Batman, Volume 2: I Am Suicide by Tom King

My rating: 2 of 5 stars


Batman has to captures Psycho Pirate from Bane's prison in order to get help for Gotham Girl and he puts together his own squad of criminals who will help him in exchange for some favors if they should get out alive. While it's similar to the Suicide Squad, it isn't the main reason for the title.

As for the story, particularly the first five issues is okay and the art is really good. What kills it is the writing. Tom King repeats things. Repeats things a lot. Changes sentences and just makes a small change and repeats what was said before. He does that. He does that a lot. He says things. Things he says in order to sound profound by re-arranging the order of words. Poetry. It's supposed to be poetic like an old noir story. A story that's Noirish and repeats things to sound poetic because it's an old noir story.

But they have a secret. The best of them have a secret. It's a secret Tom King doesn't know. Or maybe Tom King knows the secret but got carried away. You see you can repeat things. You can repeat a lot of things. You can say a sentence and then modify it. You can say a sentence and modify it a few times. However, you can't just say a sentence and then modify all the time. You can repeat things, but you can't repeat things all the time. It becomes repetitive and pretentious. Pretentious and repetitive is what it becomes.

As opposed to the first volume, I didn't like this take on Batman. He was often irresponsible particularly in the final two issues. And the way he's knocked for a loop and put in peril in Issue #15 is just foolish beyond imagination.

So overall, I'm not a fan of this volume and reading it leaves me dubious about whether Volume 3 will be worth reading.



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