
Artwork across the Battle for the Cowl is uniformly superb. It is consistent both with previous titles in this sequence, as well as with the main comic books. Panels are well-laid out and make excellent use of colour to distinguish between the different characters. Each of the main characters is well drawn and easy to recognise and the lettering is generally of a very high quality, making both speech bubbles and captions easy to read. There are some nice, old-fashioned renditions of some traditional Batman bad guys, and it's good to see villains like the Penguin return to their ferocious and evil-looking best, after some decidedly dodgy recent attempts to reinvent them.
Tony S Daniels' artwork is relatively simple in its layout. Some comic book artists use every trick they know to try and make sure each page looks different, mixing full page drawings with panels that zig zag from left to right, up and down or across double page spreads. For the most part Battle for the Cowl sticks with panels which simply read from left to right. This makes them much easier to read, as there's no need to stop and work out where you need to go next. As a result ensures the pace with which you read the book matches the non-stop pace of the action. Sure, some more advanced layout techniques are used sometimes, but only when they are appropriate to the story, and never simply because the author fancies a bit of a change.
The Batman RIP series has provided three excellent, if very different stories. In keeping with such a climactic event, the series started with the slow-burning, psychological Black Glove, before placing a greater reliance on Batman's mind in Batman RIP and concluding with the action-packed Battle for the Cowl. The three stories have demonstrated the versatility of the Batman as a character and the fact they have been so different has helped keep the reader both interested and on their toes throughout. Battle for the Cowl provides a fitting and interesting conclusion to this traumatic trilogy.
The last time I awaited publication of a graphic novel so eagerly it was the Knightfall series back in the early 90s. Batman and Gotham may have had their fair share of adventures since then, but none have captured the imagination in quite the same way. Of course, we all know that Bruce Wayne is not really dead and that he'll be back to claim the Bat once more, but that's not enough to spoil your enjoyment of this volume.
Basic Information
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Battle for the Cowl
Tony S Daniel
Titan, 2010
ISBN: 978-1848564237
© Copyright SWSt 2011
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