Gerald Parel

I received this from Edelweiss and DC Comics in exchange for an honest review.

Really enjoyed this one, especially how Brian Azzarello tied the history and culture of the four cities (Berlin, Prague, Paris, and Rome) into the story line.

I also greatly enjoyed the twist of forcing Batman and the Joker into working together, almost like a twisted buddy-cop plot.

Jim Lee's artwork was fantastic, especially how the viewpoint of both Batman and Joker became more and more like a hallucination as show more the Trojan horse virus worked its way through their systems.

Good stuff! show less

Enjoyed the minute-tour of a European city at the start of each chapter. The range of artists on display shows off a lot of talent, though the story is kind of a bag lunch among Batman stories. Oh hey, it's Bane, revealed just in time to subsequently leave the story. The book is really about the reluctant alliance between Batman and Joker, but it ends without much payoff beyond "that was a neat little journey," almost like a shorter Hush.

You know you have procrastinated enough when you can't find the images you have screen capped for a graphic novel. But, never mind that, I can write a review without any images to accompany it. But, it makes the review a little less fun to do and I can't show you all the quality of the art. However, most of Batman: Europa was quite nice, the only part that I found a bit hard to see what has going on was when Batman and Joker were in Paris and they are starting to feel the effect of the virus show more and the art is showing that. Other than that, pretty much the whole volume was good.

However, the story was nothing really special, which surprised me because here we have two arch nemeses working together for a cure and one would think that it would be pretty cool to read about that, but I actually found myself not really overwhelmed with the story, a bit too much I need to finish this volume rather than I want to finish the volume. Sure, there were some good parts, the fact that the Joker and Batman were "working" together was a cool idea.

Then we have the ending, to be honest. I was not really impressed with whom was behind it all. No real wow feeling.

So, not my favourite volume, it had some good parts, the art was good, but the story was not fantastic. A good read, nothing more.

I want to thank DC Comics for providing me with a free copy for an honest review! show less

Not best. Definitely not what I was expecting in a Batman/Joker team up.