Is War Games Good?

[Dr.Octagon]

War Games is the culmination of everything wrong with the Batbooks during the early 2000s. The Morrison run was required just to undo the damage War Games did, and the removal of War Games from canon is the single biggest benefit to the entire Bat-line of the Nu52 reboot.

This poster above summed it up... it's awful non canon now and never referanced.. in my opinion the only old Bat crossovers that are important and essential are knightfall because its the first time the Bat is Broken and No Mans land as its Epic in size and scope and both these Crossovers are still referanced in future stories years later like in morrissons Batman run.
Ps. You can also discard the(murder fugitive crossovers) another load of crap.

[Dmreyn]

I definitely didn't mind War Games as much as some of the others. One thing people forget to mention about war games is that it sets the stage for Black Mask to become one of Batman's bigger villains (also Catwoman's, but that's a little later on in Brubaker's run). The torture thing? It is what it is. Black Mask is a sadistic psycho. People like to complain about the "torture" of a teenager in this, but just keep this in mind: nobody seems to be up in arms that Robin was brutally beat to death within inches of his life with a crowbar before being blown up by the Joker, or that Barbara Gordon shot and paralyzed by the Joker while having pictures taken of her.

[sunofdarkchild]

The gratuitous torture, plot induced stupidity, and plot holes may be serious problems, but they are not the main issue with why War Games is a terrible story.

The main problem with War Games is that it is a story about how Batman is a complete and utter failure and has not virtually no good for Gotham in all the years he has been operating. That could have been a interesting story, except it wasn't one they wanted to tell. Unfortunately that is the only conclusion that can be drawn from the central conceit-that Gotham, having been through the reign of the supervillains in Knightfall and a tremendous earthquake and depopulation in No Man's Land, could be torn apart and nearly destroyed by a simple gang war. The existence of the story is itself proof that Batman has failed to put a dent in the capabilities of the mob, let alone the supercriminal element. It is proof that after at least 15 years of fighting crime, Batman has not made Gotham even one iota better than it was when he started.

Except they never wanted or tried to tell a story about Batman's failures. They wanted to have both their war and their infallible batgod. so other people were forced to bear the blame that should have been Batman's, and without the admission of Batman's failure the conceit of the gangwar never had a chance to work. They fought against their own story and thereby killed it.

With the central premise being so flawed, of course the various other problems were going to stick out more and make people even more upset, like the neck-snapping in Man of Steel causing a larger outcry than the murder of Zod and co. in the superior Superman 2.

[The Lucky One]

People like to complain about the "torture" of a teenager in this, but just keep this in mind: nobody seems to be up in arms that Robin was brutally beat to death within inches of his life with a crowbar before being blown up by the Joker, or that Barbara Gordon shot and paralyzed by the Joker while having pictures taken of her.

Actually, not so much the former, but there has definitely been backlash against The Killing Joke in recent years. When I was a teenager and in my '20s, TKJ was considered one of the all-time great Batman stories, often mentioned in the same breath as Year One and TDKR. I'm sure some still consider it great, but without question there's been more vocal opposition to it in recent years, to how it removes all agency from Barbara Gordon, how she's not at all the focus of a story that fridges her, how (apocryphally or not) Alan Moore was told to "cripple the b*tch," and how Batman ends the story laughing with the madman who just permanently crippled (and maybe sexually assaulted) one of his closest allies.

I was actually just thinking last night, in light of this thread, how (spoiler tags in deference to those who haven't read it yet) spoilers:

War Games hits some, though not all, of the same beats as TKJ. There's the female character tormented (and ultimately in this case killed) to make the villain seem more menacing, there's Batman not showing nearly the concern or grief afterwards as he should. Obviously there are differences -- Black Mask doesn't take naked pictures of Steph, and she overall has more agency than Babs had in TKJ -- but some of the same gross sexual politics are at play, of a mostly male editorial team allowing a young female character to be brutalized and taken off the board because they have no more use for her, and Batman reacting completely inappropriately during and after the event. But ultimately, TKJ is still a tightly-written one-shot by Alan Moore, and War Games is a sprawling crossover written by Some Guys, so my guess is that TKJ will always be thought of more fondly, and War Games will continue to be an unpleasant footnote that we all ignore and pretend never happened.

end of spoilers

[heyevaxx]

Actually, not so much the former, but there has definitely been backlash against The Killing Joke in recent years. ...

Well said Lucky One. There's an additional twist that makes WG really bad for me.

(I'll try to hide identities but SPOILER ALERT if anyone cares)

Not only is a person tortured in WG with sexual overtones, but another character is made responsible for the victim's actual death!

So the villain doesn't actually do the final killing, a "good" character does. It was just flabbergasting.

This ranks up there right after OYL when Cass Cain became a monologuing, bitterly anti-Batman, murdering, villain who could read and write Navajo but could not beat Tim Drake with a broken shoulder.

To make this previously completely good toon go 100% against character to kill someone was just... the lowest.

*And* both the killer and victim were females. The torturing villain can just shrug his shoulders and claim "At least I didn't kill her."

So War Games is pretty dang bad in my book. When re-reading I look forward to Knightfall and NML but I skip War Games.

[Dr.Octagon]

Well said Lucky One. There's an additional twist that makes WG really bad for me.

(I'll try to hide identities but SPOILER ALERT if anyone cares)

Not only is a person tortured in WG with sexual overtones, but another character is made responsible for the victim's actual death!

So the villain doesn't actually do the final killing, a "good" character does. It was just flabbergasting.

This ranks up there right after OYL when Cass Cain became a monologuing, bitterly anti-Batman, murdering, villain who could read and write Navajo but could not beat Tim Drake with a broken shoulder.

To make this previously completely good toon go 100% against character to kill someone was just... the lowest.

*And* both the killer and victim were females. The torturing villain can just shrug his shoulders and claim "At least I didn't kill her."

So War Games is pretty dang bad in my book. When re-reading I look forward to Knightfall and NML but I skip War Games.

I also skip wargames..
I think it's futile to compare War Games with Killing Joke and there respective torture scene's..
War Games is universally panned not because of it's torture scenes.. It's universally panned because it's an awfully written poor Batman crossover that should not even be mentioned in the same breadth as a classic well written book like Killing Joke (shudder) lol

[TheNewFiftyForum]

The big problem I had with that story is that at no point, you really get an idea how the plan should have worked when executed correctly. I would have been more interesting if the plan was more complex, they had better explained how it should have worked and started with a few steps that actually worked according to the plan, before everything went out of control.

Btw "Bruce Wayne: Murderer?" is imo also not that great. The part were decides not to clear his name, just to be Batman and not Bruce Wayne, breaks with his family and lets Sasha Bordeaux rot in jail, feels so horrible wrong.

I haven't read WG in a long time, but I specifically remember thinking "Wait, if Batman could trigger this contingency plan at any given moment, why didn't he do it before? Doesn't it basically give him the means to clean up street level organized crime in Gotham in one swoop?" about the setup of the story. Overall, it felt like the culmination of 90's main continuity Batman, in that it's a long as hell crossover with tight continuity between the titles, dry storytelling, massive amounts of Bat-family, and mediocre art. Certainly not my favorite era.

[Aahz]

I haven't read WG in a long time, but I specifically remember thinking "Wait, if Batman could trigger this contingency plan at any given moment, why didn't he do it before? Doesn't it basically give him the means to clean up street level organized crime in Gotham in one swoop?" about the setup of the story. Overall, it felt like the culmination of 90's main continuity Batman, in that it's a long as hell crossover with tight continuity between the titles, massive amounts of Bat-family, and mediocre art. Certainly not my favorite era.

And the part of the plan that was shown was so simple that it imo didn't proofed anything about the skills of the one who started it, which made it kind of pointless.

[Carabas]

Btw "Bruce Wayne: Murderer?" is imo also not that great. The part were decides not to clear his name, just to be Batman and not Bruce Wayne, breaks with his family and lets Sasha Bordeaux rot in jail, feels so horrible wrong.

That's the entire point of Murderer/Fugitive: everything about that kind of characterisation, the whole "Batman is real, Bruce Wayne is the mask" line of thinking is horribly wrong.
Everybody calls him out on it. He is clearly objectively wrong in the story. Him abandoning his humanity is not portrayed as a edgy or cool or anything like that. It's portrayed as stupid.
M/F is the story where Rucka and Brubaker were going to kill off this characterisation (didn't stick, of course).

From later on in that story:

[twincast]

Beautifully written. Makes me want to go read the whole story again after all these years right now.

Oh, and really great signature you have there. *both thumbs up*

Fittingly enough, both these pages and your signature should be read by Zack Snyder. Over and over again. Until he gets it. Maybe. One day. ... *sigh*

[JAG2045]

Thank you. This is a very fair and balanced description of what happened in the event. The killer for me is I really liked the characters from the 2nd and 3rd points so I'm not a fan of WG.

Outside of the fantasy world, the stated purpose from DC editorial was to "involve some kind of Gang War in Gotham" and that "[redacted] was gonna die." Horrocks called the WG writing room experience "one of the most depressing weeks of my life" and he says Devin Grayson was also against what was being forced from editorial.

This is really depressing, hearing how it was commanded from on high despite this character being well liked and at least some of the Gotham writers being opposed to it.

To hear the relevant bits about WG, skip to 29.50 when Karen Healey starts speaking. It then flows into Dylan Horrocks at 32:15 and ends about 37:46.

Graphic Novels, Comics and Cartoons: Auckland Writers & Readers Festival 2011
uploaded July 8, 2011
https://vimeo.com/26148897

Also regarding Steph becoming Robin before it (from wikipedia article on Stephanie Brown:

"Regarding the former issue, at the 2011 Auckland Writers and Readers Festival, the former Batgirl writer Dylan Horrocks said that the writers were told from the start that Spoiler would die in this crossover and she was made Robin "purely as a trick to play on the readers, that we would fool them into thinking that the big event [War Games] was that Stephanie Brown would become Robin". The decision was unpopular with both him and Nightwing writer Devin Grayson, and he felt "pleased and vindicated" over the eventual controversy"

I haven't read WG in a long time, but I specifically remember thinking "Wait, if Batman could trigger this contingency plan at any given moment, why didn't he do it before? Doesn't it basically give him the means to clean up street level organized crime in Gotham in one swoop?" about the setup of the story. Overall, it felt like the culmination of 90's main continuity Batman, in that it's a long as hell crossover with tight continuity between the titles, dry storytelling, massive amounts of Bat-family, and mediocre art. Certainly not my favorite era.

I think the problem Batman has with the plan is it would invoke massive loss of life which he wants to avoid so the plan was only to be used as an emergency last resort. Although before Orpheus showed up who would he have as a puppet head of the mob? He couldnt be matches malone full time to run the crime empire and be Batman?

[Carabas]

I think the problem Batman has with the plan is it would invoke massive loss of life which he wants to avoid so the plan was only to be used as an emergency last resort. Although before Orpheus showed up who would he have as a puppet head of the mob? He couldnt be matches malone full time to run the crime empire and be Batman?

Splitting time between various personas and basically living two or three full time lives is not something any superhero has ever had a problem with beyond being late for appointments.

[Agent Z]

I definitely didn't mind War Games as much as some of the others. One thing people forget to mention about war games is that it sets the stage for Black Mask to become one of Batman's bigger villains (also Catwoman's, but that's a little later on in Brubaker's run). The torture thing? It is what it is. Black Mask is a sadistic psycho. People like to complain about the "torture" of a teenager in this, but just keep this in mind: nobody seems to be up in arms that Robin was brutally beat to death within inches of his life with a crowbar before being blown up by the Joker, or that Barbara Gordon shot and paralyzed by the Joker while having pictures taken of her.

U, people have been recently very voval in their dislike of Jason's death and Barbara being crippled by the Joker. I don't know where you've been looking but it's there.

[TheNewFiftyForum]

I think the problem Batman has with the plan is it would invoke massive loss of life which he wants to avoid so the plan was only to be used as an emergency last resort. Although before Orpheus showed up who would he have as a puppet head of the mob? He couldnt be matches malone full time to run the crime empire and be Batman?

He wouldn't have to assume the role as Gotham's mob boss full time, just long enough (a couple of months or so?) to collect and set up enough evidence to sell as many of them as possible out to the law. The loss of life-thing does make sense though.

[Agent Z]

Splitting time between various personas and basically living two or three full time lives is not something any superhero has ever had a problem with beyond being late for appointments.

Hell, there was that time when Peter had FOUR different identities at the same time none of which were Spider-Man.