matt wagner | the m0vie blog

Batman and the Monster Men (Review)

Posted on July 17, 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 really liked both of Matt Wagner’s Dark Moon Rising miniseries, offering a modern retelling of two classic Golden Age Batman stories, fit within the context of the Caped Crusader’s early career. I honestly don’t think that we get enough Golden Age nostalgia within DC comics – the focus of the recent wave of revisionism seems to have been the decidedly wacky and zany Silver Age. Still, between this and Grant Morrison’s Action Comics, perhaps we can start a trend. This is a story transitioning between Frank Miller’s iconic Batman: Year One and Jeph Loeb’s slightly more colourful The Long Halloween, built on the idea that Batman inhabits a comic book world – too much “realism” or too heavy a focus on “gritty urban crime” might rob the character of some of his appeal.

He sure knows how to make an entrance…

Continue reading →

Filed under: Comics | Tagged: batman, batman #1, Batman and the Monster Men, Batman in film, batman: year one, dark knight returns, dc comics, frank miller, Hugo Strange, matt wagner, Miller, monster men | Leave a comment »

Batman and the Mad Monk

Posted on October 4, 2009 by Darren

With all the Silver Age love that Grant Morrison is giving Batman and Geoff Johns is showing Hal Jordan, it’s nice to see a little reflection back towards the Golden Age, which is generally forgotten (it helps that many of the comic book heroes that we have today only really emerged during that Silver Age, and that the writers would have grown up during it). Here we have a contemporary retelling of one of the early Batman stories, as reimagined by Matt Wagner in a follow-up to another Golden Age adaptation, Batman and the Monster Men. It’s a lovely little fun story that stands tall among the many, many early adventures in Batman’s career.