But there was stuff I liked here. It’s interesting to see a mirthless, grimacing Joker for a change and King writes him really well. Same goes for Riddler - in fact, King might’ve written the best version of Riddler ever in this book! Many of the riddles are clever and funny. The nine-course dinner scene, though pointless, was cool. Mikel Janin’s art has never looked better either. The book is visually spectacular and Janin draws Batman, Joker and Riddler as superbly as King writes them. Janin definitely elevates King’s patchy script up from a crap book to a middling one. The Joker and The Riddler are two of Batman’s most well-known and popular villains with decades of stories behind them. With such a wealth of stories, its difficult to think of what recent stories they have that could last the test of time, but Batman writer Tom King crafts a pretty great and impactful tale of these two rogues. Joker and Riddler are as deadly as ever while Batman is caught in the middle of a battle that concerns itself more with the consequences of two big villains fighting than fully showing it.

In Batman #2, when Batman pulls a Stealth Hi/Bye on Gotham and Gotham Girl and they say that that's impossible, Commissioner Gordon says, "It not impossible, kid. It's Batman." In Batman #13, Catwoman says nearly the same thing when Bronze Tiger says it's impossible that Batman just walked into Santa Prisca and walked out with the Psycho Pirate: "It's not impossible. It's Batman." And then during Batman #19, as Bane invades Arkham, he flips it by saying "Not impossible. Bane." When Batman visits Arkham Asylum, Saturn Girl breaths onto her glass and draws the Legion of Super-Heroes' symbol. The closest dialogue balloon has Jeremiah Arkham say "who's taking on that burden?". This issue was released after the possible Legion writers, a list on which Tom King is included, were revealed. Positive Content: Despite many of the negatives that I list, the actions of Batman are heroic as he tries to save Gotham from this devastating street war. Review It would be easy for a story like this to focus solely on the villains and the fights they get into as Gotham’s rogues choose sides in Joker and Riddler’s war, showcasing some epic battles between them. However, King subverts this, instead placing the focus on the collateral damage the war causes. For instance, while it would have been nice to see Deadshot and Deathstroke’s five day sniper fight in full, Bruce places the focus on the number of people caught in the crossfire and the emotional toll it took on him. Moments like these inform the actions Batman later took in the war and how it affected him as a crimefighter.

The Chew Toy: Kite Man is first captured by Gotham Girl in the "I Am Gotham" epilogue, and thrown into Arkham. In his next appearance, he's free, but gets the stuffing beaten out of him during Batman and Catwoman's "date night." Also King has already made the demonstration of his natural-born sense of pacing in his previous books and this one is from the same mother lode. Moreover, the angles that Batman (and oddly as Bruce Wayne too) decides to battle against both villains was off-course of the way that the Caped Crusader should react to this criminal war. This series portrays Batman as always having his Rebirth Batsuit since the very beginning. This is in spite of the fact that this suit was only introduced during the "Superheavy" arc in Scott Snyder's New 52 run. In Batman #5, when Alfred is pretending to be Batman, he is wearing Greg Capullo's original New 52 Batsuit.

I also love the look of the Joker in this issue, he's so menacing, and I love that he's unable to laugh, him being so grim makes him even scarierThis wasn’t called the Joker and Riddler War, it was called the War of Jokes and Riddles,” he told me at New York Comic Con, in the week after the arc’s final issue and the reveal of the Riddler’s plan. “The idea of Kite Man was he combined both of those, in some ways. He’s an utter joke. You say Kite Man, people laugh. He’s the joke of a hero. But he’s also this little riddle because there’s no understanding him. ‘Who is Kite Man?’ is the riddle.