Reviews: Batman and JSA 80 Giants

Just recently I’ve read both the Batman 80 Page Giant and the JSA 80 Page Giant.

I had the Batman book put aside for me by my LCS and they also put in the JSA one which I wasn’t planning on picking up. That being said I though I’d give it a read anyway to see what I have been missing since I stopped reading JSA a while back.

Now I enjoyed both of these books but Although there was the common ‘winter’ thread going through the Batman book it still felt like an Anthology with the different stories having different writers and artists doing their parts.

A lot of the book to me was forgettable. As I read it about 4 days ago the only story that is sticking in my mind was the Catwoman story with are by Josh Finney and Kat Rocha as the art in that story was as good as anything else they have done through Titanium Rain and Utopiates. Also I have to state that their work in the book is what had me picking it up and since they are friends I am bias.

Now I’m not saying that the Batman was bad, just that ti wasn’t memorable to me.

Now with the JSA one that was a different beast on it’s own. I wasn’t expecting much from it and what we got was a great series of stories that were all joined together by an ongoing story of strange things going on within the Brownstone. The story flowed well from one group of characters to the next and there was only subtle changes in the art when it was going from artist to artist so nothing was sticking out in front of me to take me out of the story.

Now taking stories in Gotham and comparing it to stories happening within a single house is completely different but I would have liked an underlying thread in the Batman one apart from one night with a blizzard. With JSA having small joining pages where it would flow from one story to the next felt more organic and didn’t give me the feeling that I was reading an anthology.

Batman 80 Page Giant 7/10

JSA 80 Page Giant 8.5/10

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