Scans_Daily

I'll echo the notion that there is nothing inherently wrong with the concept of the story, but the execution has been woeful, and it becoming the basis of such a huge crossover is vastly depressing.

The Batgirl and various Robin-esque titles have spend TWO BLOODY ISSUES EACH on this build up, with the Joker is God-mode throughout so they all seem to hammering him in the face with him never noticing ANY of it. And then beingg

And at the end of each of these 1/6 of their entire annual output of issues, he drags them away to be some sort of key factor in his final plan. But instead they appear in a few pages for a rather dull "joke" and gthen act like the same sort of idiot Batman has been for this story (Honestly, you see something you don't know the origin of in a Joker base, you don't hang around to look in case something happens.

For some reason it made me think of "Dreadful birthday Dear joker", where the Joker kidnaps Jim Gordon, Robin and Alfred in the space of about six pages, does so in a very Joker-ish fashion (and no pointless shock deaths) and then uses his hostages to make a point, and STILL has room for a more dramatic, exciting, thematically interesting confrontation between Joker and Batman in it's mere 23 pages than this overblown waffle-fest.

And none of the "kids" joining Bruce as he chases down the Joker makes no sense at all, the whole point of this story should have been to show the family serve a valid function for him as his partner, and none of them demonstrate this at all, because they're never given a chance too.

The Joker mentions that he'd spent hours "Whispering in their ears" about what Batman really though about them. THAT is creepy, THAT is a sinster idea, and THAT I would want to hear, but we get no clue as to what he said to ANY of them. So unless there's any follow up, the only chance

Based on what I've seen the Nightwing tie in seemed to be the only one to have anything like a theme in it's own right, but destroyed the entire, and basically only, subplot that has been building up in Nightwing since the relaunch.

And I echo the general comment that (Joker's reaction to his real name to one side) the final confrontation was just... awful, and on a par with Nightwing's reaction to Bruce's copter going down at the end of RIP. Dick would NEVER presume that meant Bruce was dead, he'd be wondering if Bruce was going to be back in the Batcave before he made it himself.

The isotope thing is either a lead in to something else or just yet more pointlessness. To end a story about the importance of Batman's family to him, with his family not appearing to be traumatised (which in some cases they SHOULD be) so nuch as just... not terribly nterested in talking to him is pretty inexplicable, or bad communication between writer and artist in terms of describing the requiaite emotion.

One final comment is based on a note I read on tumblr and agree with: This story loses most of it's impact BECAUSE of the DCnU, where Batman's relationships with his Robin's has been vaguely described or glossed over, and timeframes ate all over the place.