Wednesday is a great day for some of us as it is New Comic Day! In an effort to expose myself to more comic books, support the industry, and have something to write about I am going to be trying something new. Every Wednesday I am going to go the local Comic Store and pick one of the “New This Week” comments to read and review. This week I chose to review the Batman 80-page-Giant Gotham Freezes Over.

Gotham Freezes Over!
Cover Price: $5.99
Release Date: December 16, 2009
Publisher: DC Comics

There are reasons that I chose this comics over all the others:
1. It’s Christmas time and this comic had a snowy cover, so despite the bleak indicators of the title I figured it was “Christmassy”
2. I’ve not read anything with Dick Grayson as Batman yet and I was curious.
3. The “80-page-GIANT”ness of it suckered me in.

Overall the anthology format is one that I don’t go out of my way to visit. I did, however, really like the mini-story format of the Gotham Knight DVD set, so I figured perhaps a Batman anthology by different contributors might be interesting for me as well. Within the anthology are eight independent stories taking place in Gotham city as different characters deal with the fact that Gotham has frozen over. As I think of how I am going to handle reviewing this mini-anthology of Batman universe stories I begin to realize that this wasn’t really the best format to begin my Comic Book reviewing days with. Reading a book like this is a bit like watching Superbowl Commercials. Some are awesome, innovative and fun, while others are generic everyday commercials you could see all the time.

This story was interesting as it touched on the dynamic between Dick Grayson & Damian as they deal with the citizens of Gotham’s reaction to the natural conditions of this Freeze over. I liked the layouts & designs for this story a lot, and the art style was interesting. It was a simple story & lesson that just touched upon the morality of Batman and how Dick Grayson is holding up that morality. Personally, I thought this was the best part of the whole anthology and I’m a little confused as to why they started off the book with this instead of putting it towards the end. I suppose, seeing as how it’s one of the only stories that’s actually Batman-centric, they thought they would bring the reader in with a Batman Story so they would stay for the rest of the book.

Alfred, as always, is badass. I suppose one of the upsides of anthologies like this is that you will almost always get to see some stories from the perspectives of characters that usually do not take the spotlight in the main series, so this was a neat side-story to read. The style is bright and colorful and more on the cartoony side, just how I like it This might have been my second favorite story in the whole thing, which leads me to believe the quality is top heavy in this book. Interesting.

An interesting story about non Batman Canon characters and a side mission on Gotham. Overall the story on this was pretty engaging and interesting. The concept seemed appropriate to the Batman universe specifically, and it was an interesting read.

Some story about a character named Veil. I’ve never heard of this character so I’m assuming this was some sort of origin/introduction story. I wonder how often that’s snuck in, an origin for some small pitch hero that either will never get to mass production or that serves as some sort of pilot to see if they should get into mass production?

The art style on this story stuck out from the rest of the Anthology. Most of the other submissions were done in a pretty standard comic book style, but this was more of a painted photo-realistic style that was different completely from the rest of the book. It broke things up and made it interesting to see something different. I do, however, prefer a more illustrative style than realistic for my tastes. I felt like they were trying to touch into the character of Catwoman and perhaps how she’s handling the death of Bruce Wayne, but I felt it was a bit of a hollow attempt. It seemed the story was put in there to force the theme home and it didn’t seem too natural. Catwoman can be pretty damn awesome, if you know what you’re doing…

Poison Ivy was dead, then alive, then mean, then sad, then happy, then sad, then mad. The end. Bleh.

A cool story with Commissioner Gordon. What I especially liked about this section was the paneling, it was interesting and different but not hard to follow. The art style was gritty but not too loose. Overall a good piece. Getting inside of the investigative mind and thinking of Commissioner Gordon is always a treat, and it wouldn’t be a Batman Anthology without the inclusion of Commish.

This is a cute little one-page stylized Batman page, pretty neat & fun but not much to say!!

The anthology tied everything together as far as being in the same event, it’s snowing. But it didn’t go much further than that. The stories were all independent from one another and they all focused on different main characters. It was an enjoyable read, I suppose, but I still am not in love with the Anthology format.

Until next week!! Same Batblog, same Batblogger! *facepalm*