I Think I Have Brain Cancer Now
Seriously, who the hell is still reading this series aside from masochists and professionals? The only reasons I read this series is to maintain my amateur professionalism, warn others away, and honestly just see how stupid ti can possibly get. This issue seriously grated on the logic drive of my brain so many times, it's not even funny. And the artist had some very confusing panel work at times, so even that's gotten dragged down.
Penguin was always one of the more rational of Batman's foes. Since when did he turn into some kind of Norman Bates weirdo who gives his dead mother jewelry? It's creepy, and not in a good Penguin way. It's a DRASTIC departure from his character, and it does not give me any faith in the upcoming turf war. Not that I had any faith for this to shatter.
Explain the logic of this to me, ANYONE PLEASE. I **** you not, Catwoman's logic is that stealing from Penguin will send a message to him to back off. How did every single person to look at that scrio on its way into production not just smack Nocenti in the face for writing something that unbelievably stupid?
The saddest part of that stupid statement is that the issue actually gets worse. Escalate's dialogue is absolutely frustrating to read. He's in a constant tug of war between personas, but they come and go so rapidly that it's damn near impossible to tell when which one is talking, it just blurs into something resembling word salad. And seriously, what the hell kind of name is 'Escalate?' A demon who can escalate peoples emotions. And he's called Escalate. Way to think outside the friggin box, Nocenti. And when he happens to see Catwoman in a bar, his plan is to escalate the lust of the 3 men in the bar so they'll chase her out? Despite the fact that THE FIRST THING THEY DO IT LOCK THE FRIGGIN DOOR and it doesn't take long for Escalate to just smash into the bar anyways.
But then the final battle with Escalate has his choppy dialogue hit an absolute peak of concussion, whereupon Catwoman kind of accidentally slices his throat in one of the most confusing action sequences I've seen in my life. It took me a good TEN MINUTES to wrap my head around what happened in that page, and even when you realize it there's no way it flows quite right. But because of something nobody remembers a demon, they just saw her slice a human's throat. Nobody questions suddenly being on the beach with fuzzy memory. Nobody saw him still changing back before he hit the ground, despite supposedly having seen her slice his throat.
In Conclusion: .5/5
A poor excuse for a comic who's only entertaining value comes from seeing just how awful it is. It's so awful that it defies sanity and reason constantly. The pacing is a nightmare, the dialogue is atrocious, and Ann Nocenti has no regard for what anyone else is doing with her horrendously inaccurate rendition of characters like Penguin. I'm SO looking forward to two weeks from now when I have to read an entire ANNUAL of this woman's writing. Be prepared for me to possibly get violently ill.
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