It Was The Time Of Legends, Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table
This tale, spanning double the length of any prior story, follows the knight Bruce of Waynesmoor as he quests to defeat the evil witch who killed his parents: Morgan LeFay. Despite its length, of all the stories I've so far read for this blog, this is the one I have the least to say about.
This story is boring. If you know the general premise of Batman and the general story of the Knights of the Round Table, this story will have almost no surprises for you. The story has at most two to three twists within the 4th of this story (the first half of the second issue) that this tale feels like it's trying to do something distinct. The rest is horribly predictable. It's also much slower paced than any of the prior stories, which is fair given it has more room to breathe, but it doesn't utilize this slower pace to the benefit of the story or its characters in any way. It just meanders along.
The art by Dick Giordano is good, it's just not anything special. It fits the book's simple, popular legend-like story, excluding a few scenes with copious amounts of blood spurting from enemy necks that feel a little too gruesome, but it doesn't elevate anything. Bob Layton's writing is the same. The prose is well composed and the dialogue works, but it feels dull and uninspired.
There is one moment, about halfway through the overall story, that it starts to pick up. The normal Batman foe R'as Al Ghul appears and it suddenly starts to feel like the story might transform into something unique, an arthurian-style Bat-knight legend. The art improves too, with more delicate line art and a less vibrant color palate, but it doesn't last long. This brief side-plot is ended far too quickly and the story resumes the dull and predictable drudge it was before all the way to the end (though I will say the story ends on one of the weirdest note of any of these stories that in my opinion would be an excellent start to a far better story).
The biggest disappointment of this story is the waste of its length. A common critique I've had with many of these stories is that they'd benefit from having more pages. This book had more pages, but it squandered any opportunity to use them. This story would've at least been the same had it been the length of all the rest, if not better because it might've needed to take more risks to fit the full story in.
In the end though, Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table was at least a story, so it isn't the worst book I've read for this blog. With that said, the final ranking for this blog is the following:
- Batman & Dracula: Red Rain
- Batman: The Blue, The Grey, And The Bat
- Batman: Holy Terror
- Batman: Dark Knight of the Round Table
- Batman: In Darkest Knight
Next week will be our final post and will be a retrospective and assessment on the series as a whole based on the stories we've read.
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