Batman The Black Glove
User Ratings and Reviews
3 Stars More uneven Batman fair.
Had this collection only included the outstanding Black Glove storyline from Grant Morrison and JH Williams, I would have purchased it. This is a handsome hardcover volume with a beautifully rendered cover with contents worthy of the deluxe treatment.
The downside is that after the 3 issues illustrated by Williams, the art chores for the remainder of the book fall to Tony Daniel, who’s usually good pencil work is ruined by inker Jonathan Glapion.
The editors seem to be trying to create a “Jim Lee-a-like” art style here, but what they end up with is a mess the reader will have to endure rather than enjoy. Check out Tony Daniel’s online Batman pencil work without inks and you’ll see what a botch job this is. While William’s work is fluid, consistant and clean, Daniel & Glapion’s work is scruffy, uneven and messy. They don’t belong in the same book.
I wish DC would clean up their act when it comes to Batman. It is hard to believe they can’t find a consistantly good art team to handle their most popular character.
Why bother bringing in big name writers like Morrison if his scripts are butchered by poor artwork. Can we get this series back on track please?
2 Stars OK, but I’ll pass
Maybe it’s just me, but I didn’t get it.
The first half of the book is a murder mystery featuring several obscure Silver Age Batman characters (the League of Batmen anyone?…yeesh), and the ending comes out of left field. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, this was a murder mystery after all.
The second half is Batman facing down agents of the Black Glove and fighting his way through a few Batmen impersonators with an ending which leads directly into the Batman: R.I.P. storyline. The last half felt more like a Batman story than the first half.
When I read a comic, I expect to be entertained. I don’t like having to “try” and understand what’s going on in a book. It’s escapist literature not Shakespeare. If I finish reading something I don’t want to reread it again just to try and make heads or tails of what is going on. Honestly, I have this problem with a lot of Grant Morrison’s work whether it’s in New X-Men, JLA, Final Crisis, 52, Seven Soldiers, or even Arkham Asylum. I find myself just wishing he’d stick to the plot and enertain without all the obscure, overly kewl, heavy handed, metaphorical storytelling. Guess his stuff just isn’t for me. To each their own I suppose.
The artwork by JH Williams was very good. The Tony Daniels chapters were OK as well.
As stated above, the second half of the book is better than the first, but not good enough to save the collection in my opinion. Honestly there’s better out there to waste your time and money, especially in today’s economic climate.
Save your twenty bucks and go find Batman: The Killing Joke, Batman & Sohn, or even Batman: Hush. I’m selling my copy and going after something new.
4 Stars Is Batman Losing His Marbles???
It took me a couple of times reading through the book to get it and maybe I still don’t. The first story finds Batman and the `Batmen of All Nations’ trapped in a mansion on a small island. The Batmen characters were created back in the lighthearted 1960’s where Batman had inspired other crime fighters from around the world to don Batman like costumes modified to their own ethnic flavor. This being NOT the 1960’s the Batmen are no longer the gay band of merry men they once were and now find themselves being picked off one by one ala Agatha Christie `And Then There Were None’. The big reveal at the end of the killers identity was… ok, but the first time I read the book I thought the villain WAS the titular `Black Glove’. But the Black Glove is more of an ethereal foe if not a product of Batman’s imagination.
The Batman has become obsessed with the idea that there may exist a foe who cannot be caught, a King of Crime. It appeared at first that the Black Glove was the mastermind pulling the strings in the first story; the villain behind the villain but in retrospect I wonder if it’s more a product of Batman’s paranoia. Batman has become so obsessed with planning for every eventuality that his mind has now constructed a villain who is always one step ahead no matter how well he strategizes. So is the Black Glove real or a product of Batman’s vivid imagination? Maybe we’ll find out in R.I.P.
The book starts off big with some excellent and creative art but drops in quality in the next two stories with the final one having both the weakest plot and blandest visuals. The second story was pretty good although it used characters from stories I’ve never read. Apparently years ago the police department started to fret about what might happen if Batman were to expire so they created three Batman type crime fighters from their own ranks. The plan didn’t go well. Batman gets blasted in the chest by one of the pseudo Batmen and goes into cardiac arrest and that’s where the story gets really strange as Batman finds himself disoriented, slipping between images from the past and strange hallucinations including a character who looks like the old Bat Mite.
I enjoyed the second story very much but the third was weak. Bruce Wayne is having dinner at a restaurant with his girlfriend, Jezebel Jet (yikes), when a member of the Ten-Eyed Brotherhood breaks in and… well, actually I can’t remember what exactly he was trying to do. Maybe kidnap Jet. It was pretty forgettable and a sorry way to close out the book. Let me just say that making a compelling story with one of the Ten-Eyed men is… challenging.
The thread that binds all through stories is Batman’s increasing paranoia which reminds me of his creation of Brother Eye during the run up to Infinite Crisis. So where does DC go with this as Batman becomes more and more unhinged? I guess it leads up to his death in Batman R.I.P. DC has already stated that Batman isn’t actually dead but it is interesting to see how writers try and push the envelope of what they can do with a character who is the companies biggest cash cow without truly, fundamentally altering the character. The death of Batman could be a hugely powerful story but then of course you’re left with a dead Batman and what fun is that.
4 Stars “The king of crime wears no crown.”
This is the second hardcover collection of Grant Morrison’s Batman and it contains the work of three artists; J.H. Williams III, Tony S. Daniel and Ryan Benjamin.
The art of Williams III and Daniel are on par, with the former adding significant style to the murder mystery - “International Club of Heroes” - where a confab on the Island of Mister Mayhew for Batman imitators from around the world turns tragic, while the latter finds Bruce Wayne in a battle of wills against a demonic “replacement” Batman, which cuts like a sabre into the shadowy reaches of his soul. Benjamin tackles the Wayne-Jezebel Jet relationship and reintroduces Robin/Nightwing in a story that is a bridge to Batman RIP.
Morrison is in a long creator run and this material is making sure that the pace remains solid for the closing laps.
4 Stars These middle issues are the best of Morrison’s run..
So by now, anyone who’s been following Morrison’s wildly uneven but ultimately enjoyable run on Batman knows how these story arcs play out. I found his early issues not up to par (Ninja manbats? Batman’s son Damien??), but Grant markedly improves with these issues.
The first arc, the “Club Of Heroes”, has Batman and Robin going to an island for a reunion of the League Of Batmen. I’ve been a loyal comic reader for most of my life, more Marvel than DC admittedly, and my knowledge of Silver Age Batman is pretty spotty. However, my ignorance didn’t hamper my enjoyment of this story, and it’s arguably Morrison’s strongest series of issues from a story standpoint: the guests find themselves in a murder mystery as someone is picking off the Batmen of other nations and the mysterious Black Glove starts to show it’s intent. JH William’s mixed-media art is simply brillliant and has to be seen to be believed.
But it’s the “Three Ghosts Of Batman” section of this collection that are by far my favorite issues of Grant’s run. There’s genuine tension and dread in these pages as Batman faces off against “The Anti-Christ” Batman, has a dream involving his parent’s killer Joe Chill and we see deeper into the lengths (and the costs) that Batman has gone to make himself the ultimate weapon against crime. I don’t care what anyone says, I like Tony Daniel’s art and I hope he stays on the Batman title for a long while to come.
By the time the last part comes around, you may be underwhelmed with both the story and art. It was meant to be a stop-gap issue before “Batman R.I.P.” so it’s a bit filler-tastic. Also, be warned, especially if you’re unfamiliar with Morrison’s style–what he’s attempting to do with his Batman run is to create nothing short of a unified-field theory for all the different eras and ages of Batman in comics–tying together some 60-plus years of storylines. The results are at times uneven and not for all tastes but there’s some very clever bits for long-time and intermediate Bat-readers alike.
Filed under: Comic Book Reviews