War Games

[Flash's Lightning]

I've heard many people saying War Games was pretty bad. Is it really that bad? Should I not worry about gathering those issues? Was it bad throughout or just parts?

[FHIZ]

Yeah, it's that bad. It pretty much killed the whole concept of big Bat cross overs. Bruce is a dick and acts out of character even for that time where he was supposed to be a bitter jerk, Stephanie is made to come off incompetent then brutally "murdered" for the sake of shock value, they make Leslie Thompkins act out of character by "letting" Stephanie "die" to teach Bruce a lesson, and just a whole bunch of other stupid crap happens.

So yeah, it sucks, a lot.

[darkseidpwns]

Yeah, it's that bad. It pretty much killed the whole concept of big Bat cross overs. Bruce is a dick and acts out of character even for that time where he was supposed to be a bitter jerk, Stephanie is made to come off incompetent then brutally "murdered" for the sake of shock value, they make Leslie Thompkins act out of character by "letting" Stephanie "die" to teach Bruce a lesson, and just a whole bunch of other stupid crap happens.

So yeah, it sucks, a lot.

And it made Black Mask the biggest dog in the yard only to off him a year later.

[Dard]

I thought that it wasn't that bad, at least if you separate "War Games" from "War Crimes".
If they left out that horrible Leslie Thompkins explanation I might even look at it in a somewhat positive way, some obvious flaws notwithstanding.
It's "War Crimes" that killed it for me.

[DarkKnghtJared]

Yeah, it really is that bad.

[mex4173]

And once War Crimes was retconned, Leslie's act in it is just comic.

[shark]

Yeah, it's that bad. It pretty much killed the whole concept of big Bat cross overs. Bruce is a dick and acts out of character even for that time where he was supposed to be a bitter jerk, Stephanie is made to come off incompetent then brutally "murdered" for the sake of shock value, they make Leslie Thompkins act out of character by "letting" Stephanie "die" to teach Bruce a lesson, and just a whole bunch of other stupid crap happens.

So yeah, it sucks, a lot.

Pretty much this.

[ArnoldoAAD]

War Games was a simple idea with a terrible execution

even if you ignore the pile of crap that the story throw on top of stephanie brown there are a lot more things to fairly complain

the story have TONS of plotholes
like how the hell did Black mask reach Orpheus without being noticed, how was he able to overpower Steph so easily, how could he hide his face under a mask of Orpheus while having the black skull mask on top and how did Batman didnt notice that and most importantly how is that he became the Gang Leader, he wasnt member of any gang and non of the gangs respected him before this

its just too long, too offensive, too stupid and too pointless to be read and the only lasting msg that it left was girls cant be Robins and black men are the first to die in the Batman Family

[Shimarenda]

.... and just a whole bunch of other stupid crap happens.

Like Oracle blowing up the clock tower to force Batman to save her. Absolutely stupid.

And then voila!, the War is over... somehow. But the narration box said so, so it must be true.

[redshirt]

Batman Comics + http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/IdiotPlot = War Games

Essentially it is the anti-The Dark Knight. I skimmed through it in Borders and I felt dirty. It was just bad.

[ticklefist]

Buying War Games is like buying the three seconds of silence between songs on a CD.

[Jared]

Don't forget the ridiculous stadium battle, with Batman taking on literally thousands of foes at once. Even for Batman, it was absurd.

Stephanie Brown was so out of character, in the context of this story she freakin' deserved to die.

Even the underlying premise was extremely poorly thought out. How was Joe Chill supposed to control all the gangs? Why does his absence result the war getting out of control? Wouldn't a "controlled" gang war that was apparently the original plan still involve lots of people dying?

However, I remember the hostage crisis at Tim's school being a decent subplot early on. Even though it hammered home the silliness of "oh, we're really supposed to think Batman was just an urban legend in the media up until now."

[Lancerman]

It was terrible. It was this long drawn out pointless storyline that killed characters, had Batman's urban legend status removed, had nearly everyone act way out of character, and made everyone look foolish. Oh and this was all so that they could position Black Mask as the top villian.

Then Black Mask was barely ever shown. One of his few appearances as the big boss of the underworld was when Red Hood and the Joker played him for a fool. And then his next notable appearance was him dying. And dying at Catwoman's hands.

If the end result was something more inspired, or hell just even more paid off I could deal with it. But it was pretty bad.

[dancj]

I enjoyed it in TPB. I imagine it dragged when read monthly, but reading all three TPBs end to end was a lot of fun.

The Leslie think in War Crimes was beyond stupid though - unless the plan all along was to reveal that Leslie had lied. In that case it would be just averagely stupid.

[Fonecrusher]

And it made Black Mask the biggest dog in the yard only to off him a year later.

Stephanie Brow was an awful Robin but besides that, yep this is what pissed me off the most, after War Games/Crimes it looked like DC were really going to push Roman Sionis/Black Mask as being a serious heavy hitter in the Gotham Underworld as the undisputed "boss of bosses" and then... they had him killed by Catwoman.

Now we got a wuss like Jeremiah Arkham wearing the mask... As far as I'm concerned Black Mask is still dead.