After creating a truly terrible Batman book with The Monster Men, Matt Wagner was invited back to make a sequel, The Mad Monk - because at DC you fail upwards!
This comic is garbage - ignore anyone telling you otherwise or that it’s part of Batman canon and therefore important; it’s not, it’s utter trash. The Mad Monk is Batman fighting vampires. That’s it!
It’s amazing how slow the World’s Greatest Detective is to realise who he’s up against. It was like that Simpsons Halloween Special where Kent Brockman says something like “Victims were found drained of their blood. Two teeth marks were found on their neck. This cape was found at the scene (“Dracula” is printed on it). Police are baffled.” Come on, Batman, you’re basically this dude’s most famous cosplayer! This guy’s business card(!) even says “Tepes” on it - Vlad the Impaler’s real name, the original person whom Dracula was based upon!!
While we wait for Batman to figure out he’s gotta punch Dracula, we’re irritated by Julie Madison, Bruce’s girlfriend in this book, who is super annoying and super boring. She also discovers a giant European castle that’s suddenly appeared in Gotham because that’s not stupid. Oh man, this is so bad. The story is so cheesy and dumb, and Wagner does nothing different with the vampire characters, they just want to drink blood and live forever like every stereotypical vampire.
I don’t know why it’s set in Batman’s early days except maybe, like Monster Men, the original was a Golden Age story so this is a modern-day remake of this “classic” and Wagner also wants to reference its place in Batman’s history.
Awful. The Mad Monk is maddeningly shitty. Don’t bother with any DC book that has Matt Wagner’s name on it, they’re all bad, especially this one!
No comments:
Post a Comment