2007-05-28 A. Sengupta "GO YAKUZA"

This is another great addition in the Bats - Sups team up stories with an "okay" introduction of Wonder Woman. I'm not a huge fan of Wonder Woman comics, I don't read any of her stand alone stories, but from what I have seen and read of her in other team up stories like JLA, Infinite Crisis stories for example - she's one bad mamma. In this she just didn't seem as tough and too dependent on Batman and Superman - but then again that's supposed to happen after all, they are a team and in this story Matt Wagner does do a good job of laying down the foundations of the trinity, and establishes the beginings of their futre relationships. I particularly loved the main bad guy in it, as he's got to be not just one of Batmans' greatest enemies, but one of the greatest rogue gallery characters in all of the DC universe. I am of course talking about the seminal Ras Al Ghul, the Demons Head. An excellent job is done to portray him as a megolomaniac, opportunistic, power-hungry psychopath. Matt Wagner does an excellent job breathing some degree of grandeur and scope to this villian that reminds me of his character from the television animated series from back in the 1990's. The only other bad guy I didn't like was Bizarro. I always thought he was a weak character anyway and just a crappy excuse for a villian, either to bring a sense of comic releif in Batman comics or really to actually enthrall fans by having a new supervillian, thus keeping the stories fresh. Because I gotta tell you, having Bizarro does neither for me. He is a waste of space. I would have loved it if the arch villian Lex Luthor could have surfaced, infact I thought he might have since Metropolis was shown a few times, and given the story line, I think this is the sort of thing Lex Luthor might have been involved in on some level or the another. Personally, I think the story tried to cram in too much in one graphic novel. Lets face it, when you have story about how the trinity of arguably the three main powerhouse characters in DC universe meet up and worked with each other to save the world, you wouldn't, couldn't do it in just one sitting. This felt like a much bigger story than it actually was, which left me feeling a sense of disappointment ater reading it. I wanted more from it and I think you will too after reading it. Some will say it's just perfect the way it is, with the lenght of the story, that it's all organic and comes together nicely at the end. Yeah it does, but only to a certain degree. Persoanlly I would have milked the beginings of the story much more and let the reader just slip into it slowly and methodically, and I would have intorduced each of the trinity in a more grander, more complex way before touching base with the main body of the story, as opposed to getting on with the story right away as this graphic novel does. In short I would have made this story bigger, grander and longer which would have spanned more than one or even two graphic novels, because that's how much I care for the characters involved. They are all just too important to be involved in one short story in one neatly packaged graphic novel. But that's just me. Matt Wagner and everybody involved did a fantastic job with the illustration. It's nostalgic and reminicient Frank Miller comic book illustrations. Every page is a page turner and I don't think you will be too disappointed at all. It is a good read, easy, inciteful and just all round fun. Pick it up in a store, buy it, read it, it's well worth it, I promise you.