Another mediocre addition to the ‘One Bad Day’ series, this time around it’s Bane getting his “greatest story yet!” Spoiler alert, it’s not even close to being a great story. Bane is now an older man spending his days in Mexico as a famous luchador. He goes against opponents who dress as Batman, and each time he breaks them just like he did the real one back in the day. He doesn’t use venom any more and spends his nights alone in his mansion. One night after a fight, someone breaks into his house, or lets themselves in because the door was open? Not sure, but they get in and instantly offer Bane venom. Bane is shocked at the sight of his old addiction as he thought all of it was destroyed by him and Batman. That’s right, before his escape to Mexico he and Batman made a partnership to destroy all the venom in the world, and afterwards they would have a final battle. Well now that Bane has seen this vial of venom he asks the young man to take him where he smuggled it from, and together they must destroy any of the remaining drugs.
Joshua Williamson is the writer on this one and it’s only my 2nd time reading one of his projects. I was expecting a lot when I saw his name attached to this title as I loved his ‘Rogues’ mini-series, but this one-shot felt passionless. That might seem really harsh, but the story did feel like a random mash-up that was kinda rushed. I also wasn’t sure how this was supposed to be his ‘One Bad Day’ moment as the story was making Bane more of a hero than a villain. And it might be that I have a misunderstanding of what the point of these one-shots are, but the previous two titles made sense to the ‘One Bad Day’ theory (albeit the Two-Face story not being that great). This story however was more of a redeem type of story and I’d be fine with that if it was written a bit better. I could see this serving better as a mini-series, but even then the other characters in the story feel lame, and the twist villain towards the 3rd act was super swiss cheesy.
Howard Porter is the artist on the book and you’d think that would be the saving grace of this one-shot however, I wasn’t a fan of this newer (newer as in since I’ve last seen him draw) style of his. It’s in no way bad and normally I love Porter’s work, but the more cartoon-like sketch style just didn’t mesh for me. Still had some great splash pages and designs, but personally for me it wasn’t my cup of tea. Porter is still a legend though.
Overall; Another great character who was supposed to get his greatest story yet, and he got a not good story. So far this one is probably my least favorite one-shot of the series and I really hope it gets better. It started off with a bang with the Riddler story, but sadly this one, and the Two-Face, story were big facepalm moments. Decent art in this one though, however not necessarily my kind of flavor.