Batman: Dark Victory

I think I'd really love this story more as an animated feature. The visual style, much like in Long Halloween, is a bit jarring at times. It can be really effective, but I'm not a huge fan of the style itself and I think that detracted from my enjoyment a bit. Which is odd, I thought the style fit Long Halloween perfectly, I may just be getting Batman'd out. That being said, all the Noire greatness is here; femme fatales, backstabbing, the mafia, secrets, murders, etc. It's definitely a different type of Batman story, probably should have right this directly after Long Halloween.

I didn't like it quite as much as The Long Halloween -- TLH felt contained, recursive, atmospheric. DV expands a little more, dealing with most of the same plot lines but in a way that feels more like a big Batman 'verse. So, I loved it as a Batman story, and it has a lot of great villain action including supervillains and mobsters. It just felt slightly different. That recursive quality is kind of built in though, expanding from lines of dialogue and repetitive motifs to a whole book that repeats and expands the previous one, and if that isn't Batman, I don't know what is. It's still a good murder mystery though, and if anything it was easier to follow than TLH. Also the art is great. It's not entirely realistic, and some shots are show more more realistic than others, and it creates a really amazing "slightly unhinged" feeling for Gotham City with a lot of striking panels, especially of the villains. I liked the art in TLH too, it's the same team, but this is a step even beyond that. show less

It obviously steals a lot from Long Halloween, but the Hangman story is still pretty good, especially in the way it manages to incorporate Robin into the story, making him believably useful. It does seem to leave a lot unanswered, though, and I can't be the only one who thought Gilda Dent should have returned in some fashion.

I liked this one even better than "The Long Halloween".

After the killer known as Holiday has been captured, Gotham is once again under attack by someone using a similar approach: this time, the victims are cops, who are hanged one by one, and left with a note pinned to them, on which is a game of hangman. Batman at first tries to solve these crimes on his own, but it isn't until he finds a companion in the form of Robin that he finds out who's behind the attacks.

The overall theme of this story arc is Batman's loneliness. Sometimes I wished the authors would've made it a little more subtle, but the lack of subtlety doesn't actually hurt. Well, it does hurt in that one really, really hurts for Batman and Bruce Wayne. So when Batman finds show more his Robin, it's a relief for the reader, too. I've read a few Batman comics now (still only a fraction of what is out there), and my feelings for Robin are ambivalent at best. I don't hate him, but I can see why some people might not like him. In here, however, I felt he was completely likeable; and I loved how Loeb and Sale chose to tell a story that every reader already knows anyway in a way that felt new and real. I especially loved the way the parallels between Bruce and Dick's fates were shown (and Alfred's reaction).

In fact, that is something that's impressed me again and again, the more Batman I've read (and by the way, I doubt there'll ever be a point where I won't feel like a newbie to this) - the way the different authors always manage to give the myth a new shape, a new twist. Because the story of how Bruce Wayne became Batman is, at this point, one almost everybody in Western culture knows (ok, I'm probably exaggerating, but a lot of people know it). Still some manage to tell it in a way that still moves.

And the pain. And the loneliness. I've found it gets a bit much after a while, so I'm trying to keep the dosage at an acceptable level, but overall I'm still loving the darkness of it. The world of Batman - definitely one of my favourite discoveries of the year. show less

After a breakout at Arkham Asylum, a serial killer starts targeting current and former police officers, murdering one on each holiday. With enemies ranging from Holiday to Solomon Grundy to Two Face all on the loose, Batman and James Gordon are both stumped as to who the killer may be.

I heard good things about this compilation and was excited to read it. However, I was soon disappointed. The plot is really rather thin, but it is convoluted by having numerous characters drop in and out of the narrative, including mobster, lawyers, and more. The resolution was really rather anticlimactic, especially after having the mystery recapped at the beginning of every chapter. I know this is a consequence of having originally been published in show more single issue format, but it became rather tedious to hear over and over again how a serial killer was on the hunt every holiday, how Two Face was formerly Harvey Dent, etc.

The illustrations are technically fine, but the black-and-white palette makes it sometimes difficult to follow the action. show less

I thought long and hard before giving two stars to this one. It's possible that I should have given it three.

It was long, and a decent enough read. In many ways it resembles Frank Miller's acclaimed [b:Batman: Year One|59980|Batman Year One|Frank Miller|http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1170537597s/59980.jpg|2501570] miniseries. Much of the art closely resembles David Mazzucchelli's subdued, semi-realistic and oddly crumpled-looking style in Year One. That's not a style I particularly like, but I don't hate it either.

Many of the secondary characters from Year One appear in Dark Victory. But the storytelling style diverges more from Miller's, particularly in the latter half of the book.

In fact, that's the reason I ended up giving Dark show more Victory only two stars; it starts well, with a promising mystery that seems as if it might be a mystery - that is, that it might be a mystery which the reader could actually have a chance to figure out, rather than simply read and wait for a deus ex machina. The characters are interesting. But as the book progresses, it goes downhill.

I don't like the way that the various supervillains are drawn, for one thing. Semi-realism goes out the window for them, and the effect doesn't work. Two-Face looks as if he's half Mafioso, and half Red Skull - but with a strange-looking nose that manages to be both weirdly long and pug at the same time (and not just on one side, which might make sense, but on both). The Joker is drawn so unrealistically that he might as well be from another universe; his head is twice the size of anyone else's, and half of his face is giant teeth. Again, the effect doesn't work. Robin looks as if he's drifting towards an anime look, of the typical "cute/frightened little kid with a tiny mouth" type.

The writing goes downhill even faster than the art. A major plotline involving betrayal is resolved in an unsatisfying, off-hand manner. The mystery, which began with such promise, sputters out with a whimper; no matter how I try to connect the interesting clues to the resolution, I can't make sense of it. Batman makes more stupid mistakes than he should, throughout; this is NOT a character who should often miss the obvious, and it's annoying when an author plays that tired old card to extend the story.

The addition of Robin to the story doesn't work at all. This is the "dark" Batman, or purports to be, and adding a cutesy/spunky sidekick to that character is a tricky proposition at best. I don't consider Frank Miller to be infallible, but at least he handled the same issue far more skillfully in [b:Batman: The Dark Knight Returns|59960|Batman The Dark Knight Returns|Frank Miller|http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/5169ZV5MBVL._SL75_.jpg|1104159]. In this book, Robin is just annoying. I can see what the author was going for, an attempt to make the sidekick issue work with the "dark lone avenger" theme, but he simply fails to carry it off successfully.

I think I might have given this book three stars if it hadn't resembled a far superior work so closely in the beginning, and then failed so completely to fulfil its promise. show less

In Batman: Dark Victory, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale continue the story begun in their Long Halloween, itself a follow-up to Frank Miller’s Batman: Year One. A new killer dubbed the hangman begins killing police with a connection to Commissioner Gordon on various holidays, possibly to prove that Alberto Falcone, son of deceased mob boss Carmine Falcone, was not the true Holiday killer. Gordon also clashed with the new District Attorney, Janice Porter, who appears to have too close a connection to the Falcone family. In an attempt to free her brother from Arkham Asylum and kill Two-Face, Sofia Gigante Falcone hires the men who provided the acid used on Harvey Dent to storm the asylum. In the process, they free the Mad Hatter, Scarecrow, show more Joker, and Poison Ivy while Two-Face escapes. He recruits the various villains to aid him in attacking the mob, incidentally throwing off suspicion that he is also the Hangman. The 13-issue story also establishes Anthony Zucco as a member of the Moroni crime family, taking time to build his role prior to his killing of the Flying Graysons, which allows Loeb and Sale to introduce their version of Robin. Though Sale was reticent to include Robin, Loeb eventually convinced him and the two introduced the character in a way that makes sense to the world they crafted in these two books. Loeb and Sale later returned to the events surrounding Catwoman and her disappearance to Italy (pg. 347) for their interquel, Catwoman: When in Rome. Like The Long Halloween, this effectively follows the world Miller established in Year One, though unlike the first volume, it is less capable of standing on its own. That said, the story is a classic Batman tale and a must-read for all fans. show less