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Batman vol 1.5: Night Of The Owls s/c

Batman vol 1.5: Night Of The Owls s/c back

Scott Snyder, various & Greg Capullo, various

Price: 
£15.99

Page 45 Review by Jonathan

“Seems you have a secret, Bruce. Don’t you?”
Creak...
“NO!”
CLANG!
“Your lucky penny, Sir.”
“Heh. Are you all right?”
“Quite, Sir.”

Good old Alfred. After the bit of classic Bat-history reworking in the preceding BATMAN vol 1: COURT OF OWLS which I’m still marvelling over at Scott Snyder’s sheer audacity, it did amuse me somewhat to see a certain piece of Bat-memorabilia that always struck me as a rather precarious thing to have lying around the Bat-cave put to such violent use.

So, following on from the tumultuous events of volume one, which culminated in the Court sending not just the current Talon assassin, but re-animating every Talon there has ever been, for a surgical strike upon Gotham’s most upstanding public servants, and a few dubious ones too, it’s up to the wider Bat-family to save the day, or night, depending on your semantics. Cue money-spinning crossover!

Now, I am most assuredly not usually one for crossovers that span into a myriad different titles, usually with the law of diminishing returns becoming ever more apparent, but here I am happy to report it works spectacularly well. Each Bat-family title is a matchup between the titular character and a Talon of yesteryear, but what could be dull and uninteresting is in fact just the opposite, as each story is done as a character piece with the Talons at the centre. It works well, avoiding it all becoming a samey slug-fest, and along the way we learn much of the history of the Court as seen through their various assassins’ eyes, which is a clever way of revealing much salient information for no hard detective work. Whilst no less than eleven writers contributed to this particular volume, someone was clearly acting as editor-in-chief and keeping the whole arc tightly under control, so a little nod to them too, whoever it was.

The key parts though, obviously, are in the main Scott Snyder-written Batman title, and as before he is on top form, spinning a yarn that as well as being of the ages, will quite probably be one for it as well. As before though, whilst secrets are revealed and some mysteries solved, others deepen yet further...

• Collects BATMAN #8-9, BATMAN ANNUAL #1, DETECTIVE COMICS #9, BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT #9, BATWING #9, BATMAN AND ROBIN #9, RED HOOD AND THE OUTLAWS #9, BIRDS OF PREY #9, BATGIRL #9, NIGHTWING #8-9 and ALL-STAR WESTERN #9.
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