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Good morning, afternoon, and evening to you all. In comparison to recent weeks, this week’s batch is fairly light. I’ve got two extra large Bat-books and the next installment to the Brightest Day saga.

Batman 80 Page Giant 2010
Writer(s): Brad Desnoyer, Matt Manning, Mandy Macmurray, John Stanisci, Paul Tobin, and Peter Miriani
Artist(s): Lee Ferguson, Garry Brown, Matt Southworth, Ryan Kelley, and Szymon Kudranski
Cover Artist: Dustin Nguyen
Publisher: DC

Eighty pages, seven stories, and I have no idea how to even begin reviewing this issue. It wouldn’t make any sense to go into each story individually, so I’ll stick to the basics. Aside from one story, the Batman Villains took the spotlight in this book. Each of the seven stories were fairly well written and very interesting. Naturally, some stories were better than others, but overall the stories were really great. What was done exceptionally well is the way the writers incorporated big name villains along with some of the more unknown villains. The art, on the other hand, had its ups and downs varying between stories. However, the cover done by Nguyen looks absolutely fantastic. Overall, this was a collection of great stories focusing on the days in the lives of Gotham’s villains, when not going up against Batman. 4.5/5

Batman Orphans #1
Writer: Eddie Berganza
Artist: Carlo Barberi
Cover Artist: Carlo Barberi
Publisher: DC

As dark and gritty as Gotham is, so is this first part of the two part mini-series. The issue starts up with the revelation that someone is impersonating Batman and is recruiting teenage boys to be Robin. The runaways are forced to participate in this gauntlet of sorts where the kids all battle each other for the chance to become Robin. Meanwhile, Bruce, Dick, and Tim must fight through a dose of Scarecrow’s fear gas that was laced into the deceased Robin’s uniform.
I thought that this issue was really good. The story takes place in much simpler times, where Tim is still Robin and Dick is Nightwing. The story’s plot is great; the writer took the dark and gritty aspects of Gotham’s history and combined it with this idea of a false Batman recruiting runaway children to fight in his cause. The identity of the false Batman has not been revealed, which only works to accentuate the darkness. The issue has an ongoing narration by a female reporter who gives the reader a chance to look at the Batman mythos from the point of view of an average person in Gotham. Overall I though that this was a well done first issue in this two part mini-series. 4/5

Brightest Day #15
Writer(s): Geoff Johns and Peter J. Tomasi
Artist(s): Patrick Gleason and Scott Clark
Cover Artist: David Finch
Publisher: DC

The last we saw of J’onn J’onzz was when he was being mentally deceived by D’kay, who had recently been revealed to be another Martian survivor. Desiring J’onn to be her mate, she launched both a mental and physical attack leaving him under her psychic control. This issue plays out twenty five years into the future, or so we are led to believe, where J’onn has become a Green Lantern. The JLA of the future join J’onn on Mars for the anniversary of his accomplishment in bringing life back to Mars. One by one the members of the League are murdered, which inevitably is what causes J’onn to awaken from his psychic slumber.
As previously mentioned, readers last saw J’onn being mentally manipulated, so whether or not readers were meant to be deceived in this issue is debatable. Regardless, the entire direction of the issue felt familiar and overall unnecessary. The final pages of the issue, which focused on Firestorm, felt far more interesting and relevant than the rest of the book. One major story also meant that there was one main artist, and unfortunately that did nothing to help this issue. 2/5

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Arnab Pradhan
arnab@comicattack.net