111 Batman By Brian Azzarello And Eduardo Risso

This book is a mixed bag for me.  I loved it, but there's a but here.  I love it, but only if I consider it an alternate earth Batman.  Which kind of makes sense considering there's a Flashpoint mini-series in here.  

I love what these guys do with Batman, only it's not quite the regular Batman.  It's a darker Batman.  It's a rougher Batman.  It's a grittier Batman.  The whole tone is different, yet not.  I don't know if this makes sense.

This book has a bunch of things.  A Flashpoint mini-series.  A six issue run on Batman.  The Wednesday Comics story. A black & white story.  It's all good stuff.  I promise.  

My biggest complaint of this book, if I had a true one, was the Wednesday Comics story.  This is not the right way to reprint that.  If you don't know Wednesday Comics, it was a series DC did a few years back.  It's printed on actual newspaper sized paper.  It does not translate well being shrunk down to comic book size, which is sad.  My old man eyes has enough trouble as it is.

Batman By Brian Azzarello And Eduardo Risso

Writer: Brian Azzarello

Artist: Eduardo Risso

DC Comics

014 Wonder Woman: Her Greatest Battles

I've said before that I do love a good compilation.  This is one of those things that sounds so good in my head, but in reality kind of falls short.  The problems, for me, are (1) there are so many stories you could pick, but such limited space that something good is going to miss out and (2) there are rarely any done-in-one stories anymore that anything you put in a book like this is going to be one part of a multi part story.  So odds are you're going to be lost or not really care what's going on.

It's an interesting choice of stories here.  The oldest is from the beginning of George Perez's run and the most recent is from the Azzarello/Chiang run.  I'm bummed out that nothing from Phil Jimenez's run on the book made the cut.  Or from Allan Heinberg's run.  But space limitations and such.

The book does work well giving you a lot of fighting.  Wonder Woman battles Ares, Max Lord, Cheetah, Power Girl.  You get a nice variety.  There's an issue of Geoff Johns' New 52 Justice League in here that really doesn't fit.  At all.  I wish that was sacrificed in favor of something else.

All in all, it's a good, mindless romp through Wonder Woman's recent history.

Wonder Woman: Her Greatest Battles

Writer: George Perez, John Byrne, Greg Rucka, Gail Simone, Geoff Johns, Brian Azzarello

Artist: George Perez, John Byrne, Drew Johnson, Rags Morales, David Lopez, Tom Derenick, Georges Jeanty, Karl Kerschl, Chris Battista, Fernando Dagnino, Jim Lee, Cliff Chiang

DC Comics