Reading DC is always a little weird for me because I'm such a Marvel person. Batman and the Justice League is full of great characters (anything with Wonder Woman in it is straight up perfection). The art is great and the story, like most comics is entertaining and fast paced! Well done!

Batman and the Justice League Vol. 1 by Shiori Teshirogi was interesting enough while I was reading but ultimately mostly forgettable and I skim read most of it. I do want to give this book another try when I'm not in a reading slump though.

Thank you net galley for letting me read and review this graphic novel. I like these characters of course. Especially Batman and Wonder Woman. The art style is nice, and I liked most of the story and writing.

The story wasn't bad. I think I see where a lot of it is going, but it's not bad. It's the artwork. It is not that the artwork is bad, it is very good manga. It's me. I am not a big fan of manga. I gave it a try. I wanted to like it more. It was still a pretty good read, but it was just not for me.

Too many stereotypes, and I couldn't get past the ridiculous look of Superman's tiny head. The idea of a Japanese visitor to Gotham City was a good one to introduce the characters to a potentially unfamiliar audience, but I had trouble following the art at times.

This big key aspect is what marked the book as clearly for a younger audience and I personally think if you know a very young person, aged 6 to perhaps 10, who liked comics but wanted to try out manga (or vice versa) or liked anime and superhero movies and you wanted to encourage them to read more, this would likely be a great book to start on (or, you know, Marvel Manga-verse). It has all the very big big JLA players, the Joker and a little kid who can get a samurai sword through airport security – what else would a super-hero fan kid need?

A rather interestingly done manga version of characters I'm used to being in a more American art style. The story is, overall, okay. It's an interesting take on popular characters.

ARC from Netgalley.
Not sure I'm going to continue with this title, but that doesn't mean it was bad. Actually, I rather like how the Justice League members look expressed in traditional manga art. But.... the story felt forced and predictable. I can almost see where this is going already.
I'd recommend for people who are wanting to cross over from manga to DC/Marvel/Image/Etc, or perhaps for younger readers.
Just really not what I was looking for, though not bad.
Recommend if you are younger or not a huge comic reader.

I love reading these tales created by authors who live in such far-away lands and yet have embraced the joy of these North American super-heroes as their own. Manga is such a unique format and the art is eye-catching and playful. A refreshing, pleasing, great and fresh take on these iconic characters.
It is fascinating to see how these super-heroes are now international heroes on a grand scale.
I recommend this title.

I have several teenagers who read every manga book I can find. They all voted this one as a keeper. I enjoyed the art and the story myself, so I guess that means it gets rave reviews from all ages!

Batman and the Justice League get the manga treatment! But it is much more than just the artwork involved here. A good story weaves through this book and makes it more than a gimmick, and transforms it into a really a good read!

A lot of people are going to like this solely because it was a Batman Manga, but the story was a bunch of nonsense. The Joker was selling an energy drink that made drinkers crazy which somehow allowed the Joker to somehow control ley lines. Lex Luthor is somehow involved in this too. And now Superman has ley line magic vision. Mixing magic in with these characters just doesn't work without any of DC's magic-based characters to be a gateway into that part of the DC universe. One of Superman's biggest weaknesses is magic. Both Batman and Luthor are science based. Why would any of these characters have anything to do with this "plot"? It makes zero sense, just like this book.

I love manga and I've been reading so many more American superhero comics recently and so I knew I had to read this, though I have to admit, I was not expecting to like it at all. Thankfully I was proven wrong. Even just in volume 1, the story has caught my attention and I can't wait to read more. I don't love the art however. As seen on the front cover, some of the time the character's heads are remarkably small compared to the rest of their bodies and it's incredibly jarring, especially when that doesn't always happen! Most of the art is pretty, but for some angles, the artist just doesn't seem to get the perspective and proportions right at all.

This is also kind of a funny title in terms of cataloging. I have purchased this for my library's manga collection, but may end up moving it to the American comics collection if it doesn't end up circulating there.

Disclosure: I was given a free digital copy by Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.
Shiori Teshirogi writes Batman and the Justice League. A boy comes to Gotham City to search for his parents and finds they apparently died. At the same time, Luthor and Joker are planning something and it's time for the Justice League to gather.

I really a lot of the art style for structures and settings. Some of this art is just gorgeous to look at. The story is also not bad, but it is flawed.

The biggest problem with the book is that it's nearly 200 pages long makes very little progress. Part of the problem is that the writer is trying to introduce so many characters and concepts, most of them aren't done well and the story doesn't really develop. To me, it feels like it would have been better had we had the boy meeting Batman and one villain and we couldn't have gotten to know everyone and how our hero relates to Batman. As it is, we get very little sense of what's going on.

I also thought the art for some of the characters didn't work, particularly Superman who seems to be based on a very emaciated New 52 design.

Overall, this book's not horrible, but it needs to move more.

I had a great time reading Batman and the Justice League Vol 1. It was done in Manga style, and I will admit it took me a bit to get used to it. Most comics you read from left to right, whereas this one you had to read from right to left. I thought it was cool how they changed the style of many of the characters, and the action scenes were pretty intense. This story reminded me a bit of Batman Ninja, probably because it was done in a similar style. If you are a fan of these characters then this is a story you may want to check out.

I really enjoyed this manga! It was really cool because the American comics are not in manga format, so this was a nice experience. I feel like I’ve been hitting a rough patch lately, so this was a welcomed change. The storyline was great! I also enjoyed that the focus was mainly on Batman and the introduction of Riu.

As the story developed, we see tension brewing between the Joker and Lex Luthor. Let the games begin! We also see the introduction of some of the Justice League forming and some villains, as well.

This manga was super easy to get into and before I knew it, it was over and I was sad 😦 Wasn’t ready for the ending and usually I am. I’m excited to see what the next one has in store!

When the Joker and Lex Luthor team up to harness and control an ancient reality changing force of energy, it’s up to Batman, the Justice League and Rui Aramiya, a young boy from Japan in search of his parents, to stop them and save the day.

Hot on the heels of the Anime Batman Ninja, Batman is no stranger to the manga treatment. Having been manga-nized twice, first in Kia Asamiya’s Batman: Child of Dreams and a short story Batman: The Third Mask in issue #4 of Batman: Black & White by Katsuhiro Otomo, but this new collection is being serialized first in the Japanese anthology Red and is by Shiori Teshirogi, best known for her work on Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas.

If you’ve never read a manga interpretation of a western comic, the style takes a bit of getting use to when looking at it with traditional superhero sensibility lenses. Don’t be confused by the title, much like Bruce Timm’s Batman cartoon, this book makes Batman the lynchpin of the series/universe, with the exception of Superman, we barely see the League and when we do it’s with someone referencing them. Like most manga, it’s filled with a ton of introspective character panels and for a brooder like Batman, it works well.

With elements of post-Crisis DC and the New 52, undies on the inside and references to Jason Todd’s death, the story has that cosmic high stakes feel that we come to expect from most JLA runs. The art is top notch, the anatomy is a bit wonky, Superman’s head is a touch too small for his body, but the action is tight, engaging and energetic, and Teshirogi’s Joker is what a Joker should be, a stylized nightmare skeleton come to life.

The advance digital copy I reviewed from DC was a weird manga hybrid, the book read left-to-right, but the panels read right-to-left like most manga, not sure what the final product will be like. Either way this first collection is a solid fusion of the two genres, worth the read. Batman and the Justice League Vol. 1 is out now at your local comic shop and book stores on October 23rd.

I'm not quite sure what audience DC is hoping will read this, but as a person who reads both manga and DC comics, I didn't find it particularly engaging. I think it's possible that it would work as a gateway into American comics for manga fans (which seems like its original intent in the Japanese) as it does introduce the characters and concepts without any expectation of background knowledge. The plot follows Rui Amamiya, a Japanese boy with unknown supernatural powers who has traveled to Gotham City in search of his parents, and his newness to the scene serves as a convenient excuse for background infodumps. I do find it interesting that the author chose to explicitly set this story in the post-Jason, pre-Tim era -- possibly because it's the closest to the Nolan films in set-up, possibly to give our hero a Robin-shaped space to step into? The art was kind of jarring for me; I missed the color from comics but also some of the character designs felt off, specifically for Batman and Superman where there heads looked comically tiny compared to their massive chests. (That I will acknowledge is a frequent problem in comics as well.) Overall, I can see the value, and I would love to hear from the Naruto/Bleach/One Piece crowd about how they engaged with the material, but this wasn't for me.

Aside from the manga version of Superman that I think is a bit too androgynous in typical manga style, I actually like the familiar Justice League characters drawn this way. The end of the . Still, I need to go back to Superman. Shouldn't his head at least be more proportional to his body? Perhaps that would help with the masculinity issue. Just, if you are trying to tell a very American owned story styled in manga aesthetics, it still needs to be an American story which means that our definition of masculinity needs to be addressed no matter how horribly old fashioned that sounds.



On the bright side, the text is easier to read, the manga style storyboarding, compared to the American style template also gives the story more breathing room. I know I am not using the right words for the art or the genre, but I just feel like aesthetically, I enjoyed this story. Although Batman is still dark and moody, especially after the loss of Robin, but he is still heroic and he is still able to mentor Rui as Bruce Wayne. The reader is left with a juicy mystery - what powers does Rui's mother have? And if his mother is still alive, what about his father?



The back of the book has a great interview with Ms. Teshirogi and in it she talks about some of the things that I actually picked up on just as a reader of both genres. Part of her taking an American story and "translating" the graphics meant that even with drawing the scenery, she had to do a lot of research so that she could pick up on cultural details that would create an American versus Japanese city, even if Gotham is a made up place.



She also talks about focusing on panel layouts and forgoing the text heavy American comic style for the more graphic focus on emotions by using face closeups typical of the manga.



This is a great partnership and I can't wait for the next volume.

A young boy travels to Gotham City to find out what happened to his parents. Although he is a good fighter and a fighter for good, he doesn’t like violence.
Meanwhile Lex Luthor and the Joker ban together to use the ley lines to get more power. This brings Superman and Batman together to fight their evil. The rest of the Justice League will probably be needed.
The book is written in the manga format but sometimes the panels left the format and become difficult to follow. I’m sure the author will correct these small mistakes. Otherwise its an excellent story and I loved the art, Superman was way hot! 😊