Comic Review: Batman Dark Mask

Yoshinori Natsume
DC Comics

As very few of you may know, I’m not a big fan of manga. I think the books are horribly overpriced, and all of them being black and white totally bums me out. Sometimes it may work, but most of the time it feels like a limiting rule within the medium. That doesn’t mean I’m not open to reading a few books, and I’m a big fan of the Initial D series.

I was interested in seeing what the Japanese would do with a character like Batman. After watching Batman Gotham Knight I wasn’t too thrilled. Apart from Kevin Conroy taking back his role of Batman and the first segment’s (Have I Got a Story For You) art style, it was fairly forgettable. That’s disappointing considering how awesome Animatrix was.

So was Japan able to redeem itself with “Death Mask”?

Sadly, no. Like the movie, the story was fairly stock. It was typical Batman wrapped in not-so-awesome Japanese style art. I’m not saying the Japanese aren’t capable of making a good looking book. This just felt very typical and bland. Perhaps some color could have helped, perhaps not. Either way, I wasn’t really digging it.

Unfortunately the art wasn’t backed up by an interesting story. Like is said, it was fairly typical stuff. They did try to touch on a few things like Bruce’s past, but who hasn’t? After Frank Miller’s Batman Year One people should have really stopped trying.


I will admit that it trying to focus on a singular part of Bruce’s pre-Batman life was wise, but the execution was immensely average. It read like a Western writer was doing this book. My advice to Yoshinori Natsume is to do his own thing. I would have been fine if he strayed away from typical super hero conventions.

And don’t even ask me about the characters. I can’t remember anyone’s name and I just reread this book yesterday. All I can say is that there’s a masked killer ripping off people’s face and Bruce is having nightmares. Oh, and there’s this whole thing where the writer suggests Batman’s vigilantly shenanigans is causing Gotham more harm than good.

What super hero comic has tried that? Oh, wait. 99% of them!

I can’t really recommend this to anyone. Manga fans and Batman fans will both probably agree that it’s best that you ignore this book. At $10 you can go grab yourself a Scott Pilgrim book and have a much better time, or you can track down a copy of “Child of Dreams“. I haven’t read it but I hear it’s Batman in a manga done right.