On page two of this book Green Lantern commits suicide by power ring and blows his own head off. Wow - top that for a wedding toast! I knew a Batman wedding was never going to be normal but I don’t think anybody expected that!
As good as the lead-in books to Batman and Catwoman’s wedding have been, the actual event itself is… underwhelming. Like The War of Jokes and Riddles, this is unfortunately one of my least favourite books in Tom King’s Batman run. And I’m not saying that because one of the worst superheroes of all time, Booster fucking Gold, takes up half the book - King’s such a good writer, he manages to make even that braindead moron tolerable!
Yup, Batman and Catwoman are getting married so of course let’s have a three issue Booster Gold storyline!? Dumbass wants to get Bruce a wedding present - but what do you give the man who has everything? A vision of what the world would be like if he hadn’t lost his parents and become Batman; proof that his life was - is - worthwhile. Except Booster fucks it up because he’s a fuckup and shit gets kerazy.
I actually liked this unexpected story. Alternative future storylines can be fun as we see familiar characters in unfamiliar roles - Jason Todd as a car-security salesman who kills Jokers (wink wink) - both Batman and Catwoman behave unexpectedly, and like I said King writes Booster Gold so that he’s not completely off-putting.
Tony S. Daniel’s artwork is slick as always though I do wonder if he shares my low opinion of Booster as the close-ups of the character, with those dead eyes and blank expression, make him look like an imbecile. And it was cool to see Catwoman don the Michelle Pfeiffer Catwoman outfit from Batman Returns.
Then we’re into a two-part Joker storyline, The Best Man. After this story and The War of Jokes and Riddles I’ve come to realise that I don’t like Tom King’s Joker very much. He doesn’t write him terribly - he gives him some great lines, Joker’s menacing enough, he sounds like the Joker - but he’s one of the few major characters King’s failed to make his own. He’s a little too predictably unpredictable, a bit derivative and indistinct, a bit too chatty - the first part, he antagonises Batman as you’d expect; the second, he and Catwoman powwow about the bad old days. I thought this was going to be the best part of the book but it turned out to be really boring.
But it’s not the worst part of the book which is, surprisingly, the main event: the wedding itself. I won’t go into spoilers but expect the unexpected - for the final couple pages at least. Because the dozens of pages leading up to it is a whole load of nothing with Bruce and Selina waffling on about their relationship while one big name guest artist after another contributes pin-up art. It’s a great looking issue but overly drawn-out and totally lacking a story as King instead stuffs the background with Easter Eggs - references from his Batman run as well as Batman and Catwoman’s history.
Batman, Volume 7: The Wedding has its moments here and there and the art on the whole is superb but it’s disappointingly boring for the most part and fails to live up to the months of build-up. I have to say though that the absurdly fast pace that Tom King is knocking out these books - and have the quality of those books remain consistently high for the most part - is pretty fucking amazing, so hats off to him for that. I mean, we’re seven books deep and there have been a couple mediocre entries but no truly bad ones - that’s astonishing.
Further to that, it doesn’t seem like King’s running out of ideas at this point in the game - if anything, the ending of this book indicates that, far from slowing down, he’s only gotten started! There’s a clear direction and strong purpose for at least the next story arc which I can’t wait to read. And this is the halfway point of King’s ambitious 100 issue storyline so who knows what’ll happen?
Meow…
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