Book Review: Batman: One Bad Day: Mr. Freeze by G. Duggan et al.

Batman: One Bad Day: Mr. Freeze written by Gerry Duggan and art by Matteo Scalera

Robin has a Christmas present for Victor Fries, better known as the villain Mr. Freeze. When the dynamic duo take down Freeze, instead of carting him off to jail, they take him to a secret lab. Victor was a brilliant scientist who froze his wife when she contracted an incurable disease. He hoped to find a cure while she was "preserved." Robin convinced Batman to set up the lab so Freeze could work on the thawing process for his wife. Can Victor keep himself together and find what he really wants? 

The story is okay. The plot is set up to show Victor's warped relationship to his wife. Victor has suffered a lot concerning his wife, as if he didn't have just "One Bad Day" but a bad lifetime. She is shown as the mentally-healthier member of the couple. She doesn't have enough influence on her husband to pull him back from going bad, which in his case is going selfish. The ending of this story is surprisingly upbeat and happy, not at all what I was expecting.

Mildly recommended.

Book Review: Batman: One Bad Day: Catwoman by G. Wilson et al.

Batman: One Bad Day: Catwoman: No Small Scores written by G. Willow Wilson, art by Jamie McKelvie, and letters by Clayton Cowles

Selina Kyle's latest burglary scheme is for a highly valuable pendant--a bird freed from a cage that was created after World War II by a world-renowned French jeweler. An auction house is starting bids at twenty thousand dollars. The pendant is even more valuable to Selina since it was her mother's. Her mom sold it to a pawnbroker who said it was a fake even though mom said it was given to her by her French mother. They only got two hundred dollars for it, barely enough for rent. So the heist has a little revenge in it too, though Selina thinks of it as getting back what's rightfully hers.

Like in The Riddler One Bad Day book, it's Selina that has the "One Bad Day," where the heist does not work out the way she wants to. Unlike The Riddler book, this story doesn't turn totally dark and pessimistic. The plot has some nice twists and pathos to it with a much brighter color pallette (though that is not much of an achievement).

Catwoman has often been an ambiguous figure--sometimes a straight-up villain, sometimes an ally to Batman, often a mixture of both. Her varying character is used to good advantage in the story, which is told from her perspective. The writer gives her a believable voice and the artist treats her with class, i.e. not like a sex object. She does have a bit of romantic distraction with Batman (naturally, he has to show up) but the scene does not have the tacky, exploitative depiction that happens with a lot of female comic book characters (or even in the Batman/Catwoman back catalog). 

Recommended--this is among the better Catwoman stories I've read.

Book Review: Batman: One Bad Day: The Riddler by T. King et al.

Batman: One Bad Day: The Riddler by written by Tom King and illustrated by Mitch Gerads

The Riddler is a member of Batman's rogues gallery that usually does not get much respect. His M.O. is giving clues to the crime he is about to commit. That turns out to be counterproductive, though it makes for entertaining stories. Who doesn't like a good riddle? In this book, The Riddler has moved on from his usual shtick. He kills a man in broad daylight without any prelude and waits around for the cops to cart him off to Arkham Asylum for the Criminally Insane. He makes repeated efforts to get Batman to visit him, increasing his brutality towards fellow inmates and guards. The contemporary story is intercut with scenes from The Riddler's adolescence at a prep school where he is forced to excel by his father, who happens to be headmaster. His unhappy childhood led to his unhappy livelihood. 

This book is inspired by Alan Moore's The Killing Joke, where The Joker creatively and brutally tortures Jim Gordon in an attempt to make him insane. The theory is that "one bad day" can turn any good man to madness or evil. This story seems more like The Riddler had the "one bad day" and has changed from a less-than-serious opponent to a full-blown psychopath who scares everyone on the police force...and maybe even Batman himself. The plot is very grim and has a lot of violence without the levity or cleverness of a typical Riddler story. I can see what the creators were going for but I found it hard to read and hard to enjoy. 

Not recommended.