If Spider-Man can do it
, why not the caped crusader? And by “it,” we mean go manga. Yoshinori Natsume’s BATMAN: DEATH MASK is a four-issue story, now collected in the manga digest size, reading right to left. Whereas Spidey’s Asian-born comics are silly, this is appropriately dark, with Batman up against a serial killer who’s collecting people’s, um, faces, by slicing them right off, which Natsume shows in grisly detail.
This somehow ties into when a young Bruce Wayne went to Japan under an assumed name and learned martial arts, so the past has come back to haunt him. Gritty and gruesome, DEATH MASK is a terrific fusion of the Batman mythos and Japanese culture. At times, the story might remind you of the training sequences in the BATMAN BEGINS film. And even if it doesn’t, this experiment works. —Rod Lott
Related posts:
- Bat-Manga!: The Secret History of Batman in Japan
- Showcase Presents The Brave and the Bold Batman Team-Ups: Volume 2
- Death Song
- The Darker Mask: Heroes from the Shadows
- Death Note: Vol. 1 / Vol. 2 / Vol. 3
