Books : Batman: False Faces

In association with Amazon.com

Rating:

- Not Up To Par With Vaughan's Best Work, But Still Very Readable
DC was definitely aiming to please Brian K. Vaughan's huge (and growing) fanbase when they put out this hardcover collection of Vaughan's old runs on Batman and his two issues on Wonder Woman. As Vaughan's introduction, which is a great read in itself, tells us, each of these stories are connected because they deal with identity. The theme is strong in the earlier stories in the volume and... well, I'll tell you a bit about each story.

+ Batman: Close Before Striking- The Batman/Matches Malone vs. the Ventriloquist story spans three issues and is very friendly to newcomers like myself. Like any Brian K. Vaughan story, there are major twists at the end of and during each issue. This miniseries reads as good as anything he's done in recent years, and takes Batman to a very dark psychological place. The closing issue was a bit heavy handed with the identity crisis stuff and lost the subtlety of the first two issues, but it didn't take away from the overall arc of the story, which was a good one.

+ Batman: Mimsy Were the Borogoves- Only Vaughan would write a Batman vs. Jabberwock comic. And only Vaughan could make it good. The story is faced paced, very psychological, and delves into what makes the Mad Hatter tick, and how the Hatter thinks he could be understood... only thing is, that involves turning his doctor into a Jabberwock. It wasn't campy at all, and Brian handles the comic with grace that it seems he's always had. (I hadn't read the next tale yet)

+ Wonder Woman: A Piece of You- No good at all. As you're reading this, you won't care what happens to Wonder Woman, if she beats Clayface, or if she stays looking like Donna for the rest of her life. The dialogue is the clunkiest Brian has ever wrote, the plot itself is silly, and Vaughan deals with the identity theme in a way here that shows that he HASN'T always had that grace. It's worth noting that this was the earliest of all of these comics, so he was still growing as a writer. But how can one defend ending a book on the line "Diana, if there's one thing YOU'VE taughe me, it's that it's not WHAT you're made of... it's how you USE it." What is this, an after school special? Major, major points taken away.

+ Batman: Skullduggery- I won't say very much about this story, because it's short and it relies on a reveal about four pages into it... but it's great. It introduces a new Batman villian that never did but should have caught on.

Overall, it's a book well worth having. The "Wonder Woman" stories take away from the overall rating in a large way, and shouldn't have been included here on the first place. The spine says "Batman: False Faces." The title is "Batman: False Faces." Having a Batman villain in the Wonder Woman story isn't enough reason to include this in a Batman book. Instead of the Wonder Woman story, more time should have been spent on making sure the pages of the book don't have the thickness of tracing paper, which they do.

6/10

Rating:

- For Brian K. Vaughan Completists Only
While this Brian K. Vaughan collection is marketed as a Batman book, it actually contains three Batman stories and one two-part Wonder Woman story. While the two characters are shown together on the cover, they never actually "team up" in any of the collected stories (Wonder Woman does face off against a Batman villain, Clayface). While Vaughan fans will snap this book of his early super-hero stories up, Batman fans will be left feeling like victims of false marketing.

Rating:

- Misleading Title? Or Maybe Not
Ah, this book is labelled as a Batman book. It features the origins of Matches Malone - Batman's underworld alter ego - in a well executed tale to the Batman Canon - but (WARNING) it also features 2 issues from a Wonder Woman comic with Clayface without Batman (the only relevance being that Clayface was an old Batman villain.) What gives?? Brian K. Vaughn is a good writer, but sticking Wonder Woman in this compilation was a serious if misleading editorial move - since the cover would make it seem that we're about to witness a team-up between the 2 characters. Boo to DC's misintentions to make a fast buck.

False faces indeed!

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