Comic Book Reviews: Samurai Jack #9 and Batman Eternal #11

Just a heads-up, the last 8 minutes or so of the video review is me talking about future stuff to check out on this blog, so just know that.

Heads-up #2: While waiting for the video to upload, I discovered that Cartoon Network and IDW's Super Secret Crisis War crossover event starts next week. Yeah, I'm obviously going to give it a look. Be ready!



Anyway, what occurred this week was a rare anomaly, a story with great art and a limited plot teamed with a story with solid plot and terrible art.

Samurai Jack continues to be a tremendously solid title, scoring an 8.9/10 for this week's issue. In the video, I praise the great art and ambitious layouts.

It's main fault tends to be that it's the second straight issue with nothing but a fight sequence, and this one just feels like a less compelling fight compared to last month's. May just be my perspective, but it hurt the book for me.

Seriously, what's with the eye style here?

Batman Eternal continues to have a lot of positives: Stephanie Brown, spreading across all of the Batman universe, real emotion from Catwoman, Alfred getting a plot, Stephanie Brown.

However, it does have weaknesses. I feel like Alfred's storyline is a little easy to predict and I've never really seen the style of story being done with him done correctly.

That doesn't mean it can't be, but this crew will need to be on its 'A' game.

I also felt that Catwoman's scenes were poorly placed and didn't really connect. But the biggest hindrance for the issue was the artwork.

It's rare that art actively distracts me from enjoying a story, but this caused me to stop a few times. Maybe it was the weird way in which the eyes REALLY didn't work or the random smile on Jason Todd's mask, but I found myself really getting frustrated with this issue.

I gave it a 7.2/10. It's still a good story, but this was definitely the worst of the first 11 issues.