By Chris Fenn
I’m finding it quite difficult to think how to word this review. I love Tomasi’s work, and I think his work with Gleason has been consistently the best Batman book since the launch of the New 52. I also love the Fourth World and am instantly interested any time they become a focus in a book. The difficulty I have is that this issue has quite a few things I really dislike with it.
First of all I both love and hate the opening to this book. I love it because it gives a very clear and concise summary of the conception, life and death of Damian Wayne; which must be nice as a new reader and is also a good refresher to people already familiar with the story. What I truly hate about the introduction, though, is using pre-Flashpoint events as an origin to New 52 stories.
Now I am quite a large lover of canon and continuity; I love non-canon stories, Elseworlds and one-shots but I also really appreciate a set and established order of events, and my understanding of resetting a universe is that DC decide to start from scratch; the problem with starting from scratch is then relying on material that occurred before the reset. One huge glaring example in this book is showing Batman get hit with the Omega Sanction, an event which occurred in Final Crisis; and for anybody that hasn’t read Final Crisis [SPOLIER ALERT] this is the event where Darkseid dies in canon, yet this is used as a prequel to a story where Darkseid has only been fought by the Justice League once.
As to not dwell on that particular aspect of the comic I’m going to point out a few other parts of this book that I disliked, and they seem to hinge on the artwork more than anything. There is one particular sequence where Batman shoots, who I think is Glorious Godfrey, in the head with, what I think is, a grappling hook; now as you may tell from how I describe it, the image isn’t very clear and just feels cluttered.
The final thing I’m going to moan about is how Batman seems to act at times. Through the bulk of the book Batman and Ra’s are fighting parademons and Batman cuts both hands off of one and gouges the eye of another. Now I know parademons aren’t human, but that seems really overly brutal for Batman; does this mean he can inadvertently kill mutants, aliens and animals? I also really hated the way he clunkily said “Knowing Ra’s, probably not deep enough”, come on Tomasi; you’re better than that!
Now the things I really enjoyed about this issue basically boil down to two events; the first is when the Justice League arrive. Now it was obvious something was going to happen when Godfrey began to scream but I thought it would be Ra’s, not the amazing two page spread of the Justice League saving the day; this really epitomizes what I want to see from a superhero team.
I also love Batman’s loss of temper, particularly his outbursts against Luthor and Shazam. I feel that when he lashes out in these instances they are justified, considering he has travelled across the world to try and get his son back, only to lose him at the last second to a madman on another planet, I also love the assertive and committed speech he gives on the final page.
Despite my grumblings this is a good issue; it isn’t as good as Tomasi’s other work, and pretty much anything I haven’t mentioned is good. I think this upcoming arc will bring out the best in Batman, the Fourth World and Damian.
For more comic views and reviews follow Chris on Twitter at @fenneth1989
Posted on July 18th, 2014
Category: OUT OF THE LONG BOX, REVIEWS
Tags: Batman, Chris Fenn, Damian Wayne, Darkseid, DC Comics, Glorious Godfrey, Justice League, Peter J Tomasi, Ras Al Ghul, Robin Rises: Omega #1 Review