I’m still
trying to erase Frank Miller’s All-Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder from my
memory. Fortunately, despite the similar title, this title has nothing to do
with that. All Star Batman
Now, a quick
proviso on writer Scott Snyder. He has a lot of well-acclaimed work and most of
it is well-deserved but… I think he might be a tad overrated. His Court of Owls
work is fantastic and his run with Dick Grayson’s Batman is second to none. But
then I have to look at the previously reviewed Batman Annual #1 (plug) and his
two Joker arcs, neither of which are that great in my opinion. Not horrible,
just not great. I honestly think Snyder is at his best dealing with villains
that don’t have a tonne of backstory and character. He can remodel lesser
villains but when dealing with the mainstream villains, and yes I’m counting
Mr Freeze, his work is less than stellar.
So, yes, it
does worry me that his first arc is focused on Two-Face, one of the more
high-profile Batman villains. Plus, this title promises to be a villain palooza
with villains being chucked in left and right. Batman: Eternal had this but it
was a 52-issue mini-series with a number of different writers, this is a
5-issue arc.
John Romita
Jr does the artwork for this series. Whilst I do like the artwork of Greg Capullo
in Scott’s previous Batman run, John Romita Jr did some great work back during
his Dick Grayson run, so I’m looking forward to seeing what he has up his
sleeve.
All Star
Batman is longer than most of DC comics’ offerings and sports a $4.99 price
tag, nearly double what DC is offering for everything else. Padding it out is
backup feature. I’ll cover the backup story separately as part of the review
but I’ll be judging each issue as a whole when I come to scores.
