Batcave | the m0vie blog

Batman: Knight of Vengeance (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, July is “Batman month” here at the m0vie blog. Check back daily for comics, movies and television reviews and discussion of the Caped Crusader.

I’ll freely concede that I wasn’t the biggest fan of Brian Azzarello and Eduardo Risso’s first collaboration on Batman, producing Broken City. While I could see what the pair were trying to do – to craft a genuinely dark and sinister noir tale within the framework of a traditional Batman narrative – it just seemed a little overwhelmingly stylistic. However, I am actually genuinely awed at their collaboration on Batman: Knight of Vengeance. A three-issue tie-in to the gigantic crossover Flashpoint, Knight of Vengeance is essentially an out-of-continuity alternate reality tale (similar to DC’s Elseworld brand), exploring a unique twist on the Batman mythos: what if Bruce had died in the mugging, and not his parents?

Darkest Knight…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: Batcave, batman, brian azzarello, Dark Knight Rises, gotham city, joker, Thomas, thomas wayne | Leave a comment »

Batman: The Dynamic Duo Archives, Vol. 1 (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 13, 2012 by Darren

It’s very hard to believe, but there was a time when both Batman and Detective Comics were on the verge of cancellation. While the character had been one of the first major superheroes to emerge, and had a profound impact on many who followed, the fifties had not been kind to the Batman. When changes in the market forced the publisher to move away from the traditional crime stories, they tried to tell science-fiction epics. This approach actually worked quite well on Superman and Action Comics, as Superman leant himself to stories about aliens and other dimensions, but these elements felt somewhat out of place in a Batman comic book. In a last ditch effort to save the titles, editor Julius Schwartz was drafted in to revamp the character and his world, resulted in a “new look” version of the Caped Crusader who would inspire Adam West’s version of the character, but felt like something of a return to the character’s roots.