The second volume was full of dramatic events. First, Bruce Wayne, on the verge of exhaustion, rounded up escapees from Arkham, only to fall into Bane’s trap. The new villain not only looked like a muscular Mount Everest dressed in a luchador outfit, but also turned out to be extremely intelligent and cunning. And it was Bane who finally managed to break Batman – figuratively and literally. Wayne with a broken back was unable to continue his mission, so he handed over his title and equipment to Jean-Paul Valley. This one, nicknamed Azbat by the fans, dealt with Bane quite quickly and without any problems and began to fight crime according to his rules.
Program
The third volume is a direct continuation of the earlier events. However, it is in vain to look for equally groundbreaking situations here. The Crusade simply tells about the reign of the new Batman and his growing detachment from reality. Azbat does not care about the work ethic of his predecessor and prefers to act alone. There is even a rather comical situation in which Valley decides to brick up the entrance to the Bat Cellar so that Robin cannot use it. The new Dark Knight also conducts a kind of arms race with criminals. As soon as there is an obstacle, he immediately turns on the “program” – that is, a hypnotic trance – and sits down to the sketchbook / workshop. In this way, Batman gets new toys all the time (for which the producers of those from the real world were probably DC forever grateful).
Impostor: bat test
My main complaint about leading the changing of the guard at the bat post in the previous installment was that everything was happening too fast there. No sooner had Jean-Paul Valley donned his pointy ears than he swooped into enemies on full Azrael, massacring his foes and defying his predecessor’s code. And there’s more here. Although some of these radical methods are quite effective, none of the numerous screenwriters even try to convince the reader that the new Batman is not a psycho. The most interesting in all of this are interactions with people from Wayne’s alter ego environment. This Jim Gordon seems to delude himself all the time that this is just a change in the character of the Dark Knight. This contrasts perfectly with the Joker, who only needs a moment to sense the impostor.
An additional problem in Crusade is that when Bane was gone, a bunch of totally random and one-shot villains jumped in his place. Where Azbat comes to fight classic villains like Mr. Freeze or the aforementioned Joker (who has a ton of great movie flavors in his history), it’s very good. However, for every decent bad guy, there are three boring rookies.
So big
The 588 pages of the previous volume were impressive. The Dark Knight Crusadeto this: hold my batarang. The whole is closed in 744 pages – in words: SEVEN HUNDRED FORTY FOUR pages. Although if someone asked me, I’d say there are more. This is due to the fact that the third volume is more fragmented than its predecessor, which had Batman at the center all the time. In the continuation, there are also notebooks from the solo series of Robin and Catwoman. Especially the first one is very weak, because it does not present anything interesting. Oh, the adventures of a young boy who has to hide his super identity. The whole thing, combined with terribly shallow opponents (just a car gang), I read rather out of duty, not for pleasure. Notebooks with Cat Woman are more interesting, although there is a problematic team of eco-terrorists treated quite badly, and Valley itself shows truly Incel tendencies. Seriously,
More Than Meets the Bat
With such a large number of notebooks, it should come as no surprise to anyone that there is a graphic mishmash here. However, the vast majority of cartoonists stick to the classic style, typical of superhero novels. Then there’s Vincent Giarrano, who doesn’t even pretend to be interested in realism. His works are wonderfully expressionistic – full of dynamics and disturbed proportions.
The previous volume was also surprisingly restrained in evoking the EXXXTREME spirit of the 90s. Yes, Azbat’s outfit was far from Bruce Wayne’s ascetic style. Okay, very far from this predilection for yellow, blue and ubiquitous edges (because, you know, that time was very edgy ). But what’s going on here is beyond bat comprehension. Jean-Paul is getting closer and closer to Grimlock from Transformers with each new outfit adjustment.
Shadow of Knightfall
The Dark Knight’s Crusade is worse than its predecessor, because the whole thing smacks of a bat … a mouse. This can be seen, for example, in the construction of the main character and with whom he has to fight. I really liked the almost complete lack of Bruce in this comic, because it’s not about him either. The latest volume of the Knightfall series is still a decent comic, although I would like to read it much better in a condensed edition, not an omnibus.
