Shadow War

[Frontier]

Other than an obvious cash grab, I really don't see the point in any of this.

Two major villains got killed but everybody knows they won't stay dead which will also make the obscure superhero turn antihero angle pointless. Also, I don't buy into what Talia did to Slade. Lady Shiva, I could. Talia, not so much and I'm not insinuating she's not deadly becuase she is, just not as deadly as Slade.

Between Slade, Talia, and Ra's...not really sure whose side Batman should be on at this point.

[thwhtGuardian]

I must've glazed over the dialogue from Batman's detective friend so I thought that tunnel was always there.

It was a huge neon sign pointing to the reveal.

[Felipe Silveira]

Between Slade, Talia, and Ra's...not really sure whose side Batman should be on at this point.

Talia, because I'm a 90's reader.

[DragonPiece]

The “twist” was telegraphed in issue 1 and the reveal happened 7 issues later. Regardless of how fast the shipping was, storywise that was dragged as hell. Especially since it was still treated as a huge surprise and not an obvious conclusion everyone involved should have thought about.

It wasn’t that obvious though, if you look on the dc comics Reddit, half of the people there had to be reminded who geo force was. I I understand the story complaints, but is it really a bad thing if you are able to figure out the mystery on your own? That shouldn’t be a critique to the story.

[Triniking1234]

It was a huge neon sign pointing to the reveal.

Man, my brain wasn't at full power at that point.
I forgot he was even mentioned (that and I never read that Leviathan event).

[thwhtGuardian]

It wasn’t that obvious though, if you look on the dc comics Reddit, half of the people there had to be reminded who geo force was. I I understand the story complaints, but is it really a bad thing if you are able to figure out the mystery on your own? That shouldn’t be a critique to the story.

It was that obvious.

And there is a big difference between a fair play mystery and just a poorly written one. A fair play mystery gives you all the clues the detective has and you solve the case together...but it becomes poorly written if the detective does everything but follow the obvious clues as it makes the detective come across as dumb.

[Arctic Cyclist]

Other than an obvious cash grab, I really don't see the point in any of this.

Two major villains got killed but everybody knows they won't stay dead which will also make the obscure superhero turn antihero angle pointless. Also, I don't buy into what Talia did to Slade. Lady Shiva, I could. Talia, not so much and I'm not insinuating she's not deadly becuase she is, just not as deadly as Slade.

Talia once beat Lady Shiva down with a chair.* Let us not forget that, or that Lady Shiva does not f--- with Talia. She will challange Ra's, she will argue with Ra's, she'll stage a coup with Ra's, but Lady Shiva has never gone against Talia in comics. She avoids her, as we have been shown here and elsewhere, when Talia snaps and goes psycho, Talia is damn near unstoppable.

Slade also really only fights teenagers, as Ghostmaker just helpfully pointed out. Or he kills from afar. Having read all of his runs...I put my money on Talia as she can walk into a Cadmus lab unarmed and take down everyone, as we saw in Metal. Everyone. Including the psychics and metas.

*That was in Hush, which everyone has and claims to have read. Claims is the operative word here. In Shiva's defense, she wasn't paying attention to Talia as she was mocking Selina and Talia was tied up. Although Shiva, having known Talia for years, should have been aware that Talia is less inclined to stay retrained than Batman so she kind of deserved to be taken down in a bar brawl move.

[Arctic Cyclist]

Some thoughts;

-How bad of a ruler is Brion? Seriously. That man has had, what, eight coups staged against him? His people were willing to be bought out by an evil corporation if it meant getting rid of him. That says a something, and what it says isn't good.

-Bruce knew from the tunnel that it was Brion. He just didn't want to believe it.

-It's nice to have it acknowledged that neither Damian nor Talia have naturally green eyes. I also love how Talia's eyes glow when she's pissed.

-Damian has no fear of heights. He got that from his momma.

-Was that a trust fall with Bruce, or was Damian expecting our favorite Batsquatch to catch him? Goliath was/is nearby, and as a bat, is one of the fastest animals on the planet (Brazillian free tailed bats have been clocked at averaging a sustained speed of 110 mph, and they're tiny). Either way, Damian's casually jumping out of a plane was awesome.

-He really gets that from Talia, who as we saw in War Zone, was a cliff jumper as a young teen albeit not as good at picking cliffs as my friends were.

-Do kids these days still cliff jump?

-I like how Slade calls Bruce Talia's Boy Toy. I like how Brion lectures Bruce about knocking up villains. It's even funnier when we remember that Talia and Bruce both swear up and down that she drugged and raped him and that neither has feelings for each other, yet they clearly are lying. At this point in universe, I think it's safe to assume the only people who believe them about it being non-con are Tim and Selina. Everyone else, villain and hero alike, was probably had a betting pool on when their kids would start showing up and how many there are.

-One of Talia's theme songs has to be "Gold Dust Woman"

-Talia has no survival instincts whatsoever and passed that down to her children. Mara on the other hand, managed to get the rare al Ghul genes for recognizing that this is stupid, we're all going to die, let's ditch this and go somewhere safe.

-Talia says she doesn't run, but that's a lie. I read Robin: Son of Batman. She totally ran from Den Darga. In her defense, he was a god in the process of destroying their island home.

-Speaking of Robin: SOB, this is the second time Damian has acquired little brothers only to have them die horrifically. I doubt he ever talked to Bruce about what happened to his clones. In fact, I'm pretty sure that Bruce doesn't realize they're all dead as Damian doesn't talk about his traumas.

-I love all the call backs to Priest's Deathstroke run, including Wintergreen explaining to Rose that Slade is looking for do overs as a dad. Slade was pretty excited to have a child with Talia long before Respawn showed up.

-Respawn was in on this from before we met him. How far does this conspiracy go? Oh wait, I read World's Finest: pretty far.

-I miss ghost Alfred.

-I wonder if the current story will reference "Eye of the Beholder" and Damian's Chinese heritage. I wouldn't be surprised if the Sensei was descended from the five legendary heroes.

-If they use the Demon Nehza to fix all the plot holes in King's Batman and establish that the entirety of the BatCat relationship, City of Bane, Glass's Teen Titans, and the current Robin run was a plot to isolate Damian and drive him into unleashing a terrible evil, I will be content. I might even consider actually paying for King's run....hahaha. No. I don't pay for what I can read on AO3 with better pacing and dialogue.

-Three mountains over, the Heretic is crying into his tea over Damian wanting a relationship with Respawn but not him.

-But really, just how bad is Brion's family and Brion himself if the only way he stays in power is through the aid of superheroes and Batman?

[Factor]

It wasn’t that obvious though, if you look on the dc comics Reddit, half of the people there had to be reminded who geo force was. I I understand the story complaints, but is it really a bad thing if you are able to figure out the mystery on your own? That shouldn’t be a critique to the story.

It was obvious to anyone who knew the character, which means the mystery was badly written.
And for those who don't know Geo-Force, it's also not well written, because the reveal would have no impact at all.

[thwhtGuardian]

It was obvious to anyone who knew the character, which means the mystery was badly written.
And for those who don't know Geo-Force, it's also not well written, because the reveal would have no impact at all.

Exactly, let's pretend it's not Geo-Force for a second so that we don't see it coming, where's the build up for this mystery foe? What characteristics are dropped to get the reader interested?

Williamson did neither, and with out that kind of development the reveal is meaningless.

I ask again, how are people enjoying this book??

This doesn't feel like a differing of tastes here, this just seems objectively bad.

[HeartofTheStoriesWeTell]

It wasn't hard to figure out. There was everything but a giant neon sign pointing right at the "twist" It's why for the life of me I can't understand how anyone could seriously think this was a good story.

can you walk me through what clues I missed becuse without coming on this thread I would never have guess geo force was even IN this story

[Triniking1234]

Mara sensed Ghostmaker was coming and dipped.

[Triniking1234]

can you walk me through what clues I missed becuse without coming on this thread I would never have guess geo force was even IN this story

Geo Force was at that the location in Shadow War Alpha where Ra's and Talia were going to turn themselves over and there's a reference to Markovia getting taken over by Leviathan (never seen that story).

Apparently the first hint was the tunnel that Batman and the detective find outside Gotham but there's not enough proof to lead back to Brion at that time since the reader doesn't even know that the fake Deathstroke had powers. The hole could've been from tech or magic.

The only concrete proof is during the part five (when the crook describes him but it's still kinda vague) and part six (when Batman says he has an idea who it is but doubts anyone he knows would actually wear Deathstroke's suit, plus Robin mentions the accent so it hints to a non-American character). Plus we get a better demonstration of his powers ("how'd he make this tunnel so suddenly without any tools or explosions?")

[HeartofTheStoriesWeTell]

Geo Force was at that the location in Shadow War Alpha where Ra's and Talia were going to turn themselves over and there's a reference to Markovia getting taken over by Leviathan (never seen that story).

Apparently the first hint was the tunnel that Batman and the detective find outside Gotham but there's not enough proof to lead back to Brion at that time since the reader doesn't even know that the fake Deathstroke had powers. The hole could've been from tech or magic.

The only concrete proof is during the part five (when the crook describes him but it's still kinda vague) and part six (when Batman says he has an idea who it is but doubts anyone he knows would actually wear Deathstroke's suit, plus Robin mentions the accent so it hints to a non-American character). Plus we get a better demonstration of his powers ("how'd he make this tunnel so suddenly without any tools or explosions?")

okay, i only know Geoforce from a few comics in the 90's and the young justice cartoon. I would not have guessed him but going back all of that makes sense to me...

[thwhtGuardian]

It was super obvious just from the tunnel, you don't need to know the fake Deathstroke has powers to make that conclusion. You see Geo-Force condemning the Al-Ghuls, it's at the Markovian embassy and the murderer gets away from a tunnel that was carved recently and without machines. You don't need to be Sherlock Holmes to connect those dots.