Comic Book Reviews: Batman #32, Batman Eternal #12 and Green Hornet #13

It's sad to see arcs and series I've followed for so long come to an end, but for Green Hornet, it's been long enough. For Batman Zero Year, I think it's time this story takes its place among the great Batman origin stories.

Green Hornet ended on a solid note and even had some of its best art for the series. Its biggest overall problem is the same problem much of the series had and that is that it tried to do so much that the story felt overly complex.

It felt like Mark Waid was trying to hit us with a couple more twists before dropping the mic, but none were super-unpredictable and by the end, I'm not sure I agree with the assessment that the Hornet should be continuing his career.

Maybe it was just my perspective, but I felt like this Hornet had been in a position where he needed to stop. I do like the idea that once he went in, he was in all the way, and it's a good sentiment that he's needed, but it didn't come together right for me.

Overall, it's good but not as good as it should have been. I'll give it a 7.8/10.

Batman's Zero Year arc was the strongest entry of anything this week and was just awesome from a writing, and art and a coloring standpoint.

Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo and FCO have been owning it this story and they were in sync again this issue.

You can here my fan-gush in the video, so here I'll just go over why it isn't more than a 9.0/10. The first page was clearly a setup for a payout scene in the final issue. It wasn't bad but I didn't really see a reason why it had to be there now.

This book is also shorter than usual by a couple pages and the whole DC charging $4 for the book is hurting its value. And of course, this book is a cliffhanger. A setup issue cannot be outright perfect because it has to pay off in another issue.

All of that said, I love this Riddler and how competent he is. I love that Batman can make mistakes and not only acknowledge them, but recover from them and still have success.

I love the message to Alfred and I love the detail in the art. Nothing else to say really.

Batman Eternal is an afterthought after those two books, but it recovered nicely from a bad issue last week. Harper Row hacking Tim Drake was the highlight for sure and I laughed harder at that than anything this week.

That said, Tim proved kind of dumb by yelling across Wayne Manor later on. And I'm still not sure how to feel about the Red Hood-Batgirl team-up.

But what did work was the plot by Gotham police (the non-corrupt portion) to get control of the city back in the hands of real heroes. I like Gotham PD being competent so this was a treat.

Overall, the book got scored with an 8.0/10.