BATMAN #17
What did the
iFanboy
community think?
Pulls
Art by Greg Capullo & Jonathan Glapion
Colors by FCO Plascencia
Letters by Richard Starkings & Jimmy Betancourt
Cover by Greg Capullo, FCO Plascencia, Toney Daniel, Matt Banning, & Tomeu Morey
Size: 40 pages
Price: 3.99
Humans are the only animal that creates and tells stories. From the dawn of man storytelling has defined us as a species – our values, desires, dreams and, as well as our prejudices and hatreds.
The first stories may have taken place inside the gloomy recess of a cave around a flickering fire told by a primitive hunter. Or around the first fires that men kindled, under the stars. It is believed that origin of storytelling may have come across as an excuse for failure. Perhaps stories were used long time ago to calm the fears or doubts of a family. As families grouped with other families and formed clans, the storyteller, who was good at telling heroic events or other important events of the tribe began to reach position of respect and power. People found them interesting and began to listen to them. The priest, the judge and the ruler were perhaps the earliest to use this art effectively in the history of storytelling. Storytelling days were considered important.
Wednesdays at my local comic book store are those “Storytelling Days” and one of my favorite storytellers is Scott Snyder.
Batman #17 continues the long tradition of telling this story that was started way back in 1939. And if you do the math, that’s a lot of motherfucking stories to tell about Batman. What Snyder has done is simple though – just tell a good story. It doesn’t have to be a life changing event. Someone doesn’t have to die. All you have to do is weave a yarn that holds our attention and makes us forget that there have already been 70 plus years of Batman stories – and that’s just what Scott has done on this series.
These are good stories.
I’ve already heard and read a lot of complaints about the ending to The Death of the Family, and to some degree I understand why people are upset, but if they stop and think for a second they will realize that what they just read evoked a reaction – good or bad, it was still an emotional response. You may have been disappointed with the ending but there is no denying that what you just read for the last four months has been quality work from both the writer and artists of this series. I for one do not feel cheated in the slightest. I haven’t enjoyed a Batman story like this in years. I was captivated all the way through and when I read issue 17 today, and this story came to an end, I felt satisfied. I was given a great, fun read by two extremely talented guys that made these last few months of comic collecting worth every cent.
A good story teller will always be respected and will always find an audience, eager to devour every exciting bit of information in their stories. Stories have and will always bind us – bring humanity together.
There is nothing like a good story and I can’t wait to see Scott Snyder tells us next.
Art: 5 - Excellent
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Great review and well written. I couldn’t put it any other way 🙂
Thanks man
Good review, I disagree with your result, story could have been confined to Batgirl, Batman, Nightwing & a 3 part Death of the family book to tie in extras, DC obviously got greedy and ruined what with correct editing could have been great story, but too many cooks spoil the broth.
Sure, cross-overs are always about the cash, but I feel the way these Death of the Family tie-in’s were handled didn’t take away from the story at all. In fact, most cross-overs you have to buy all the tie-in’s to make sense of everything – not so here. You could very easily have just bought Batman and still gotten the grand scope of things. Snyder did a great job of handing out bits of story to the other bat-titles that enhanced Death of the Family but were not essential to his tale.
Nice review!
I liked the fact that the book was both incredibly intense in some respects, yet equally subtle in other aspects. And I like even more that the subtle aspects may have the biggest ramifications.
Loved it!
Thanks!
I agree that one of Snyder’s gifts is his “subtlety”. Some of my favorite moments in his Batman stories are the quiet moments. Remember back in issue 4, I think, when Batman is discovering the Court of Owls secret hideouts in the 13th floors of Gotham’s buildings? There is a panel of Batman standing face to face with one the Talons suits of armor, with his pin-light casting ominous shadows on the walls, and not a word being said – and you are just waiting for that Talon to reach out and grab him.
That one panel alone is what Batman is all about. Brilliant storytelling.
While I love Snyder and Capullo’s storytelling, I find myself wishing there was some lasting physical consequence. This can be done without killing a character. If a member of the family had lost a hand or limb or eye (or even just a big scar) we could finally get a sense visually of how harrowing this encounter is. I can appreciate reading the emotional fallout from this debacle but I can’t quite swallow the fact that these character’s bodies are all completely unscathed.
While they may be unscathed physically – mentally, these dudes, and gal, are fucked thanks to The Joker.