Night Of The Monster Men
A Batman, Nightwing, And Detective Comics Crossover Story
2017
4 / 10
Story By Steve Orlando And Tom King with James Tynion IV
Artists: Batman - Riley Rossmo; Nightwing - Roge Antonio; Detective Comics - Andy MacDonald
I'm not a big fan of the crossover way of publishing and creating a story and the Night Of The Monster Men is the perfect example as to why.
The main reason is artwork. Since comics are pretty much graphically immersive with the action being shown via the artwork while the writing expresses the characters feelings so when you have three differing styles telling the same story it can hamper and even hinder the work.
Being honest I'm not that keen on any of the artist's renditions though there are some similarities between Riley Rossmo and Roge Antonio's work. Though they are different style-wise the characters do have recognisable faces and body sculpture. For the most, it nearly flows, though I didn't like how Antonio drew Gotham Girl. However, it's Andy MacDonald's art that is just too different from the other two's and this spoiled the story for me. I am NOT saying that MacDonald's art was below par, it isn't... well not up to the last page in the series where you have difficulty recognising Bruce Wayne and Kate Kane, but it is too different to Rossmo's and Antonio's to be a distraction, though his rendition of Gotham Girl is the strongest.
I believe this would have worked better had Rossmo drawn the whole series. His style is so well suited to this type of story. Along with the colourist Ivan Plascencia they give the story a nice moody feel and I really love the way they created the rain-drenched streets of Gotham.
The only thing that annoyed me about his style was how small Batman's ears were on his cowl. Rossmo's rendition of the monster men themselves, for me, was the best.
Riley Rossmo
Roge Antonio
Andy MacDonald
As for the story, we start off with a severe weather warning and a storm which threatens to flood Gotham worse than the Zero-Day flood so Batman and the Bat-Team take it upon themselves to help the police to evacuate the populace.
Though, who would have thought it, Hugo Strange has avidly been watching the weather and has chosen this particularly nasty day to attack the Batman. Not really, it must be chance and luck he chose this particular day to fight; Batman and his posse will be spread thin when he activates the Monster Men to strike.
This is a strong beginning as we learn how Strange orchestrated his scheme while watching the team defend themselves against monsters, some of which are pretty near indestructible.
As the story progresses the Orphan and Spoiler who have helped to move the Gothamites out to higher ground start to have some issues of their own as the people crammed into the cave start to get restless and violent.
What will happen to the team...
Now, this is where the story begins to spoil. The ending is pretty weak compared to the rest of the story and lets it down pretty badly. Strange's reasoning for starting the assault and Batman's resolution to the situation left me feeling deflated, I wanted more. For such a grand plan I expected Strange would have a grand justification. Then I was expecting a big boss fight when Batman finally faced Strange, after all, you see strange working out his muscles. The ending the writers give their readers is worse than the conclusion to Batman V Superman or Stephen King's "Dark Half". It now ranks up in my top ten of letdowns. Though I have to say the journey to get there was greatly entertaining... mostly.
I wouldn't recommend this title to anybody as there are so many better pieces of work out there. It's just as shame because this story had the potential to be one of the great Batman stories.
Alternate Covers.
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