Caveat #1 – I did not finish reading this book. I have a reading copy and I read all the way to page 435 before encountering this message "For the thrilling conclusion, read the complete novel in January 2000." Fine I thought, I shall pull a copy off the shelf at work and read the last bit. Imagine my relief when I discovered that my store no longer carries this book due to lack of sales and that I wasn’t going to have to force myself through another 20 or so pages. I did a jig in the sci fi aisle.

Caveat #2 – I love comics. I have written comics (the upcoming NightFreaks, if Calibre Press can scrape together the money to print it and the current Mara, Celtic Shamaness Summer Country story arc.) I believe that comics are one of the best forms for telling a story. You don’t have to rely on the audience to read your words as in a novel, and figure out exactly what the scene looks like because the artist has drawn it for them. You don’t have to worry about the actors being sick or having a different take on your character as you would in a movie or a play. And the character’s thoughts can still be displayed without a weird voice over or an awkward soliloquy. Comics, as an art form, have it all for the control freak artist/writer.

That said, please remind me in the future to not read long books I hate.

About now, you’re wondering why I read Batman: No Man’s Land when it weighs in at 435 pages without the "thrilling conclusion."

Batman.
I love Batman. I happened to be at the Chicago Comicon the year the Batman cartoon was premiered and I was entranced. Then I happened to be working at a comic book store when Batman Returns came to the big beautiful Highland Square Theatre. I was enamored. I read Batman: The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller and (despite the fact that I don’t like Frank Miller’s art [it’s always something with me, isn’t it?]) I was engulfed. I was too hysterically overwhelmed to speak the one time I could have met Bob Kane (conversely, I didn’t view Neil Gaiman as a big deal because my friend Jill Thompson was penciling Sandman when I encountered him.) I was pleased as punch the last time I was at the DC offices visiting Kevin Dooley to discover that his office was right next to Denny O’Neil’s office and moments later, crushed to find that Denny had taken that day off.

End Of the World stories.
I have loved a good End Of the World story since I first read The Stand. In this book, the world doesn’t end, but Gotham does. There's been some kind of half explained catastrophe and the government has declared Gotham a no man’s land, cutting it off from the USA. Whatever.

Big books.
I like to read long, involved stories. This is evinced by my love of Connie Willis and the number of books on my shelf that are well over an inch thick. I want to be drawn in, sucked under, and immersed in the story and I want it to go on for a looooong time.

And this monsterosity?

Well, it is Batman, but he's not very well done. He’s almost a cartoon of himself in this story. So is the Joker (which is almost ironic, but not.) Rucka seems to have a pretty good grasp on Two Face, but he's the only villain I’m buyin’. Poison Ivy barely makes a cameo in the story. Supposedly, when she got out of Arkham she vanished into the park and grew things, however, she didn’t get upset when somebody burned a couple of her trees and she didn’t peep when Lex Luthor showed up and set up camp in the middle of her park. This doesn’t sound like the Poison Ivy we’ve all grown to love. So, our characters? They aren’t here. I’ve read Bat friends and Bat fiends in the hands of many writers and I have rarely seen them handled this badly.

Gotham city, no man’s land. Hmm. There’s a major earthquake that all but flattens the city and instead of having FEMA on site in 24 hours, Congress decides to just cut them off. Ok, it’s a high crime area, yea, but so it Florida, why don’t we cut them off. And how hard would it be to cut off Manhattan? Blow up a couple of bridges, collapse a couple of tunnels. Badda bing, badda boom, no pun intended. So the best I can come up with for the premise of this story is Ill Conceived.

It’s paced like a comic book story arc. Barbara Gordon is wheelchair bound and suddenly there’s a new Batgirl. Who is this Batgirl? Where did she come from? She does a few things. They figure out who she is. Over. On to the new "mystery." There are about 15 of these mini plots laced through the book. My guess is that this is the novelization of the comic arc. When writing comics you have 22 pages to get your story across before your audience has to wait a month, therefore you must do short simple stories. It’s the prose equivalent of highway rumble strips. Short arcs are ok as long as there’s an over all plot binding your book together. There isn’t an over all plot here, just a premise.

"Not your father’s comic books" used to be an ad slogan for DC. Too bad they still haven’t figured out the difference between mature and [snicker] "dirty." For "Mature" content we have a running joke between Joker and Harlequin. It starts with her dressing up in costumes (the usual, nurse, nun etc before she hits on the harlequin costume) it rambles on with him complaining about her wanting to have babies. There’s also a mention of the fact that while Batman was out of the picture nursing the back that Bane broke for him, Nightwing (previously Robin / aka Dick Grayson) and Huntress (got me where she came from.) had "relations." I don’t know if this played out in the story arc or not, but at the same time, I don’t care. Oh yea, and Penguin is constantly leering at Lex Luthor’s attractive bodyguard / assistant. The only actually mature plot line I could locate was the struggle between Commissioner Gordon and Bill Petitt over capital punishment in no man’s land. And I wasn't happy with the way it was handled because it seemed like the author was in over his depth.

There is a letter from the VP associate publisher of pocket books in the front of my copy. It claims Greg Rucka is critically acclaimed, so I did some research. Greg Rucka writes men’s adventure novels, the literary equivalent of Baywatch. And the critical praise on the book? Most of it is for Batman as a legend. The Cleveland Plain Dealer says "No Man’s Land is the most spellbinding Batman story in years." First, I consider the source, then I wonder how bad Batman has really gotten, then I wonder if the reviewer is on DC’s magnanimous comp list (do you think I actually paid for my Sandman hardback graphic novels? How about that embroidered denim jacket in the attic that was the DC Christmas gift one year?) There's glowing praise from Publisher’s Weekly, but I just have to wonder what they’re smoking.

I’ll stop raving now with one final shot. If anybody happens to be saying "I don’t see you doing Batman," I can. You write Denny O’Neil and tell him I’ve got a great arc where Batman actually kills someone, dealing with grief and high ideals. If he wants to go nose to nose with Karen Berger so he can hire a blacklisted writer, he could have one of the best arcs since The Dark Knight Returns (and yes, I am black listed, along with Nancy Collins, at DC Comics.)

Don’t read this tripe. It might be worse than Dara Joy’s Mine to Take (but only because it’s much longer.)


Recommended: No