Mike Benson

I haven't been thrilled with how Deadpool has been written recently (no names mentioned, *cough*Daniel Way and Victor Gischler*cough*), but this miniseries is great.

Mike Benson really makes the character funny, even though he employs the Pool-o-vision and "white boxes" gimmicks that I have come to loathe. There's actually a discernible plot, which is unfortunately too rare nowadays when it comes to Deadpool, and recurring characters that aren't horribly butchered (hello, Outlaw). And the show more jokes are actually funny. No, seriously! That's a rarity for modern Deadpool, too.

The art for the Suicide Kings mini is pretty good, but I don't care for Shawn Crystal's art in the Games of Death one-shot.

Frankly, I wish that Benson wrote Deadpool more often. Maybe then his solo series would actually be worth buying. show less

The only reason I picked up this trade was because it was something like 85% off the cover price at the used book store, but I'm glad that I bought it. I like Benson's Moon Knight better than Huston's; Huston seemed like such a hardcore Moon Knight fanboy that he had to make Marc Spector the biggest badass to ever strut in the Marvel Universe. While MK is still a psychotic badass in these comics, he does have his redeeming moments at the same time - particularly when he breaks down and says show more that he wants to be a hero. Plus there is some wicked awesome Suydam cover art included in this trade, which perfectly fits the character of Moon Knight. show less

The TPB starts with a story about Huntress and the Man-Bat that doesn't quite turn out exactly like I thought it would. There's also an Oracle sighting, which happens too infrequently. Then a Commissioner Gordon and Batman mystery which is the most interesting of the three stories, and then the final story is a Robin story.

It's interesting that the Streets of Gotham series seems to be more than just about Batman, which doesn't always happen in the Gotham titles. And the art is okay, but not show more my favorite Batman art by a long shot. show less

Short summary: Leviathan is a perfectly good continuation of Dini and Nguyen's work on the first Streets of Gotham collection.

The title story starts off the collection nicely - The Huntress tracks Man-Bat across the city, and both of them end up in over their heads when they crash into an old church. Dini does a good job of blending Huntress's wit with the spooky situation. My one little grumble here is that it seems like this would be a natural place to address the cross iconography show more Huntress uses, but it doesn't come up once.

"In The Bleak Midwinter" is a sad, Christmas one-shot featuring Humpty Dumpty and continuing the Zsasz story from the first collection. Really well done.

When I first read through the collection, I wasn't really a fan of "Hardcore Nights", but I enjoyed it a little bit more on the second pass. It's a pretty good Batman mystery story, but ultimately forgettable. (This is where I drop a star.)

The collection gets rounded out with "The Heroes" and "Final Cut", which wrap up the Zsasz storyline and reveal the identity of Abuse. This is another bit that I originally wasn't a huge fan of, but came to enjoy more. I still have mixed feelings about the reveal of Abuse as a little kid -- while he works as a nice complement to Damian, I feel like there could have been more done with him than we see in this arc.

All in all, Streets of Gotham continues to entertain (and Nguyen's art continues to wow) show less