Comic Books

BATMAN #696

Batman at the mercy of Black Mask! While trapped in the crime lord’s headquarters, The Dark Knight must find a way to escape before all of Gotham City falls prey to the Mask’s lethal toxins. Guest-starring Catwoman, Penguin, Robin and the Reaper!

Written by Tony Daniel
Art by Tony Daniel and Sandu Florea
Cover by Tony Daniel

Price: $2.99
iFanboy Community Pick of the Week Percentage: 0.0%
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Avg Rating: 3.2
 
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Comments

  1. When is Tony Daniel’s run on this over?

  2. @jobob

    He’s solicited on the May issue.  Just as writer though. 

  3. …Same for April.  Guilliem March is on art.

    This is what I get for pressing "submit" hastily.

  4. i acatully liked the last issue

  5. Last issue was good, cant wait to see what happens.

  6. I think this run has been solid, if not spectacular.

  7. I wouldn’t go as far as to say ‘spectacular’, but its been more tolerable than the previous arcs.  I would’ve stuck with ‘solid’ personally. 

  8. @vadamowens: This is what happens when I comment after drinking a bottle of wine. What I meant was:

    "I think this run has been solid, but not spectacular."

  9. mmmm Wine.  Did you know that wine has a lot of carbs?  Being a diabetic, I thought I was safe with wine.  Turns out I can only drink hard liquor:(

  10. I’m rather enjoying this arc too, but I also liked Winick’s previous arc so my opinion means nothing to the majority. 

    Oh God, Gulliem March is gonna be on art duties soon?!  I just dropped GC Sirens because that scribble scrabble makes me dizzy!!  Now he’s gonna ruin my monthly Batman experience too?!  I think Kevin Smith’s buddy draws better Batman comics then March does.

  11. @robby I know due to expenses, you said you were dropping several titles.  If you’re not collecting RR and B-Girl, that may dramatically increase your bat-experience.  They’re both tremendous books and many people vouch for them.  I’ve already dropped SOG, almost dropped B&R, and I would drop this one if I knew that Bruce wasn’t coming back in a couple of months.

    Fuck me, that was a lot of abbreviating. 

  12. Get Daniel off this NOW! if he does issue 700 that will suck!

  13. I’m with Conor, this run was really well written and the art was indeed spectacular.  Tony Daniel deserves some props for his work.

  14. I was obviously responding to Conor’s first post withouth having read his second post, and I wasn’t even buzzed.  Still, I liked the art on this and the writing wasn’t great, but it was solid and well written.

  15. @vadomowens:  I love Batgirl so far.  I think #4 was the only slightly crappy issues.  I was just about to drop RR but decided to give it a third chance when I heard he is coming back to Gotham finally!!  I had to get rid of Sirens cuz of that art and that’s why I’m pissed off that he’s coming over here now.  The only Bat-books I don’t buy is Azrael, Outsiders, and now Sirens. 

    I don’t know what everyone’s problem is with Daniel.  If you could stand BFTC, then there is no reason why you can’t like this arc.  You’re right though, I hope somebody else comes in to do #700.  It’s not that Daniel is bad, but he’s just too amateur for a big anniversary event like that.  Remember ACTION #700?!  BLAH

  16. I think this has been solid, too. I don’t think it’s absolutely spectacular or anything, but negative thoughts never really enter my mind when I’m reading it. Afterwards, when I read some negative reviews…I see their points about how the writing is "off" in some places. But I just don’t really hold Daniel to a super-high standard anyway, so I’ve been very pleased with this. This isn’t like BftC, where the writing took me out of it. But…I even enjoyed BftC for what it was and had a decent time with it. And this is definitely, significantly better than BftC. I think this has been a solid 3.5/5 overall, and I’m a bastard of a grader.

    I didn’t read the Winick stuff, so I have no idea of how to compare it. Hopefully DC gets a whole gang of talent for issue #700. I wouldn’t mind if Daniel was heavily involved. But I’m not really one to care that much for anniversaries, anyway.

  17. Honestly if it werent Daniel on artwork i wouldt be enjoying this as much.

  18. How is this book ‘guest starring’ catwoman and the penguin? they’re Batman characters! That’s like saying ‘daredevil guest starring foggy Nelson’ or ‘captain America guest starring the red skull’

  19. I don’t get the hate, personally; Battle for the Cowl was a steaming turd, but Tony Daniel’s run on Batman has been really grim and compelling, in my opinion, not to mention stylistically awesome. 

  20. I know I’m not representing the popular opinion, but I’ll take Tony Daniel over Grant Morrison on *this* title.

  21. I really liked this issue.  I wish I could’ve given it a four but for some reason I couldn’t bring myself to it.

    As for the arc as a whole, it seems like every other issue has been really good, and the others have been pretty boring. 

  22. Forgot to add a major complaint…

    Tony Daniel has absolutely no idea how to write Damian.  I can’t think of a character less likely to say "Epic fail," followed by a Terminator reference.

  23. Aaaand…I’ve defended the run up to now, but this issue was pretty horrible. The writing just did not work to pull off the flashback structure. No one’s motives were all that clear, or interesting. And some of the dialogue was atrocious.

    The next comic that references "epic fail" is getting dropped from my pull-list instantly.

    The art was still okay, though.

  24. This was better than the last issue, but still mediocre at best.

  25. Was I supposed to be able to follow this? This was a mess. I couldn’t tell you what the plot was or what happened in the entire issue. How ironic that it begins with the words ‘epic fail’ because that’s exactly what this has been so far

  26. this was definitely the best issue of this black mask arc so far

  27. Im gonna drop this now, its too mediocre for a batman book, and the art is better in streets of gotham…i dont need two mediocre batman books…

  28. Wow, this issue was like so complicated.  Could somebody care to explain what I just tried to interprete by reading this mess twice?  Did I miss an issue in this arc or something?  I didn’t, but it feels like I did.

    If they weren’t about to finally tell us who Black Mask is, I’d drop it, but it looks like I’m gonna have to drop it anyway since my unemployment checks just ran out and there aren’t any jobs in NJ to save a person’s life.

  29. Just like this whole story, the art was nice, the story was not. Still wayyyyyyyyy too overly wordy (I had to go back & count the pages, ’cause it felt like it took twice as long as any other comic to read) & a very messy, confusing plot.

    I think Daniel is trying to emulate Morrison’s style after working with him, by making his plot run out of sequential order & having way too many things going on at once. Trying to make a story feel important by having SO much happening, & distract you from the fact that the actual story isn’t really there.

  30. This reads like an 80s X-Men issue…so many people running around…I think Daniel might need a scripter for this series.

  31. I like Tony Daniels on art but I wish he wouldn’t write the story.  I think the structure of what he is trying to do is pretty good but the execution leaves a little to be desired.  Hopefully as he writes more his technique will get better and he’ll streamline his stories.

  32. Most of this arc was pretty solid but I virtually had almost no idea what this issue was about.  At all!!

  33. This book is pretty solid from a new writer. Also a massive relief for those of us who find Morrison’schtick tiresome.

  34. I think this is my next dropped book Tony Daniel’s writing and art are just too awful . This supposed to be the flagship title of DC and they have a second rate creator on it …Why ?

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