Reviewer: Tim Byrne
Story Title: War Games Act 3 – Part 6 (of 8)
Written by: Dylan Horrocks
Penciled by: Mike Huddleston
Inked by: Jesse Delperdang
Colored by: Jason Wright
Lettered by: Rob Leigh
Editor: Michael Wright
Publisher: DC Comics
Well, there once was a cross-over called War Games…
Greetings one and all, and welcome to my inaugural review right here at the Nexus.
Very briefly, I hail from the fantastically sunny and fantastic shores of Melbourne, Australia, and I subscribe freely to tossing snippets into the middle of my reviews that have only peripheral relevance to the issue at hand.
Anyway, War Games is moving through its final act, and it has failed to capture the ‘wow’ factor : Can the heart of the story be summed up in a ‘wow’ sentence? For instance – ‘Batman is crippled and may never walk again!’ – Wow! ‘Gotham is cut off, possibly forever from the rest of the United States!’ – Wow! Lots of criminals are fighting and killing people! – Eh..
To bring you back to the specifics of this issue, Batgirl attempts to intervene in a situation where Onyx is coming off second best, and Black Mask attempts to exert control over the chaos in Gotham.
The whole second half of this issue really came across as a stroll through the woods by a certain Clown Prince of Mayhem. The macabre wit, the disregard for ‘norms’ and conventions, the seeking of the spotlight…nothing specific to Black Mask leapt out at me at all.
The big moment at the end is pretty tame as far as ‘part 23-out-of-25’ endings go, and I think a lot of readers are still waiting for the other shoe to drop, and the stakes to be raised. The staggering potential of Batman being revealed as more than an urban legend has been woefully underused in this cross-over.
The art is adequate, if only barely. Some minimal backgrounds aren’t really my preferred style, and attempts at ‘tough’ gangsters in the first half of the issue don’t really go anywhere. Batgirl (remember her?) hardly has the most eye-catching costume out there, at any rate.
Its hard to rate an issue such as this, because if you’ve stuck with this cross-over till now, its pretty unlikely that you’ll drop it for the final two parts.
