Book Review: Batman: Legends of The Dark Knight 100-Page Super Spectacular #5

Book: Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight 100-Page Super Spectacular #5 cover by Cully Hamner

Edition: Paperback

Description:

In “Hell’s Bells,” Batman’s latest altercation with the Gotham City Police Department forces him to improvise, when they converge on a suspect – and the police try to take him out instead. Plus two other stories featuring the Dark Knight Detective!


Rating: 4 stars

Review:

I enjoyed reading this, there are three very different yet interesting stories (along with good artwork) in this book.

Story #1: Nevermore by Ron Marz with illustration by Cully Hamner, color by Rico Renzi and letters by Saida Temofonte

This story opens with "Edgar" a new patient at Arkham Asylum claiming he killed Batman. It all started when Batman arrived at the library to go over a crime scene with Commissioner Gordon. He could easily see that Catwoman was the one who had broken in. However, her efforts were interrupted resulted in her being captured.

A clue led Batman to an abandoned mansion but Edgar (who seems to be suffering from the delusion that he is Edgar Allan Poe) and his minions (who were named after characters from Poe's stories) were waiting for him. He had what appeared to be the perfect plan to get rid of Batman but was the Cape Crusader dead and what happened to Catwoman?

I often wonder why so many of Batman's villains suffer from mental health issues. But then again so does Batman but I feel like Bruce took his trauma and channeled it into being a hero. He didn't want others to go through what he went through but he still has trauma he never got help in dealing with. While I feel like the others used their trauma as a way to hurt as many as they can. This was a really interesting story with it incorporated a bit of Edgar Allan Poe in it.



Story #2: Hell's Bells written and illustrated by Scott Kolins with color by Wendy Broome with Dave McCaig (chapter one only) and letters by Saida Temofonte

This three part story centers around a vampire like creature stalking the residents of an apartment building. The creature kills it's victims by draining the life out of them leaving them as a dried brittle husk. Batman, Commissioner Gordon and the Gotham police were trying find and stop the creature but there were no clues to follow and it doesn't help that the police thought Batman was the one really attacking people.

Things went from bad to worse after the creature attacked Commissioner Gordon. Batman was going to have to kick up his efforts to stop the monster and to see if he can find a way to help Commissioner Gordon who was in the hospital fighting for his life. This was turning out to be a very difficult case for Batman with hardly any substantial leads.

Although I found this to be an interesting supernatural story there were times when it felt like things were happening somewhere off page and it seemed like a few scenes felt rushed.



Story #3: What Would Batman Do? by J. Torres with illustration by Matthew Clark, Ink by Wade Von Grawbader, color by Ulises Arreola and Carrie Strachan and letters by Deron Bennett

When Man-Bat, Clayface and Killer Croc broke out of Arkham Asylum, Robin (Dick Grayson) takes it upon himself to go after the villains since Batman was out of town. But Batman told him not to go out there since he had a contingency plan already in place.

Let's just say Robin didn't listen and when he ran into Batgirl (Barbara Gordon) in the sewer, he figured she was who Batman must have called in to help. Well, she wasn't, Batgirl just had the same idea as Robin in wanting to recapture the villains.

With the duo being a little out of their crime fighting depth they decide to work together and use some of Batman's prior experience dealing with these villains to stop them. But what worked for Batman doesn't necessarily work for them and not to mention they kept getting in the way of Batman's contingency plan.

This was my favorite out of the three stories, the writing for this was so sharp and funny as Robin and Batgirl try to prove to themselves that they were more than just sidekicks.


There are still a couple more volumes of the Legends of The Dark Knight series I have to read but this is the last of the 100-Page Spectaculars. And this was a good read that added interesting stories to the Batman universe.