Customer Reviews

Batman: Cataclysm (Prelude to No Man's Land)

5 star:		(5)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Batman: Cataclysm was overall a great comic book, and very enjoyable. For Batman fans, the comic is much different than most Batman books. For example, you won't see too many of the regular vilians (Joker, Scarecrow, etc.). Instead Gotham is rocked by a huge earthquake destroying everything, even the Batcave. Batman is left to fight something he has no power over, mother nature. It makes for a very interesting tale, as Batman sees the city he loves burn and crumble into oblivion, and he can do nothing to stop it. Along the way, heroes like Nightwing, Robin, Huntress, Spoiler, and Catwoman join forces to help trapped citizens and fight off escaped convicts. Then, a man calling himself the Quakemaster takes claim for the earthquake and threatens Gotham with another one. In the end, the identity of the Quakemaster is very suprising. Batman: Cataclysm is one of the best storylines and definitely one of the most emotional storylines for a Batman series. It is a good read with great artwork, and it leads to the aftermath story of Gotham, Batman: No Man's Land.

Batman can handle criminals. But how can he fight a Earthquake? How can he fight the natural destruction of a city?

A lot of crossovers nowadays are pathetically poorly coordinated. But Batman: Cataclysm is very well coordinated and flows pretty well. If you don't read the writing credits you wouldn't be able to tell how many different writers were involved. The main story following Batman, Oracle, Nightwing and Robin are intersepersed with vignettes starring Two-Face, Ra's al Ghul and others. One of the few week points is a vignette starring Robin is put in out of order. In it Robin, while rescuing trapped victims, says in the narrative that he hasn't found his family, but about five pages before he was reunited with his family. But most of the story flows well, and it's believable. Batman and Alfred are trapped in the Batcave well below ground. How do they get out? The Batmobile exit is blocked, the stairs up to the mansion is blocked, the access to Robin's house is blocked. So how do they get out? It's handled very clearly and as realistically as any comic book can get.

The real strong point of this story though is the artwork. Almost every comics artist can draw a decent figure but there are a sad number of artists who don't or can't draw backgrounds. But the Batman creative crew is occupied by artists who can draw buildings and scenery. As Gotham city is an essential part of the Batman mythos this probably isn't a coincidence. As such the scenes of the destroyed city are amazing and horrific. The falling skyscrapers, Wayne Manor split down the middle, rubble two stories high are all handled well, and you really feel how intense it is for these people to lose their city, their home.

I was really impressed with this work. The story continues in the No Man's Land story arc, and after reading this I definately want to go read those.

Overall a great book. Gotham City faces something worse than even the Joker or Penguin could do to it, Earthquake! Batman battles those who come out of the darkness to take advantage of the destruction while Bruce Wayne fights to save his city politically. Only mistake I made was reading the No Mans Land Comics(which were even better) before I read this so It spoiled some of the suspense for me. I would advise against doing that.

They actually were able to pull it off. An awesome book. It starts off with the one villian that Batman can do absolutely nothing to it. An earthquake that measures 7.6 demolishes Gotham. Wayne Manor is in shambles and the Batcave is fully exposed. The Bat team must rush to save the survivors whether they be wondering the streets, under collapsed buildings, or just plain lost in this new land. An excellent ending with great art the entire way through. Wonderfully written and you need to read the followling five volumes entitled No Man's Land to find the finish.

A good chunk of this book takes place within a span of 5 minutes, while at other times, it jumps back and forth by several hours. But overall, the stories were compelling, and the artwork quite excellent. I recommend it, but to fully appreciate it, I think the reader should also purchase the sequels, "No Man's Land" volumes 1-3.

What we have here is a major earthquake that pretty much destroys Gotham. You get to see what Batman and company would do in the face of a major natural disaster. On a scale that we've never seen (after all, they do close it off). It's a great story with really good art. It helps keep Batman from becoming stale.

Now, I don't claim to be either the biggest comic book nerd or literary critic but let me just preface and say that I really did like this arc. I loved the threat of natural disaster out of left field, I like the way it brought out new sides of all involved, I even liked the quasi-philosophy of Ras Al'Gul and the weird turn with the Penguin alliance.
My problem is and shall remain, that... this is in the DC universe. We consider this earthquake to be so devastating because Gotham's resident hero is a crime fighter, a detective, with no power over the natural elements, but to be honest, I couldn't go a page without screaming, "Where's Superman?! Where's the Flash and the Green Lantern?!" These other heroes that supposedly coexist in this world, who could come in and fix the problem and save countless lives, are simply discarded for plot convenience and as such, on the deepest of levels, this really doesn't make sense.

"Cataclysm" is about the horrifying moments during a devastating earthquake that levels Gotham City and the first few weeks afterwards as the survivors desperately attempt to resume their lives. Suspenseful and terrifying, these vignettes show Gothamites at their best, their worst, and their most tragic. An amazing, wonderful prelude to the "No Man's Land" saga.

I was collecting comics at the time this story arc came through, and enjoyed it throughly. It shows you just how hard the caped crusader had to work to try his hardest to save his city. I reccomend the whole No Man's Land collection for anyone who hasn't read it yet.

Like I said in the title of the review this book is quite a slow-starter as far as storytelling goes. You'll find yourself already through one third of the book (about 120 pages) with everything collapsing and causing trauma before the story actually starts to take shape and begins to develop. From there on it keeps getting better and better when it turns out the quake did not only wreck the city itself but hit Blackgate Prison as well (which holds some of Gothams most dangerous criminals), when the people of Gotham start having to decide to go live on instinct or to stick to their common sense, and when suddenly a mysterious figure who calls himself "Quake-master" claims to be responsible for the quake and starts making demands. It's also interesting to see how Batman reacts now that he has to 'fight' something that is more than just another villain but a big-scale disaster instead. Something that requires the man behind the mask to realize where his priorities lie, without turning it into another attempt to a 'dark & gritty' tale which already has been overdone by now. Another thing I definately want to mention is the excellent climaxing in this book. Where in most books you find out who or what is responsible for everything that is going on halfway through the book (if not earlier), and then spend 50 pages with the good guy chasing the bad guy into an obvious end, that's not the case here. It keeps you wondering what exactly is going on untill even the last 10 pages where everything finally falls into place (and where you finally find out who "The Quake-master" is. And it's not who you think it is either !). In the end I have two little points of criticism. One of them being the fact that there are so many different artists who worked on the story. Off course that's logical since it's a collected cross-over which ran through several titles, but some of the art (like Scott McDaniels work) isn't really appropriate for a story with this kind of theme, where some other art (like Bill Sienkiewics' and Klaus Jansons work) really IS. The other little point is the presence of some editorial slips. This varies from spelling errors ("two" instead of "too") to a character referring to something that couldn't have possibly just happened. But apart from those minor points it's a very nice read and a good prequel to "No Man's Land" which follows it.