But yeah, I got the Gotham Underground issue today, and a few others. This is arc and issue great step up from War Games, so I don’t really mind if the concepts are similar. I will say I saw Tieri talking about having the Joker in this scene, but I was definately underwhelmed. He just acted like a dick and served as a plot vehicle to get the Penguin to play ball with the government. Okay, whatever. Tobias Whale is still a great (new?) character, and the villains are being handled very well (but Two-Face and Joker are a bit shaky). I’m more wait-and-see with Johnny Stitches; he reminds me too much of Jigsaw right now. And while I haven’t read a lot of Tieri’s stuff, he’s still keeping the plot moving enough so I care what’s going on. Plus, I like it when the mob is an actual threat in Gotham, so that makes this story work for me.

And I agree that “Bruce Wayne is the mask” idea is played out, but I’m not really seeing that in this series. He’s been Matches Malone for most of the series, right? Whenever I read the caption boxes, I even hear him out as Bruce Wayne: Detective, and not Batman: Asshole, and that says something.

Moving along, I got the latest Wonderwoman comic, and you’re review is pretty spot on. Simone really captures Wonder Woman (or at least what I think Wonder Woman is about, I’m by far not a regular reader of this series), but man, it still didn’t do much for me. I find it odd that Simone felt the need to bust out Nazis AND gorillas, which are half of DC’s staples right there. Both elements seemed to have had little consequences to the conclusion. I’m not angry I bought this arc, but I don’t think I’ll continue buying it.

The plot hook itself is alright. It’s nothing desperately original (War Games comes to mind) but a good writer can make it interesting. Bendis did a good job with it in Daredevil and to a lesser extent the recent Hood arc in New Avengers. The problem is that Tieri is just not a good writer. Why should I care about the plot if I don’t care about any of the characters involved? They’re just a bunch of boring, shallow assholes that all talk like mobsters in some third rate crime novel. I’m not even getting into how terribly conceived that Johnny Stitches guy is. Not to mention how Batman himself is in “Bruce Wayne is the mask” mode which is just about the least interesting and least sympathetic way to write the character.