Batman: The Brave and the Bold Anthology Comic

[MAR420X]

https://media.lunardistribution.com/...%20Preview.pdf

12 PAGE lettered preview

[SplinteringHeart]

In the Stormwatch story that character "Phantom-One" looks just like Mark Millar's Nemesis!

[Frontier]

https://media.lunardistribution.com/...%20Preview.pdf

12 PAGE lettered preview

Excited for the Superman story.

[Hypo]

Out next week, AIPT has a preview though it has less pages than the one pdf one earlier in the thread.

[sifighter]

….okay can we all admit that scene with Bruce with Batman eyes was awesome

[Drako]

Tom King and Dan Mora stories were pretty good.

[sifighter]

Tom King and Dan Mora stories were pretty good.

I was also moderately impressed by the Stormwatch story. Though it may be because they referenced Williamson’s Flash run and I like Rose Wilson.

[thwhtGuardian]

I love anthologies as they although they may only have a slightly larger page count than your traditional comic so they don't actually take longer to read they still feel like you're getting more bang for your buck as you're getting more than one story. The down side to anthologies is that for some unknown law to the universe they are almost always a mixed bag...and this new attempt at a Batman and friends anthology(which is a great idea in my mind) is no different. Out of the four stories here only one was really stellar, another one was interesting but more fun to look at than read a third was just barely okay but was a story we've already seen before and the fourth was nearly unreadable with zero characters to care about.

The first feature was the "Winning Card: Part One" by Tom King and Mitch Gerads. And while it looked fantastic and the characterization of Batman/ Bruce Wayne, Alfred and Jim Gordon were all solid...it's just yet another retelling of Batman's first meeting of the Joker. And rather than making his own version of how Batman first battled the Clown Prince of Crime, King instead just chooses to put his usual noir style moody twist on the same story we already know. Sure, Brubaker did the same thing in 2005 and it's a classic but that's just not something that can be repeated. It undoubtedly looks amazing though, with Gerads really capturing that moody Year One feel which just fits perfectly.

The less said about the next feature about a new Stormwatch by Ed Brisson the better. Only the Weatherman returns with the rest of the team featuring a bunch of other "edgy" Batman cast offs that couldn't name if you tried. On top of that there was no political intrigue or satire. It was just a boring, "edgy" fake justice league.

The best of the bunch was surprisingly one of the ones I was skeptical of as I'm not a huge fan of Cantwell...but get that man on Superman stat! Being a Superman story in a Batman anthology already made it stand out, but the pulpy mystery of Clark being sent a decoder ring from a sci-fi adventure show he loved as a child and following it on a quest to save a mystery person was just amazing. It was energetic, fun and the treasure map style mystery set up was immediately engaging which will sure to leave you howling for more when you get to the end. And the art by Javier Rodríguez? AMAZING! That's the way Superman should always look.
The final feature was written and illustrated by Dan Mora and although it looks as amazing as you'd expect from Mora the plot itself was slightly thin. I loved the concept of a new futuristic, cybernetic Batman fighting a VR controlled Joker robot, and the anime-esque transformation into Superbatman mode was fun...but there was no real plot other than that and very little in the way of characterization which makes it feel like yet another situation of an amazing artist who really does need a partner when it comes to writing and there's nothing wrong with that.

Overall, I'll definitely be reading more but it's not shaking the curse of anthologies being mixed bags any time soon.

[Factor]

I tried the book because I was curious about the new Stormwatch even though I hate the line-up.
I ended up really enjoying King’s Batman tale, but Stormwatch itself didn’t impress.
The art for Stormwatch is great, I think they really nailed it. But the team’s concept is just “DC does X-force”, which isn’t terrible, but would need much better execution.
Brisson couldn’t sell me on the roster. Their personalities were very vague and it seems like half of them were chosen for their aesthetic similarities with the competition (Psylocke/Shado, X-23/Ravager, Cop guy/Cable etc).
I kept hoping the cop guy and Phantom-01 would be killed off. I wish we got more Stormwatch characters in a Stormwatch story instead of random people connected to the Batverse that don’t even serve the purpose of driving sales.

[Mantis-Ray]

As always Gerad's art is a tour de force. Everything looks great, my favorite panel has to be Batman's kick. And the story was good, though King really does overuse the cursing with the guy Batman is chasing. Comic writers really need to stop doing cursing in a book that has the word's censored, it just makes the voice box's annoying to read through.

Stormwatch ehhhh. I'm not a Wildstorm fan but it is annoying how utterly random the roster is, with one inclusion even being Brisson's Phantom-One from his middling Batman Incorporated book. Plus the inclusion of Peacekeeper-01 brings it down a ton. I for the life of me cannot stand that character, if this book was a 10 then his very existence brings it down to a 5. They need to kill him off as fast as possible, with preferably the most humiliating death possible.

Superman is fun. Cantwell has a good voice for the character's, Rodriquez's art is gorgeous with beautiful colors, and the whole set-up appears to be an old-school adventure pulp story which should make for a delightfully entertaining romp.

Not much to say about the Dan Mora story since its short but it was fun seeing Batman doing a whole Kamen Rider bit, even doing the Rider Kick. Reminded of how Mora did fan-art of the Batfam in Super Sentai gear so he's clearly a Toku fan.

[thwhtGuardian]

I just don't get the praise for King's Joker story...we already have a modern interpretation of Batman #1, it was call the Batman: The Man Who Laughs and there really wasn't a whole lot new here to justify doing it again.

[Jody Garland]

The less said about the next feature about a new Stormwatch by Ed Brisson the better. Only the Weatherman returns with the rest of the team featuring a bunch of other "edgy" Batman cast offs that couldn't name if you tried. On top of that there was no political intrigue or satire. It was just a boring, "edgy" fake justice league.

There's two Batman characters, a Titans character, a Green Arrow character, two Stormwatch characters from the original run and a new character. That's hardly a bunch of Batman castoffs, considering Bat characters make up 2/7 of the team.

[Drako]

I just don't get the praise for King's Joker story...we already have a modern interpretation of Batman #1, it was call the Batman: The Man Who Laughs and there really wasn't a whole lot new here to justify doing it again.

People can enjoy more than one thing.

[Factor]

I just don't get the praise for King's Joker story...we already have a modern interpretation of Batman #1, it was call the Batman: The Man Who Laughs and there really wasn't a whole lot new here to justify doing it again.

Do I think there was a particular need for that story or that it's covering new ground? Absolutely not.
But I do think so far it's being very well executed, so I think it deserves praise for that at least.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

The first feature was the "Winning Card: Part One" by Tom King and Mitch Gerads. And while it looked fantastic and the characterization of Batman/ Bruce Wayne, Alfred and Jim Gordon were all solid...it's just yet another retelling of Batman's first meeting of the Joker. And rather than making his own version of how Batman first battled the Clown Prince of Crime, King instead just chooses to put his usual noir style moody twist on the same story we already know. Sure, Brubaker did the same thing in 2005 and it's a classic but that's just not something that can be repeated. It undoubtedly looks amazing though, with Gerads really capturing that moody Year One feel which just fits perfectly.

This was it exactly for me. I felt like I was reading a continuation of Year One. DC can put out Zero Year, The Knight, etc, but Year One is still the foundation to which modern Batman is built on, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.