It’s been a while since I read a book that wasn’t an anime based (Well, novels came first, but I watched the anime before reading the novels) or was about comic book characters. I should probably get back to regular novels soon, but that’s in the distant future since it would just be too overwhelming at the moment. Not to fear though, these DC books have the action that you’re looking for and working with an established franchise has its perks. The book is very short and you can read it cover to cover in a very short amount of time. As a result, it makes this a fairly short review to write.

Some citizens have been concerned about a mysterious bat monster that has kidnapped many people and seems to get a new victim each night. Batman hears about this and looks into the matter, only to find out that it’s his old enemy, Man Bat. Man Bat is a very tricky foe so Batman can’t afford to pull his punches and he’ll have to outsmart him. Unfortunately, someone was also poisoned during this crisis so Batman has to enlist Poison Ivy’s help in order to cure him. Poison Ivy has never been a big fan of humanity so Batman knows that it is a risk to ask for her help, but he’s Batman so he can take care of himself.

It’s a quick story and it’s always interesting to read a book as opposed to a comic since extra details are given. Books have to spend time describing the scenery and telling us what the characters are doing since we can’t see it for ourselves. That being said, the book does have about a dozen or so pages to illustrate some of the events that are happening, but the point remains. It’s a fun thing about books while not necessarily being much of a positive or a negative. It’s there and it has to be there, but it’s an aspect that does take up a lot of time and makes the actual adventure feel a lot shorter.

Poison Ivy gets a solid role here as she helps out in a critical moment and shows that some villains can still do good deeds once in a while. I’d actually argue that she would have been out of character if Ivy had not helped out in the end since this does help to further her own goals. It would have been counter productive not to have helped. Unfortunately, Man Bat is not a very interesting villain so I would have preferred for the big antagonist to have been someone else. There’s just nothing interesting about Man Bat. He’s a guy who can turn into a bat…that’s about as unoriginal as you can get where villains are concerned. I just don’t fullllly understand the reasoning behind making the character so important in the Batman franchise, but that’s neither here nor there.

The writing in the book is good and the font is in a nice size which makes for easy reading. It’s been a while since I read the other Batman and Superman books, but this one can reasonably hold its own against them. It lacks the same amount of action that some of the others had, but it’s interesting enough compared to the average book that I can give it a solid seven. There are no real negatives to be had here and the book even deals with helping the environment, which is always a nice plus. As everyone in New York can testify, the weather has been very wonky as of late and climate change seems to be speeding up. Wayne Industries is helping out and others can now join in so that the DC universe is protected from this. I wonder if Stark Industries can say the same.

Overall, This is a fun Batman book. It would have been neat if we had gotten some more villains and heroes into the story, but then the actual book would have certainly needed to be extended a little. The short length of the book likely limited its options, which is why you have to consider the trade off between size and content. You can easily read this on a rainy day and I can’t speak for the going rate of this book as I read it via the library, but I’m sure that the price is reasonable, although you should check if your local library has it just in case.

Overall 7/10