Lapsed comic book nut here thought Tom King's run on Batman was startlingly fresh--and now comes White Knight and Sean Murphy's original take on all the Bat-tropes to get my finger flying across my iPad screen to see where he's taking me. I may have said this about King's Batman, but why the DC Comics movie universe powers that be don't enlist Murphy to guide a big-screen Bat-venture is beyond me.

Always great to see Batman in a more Gothic and intense role. We'll be getting this for our graphic novel section.

Interesting take on the Batman/Joker dynamic. Excellent art and an engaging storyline, plus character development that makes a whole lot of sense in this AU. I just wish there had been more dissection of mental illness, especially with Harley being such a major character. However, the lines between hero and anti-hero, and anti-hero and villain are worth exploring in a storyline of their own, and Murphy does it well.

This was an interesting elseworlds-like story exploring the relationship between Batman and his greatest adversary, Joker. The story is compelling, as it revolves around a reformed Joker, who becomes sane and holds Batman and the GCPD responsible for making him a super-villain. Exploiting the discontent from the poorer neighborhoods of Gotham, who disproportionately suffer from collateral damage in Batman's fights against supervillians, Jack Napier runs for Gotham city counselman. Napier has uncovered proof that Gotham's richest have been profiteering from Batman-related destruction, and his populist appeals to battle police corruption strikes a cord with Gotham's poorest. Murphy's story is a great comic book tale that touches on current racial tensions, echoing the Black Lives Movement's distrust of police brutality and the effects of gentrification.

An interesting but ultimately uneven Batman book. The first half was great and there were a lot of lovely and surprising tweaks to the mythology, but the story started to drag in the middle. The finale was also a bit underwhelming. The portions of this book focused on character worked really well, but the plot and action sequences left me wanting.