"The shadow raised an arm quickly, throwing something small and black that whistled past Garrett's head. Then Fowler made a noise and fell flat, and the shadow was coming forward. And it had horns. And wings. And claws. And was as big as Garrett himself, and moving like it didn't need to touch the ground at all. It was the Bat. Garrett felt his stomach tyring to slide down his legs."
Batman: No Man's Land is a novelization of the DC comics story arc of the same name, here organized in its novel form by Greg Rucka and published in 2000. The novelization omits many of the sub-plots from the comics, aiming for a simplified and centralized story. However, No Man's Land is still primarily a comic-story. It has many characters and much background that may not be understood by those not familiar with the fiction (fortunately for me, I'm a huge Batman fan). I think that this novel suffered from a lot of this inherited detail carried over from the comics. Also, it was a nice touch to have brief narrations provided by Barbara Gordon, formerly Batgirl. Her diary files provide much needed summary in a novel so crammed as this one.
In a nutshell, Gotham city has recently suffered a series of cataclysmic events, the most recent of which was a violent earthquake which destroyed many of the buildings and structures within the city. Wayne Manor itself was even demolished. The catastrophic damage left by the quake prompted the United States government to disown Gotham city and announce it as a 'no man's land', to no longer a part of the country. The bridges were blown and no one was allowed in or out of this new forbidden zone.
At the outset of the story, a few police remain, with Commissioner Gordon as their leader. Turf wars quickly begin among rival gangs and Gotham city is eventually quartered off and claimed by various groups who use gang-symbols to mark their territories. The game is amped when Gotham's notorious 'super-criminals' enter the fray. The Penguin, Two-face, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy, to name a few, hold a substantial amount of land. But amid the chaos, where is the Batman?
The first part of the tale is concerned with the survivors desperately grasping for order in a ruined city, until the Bat returns. From then on, the Batman finds he must employ new strategies, rebuild lost friendships and trust new allies in order to regain Gotham. He even takes up bat-tagging his bat-symbol for control of territories.
As a Batman fan, I loved every page. But as a reader, I had some disappointments.
Reading the eloquent dialogue of the Penguin, the gadgetry of the Batman, watching him stop a mob or intimidate Lex Luthor, the throwbacks to previous story arcs and heroes and villains, even getting inside of the Joker's head and seeing things from his point of view... these were all great fun. But reading my first Batman novel really made me realize how much Batman belongs to the visual medium. Oh sure the writing is most of the time curt and succinct, and the dialogue most often delivered by strong personalities with clear caricature.
But imagine describing a complex hand-to-hand fight with Batman and some bad guy. Go ahead imagine it. Imagine the words you might choose. You'll imagine a complex, weighty sentence that at once makes the brain picture the action while at the same time envisioning it at a snail's pace. The action is chained up and dragged down by the impracticality of writing all of Batman's complex moves, each twist of his wrist, each batarang, each somersault, each flying kick. Sometimes, the writing just didn't seem to work.
Also, the constant jumping from points-of-view seemed disconcerting and it made too many characters seem to sound and act alike, without voices of their own. Even viewing scenes from the perspective of the Joker, while at first tempting, fell flat.
However, I can laud this book for a spot-on portrayal of the cold, gravelly Batman. It had very memorable scenes. The courthouse scene with Two-face acting out a trial to sentence the Commissioner was very entertaining, and I felt the emotions of the characters at the heavy conclusion. Overall, there was a very tangible sense of dread about the whole story, with optimism crushed and tread underfoot as it should be in every good Batman tale.
While I enjoyed this novel immensely as a fan, a few things bugged me as a reader. I'd recommend the comic version of the story, if you can find it. I give Batman: No Man's Land:
6 out of 10 spray-paint bat-signals!
Batman fans will enjoy it. Casual readers may get lost. But it is at once brutal, shocking and psychological, gritty as any Batman story ever told. It captures what makes Batman-storytelling so great though it loses that special 'something' because it is what it is: a novelization, an adaptation of the real thing.
In a nutshell, Gotham city has recently suffered a series of cataclysmic events, the most recent of which was a violent earthquake which destroyed many of the buildings and structures within the city. Wayne Manor itself was even demolished. The catastrophic damage left by the quake prompted the United States government to disown Gotham city and announce it as a 'no man's land', to no longer a part of the country. The bridges were blown and no one was allowed in or out of this new forbidden zone.
At the outset of the story, a few police remain, with Commissioner Gordon as their leader. Turf wars quickly begin among rival gangs and Gotham city is eventually quartered off and claimed by various groups who use gang-symbols to mark their territories. The game is amped when Gotham's notorious 'super-criminals' enter the fray. The Penguin, Two-face, Mr. Freeze and Poison Ivy, to name a few, hold a substantial amount of land. But amid the chaos, where is the Batman?
The first part of the tale is concerned with the survivors desperately grasping for order in a ruined city, until the Bat returns. From then on, the Batman finds he must employ new strategies, rebuild lost friendships and trust new allies in order to regain Gotham. He even takes up bat-tagging his bat-symbol for control of territories.
As a Batman fan, I loved every page. But as a reader, I had some disappointments.
Reading the eloquent dialogue of the Penguin, the gadgetry of the Batman, watching him stop a mob or intimidate Lex Luthor, the throwbacks to previous story arcs and heroes and villains, even getting inside of the Joker's head and seeing things from his point of view... these were all great fun. But reading my first Batman novel really made me realize how much Batman belongs to the visual medium. Oh sure the writing is most of the time curt and succinct, and the dialogue most often delivered by strong personalities with clear caricature.
But imagine describing a complex hand-to-hand fight with Batman and some bad guy. Go ahead imagine it. Imagine the words you might choose. You'll imagine a complex, weighty sentence that at once makes the brain picture the action while at the same time envisioning it at a snail's pace. The action is chained up and dragged down by the impracticality of writing all of Batman's complex moves, each twist of his wrist, each batarang, each somersault, each flying kick. Sometimes, the writing just didn't seem to work.
Also, the constant jumping from points-of-view seemed disconcerting and it made too many characters seem to sound and act alike, without voices of their own. Even viewing scenes from the perspective of the Joker, while at first tempting, fell flat.
However, I can laud this book for a spot-on portrayal of the cold, gravelly Batman. It had very memorable scenes. The courthouse scene with Two-face acting out a trial to sentence the Commissioner was very entertaining, and I felt the emotions of the characters at the heavy conclusion. Overall, there was a very tangible sense of dread about the whole story, with optimism crushed and tread underfoot as it should be in every good Batman tale.
6 out of 10 spray-paint bat-signals!
Batman fans will enjoy it. Casual readers may get lost. But it is at once brutal, shocking and psychological, gritty as any Batman story ever told. It captures what makes Batman-storytelling so great though it loses that special 'something' because it is what it is: a novelization, an adaptation of the real thing.
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