Hey, fellow DC fans!
So I recently made a topic discussing the New 52 and if it worked/accomplished its goal Honestly, I had so much fun talking about it with Fellow DC fans I thought it might be fun to make topics discussing the specific series there. I don’t know how this’ll go, I don’t know how many there’ll be, I don’t know any of that. All I know is its super fun to discuss comic books with everyone here, since we’re all clearly passionate about the same thing. Maybe I’ll post a new discussion every week? I don’t know! Everyone is welcome here though, whether you liked the New 52, or hated it or anything in between!
With all the news in regards to 5G, the departure of Dan Didio and all this other stuff, other DC fans are worried too, I think. I think these threads will be a fun way to discuss with fellow DC fans!
I picked Batman first because it seems like the least divisive book. I’ll be going by arcs too, instead of entire runs since it’ll allow us to explore the books and how they changed. So without further adieu, let’s discuss the first arc in Snyder & Capullo’s New 52 run of Batman!
So as we all know Batman is one of those books that didn’t really benefit from the “reboot” aspect, but that’s mostly only because Batman wasn’t… Really rebooted. Batman adhered to the “5 year rule” but it caused a lot of things to not make sense. The amount of Robins Batman went through in five years is absurd, let’s make that perfectly clear. There is no universe where the Batfamily has gone through all that history in five years unless every single night was one of the large events. The question is… Did this affect the quality of Snyder’s stories?
I personally don’t think it did. Readers who were already familiar with the previous stories noticed it, thought it was dumb, but they were still familiar with all the Bat-history. New readers were probably unaffected too because they didn’t… Really know. I know I didn’t. So, Batman wasn’t really much of a reboot, but was the story any good?
Put simply: yeah. Definitely. The court/Night of the Owls was a really awesome way to start this run. From that very first issue Snyder established Gotham as not just a city, but a character, central to the story of the Batman. Capullo’s art was the perfect way to bring Snyder’s scripts to life. They worked well together and the end result showed. I can’t remember a single issue drawn by Capullo that looked bad.
These first two arcs introduce us to two new villains. The first is the Court of Owls, a secret group that runs Gotham in the shadows. Not exactly original, by any means, but the execution is what makes this arc stands out. During his investigation into the court, Batman finds himself trapped in a maze under Gotham and barely gets out. The Court systematically break him down and they almost succeed in killing him, too. The first arc ends with Bruce’s escape but it seems the Court isn’t ready to quite give up, as they decide to launch a full scale attack on Gotham city in a crossover that brought pretty much every Batfamily book into the fray. This is where the second new villain comes into play. Or villains, I guess.
The Court has these… Not quite undead soldiers they call Talons. Through all these bat titles they drive back the talons. Some books were better than others but today I’m going to focus only on the Batman portion, which also saw the introduction of a very specific Talon. Lincoln March, who claims to be Bruce Wayne’s younger brother. We end the arc not knowing whether or not it was true, and Bruce ends up needing to detonate his own building just to get rid of the guy.
Now. cut me some slack, it’s been a while since I’ve read this and I was only able to do a quick skim through the books to refresh my memory, so if I forgot or missed anything let me know below. But with all that out of the way, why don’t you tell me what you thought about the arc?
Personally I thought it was a well-paced, well told, well-done arc. The only issue I have with it is the early event type story amidst this reboot. They started out strong, but just as people were easing into the books they throw this big event in that just kinda goes… “You don’t NEED to read these tie-ins, but if you wanna know everything, you’re gonna have to.”
So, now it’s up to you guys, so let’s hear it. Did you love the Court/Night of the Owls, did you hate it? Are you indifferent? Let’s talk!
