The Brave and the Bold: Batman and Wonder Woman by Liam Sharp Review

Faeries and leprechauns are having a spat and a magical Gaelic king has been supposedly murdered – whodunit? Wonder Woman and Batman are on the case?

The Brave and the Bold: Batman and Wonder Woman was neither brave nor bold but was an extremely boring read! Honestly, I’ve read more interesting legal documents than this superhero comic!

The plot is incomprehensible, incoherent and plain bad. Writer/artist Liam Sharp basically had this dreary Celtic fantasy story that he bunged Wonder Woman and Batman into in order to sell it. Neither character has any reason to be involved in this drek. Wonder Woman’s doing a favour for some guy we’ve never seen before and some folk in Gotham’s Irish Quarter (probably the one and only time such a place has been mentioned) are acting zombie-ish and Gotham is Batman’s turf – it’s that contrived and tenuous a connection.

Sharp writes both iconic characters incredibly poorly and they come across here as complete blanks. Nor do either character really have much to do. It’s just barely a murder mystery that Wonder Woman and Batman are sort of investigating. They’re really side characters in the terrible fantasy with these awful new characters spouting dull exposition and wringing their hands over a faerie civil war. It’s impossible to care about – the characters, writing, dialogue, plot, you name it, it’s the boringest!

Sharp’s art is the book’s saving grace. It is remarkable. As godawful as the writing is, the art is the polar opposite. The pages are filled with lush, eye-catching detail, the layouts are imaginative and Celtic-themed, the landscapes are stunning, the character designs are great, and it’s all complemented beautifully by Romulo Fajardo Jr’s rich colours. I’ll give the book two stars for the skilful art alone as clearly a lot of time and effort went into it and it shows.

Unfortunately, Liam Sharp is just another in a long line of artists who can’t write worth a damn. I look forward to the next comic he works on – provided he only draws it and someone talented writes it!