Batman '89 (2021)

[eledoremassis02]

I plan on re-reading it as one whole story, there are things a love about it and things that are just kinda eh, but I hope it flows better as a graphic novel.

Shumachers take on Mad Hatter, I think, would have been really interesting. I wonder if he was aware of that character.

[Gotham Knight]

Not going to spoil too much about #5...but Harvey Kent of the Golden Age returns in a big way. I was pretty impressed. This is the big action issue.

[Silver Nemesis]

I thought issue 5 was a marginal improvement over the last few, but it still had a lot of problems.

SPOILERS.

Batman finally threw a punch (two in fact, which still isn't terribly satisfying but is an improvement nonetheless). Gordon featured more prominently and had some meaningful interaction with his daughter. There's some semblance of a central plot now, with everyone trying to rescue Gordon from Dent. But this scenario should have been introduced much earlier in the series, rather than in the second half of the penultimate issue. The Batcycle looked great, though the vehicular action scenes were hardly integral to the story. I liked how the Batman Returns batarang was incorporated into the action scene at the police station. I thought the art and colouring in general were better this issue, which might reflect the extra time they had to work on it. The following image looked very familiar.

Many of the old criticisms still stand though. Hamm's writing isn't well structured and there are some very clumsy and confusing scene transitions. For example, there's a scene where Two-Face is fleeing a park that's meant to be surrounded by cops, and on the very next page he's back in his hideout conversing with Gordon. It feels as though there's a page missing in between those two scenes, or at least a missing caption clarifying the time jump, and that's not the only time Hamm makes abrupt geographical and temporal leaps of that nature. Two-Face still doesn't have a clearly stated end goal. Selina's presence still feels as though it's been shoehorned into the narrative. And Batman still doesn't talk or behave like the Burton version.

I wouldn't blame the GCPD for turning against Batman and his allies after the way they behaved in this issue. Firstly, Bruce accidentally shot Gordon in the neck with a tranquiliser dart and allowed Two-Face to kidnap and take him hostage. Secondly, he had Robin assault several innocent cops using the Batcycle. And thirdly, Catwoman assaulted Barbara to prevent her arresting Two-Face (Selina presumably did this to assist Batman in locating Gordon), thereby sabotaging an otherwise successful police sting operation and allowing Two-Face to retreat to his hideout and shoot Barbara's father. And that's to say nothing of the rather pointless scene where Batman and Robin are speeding around Gotham in the Batmobile at 160 mph. I wouldn't mind if they were racing to save someone's life, but in that particular scene they weren't.

So on the whole, a mixed review from me. Still not great, but I thought it was slightly better than the last three issues.

[Gotham Knight]

Really awesome chat with Hamm/Quinones

[Travesty]

Many of the old criticisms still stand though. Hamm's writing isn't well structured and there are some very clumsy and confusing scene transitions. For example, there's a scene where Two-Face is fleeing a park that's meant to be surrounded by cops, and on the very next page he's back in his hideout conversing with Gordon. It feels as though there's a page missing in between those two scenes, or at least a missing caption clarifying the time jump, and that's not the only time Hamm makes abrupt geographical and temporal leaps of that nature. Two-Face still doesn't have a clearly stated end goal. Selina's presence still feels as though it's been shoehorned into the narrative. And Batman still doesn't talk or behave like the Burton version.

I wouldn't blame the GCPD for turning against Batman and his allies after the way they behaved in this issue. Firstly, Bruce accidentally shot Gordon in the neck with a tranquiliser dart and allowed Two-Face to kidnap and take him hostage. Secondly, he had Robin assault several innocent cops using the Batcycle. And thirdly, Catwoman assaulted Barbara to prevent her arresting Two-Face (Selina presumably did this to assist Batman in locating Gordon), thereby sabotaging an otherwise successful police sting operation and allowing Two-Face to retreat to his hideout and shoot Barbara's father. And that's to say nothing of the rather pointless scene where Batman and Robin are speeding around Gotham in the Batmobile at 160 mph. I wouldn't mind if they were racing to save someone's life, but in that particular scene they weren't.

So on the whole, a mixed review from me. Still not great, but I thought it was slightly better than the last three issues.

Pretty much this.

[The Laughing Fish]

Issue #5 is much better than what we got in the last couple of chapters, but it has come too late. I'm glad we saw Commissioner Gordon having a much more prominent role and shared some interaction with Barbara. Long overdue.

Only one more issue to go now. I expect Two-Face's story to wrap up, but I don't expect all loose ends to be tied up, i.e. Catwoman.

[eledoremassis02]

I wonder if they are going to set up for another run? I honestly am not sure if im going to be invested in another go. This one has some interesting aspects but overall kind of feels like not much has happened. Without Burton or Keaton, this just feels like someone did a comic adaptation of a script draft.

[Gotham Knight]

Next week finally!!!

[Silver Nemesis]

Well, the series is finished. Here are my thoughts on the final issue and the series as a whole. SPOILERS ahead.

To begin with, we find out that Gordon did not survive the gunshot he sustained in the previous issue. But his death is not clearly depicted and we only learn of its occurrence through a second-hand report. Batman is indirectly responsible for this tragedy, since it was Batman who shot Gordon with a tranquiliser and allowed Two-Face to kidnap him, and it was Batman and his allies who sabotaged Barbara's sting operation and allowed Two-Face to retreat to his hideout and shoot Gordon. All in all, it makes for a pretty rotten send-off for Hingle's Gordon and an embarrassing stain on Bat-Keaton's performance record.

The Burtonverse Falcone is introduced, only to be killed off on the very same page. That struck me as rather pointless. Hamm's clumsy scene transitions continue to plague his writing, and there's a particularly awkward example of this in #6 where we go from a scene of Bruce sitting in a wheelchair in the Batcave to another scene of Bruce sitting in a wheelchair in the Batcave, wearing identical clothes, without a caption to separate the two scenes or indicate that a leap in time has occurred. In one panel he's in the middle of a conversation with Alfred...

...and in the very next panel he's in the middle of a conversation with Two-Face.

I had to re-read this sequence of panels a couple of times before I realised there'd been a time jump. There was nothing in the art or text to indicate as such, aside from Two-Face suddenly appearing out of nowhere. These kind of confusing scene transitions have been a recurring problem throughout this series and highlight how poorly structured Hamm's writing is.

What other observations can I offer about the final issue? Catwoman continues to not act like the Pfeiffer version, and Barbara is relegated to a minor supporting role. She literally only appears in four panels and has no dialogue. We don't even get to see her react to news of her father's death, or to Dent's death for that matter. She's just shoved aside for the entire issue. The ending is unsatisfactorily abrupt, with Catwoman appearing out of nowhere and murdering Dent. Why? Why did she do anything in this series? I get why she killed Shreck in Batman Returns, although she was far less nonchalant about that than she was about killing Dent. But her motives in this comic, and the back story explaining what happened to her after the events of BR, remain frustratingly opaque. I also didn't like Bruce's line to Selina about them not being the same. That felt like Hamm trying to steer Bruce's characterisation away from a specifically Burtonesque version towards a more generic comic book version.

On the plus side, the cover art looked great. There were a few panels right at the end which finally captured the look of Burton's Gotham. And it was nice to see the Batman Forever garage.

That's all I have to say really. The series as a whole is painfully disappointing and I won't bother buying the collected edition when it's finally released. I don't consider this canonical to the Burtonverse, and as far as sequels to B89 and BR go I'll stick with Batman Forever. The Batman '89 comic didn't capture the look or feel of the Burton films. The characters didn't act like their Burtonverse counterparts, there was little to no central plot, and there were too many characters and separate narrative strands that didn't come together in a satisfying way. It wasn't funny, scary, clever, intense or emotionally engaging. The writing was messy and unfocused, and aside from the covers the art work was generally mediocre. IMHO the entire series is a 2 out of 5 at best.

Hamm's a good writer

https://www.batman-online.com/forum/index.php?topic=4067.290

I retract this ^ statement.

[The Dark Knight]

Exactly all that, except for me the events after BR remain in my own imagination. There's too much for me to overlook to accept this as canon. Batman talks way too much, Burtonverse characters in general don't feel like the genuine articles and the story is all over the place. I won't be buying a collected volume either. The excitement of the concept faded with each issue. They started getting more wrong than right, with the Burton edge smoothed off to become something more generic.