Bruce Wayne on Drugs...???

[IceManML]

Obviously the title of this comic caught my eye. and as I start reading on this, I see the key phrases related to [funny] and [best story in a long time].

I'm going to pick this one up as soon as I get a chance. It's been a long time since I've wanted to actually spend $ on a comic since my disappointment in the death of spiderman.

Tell me what ya think... (url at the bottom)

 

 

"It sounds like a joke at first: What if Batman got addicted to drugs? But legendary Batman writer Denny O'Neil took a laughable premise and turned it into one of the best character portraits the Cape Crusader's ever seen. <!-- %JUMP:More »% -->

 

Batman: Venom shows off everything that makes Denny O'Neil one of my favorite writers. His work shows off an incredible ear for the musicality and quirkiness of human speech and he intentionally tethers the superhero idea to its pulp predecessors. His superpeople were always human, able to stumble and recover in ways that made them more relatable and more heroic. He first won acclaim with Neal Adams, as part of a writer/artist team that pulled Batman back into the shadows after the character's goofy popularity during a 1960s camp TV show.

 

Decades later, O'Neil spent a long time as the editor in charge of Batman at DC Comics and his tenure generated many of the character's modern high points in the recent Bat-mythos. A dead Robin, a new Robin, Bane? All of them happened under O'Neil's stewardship.

 

Originally released as part of the Legend of the Dark Knight series that featured rotating creative teams, Venom serves as a thematic lead-in for the Bane character. This five-issue arc introduced the super-steroid that makes the masked villain freakishly strong, with Trevor Von Eeden on layouts and Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez providing inks. Garcia-Lopez is one of comics' unsung heroes, a man who helped develop a look for DC's most famous characters that showed up on bedsheets, lunchboxes, stickers and all kinds of other merchandise. And Von Eeden crafted some of the most visually daring superhero comics of the 1970s and '80s, with angled layouts and a style that went from detailed to impressionistic with ease. He could damn well tell a story, too, and Venom shows off his talent in spades.

 

You know how there are moments from favorite comics movies and games that you can quote by heart at will? Venom is full of those for me. It's being reprinted to capitalize on the impending release of The Dark Knight Rises, as the film features Bane, a supervillain who uses Venom to become superstrong. However, tie-ins aside, Venom stands as an example of the kind of writing and drawing that doesn't happen any more, with third-person narrator captions that serve as the writer's voice and steady, unassuming artwork that unfurls with a clean, nearly-perfect precision. Here's why it works..."

 

http://kotaku.com/59...an-stories-ever

 

 

<hr />

[Mr. Hakujin]

Yeah, Batman: Venom is one of those stories I remember reading back in the day and thinking, well that was intense. It usually only gets mentioned as the origin for Bane and not so much for it's portrayal of Wayne as an addict, so maybe it's not as good as I remember. It came out when I was in my heyday of reading Batman comics--the weekly pull list days. Denny O'Neal was like a god back then.

 

Denny O'Neil doesn't write many comics nowadays. That's okay. Most of those he turned out in his heyday have ensured that he's going to be a hero to me and many others for decades to come.

Word.

 

Also, I wonder why he did get out of the business...

[Thelogan]

There's a handful of examples of very un-Batman decision making in that story, but as far as I'm concerned O'Neil is allowed to decide what qualifies as that, so I aint gonna bitch about it (as an aside: everyone who bitches and whines about the "bladder spasm", I want to hit you so fucking hard). All in all, it's a cool little story in the 70's style.

 

What really gets me though is "Hey, I'm going somewhere potentially very dangerous. Hmmm, I'm going to need someone to chat with during the flight. Alfred, why don't you come along?"

Seriously? Forced plot device and a potential liability.