I had this grand plan to breeze through all of these on a weekend, since once the first two come off of hold the rest of them are readily available at my library. Foolish me, I should have realized that these are substantial length novels that would take a substantial amount of time to complete.
Fun side bar, I also discovered that I checked a number of these out from the NYPL back in 2016? But I feel like I’d remember if I’d actually read them…
The real genesis of starting these was the Netflix series, which I’ve heard conflicting things about. A friend whose taste is close to mine said that it suffered from what I call “expensive streamer budget oversight,” aka you spend all this money on celebrities and cinematography and CGI but forget to hire a good writing staff (see: LotR Rings of Power). But others have screencapped bits and pieces to highlight how there are moments of real beauty and power within the show, and I very much like that?
So here we are, reading the novels first because I want to know what I’m getting into! If I have to grade the art and the story separately, I’d say that the art is less my style—it’s obviously very classic comic book style art, but my tastes veer a bit cleaner when it comes to detail and aesthetic. But I think it serves this story quite well, because at the end of the day it wasn’t a standalone graphic novel series so much as it was an outing within the larger DC universe (Batman shows up!) and from similar artistic grounds.
So art aside, the story is where things really shine. It’s been a number of years so there are plenty of elements that have percolated into general consciousness, and as a result maybe the set up didn’t feel strictly novel to me. But I definitely can’t tell where it’s going, and while I haven’t run out to finish the rest of the series (look it’s been a busy year, can you tell by the rapid fire reviews that are being done on December 28th) I’m looking forward to curling up with additional volumes and enjoying a series that is finished.