★★★★★ 5
The Greatest Batman Story Ever Written by Scott Snyder
Format: Paperback, Format: Paperback
Known about this volume for a long time, but I kept putting it off and just managed to finally read it a few days ago. And the first thing that came to my mind after I finished the last page and closed the comic was "Wow, that was a really good story". And I really think that sums it up perfectly, but i'll expand to give a more thorough review.
Scott Snyder is the current writer of the main Batman comic book series (Though his run is nearly at an end now), which is where the brunt of my experience with him comes from. I've read another comic by him set around the same time period that this one takes place in (Batman Gates of Gotham) and I honestly wasn't impressed with it. Definitely one of his weaker showings. This one makes up for that and then some however. The Batman featured in this, and the previous, story is Dick Grayson (Robin #1, Nightwing, and currently Agent 13 over in Grayson). Naturally, you'd expect Dick Grayson to be a different character than Bruce Wayne, and Snyder gets this. The entire story really deals with the idea that it is Dick wearing the cape and cowl and crafts an adventure that is made for him and how he would personally deal with it. He makes some mistakes here and there, but also has a lot of success specifically because of who he is. I think the stories told in this work are exciting and full of a good amount of action and character development.
Snyder has a tendency in my opinion to only focus on one overarching story, which I don't personally prefer. He avoids that here. There is one massive story being told, with one main villain at its core who is responsible for pulling our heroe's strings, but between that and the start of the story are numerous other adventures as well, with different characters and villains, who have their own motivations. I appreciate this because it's just nice to see our hero fighting against so many different people throughout the story. This also isnt' solely Dick's story. I'd say that it's as much Jim Gordon's as it is Batman's this time around, with the major villain striking really close to home. This adds a sense of emotion and tragedy to the story which you don't often see. Further more, this story is creepy. That's actually something that I don't think can be said about the majority of Batman stories out there. It's dark, depressing, and genuinely creepy at points, capable of chilling you to the bone. It's a solid change of pace and I loved it.
Despite the fact that we don't get our traditional Batman in this I would honestly rate this as one of the greatst Batman stories of all time and highly recommend it.
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Reviewed in the United States on March 14, 2016