 Hey everybody, welcome to another exciting episode, another edition of A Week In Geek Them here on YouTube, and today we're going to be tackling the Batman Damned Book from Brian Azarello and Lee Bermejo. Okay, let's get things out of the way first, the big elephant in the room if you will. Boy, this episode is going to be pun filled, so get ready. The Batawang situation, if you don't know back in September 2018 when this book was first coming out, it was the first DC Black Label. Now you're probably wondering what the heck is a DC Black Label, basically it's their mature imprint that was established last year, and it's sort of like this black sticker on your book that says DC Black Label, it's intended for mature audiences and features storylines that are not necessarily set in continuity with the main DC universe, instead they are allowing artists to flex their muscles and take more risk and create more personal stories with these characters and do something different. I love the idea, I am all up for it, however the marketing for Batman Damned was atrocious. Supposedly, the story goes that from technical snafu we were able to see Batman's junk in the first issue, it wasn't supposed to be super highlighted, more like an outline or something like that, but it was a printing error so it clearly showed up when you got your hands on the issue. And I gotta say, before the controversy, before we knew what the heck was going on, I loved the idea that it was prestige format, sort of like this magazine-sized comic. I really wanted to own something like that because I don't collect singles but I do want to get something like that, that's a pretty cool format to have because the art is going to benefit immensely from the larger page sizes, especially Bermejo's art which is unbelievably badass in this book. So the issue drops, the thing, the Badawang situation occurs and everybody freaked the F out and comic book shops could not get ahold of more issues, it sold out everywhere, even online sites, I do remember going to insta-trades.com and we did an episode of, I don't remember if I was on that day, but we did an episode of Omnibrow's Live over at the Omnibus Collectors Network and we were talking, no I probably wasn't there, we were talking about the situation and then one of the guys mentioned, hey insta-trades has the book, so everybody jumped in and the page, you know, they had to refund people because they were not expecting such a high volume, traffic volume of online goers, I couldn't get my issue, I was refunded and eventually I just gave up and I got to be completely sincere when I say this, thank goodness that I gave up on this and did not collect any of the issues because I think this is one of the first modern Batman books which I did not like whatsoever. It's only three issues, three, I want to say, I don't know if there, I cannot remember at the top of my head but I do think the page count is a little bit higher from a typical comic but still, it's only three issues, it's a very small story, but the way this thing was advertised, it was going to be something different, but at the end of the day it's a pretty basic kind of uneven, boring and kind of just meh issue or story of Batman. This is a sort of loose sequel to the creative team's Joker story that they did, I think it was around 2008. So what happens in this book is very simple. Batman gets into a scuffle with Joker and Batman gets knocked out and when he wakes, he finds out the Joker has died and there's this huge mystery of is he really alive or not. What soon follows is a shockingly gritty comic that is trying to be super edgy but just failed in my honest opinion. I love Brian's writing, do not get me wrong, but for some reason I don't know what the heck was going on, but I could not understand half the things I was reading and I thought wait did I suddenly hit my head and forgot how to read? The narrative structure of the monologues or whatever it is you're reading don't really make a ton of sense when you're reading it so I'm like what's going on? Of course it turns out that you're having an unreliable narrator in the form of John Constantine talking to the reader about life and the nature of Gotham and Batman and things like empathy and fear and it has a ton of corny dialogue that I will highlight for you guys that I was like okay they did that, sure why not. But eventually you know the two of them team up to solve this mystery of whether or not the Joker is really dead or what is happening and then it goes off into this weird reimagining of Batman's origin slightly tweaked to something that I personally did not like whatsoever and I thought it was a little bit rude and obnoxious that Brian would try to add a detail to the Wayne's history that was never really there and nobody really toyed around with that and I felt a little bit like ugh really. Then we get introductions to the more mystical magical side I should say to Gotham and I do love the idea of this book being more like horror based in Gotham like very psychological horror with characters like Dead Man, Zetana, Enchantress, you know all the staples of the magical side of DC Comics they are involved in this book in some shape or form. So this lead me to believe that you know aside from the comic selling because of a controversy I just didn't like it and I think you should have rebranded the book as like just as like dark Gotham City black label or something like that you know. The art is breathtaking it is some of Vermejo's best work it is gorgeous to look at I read the issues digitally so if you can't get your hands on the hardcover or the singles and you only have like a tablet I have an iPad that I use to read comics on occasions it looks friggin fantastic digitally it really blew me away how awesome the art looked every expression of the greeting the grittiness and the textures of Gotham the suits the costumes I should say they all look very realistic dark and grimy and just very nasty looking in a good way you know. But the story you know part of what I did not like about the story is how some of the dialogue can be R rated and you can make it a little bit compelling but in the case of this book I found it a little bit more juvenile in some occasions there are some reworkings for some characters with which I absolutely hated I won't say who but you can probably guess if you looked at the images for this book there is there's even an attempt at rape scene that just came out of nowhere in this book there is there's a lot of violence and grit to the book where I think just comes out of nowhere and I get it you're trying to do a mature Batman storyline but I think you could do better than this I think you could create a world that's a little bit more fascinating and it doesn't have to resort to these sorts of things to tell a compelling story because the character lends itself to a very good R rated detective story you know and yeah you want to do the whole supernatural thing but just because it's a supernatural tale does not mean that it has to be sort of foul you know yeah there is sort of like a scary aspect to it and and I thought it was brilliant to mix the horror elements of magic with a city like a Gotham but the way it's done in this book it's a bit of a hit or miss in my honest opinion I wanted more from that story it's only three issues and before you know it you blaze through it and the end resolution of the story without giving anything away left much to do to be desired because it doesn't or at least to me it doesn't reach a definitive conclusion yeah you do know what happens at the end but it's more like a like a little asterisk in Batman's life of a R rated chapter that happened between a story and another story like it's not life-altering it doesn't do much in my opinion going forward I didn't leave reading this thinking wow this changed my outlook on things no it was basically like an R rated rump through Gotham City with magical characters and a dazed and confused Batman which was a little bit weird I did like the suit I love what Bermejo does with the bat suits his interpretations of it look pretty badass in my for my taste I should say so yeah confused shocked and just I didn't I didn't I didn't like it I gotta be completely sincere I it's not a story that I would recommend I don't know if you guys you probably disagree with me you probably think it's it's fantastic and that is perfectly fine everybody has different tastes I just didn't like it as much as other people I'm pretty sure the hardcover looks amazing with that beautiful artwork but it's not something that I would go out and get as soon as humanly possible just saying have you read Batman damned let me know down below if not tell me what are some of your favorite magical stories in the DC universe as well guys as always thank you so much for liking commenting and subscribing to a week geek them following me on your favorite social media platform as well thank you so much we are very close to 2,000 subscribers and that is pretty damn awesome I've got to go I will catch all of you our next episode