Garth Ennis writes one of his loud, obnoxious, gross, and cruel takes on superheroes, giving Killer Croc an origin story and pushing the character in a new direction with some goofy shock value developments. It's almost okay but crosses the line a few too many times with a gleefully sadistic Batman, gratuitous fat shaming, and the mutilation and maiming of Batman's entire rogue's gallery in ways that either make this an Elseworlds tale or a canon story that will be quickly ignored or retconned. (This latter ambiguity is an issue with most of the Black Label books.)

What really sunk the book for me though was Liam Sharp abandoning his usual style for a murky and ugly Arkham Asylum morass that looks like Bill Sienkiewicz painting over Sam Kieth. Ugh. The initial concept sketches included in the back of the book looked so much better. ( )