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Of Embassies and Origins - Justice League International Part 2 (Eaglemoss Collection v77)

  Review: Since we are doing a series of reviews focusing on Booster Gold over his nearly 40-year history, we include this one as a collection of some of his earliest appearances, dating to late 1987. That places the original publish date of these tales while his original solo series was still going strong.  This book is a beautiful, glossy hard-cover with smooth and heavy-stock paper inside, although the sometimes-low print reproduction quality leads to blurred and hard to read word balloons on occasion. It is also a rare book here in North America, as Eaglemoss Collections targeted UK fans with this series. At this point in the history of the 1987-rebooted Justice League, they have gained official United Nations recognition and sanction. To ensure their reach truly is global, they rebrand as Justice League International (as does the title of the series!) and they open new headquarters buildings around the world: New York, Paris and Moscow are included here. As this is a product of 19
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Batman: Arkham Origins

 


Description: The best-selling video game comes to comic books in BATMAN: ARKHAM ORIGINS!
In the video game Batman: Arkham Origins, Black Mask orders a hit on the Dark Knight and assassins from all across Gotham City answer the call. Batman must defeat the likes of Deathstroke, Bane, The Joker, Copperhead and others while trying to find out what Black Mask is up to. Based on the hit video game, this volume is presented in multi-path comic format, allowing the reader to make critical choices throughout this interactive adventure.
Collects: chapters #1-14
Authors: Adam Beechen, Doug Wagner, Frank Hannah
Artists: Various
Published By: DC Comics
Published When: Sept 2014
Parental Rating: Teen

Review:

Video games like Batman: Arkham Origins are frequently "choose your path" in format. Will you pursue this villain or that? Will you go here or there? There is some linear progression forced upon the player, with some defined choice-points. When you make the wrong choices, it is easy to reset and restart.

"Choose your own adventure" books have a similar format, some sections that drive the plot forward, and points where the reader makes a choice for the character. Their popularity with young readers comes and goes, and they have a bit steeper effort needed to start over, although backing up one choice is reasonably simple.

This graphic novel attempts to bring this format to the world of comics. It does not succeed.

Sure, the format is there, with decision points, and different destination pages depending on the choice.

But the decisions to be made ranged from trivial to clearly consequential, and from immediate-response moments to ones open to more thought and contemplation. The demands of graphic story-telling, including layout, pacing, even the need to fill each page, add to the challenge of navigating the story. At least while doing all that page-flipping the art is consistently eye-pleasing.

I am left with a disjointed story, and my level of interest in the overall narrative diminished with each subsequent reverting to previous decision points.

Could this format work? Can comics and reader-choice at key plot points go together? Maybe. I would certainly read another attempt. But I do wonder if the nature of the format, with some pages of carefully crafted art and narrative being skipped or throw-away due to reader choices, makes it an inherently weaker form of story-telling than the video game on which it is based.

For the art and for the willingness to try a novel experiment, I give it 2 capes out of 5.


ISBN-10: 1401248861
ISBN-13: 9781401248864
Language: English
Pages: 160

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