Trash I read this week

Batman Vs. The Undead
DC Comics
Scripts - Kevin VanHook
Pencils/Cover - Tom Mandrake
22 Pages for $2.99

I don't read Batman at all, so when I saw this title I was intrigued, don't ask me why, but I picked it up. I have to say that I was a little surprised at how crappy this book is. It's not terrible, it's just not really good either. It starts with Bruce giving millions of his hard earned family money to some hospital in New Orleans. But Bruce is really in New Orleans as Batman, looking for some cat named Combs. I have no idea who this character is, but he reminds me of Doktor Sleepless for some reason, besides all the raising of the dead and shit.

So yeah, Batman is there to see what this crazy fucker Combs is doing and he runs into Dimeter the Vampire. He's also hunting Combs for some reason, which I am still not clear on. I do know that he's there to fuck this hot chick for a while, so that rules. If this is something that happened in earlier issues, then I apologize, but in this issue, it's really not addressed.

Combs is in New Orleans for sinister reasons of course. I guess he was released from Arkaham and is still kind of insane, go figure. He's there to raise some dead folks from this museum. He tricks the curator into believing he's some sort of investor, even though he looks SUPER creepy the whole time, with these weird ass glasses on which make his eyeballs look downright full of lunacy. Anyways, Combs kills this fucker and sets about using his body to conjure up some evil mumbo jumbo to raise the dead posing in this museum. Little does he know that Batman and Dimeter are already in the museum on his trail. That's when all hell breaks lose and Combs sends the undead after them for a balls to the wall fight to the death.

This could have been written by a twelve year old. I'm not saying it was, but it could have been. There is no substance in this book that makes me feel like any care was taken to actually write it. It's basic, benign and too straightforward for me. I was expecting something interesting to happen and well it didn't. It's just some crazy fucker raising the dead to fight Batman at this point. Perhaps in later issues we might find out a better reason for him being a huge dickwad, but I won't be sticking around to find out. This is officially off my radar, onto the next book please.

Michael