Attack on Titan! No, wait attack of the monster men!
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom King, Steve Orlando
Art: Riley Rossmo
Colors: Ivan Plascencia
Letterer: Deron Bennett
What They Say:
“NIGHT OF THE MONSTER MEN” part 1! The first crossover of the “Rebirth” era is here! As a huge storm approaches, Batman, Batwoman, and Nightwing try and prepare Gotham City for the worst, but nothing can prepare them for enormous tall monsters rampaging through the streets! Batman will need all of his allies to unite in order to stop these mad science monsters from tearing their city apart!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
I’ve been admittedly wary of getting into the first event in the Batman books because I’m just not keen on crossovers, which is what keeps me from most of the main character books in general. With this opening installment which Tom King worked with Steve Orlando on with plot and script, it’s already a dazzling affair thanks to the addition of Riley Rossmo to the team. I adored his work on the recent Hellblazer series and while he doesn’t get to be quite as creative with layouts and designs here as he was there, this opening act is much stronger because of his inclusion. Rossmo has some really great layouts that makes the flow fun and engaging but it’s his character artwork that really wins me over, from some really neat standing on rooftop aspects for Batwoman and Batman in how they’re presented to the creativity of the monsters that are coming to life.
With the pieces of this event seeded previously into a few of the prior issues, one of which is well referenced here as in-context for Batman, this event takes place after some bad things have gone down and we have Batman in an even more determined than usual place. With Tim dead, the loss of Gotham and the near loss of Gotham Girl, he’s very intense about not losing anyone else. What’s driving him even more is the coming hurricane named Milton that’s about to hit. He’s pulled together a solid and intriguing team with the likes of Batwoman, Nightwing, Spoiler and this new Clayface that’s trying to be on the side of right. He’s got this team that’s going to do the hard work of working alongside first responders and police officers that still have to treat them as vigilantes and, essentially, criminals. The idea is to focus on the issue at hand and Commissioner Gordon gets it but has to admit that their hands are tied in how they have to look when working the streets amid this.
While we do get some of the early stage plans going into motion for dealing with the storm, events change quickly as they often do in Gotham. Here, it’s Hugo Strange’s program of creating monster men that goes live as the corpses that he has suddenly mutate and change before barreling out into the street. They’re like toddlers to some degree and the allusions to Attack on Titan in a few ways is amusing, especially some of the visuals with massive gothic Gotham buildings and walls. Rossmo gets to have some fun with the fights as we see Batman dealing with that amid the others trying to protect people, but this is just the opening stage of the event so it gets only so far. I do like seeing the network that Batman has put together to relay and deal with information that feels modern enough to be realistic but advanced enough to be just enough into the future as well. There’s a lot to like with the introduction of the monster men even if we don’t have the reasoning for it yet.
In Summary:
I’ve been wary of the Monster Men event simply because I’m not picking up the other books and as good as this opening installment is, it’s not enough to make me pursue it more. Orlando and King keep things moving pretty well here but the real star for me is Riley Rossmo. With some really good issues from Finch previously and then the large group of artists the last time around, Rossmo is an artist whose work I want to see in this book pretty regularly as he has a very good design to it while Plascencia color work avoids the vibrancy that we had with Finch’s segment of the run. There’s a grittier aspect to this without it being grimdark and difficult to discern. Add in some real love of the monster men themselves in their designs and some really great panels overall in depicting the rain and how the heroes look in it and the art’s a winner across the board.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 21st, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
