Batman Tales: Once Upon a Crime takes 4 classic children's stories and adds a Dark Knight twist to them.
+ Damian Wayne is home sick with a fever. In his dreams, he imagines that
he's a little wooden boy who dreams to become a real life sidekick.
+ Detectives Bullock and Montoya are tasked with finding who stole a very
expensive diamond called ‘The Green Pea’. So let's haul in every baddie
Gotham has into questioning from Harley Quinn to Two-Face in order for Bullock and Montoya to get to the bottom of things.
+ Faithful butler Alfred Pennyworth is cleaning Wayne Manor when he falls
through the looking glass into Wonderland. They ought to call it Arkhamland
as all of the characters Alfred meets are from Batman's Rogue's Gallery.
+Lastly, Batman is assisted on a wintery night by a mysterious woman clothed
in snow and frost in this adaptation of Han Christian Andersen's The Ice Queen.
Derek Fridolfs and Dustin Nguyen reunited to bring young adult readers this digest volume of myth and fable. In 2009, the pair first joined forces in the
creation of the L'il Gotham Universe where Batman's friends and foes are just a bit smaller and a whole lot cuter. Fridolfs and Nguyen's first entry was a short story in Detective Comics Annual #27. This resulted in a digital miniseries spin-off, the aptly named L'il Gotham.
In the digital series, Batman and son Damian celebrated the holidays in a way only the Caped Crusader can- fighting bad guys! On Thanksgiving they fight bargain shoppers and thieving birds during a scheme planned by the Penguin. On New Year's Catwoman contemplates whether to spend the next 12 months
on the straight and narrow or keep on as a master cat burglar.
Once Upon A Crime continues with that same fanciful style first ushered forth in the annual and digital spin-off. Fridolfs and Nguyen are real students of the Batman Family. The creative duo seem greatly influenced by Batman: The Animated Series with appearances by series characters such as Roxy Rocket, Condiment King, Nora Fries and the Phantasm.
The second story which is modeled after The Princess and the Pea was the best of the quartet. Great dialogue and very creatively plotted. The Pinnochio story was pretty good as it paints a picture of what life would be like if Bruce Wayne and Talia al Ghul wed. I felt that the Wonderland story was just too gosh darn silly. Lewis Carroll's classics starring Alice weren't known for being
very logical. But that yarn lacks that mathematical edge that reflected Caroll's passion for numbers. Though Nguyen’s illustration of the Jabberwock was breathtaking.
The final story was very different in tone. That story was completely in verse. It also lacked the humor of the other 3 tales. I'm not very familiar with Andersen's The Ice Queen. Isn't this what Disney's Frozen is based on? If so, then geez did Disney take a lot of creative license. While I didn't really know the original source material, I really liked this story for its tragic journey that ends in hope.
For my reading challenge, I'm supposed to read and review a Young Adult Graphic Novel. Amazon classifies this book as being for readers aged 8-12. According to several educational websites, a Young Adult reader is one from ages 12-17. While I am on the low end of the spectrum of the age range with this book, I'm still meeting the qualifications for this task.
Worth Consuming!
Rating: 8 out of 10 stars.
Completing this review completes Task #35 (Young Adult GN) of the 2022 Comic Book and Graphic Novel Reading Challenge.
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