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Sep. 12th, 2008 10:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
teapotgirlI rented Batman: Gotham Knight yesterday. I mostly liked it. The problem with a series of vignettes is that sometimes you will get some suck next to the awesome. The Batman: Black and White series seems to be the sole exception to this rule.
It technically takes place in the world of the Nolan movies with a self-contained story arc. It's definitely pre-The Dark Knight because Detective Anna Ramirez (the dirty cop responsible for kidnapping Rachel Dawes) is still good and idealistic. No mention of Joker but the Scarecrow shows up.
Thankfully the suckiest story is second in the line-up. It's written by Greg Rucka, so I'm not really surprised because I find him to be very hit or miss. It feels especially half-finished because it's all about one cop's distrust of Batman, stuff explodes, and suddenly the cop likes Batman for no real reason. The cop also rides a blast wave to the top of a 20 story building, and jumps down 10 stories without getting hurt. It irks to me no end.
(Wiki tells me Batman rescues the cop and puts him on top of the building, but it still doesn't explain the 10 story jump.)
The segments have their own art styles. There's one segment where the art is heavily influenced by Mike Mignola/Hellboy and the last segment looks like something out of the early 90s Image Comics with excessive muscles upon muscles, which is too bad because one of the original Batman: The Animated Series writers wrote it, and there's some good lines.
My two favorite vignettes:
"Field Test" is the only segment where it's mostly Bruce Wayne schmoozing and he looks the most bishounen which I think fits the needs of the story. I think a lot of artists forget that Bruce is supposed to be attractive and he gets all mucked up in their attempts at dramatic lighting and their need to make Batman look like a tank.
I'M LOOKING AT YOU, MILLER.
His Batman costume is also heavily influenced by G-Force; it takes a bit to get used to but I liked the design. This is also the segment where Will Friedle/Ron Stoppable/Terry McGinnis plays a Russian gangster.
I love, love, love stories about Bruce's training before he officially became the Batman so I really liked "Working Through Pain" which is about Bruce's time in India, learning from fakirs on how to endure pain. Parminder Nagra (Jess from Bend it Like Beckham) is his teacher. I really liked her in this. I also forgot how lovely her voice is. Bruce also looks like Kyoya. I also wanted to give Bruce a hug and a puppy in this story.
Kevin Conroy is the only actor from the animated series doing voices (he will always be my Batman). They got David McCallum to play Alfred, and his Alfred talks like Jeeves which I liked.
Also, Avatar Kuruk is the voice of Jim Gordon. Heh.
It technically takes place in the world of the Nolan movies with a self-contained story arc. It's definitely pre-The Dark Knight because Detective Anna Ramirez (the dirty cop responsible for kidnapping Rachel Dawes) is still good and idealistic. No mention of Joker but the Scarecrow shows up.
Thankfully the suckiest story is second in the line-up. It's written by Greg Rucka, so I'm not really surprised because I find him to be very hit or miss. It feels especially half-finished because it's all about one cop's distrust of Batman, stuff explodes, and suddenly the cop likes Batman for no real reason. The cop also rides a blast wave to the top of a 20 story building, and jumps down 10 stories without getting hurt. It irks to me no end.
(Wiki tells me Batman rescues the cop and puts him on top of the building, but it still doesn't explain the 10 story jump.)
The segments have their own art styles. There's one segment where the art is heavily influenced by Mike Mignola/Hellboy and the last segment looks like something out of the early 90s Image Comics with excessive muscles upon muscles, which is too bad because one of the original Batman: The Animated Series writers wrote it, and there's some good lines.
My two favorite vignettes:
"Field Test" is the only segment where it's mostly Bruce Wayne schmoozing and he looks the most bishounen which I think fits the needs of the story. I think a lot of artists forget that Bruce is supposed to be attractive and he gets all mucked up in their attempts at dramatic lighting and their need to make Batman look like a tank.
I'M LOOKING AT YOU, MILLER.
His Batman costume is also heavily influenced by G-Force; it takes a bit to get used to but I liked the design. This is also the segment where Will Friedle/Ron Stoppable/Terry McGinnis plays a Russian gangster.
I love, love, love stories about Bruce's training before he officially became the Batman so I really liked "Working Through Pain" which is about Bruce's time in India, learning from fakirs on how to endure pain. Parminder Nagra (Jess from Bend it Like Beckham) is his teacher. I really liked her in this. I also forgot how lovely her voice is. Bruce also looks like Kyoya. I also wanted to give Bruce a hug and a puppy in this story.
Kevin Conroy is the only actor from the animated series doing voices (he will always be my Batman). They got David McCallum to play Alfred, and his Alfred talks like Jeeves which I liked.
Also, Avatar Kuruk is the voice of Jim Gordon. Heh.
