War of Jokes & Riddles

it's trash. none of the characters act like they should,the art looks traced, and just it takes a bigger shit on continuity than new 52 did. thoughts?

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the art is so terrible, it's kind of incredible that Janin ever managed to do ok on Grayson

Jokes and Riddles was great, but it doesn't seem to have any ending at the moment. Why is there Kite Man? This should be about Riddler and Joker. I will grant that Kite Man is the best Batman villain to appear since Professor Pyg, and has made his issues the best I've read in ages. JaR can be summed up in two parts right now, the JaR, and Kite Man. The art has been good. The idea was good, but DC seems to have forgotten what it was doing, but switching to Kite Man hasn't been a bad move. It's been actually entertaining.

>thoughts?
I disagree with basically everything you just said.

the whole kite man thing seemed like king was trying to look smart by "reinventing" a shitty z-rate character. some things dont need to be rebooted as dark and edgy to be taken seriously

Kite Man is the story King wants to be writing, and Jokes and Riddles is the editorially "encouraged" BIG JOKER STORY
>the art has been good
pfffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

Why is it that every time a king thread is made, you pop up?

they're killing joker by overusing him. snyder was breaking enough balls by getting dotf AND endgame, but now he's putting him in metal too? king could've just wrote kite man instead of this fanfiction where riddler doesnt wear a shirt

I'm just glad that thanks to Sup Forums storytimes I never had to pay for these comics. Half of the time they're not worth the money.

>pays for comics
readcomiconline.to/... you're welcome

>spoonfeeding this hard
this is why Sup Forums is the worst board

Morrison used him pretty frequently over the course of his run, Snyder is just a shitty writer.

this bit pissed me off especially. scarface isnt a puppet to wesker, he's the dominant personality. its like king doesnt know the character's he's writing for.

are there other examples of Wesker being separated from Scarface that back this up?

i dont know i think its pretty in character, you read knightfall? Similar thing happend to him there and he ended up using a sock as a substitute.

Also that time in Living Hell he went apeshit and had a guy murdered for smashing scarface

Wesker NEVER refers to him as a puppet, only "Mister Scarface". Hes a beta to that personality, and when separated hes lost, and even creates multiple new personalities to fill the void in the meantime. Just look at Knightfall, he had Socko telling him what to do

i may be wrong but i remember them being separated in knightfall after bane frees everyone from arkham. true, i may just have a specific perception of the ventriloquist but i dont think he'd ever refer to scarface as a simple "puppet".

>knightfall
>knightfall
>knightfall
i think thats pretty convincing evidence...

So just one story then?

I think the entire point is that its a war told from the perspective of two soldiers fighting it. Batman, an outside agent forced to side with one side, and Kiteman forced to side with the other. They even reflect each other in other ways. Batman lost his parents to crime, Kiteman lost his son.


Its pretty clear how it relates back to his time in the CIA, though its not a 1:1 parallel like Omega Men or Vision.

Well I dont know, how often does Scarface/Wesker get spotlight?

you guys are being pretty pedantic, but regardless this is set right after year one. So this would be the first time he has ever been seperated from Scarface and his psychosis isnt as deeply set in it yet. He is more acting out of shock that Scarface COULD be stolen from him, its the first time he has had to deal with the fact that Scarface IS just a puppet because Scarface wasnt able to do anything when taken from him.

Him submitting back to Scarface later would cement his psychosis further and re-enforce the idea of Scarface being "real."

"...yes father. I shall become a bat." vs "...yes son. I shall become a kite."

this, it's technically Wesker's first chronological appearance in the New 52 continuity

Wesker and Scarface are minor characters.

>set in year two
this is probably my biggest problem with this story, that it condenses the timeline just as bad if not worse than the new 52 did.
harvey is already two-face? cool, just throw the whole gordon-batman-dent triangle straight out the window and condense it to MAYBE half a year. Joker's already sick of joker-ing after only existing since the start of THIS year?

i get that they love doing these hush-esque villain roulette events, but have some fucking subtlety.

I try not to think about the timeline anymore

the issue is the adherence to status quo. they force all this retcon shit into the early days so they wont have to make the characters age.

king, get off Sup Forums and get back to writing stories about batman cutting himself already.

I disagree

Everything not related to Kite Man is terrible, as weird as it sounds. Still better than last two "I am" arcs.

I Am Bane is fine

>Bane hanging Robins in cave for shocking, meaningless cliffhanger
>Batman storing Robins in Superman's freezer so they don't run around
>Batman getting pummeled for multiple pages but he escapes
>Bat is able to convince whole Arkham to help him, even those inmates that can't be reasoned with
>Bane is able to beat whole Arkham, even those inmates that he can't beat
>Bane pummels Batman for whole issue
>Batman headbutts him and wins
>+mommy issues and a lot of scenes that don't make sense but look cool according to King
I wouldn't call that "fine".

>>Bane is able to beat whole Arkham, even those inmates that he can't beat
>it's only ok when Batman does it

a big problem with writing a bane-centric story is that he's essentially synonymous with knightfall (kinda like doomsday and DoS, eccept DoS sucks), so any big event with bane at the helm seems sub-par in comparison.

also it doesnt help that i think king isnt doing anything interesting with the batman mythos.

>posterized 3d models traced over with awful facial expressions
>posterized+recoloured photo of park for background (drawing is too much effort)

janin is a good artist

look at that nigga's head

that nigga look like he walk straight out a N64 game

In No Man's Land he lost Scarface as well, and he was just as pathetic without him as he always is. He doesn't suddenly grow a pair.

I feel like people wouldn't be quite as hard on King Batman if it had better art

but god what were they thinking

the worst offence of this is when batman states its been a year since he donned the cowl, and then on the next page he says he's already joined the justice league.

>year one batman on the justice league

shhhh dont tell him that he is wrong.

I'm pretty sure it's technically Year Two Batman on the Justice League

It's like if Reddit and Tumblr had an aborted fetus

and then Sup Forums fucked the corpse

Joker is a shitty character, he is too overpowered, in this story it is done in the wrong way, snyder did it much better.
In the future they should make him a god or something that explain why he is so powerful.

I don't like what he's been doing to Riddler's face, but yeah, the art is good. Not perfect, not superb. Good. Acceptable. Alright. It's got flaws, but they're overlook-able. I don't like that the writer doesn't have any material for The Joker, but that's alright too. Kite Man has made up for it.

You're wrong about it being trash, you're right about the characters not behaving normally. My biggest problem with this arc is the way Joker and Riddler are now super powered. Riddler catching a fucking knife at the bridge of his nose is not something the Riddler should he able to do. The Joker having 3 guns pointed directly at him, but STILL managing to kill all three people (with only one gun, not even a "Joker-y" prop) is not something the Joker should be able to do.

I can forgive not giving ALL characters involved deep roles and motivations, being fearing for their own safety, but the apotheosis of Joker and Riddler is the real problem. I still like the arc, though.

riddler looks garbage. true, riddler was muscular in the 70s-80s when wearing the classic green tights, but i just dont think this shirtless, blatant murdering, pug-faced depiction works at all.

See look at that! We get more like reddit everyday. I blame r/the_donald.

>Sup Forums - Faggots & Victim Complexes
Go take your anxiety medication you fucking NEETs. At least the sites you hiss at like retarded possums have a use beyond dick-waving contests.

This, true about the characters but i think the arc sucks.

Most of this seems like personal problems. You having a problem with it doesn't make it bad.

all i can say is that id feel ashamed to put the king run on the shelf next to the snyder run.

sure, snyder leaned a little too heavily on the joker, and sure it isnt the greatest run ever, but i feel like snyder at least attempted what morrison succeeded at doing. that being using the pre-existing batman villains as an entryway to make new stories based on new villains.

the court of owls will cement their place in the batman mythos. who the fuck's gonna remember gotham or gotham girl in 15 years?

Story is ridiculous.
Why have the big 2 managed to recruit all the others, doesn't make sense.
How come Batman manages to take them out one by one, and not the police?
Also messes seriously with continuity.
Art isn't all that bad - compared with, say, most of the minor bta-books. At least the coloring is great.
Dialog is quite decent.
Basic idea and premise is good, could have been something if not for glaring plot holes.

>deathstroke and deadshot deathmatch
>evenly matched (inaccurate)
>people being gunned down in crossfire
>goes on for five days
>batman defeats both in one page
>no real excuse for why he didnt do it sooner
>claims moral superiority for not killing them

quality writing from king here.

King made a choice to use characters and their most superficial motivations as props to tell a more emotion based story, one that spends a lot of time revolving around happiness and sadness. The trade off to telling Batman stories this way is it gets less action based drama, and Batman rogues without their usual action drama (i.e. wanting to blow up or take over Gotham, revenge, etc) make for a strange soap opera sometimes. Characters like Gotham and Gotham Girl deal in emotional impacts, so does I Am Suicide with Bane being free from his addiction, so does Bruce's proposal to Selina, and Joker's/Riddler's/Kiteman's motivations in WoJaR.

I understand that the point of King's run is to find more personality and motivations in the characters themselves than in their gimmicks. Following that logic, it makes sense that he'd have some characters put their more superficial traits on the backburner and look at their emotions. Unfortunately, this doesn't always track well when it conflicts strongly with reader expectations. When you remove the gimmick angle from characters like the Joker and Riddler then all you have are mundane killing machines, which I don't think is an accident, but it isn't as fun or engaging to read as Joker hitting people in the face with exploding pies, or trying to solve riddles along with Batman.

tl;dr King writes for emotional impact, which doesn't produce much memorable content, but also doesn't make it bad.

>Story is ridiculous.
Not really, all the questions you ask are answerable.
>Why have the big 2 managed to recruit all the others, doesn't make sense.
It was either join or be killed.
>How come Batman manages to take them out one by one, and not the police?
As opposed to literally who else? What other villains have the GCPD been able to solo? Also, did you forget that they did try to send in SWAT to both Joker and Riddler's camps, both of which were annihilated?
>Also messes seriously with continuity.
The continuity was messed up by n52, that being a major plot point of Rebirth.

>no real excuse for why he didnt do it sooner
The excuse given was that he was still very green, and both Floyd and Slade were too good to catch quickly for a young Batman with no help available. This is apparently happening before Robins were around.
>claims moral superiority for not killing them
A. When did he do that? B. This is the story of the worst thing that Batman has ever done, remember? He was not proud of the fact that he almost killed deadshot. A fact that was punctuated by Batman explicitly saying it was a miracle that he survived, dickteasing the fact that while beating a man so close to death was awful, it still isn't the worst thing he's done yet.

i get what you're saying but i dont think that writing emotional and meaningful stories negates the ability for the characters to act in-character. to strip characters like the joker and the riddler of what you call their "gimmicks" is to make them joker and riddler in name only.

when you write for these characters, you have to utilize the elements that make them that character in the first place, otherwise you destroy the point of writing the story with preexisting characters at all.

there's plenty of examples of books where the characters maintain their fantastical elements, and yet a deeper emotional core still exists. "eye of the beholder" tells a story about corruption and obsession, and yet it doesnt betray the character of two-face in the process. "killing joke", joker still has a ridiculous plan involving a circus, cracks jokes and even has a bloody song and dance routine, and yet that story still has an emotional core. there's countless other examples that prove that a real dramatic story CAN be told in such a silly, weird medium.

war of jokes and riddles should've just been the kite man bit. the rest of it betrays every other character for the sake of a lame story about ultimatums and the lesser of two evils. had king invented new, grey-bland characters for this arc, it still wouldve sucked, but at least it wouldnt have been a bastardization of prexisiting characters.

Join or be killed?
Who exactly does Ivy feel threatened by? Croc? Deathstroke? Clayface? All of them could flatten Riddler and Joker? Someone like Hatter could not, but he is quite insane and doesn't care about threats. Penguin is smart enough to lay low. These are not minions, but King treats them as such.

GCPD takes down villains, read the old books. Also, most villains plan and take their time, this full-scale warr puts them right in the scope of the police.

Continuity - OK, 52 messed everything up already.

I don't disagree with the idea that he leaves some character on the table, but it still isn't a deal breaker for me yet. If his intent is to make Joker and Riddler as dry as possible with the goal of building them back up to their usual selves at the end, then it has strong redemption potential. They aren't their normal selves because they aren't happy, which gives King a chance to write his happy/sad stories AND sort of justifies writing them in such a bland way. He just has to have some sort of pay off at the end, which I'm still optimistic about.

>Who exactly does Ivy feel threatened by?
Ivy's motivation was to protect The Green, and Riddler convinced her that goal would be better served on his side. I assume it's the same for all the others, threaten or protect something they care about. Given how Penguin's fellow crime boss Carmine Falcone faired when he disappointed the Joker, he had plenty of motivation to fall in line and pick a side. But chances are, just like any other villain team, they all stand to gain something from the alliance.

>GCPD takes down villains, read the old books. Also, most villains plan and take their time, this full-scale warr puts them right in the scope of the police.
Again, did you forget the part where they sent in two (2) SWAT teams and both were killed? It's weird to even consider the police a factor in Gotham, and whatever books you're referring to must be way too old to matter.

>GCPD takes down villains, read the old books
They did? Because I remember that it was a plot point in GC how the GCPD felt really frustrated that they couldn't take down any of rouges without Batman.

>Its pretty clear how it relates back to his time in the CIA
You mean how everything the CIA has done for a generation has been a colossal fuck-up, though they'll never admit it, despite overcomplicated overplanning and much fanfare about how these are all the smartest guys with the coolest secret plans?

Reminds me a lot of Tom King's writing.

The art is the only thing I like.
Finch and yeah Janin (YEAH I LIKE JANIN).

Tom King is a terrible writer and make Snyder's loggorhea and clumsy repetitive metaphors seem like genius Shakespeare by comparison. ("Bat King! Get it????" >>> anything in King's run)

>King is a bitch who is all about his "feelings" and is so overwhelmed with emotion he can't think straight.
>Bbut that doesn't make it "bad", guys!

>Ivy's motivation was to protect The Green, and Riddler convinced her that goal would be better served on his side. I assume it's the same for all the others, threaten or protect something they care about.
Keep assuming.
Keep covering for him.
You realize that in this one little nonsensical paragraph you've done more actual logical character work than in the entirety of Tom King's run.

>the whole kite man thing seemed like king was trying to look smart by "reinventing" a shitty z-rate character.
Yeah I don't even want to find out, but I'm sure on some normie hipster/dad-humor sites and podcasts like iFanboy or Comic Geek Speak those guys are all
>"Kite Man??? Ha-HAAAAH! Wow who'da thunk it but I'm like totally involved and care about KITE MAN! Tom King is a GEENIUS to tell this little story within the context of this great big war! This is just--KITE MAN! WOW! 'The Ballad of Kite Man'! He's just like this schlub, this down-on-his-luck guy, and--WOW! I am REALLY enjoying this!"

>WAAAAH STOP HELPING PEOPLE
Go cry about it on Sup Forums. He didn't even ask for it, the guy just kindly provided him a source for comics basically unprovoked. That's not "spoon feeding"

fuck. This looks like cut-scene from Ultimate Spider-man game,

I bet you thought that was clever.

>when you write for these characters, you have to utilize the elements that make them that character in the first place, otherwise you destroy the point of writing the story with preexisting characters at all.

I agree with your post 100% but this bit particularly. I think that King, and maybe DC in general tends to ignore those "elements" that define the characters. Or at least have a very reinventing view of what those elements are in the first place. Ever since the New 52 I think, most writers have been trying to re define core elements, and I think for the most part, they've been failing spectacularly. Hit and miss here and there.

When I think of old runs, like Grant , O'Neil, or perhaps even Morrison, I don't see them trying to re-define who Batman is, or his personality and traumas... they were just putting out semi-decent stories, and paying tribute to what came before.

It's a weird sensation knowing that there are many out there who only started reading this character with Snyder or King, and think THIS is the best Batman.

Why all those Batman villain still roams the streets?

>>"Kite Man??? Ha-HAAAAH! Wow who'da thunk it but I'm like totally involved and care about KITE MAN! Tom King is a GEENIUS to tell this little story within the context of this great big war! This is just--KITE MAN! WOW! 'The Ballad of Kite Man'! He's just like this schlub, this down-on-his-luck guy, and--WOW! I am REALLY enjoying this!"

Don't try to defend this shit.

Not trying to attack anyone, but if you don't like King or Snyder, what would be the best Bat-run (not individual TPs) in your opinion?

Morrison or O'Neil

but any argument over "best" is basically just a power level argument and therefore retarded

Good, then, not best. Actually bought Morrison, unlike King and Snyder, but seem to recall a LOT of critique against him.

For the 90's Grant and Dixon

O'Neil I think is betterm though.

I loathe this version of Riddler.
Kite man has been fun but overdone. And the sappy story ruined it.
Joker has had some teeny, tiny worthy moments.
Bats has been from average to dumb.

What's wrong with Kite Man? Why can't a normal Gothamite join in without becoming Great White, Zazzax, - in fact wasn't that the whole idea behind Mr Bloom, and the Victim Syndicate? That this isn't about the Joker and the Arkham inmates every time?

Ivy's motivations are in the book

Still better than METAL

Where exactly? The only thing I remember is Riddler telling her that Joker will start a fire or something. What about Freeze?

Except he can't write emotional depth to save his life and is constantly reverting back to repetitive melodrama.

The dialogue is really terrible and everyone has the same damn voice. Instead of having Riddler and Joker command armies of mooks, King just made established villains into mooks. They follow joker and Riddler's orders like little puppies and they get taken down by batman in one page. You're not told or shown why they work for Joker/Riddler, they're jsut there to up the stakes and make things feel "bigger" and more "important". Kite man's kid dying is on Batman and in the last issue where Riddler is gloating about killing the kid and Batman's just standing there behind him and letting him pisses me off.
It's really badly paced and every single double page spread has been stupid and a waste of page.

>everyone has the same damn voice.
That's not even close to being true.

...

At least in METAL there is stupid shit to enjoy, here its just stupid

Three separate different voices.

It's one of the weaker Batman stories, but not because the story is bad but because King decided to be experimental in his storytelling and he missed the mark.

What? he has everyone speak in his retarded robovoice. The second "in this war" is cringe as fuck.

Honestly I think it's the double shipping that really fucked him

It's the same damn voice. Everyone just talks like this. In the same damn voice.

not really, his work on Justice League Dark is about at this level, and that didn't double ship as far as I'm aware

His work on Justice League Dark was far worse.

>You're not told or shown why they work for Joker/Riddler.
This is also simply not true, we are told and show multiple times why they're working with The Joker or the Riddler.
Some do it out of fear of being killed, others see choose sides based on who they think is more sane like Poison Ivy and others are doing it for personal reasons like revenge in kite man's case.

so it's clearly not the double shipping either way, he's just terrible

>it's the same damn voice
No it simply isn't.

Most wouldn't have taken a side between Joker/Riddler's little pissing contest