The two Batman titled comics I am reading are Batman and Batman & Robin. The main stories in both leave something to be desired, especially in Batman & Robin. While I don’t really like the plot in the comics, it’s the side-plots that I really like. The  relationships between the Batman family are what attracts me, as you now have a happier Batman and a dark Robin. Damien is hilarious, even though that is not the character’s intent. I especially loved the crossover of Robin in the Batgirl comic.

By far, my favorite comic in the line (and perhaps favorite comic overall right now) is Batgirl. I liked Stephanie Brown as Robin, and it was a shame that her stint as Robin was just used as a premise to kick off the War Games story. So it’s good to see her in a new comic as Batgirl. The comic is still dark, but at the same time is very witty and fun. In many ways, she reminds me of Spiderman, where nothing seems to go her way but she is able to push through anyways. Especially good is the relationship between Batgirl, Oracle, Batman and Robin; where she is very much treated the outcast but she manages to keep mostly upbeat about it.

I hope that when Bruce Wayne shows back up to be Batman once again, Stephanie doesn’t get sidelined again.

The first two, Watchmen and Killing Joke, were self contained story lines. This was nice because you can just pick it up off the shelf and enjoy a good story. War Games, with the prequel War Drums, was also a mostly self-contained story. Sure, it took 4 books to tell the story, but it’s all there. War Drums was especially important because it helped catch me up on what was going on before the War Games story starts. It even went as far as to introduce individual characters.

Batman RIP is perhaps the example I have for a bad trade paperback. The entire story made you feel lost, not because it was a complex plot, but because I just no idea who people were and what was going on. Many story points seemed like Deus Ex Machina or just random dribble.

Coming from Marvel books, I was also impressed by War Games by how the stories were integrated into a single whole. Comics from multiple lines, from multiple Batman comics, Robin, and Catwoman, were all intermingled into a single chronological story. Even when the featured character jumped from Batman to Catwoman then to Robin, I never felt like it didn’t make sense. I got the whole story in one pass, which I thought was terrific. Marvel trades, unlike War Games, would have had the core story in one book, and each side-story in its own trade. Some might see this as being nice to the consumer because you can get the basic story at a cheaper cost, but if you were planning on reading all of the stories there was a massive lack of continuity as you read each of the trade paperbacks in order. For example with Civil War or House of M, reading the secondary trades after reading the main story book was difficult because it wasn’t always easy to figure out when this occurred in the main story, or it is irritating because the contents of the side story help the main story and would have made it better if they had been inserted into the main storyline.

DC also produced War Games in a cheaper format. Instead of being a glossy, heavy paper like you typically find in many comics and trade paperbacks, War Games was printed on paper that was very much like newspaper. While cheaper to produce, I don’t feel like the quality was diminished and I got a better product at the end of the day because I could read the entire story, with all side stories, in chronological order for a much cheaper cost than it would be to read a similar Marvel based trade where I would have felt disconnected by the side stories.