Batman: Rebirth #1

So let's dig into the series I was looking forward to the most with Rebirth... Batman. I lost interest in Snyder's run after about 30 issues. I really liked the first two arcs but then I felt like Snyder got really long winded with his storylines. I also didn't like that Snyder was trying to cram the Batman family with even more characters while DC was actively ignoring members that already existed like Stephanie Brown or Cassandra Cain.

Overview: Batman brings on Duke and is training him for a role in the Bat-Family. We also get some villainous fun as the Calendar Man was trying to release some spores to destroy Gotham.

I really want to write more about this comic but there really wasn't very much to it. It's kind of a very base overview of I guess what's going on. We see Batman bring Duke in and we get a scene where Lucius Fox restores Bruce's fortune and we're out.

Final Thoughts: There's actually a lot to say about this issue and very little of it is good.

First, the scene with Bruce and Lucius was just dumb. Bruce was doing one armed pull ups on a helicopter landing pad at the top of a skyscraper. Now, if you've seen 5 seconds of a Batman cartoon you can see why this is dumb. The point of Bruce Wayne is he is nothing like Batman. He's supposed to come across as a carefree playboy. Doing something that extreme is a good way to out himself as a potential ID for Batman or to slip and fall to his death. It really just rubbed me the wrong way and came across like the new writer Tom King doesn't get the character he's writing.

Then we get to the Calendar Man. They turned the Calendar Man into this weird guy that dies in the winter and is reborn in the spring instead of just a guy that bases his crimes on the time of the year. This change is a perfect example of what DC has been doing for the last several years with their properties. You take a character that's perfectly acceptable in their current form and then change them just because you feel like you have to tinker with something. I was really excited to see the Calendar Man and then was immediately bummed out when I saw what they did to him.

This was a real letdown after DC Rebirth #1. This felt like the same soulless writing that DC has bee subjecting me to for the last several years. Also, this was a terrible introduction for someone that wasn't up on more current Bat-book events. It felt like I was missing something plot wise the entire time and that the book assumed I had a base level of knowledge about the last few years.

I was really excited to read more after DC Rebirth #1 and after this issue I'm back to being uneasy about spending any money on the new DCU. This was just very mediocre like a lot of DC books have been since the New 52 started. I'm really hoping Batman #1 is an overall better read than this was.

Overall I give this a C for a mediocre book and a complete failure as an introduction to the Rebirth Batman.