I never did read the famous "Knightfall" storyline for Batman despite reading thousnads of issues of the cape crusader. So I won a auction online for Book 1-3 that covers pretty much the complete run today for less than 40 bucks. Decided I'd read the Prelude to Knightfall on DC Universe to get myself ready. Am I ready? Kind of...

Actually this held up better than expected. Dixon writes half the stories while Doug moench writes the other half. And the thing is...They're kind of two wildly different writers.

Dixon relies on the art to show the inner turmoil more while giving us snappier dialogue and less of it. Moench is wordier (Though not to the extreme) and focuses on the internal dialogue more. So it's a bit jarring going back and forth.

But the main point of this book is to show a Batman pushing himself to his limits. With Dixon two stories we get one a bout a little psycho kid trying to run a gang and take out the Batman. It's comical in a sense it's a little kid doing it but kind of horrifying at the same time. Then there's a guy who basically hypnotizes people and makes them kill themselves.

On the flipside Doug has more basic stories of villains being...well villains. I can't even fully remember anyone except one dude dressed in all black with spikes on his head looking like Pinhead but too silly to take serious. But as we get to the end of his stories it starts to bleed into Bane's master plan and you can really see how worn out Bruce is at this point and how scared Tim and Alfred are for him.

Overall, this is mostly good. The Dixon stuff I'd even rate highly entertaining and solid art. On the flipside Doug stuff at the end got good but prior was just decent and the art at the start of his collection was pretty awful and only got good on the final two issues.

Still, the collection got me excited for Knightfall. Not amazing but solid. A 3 out of 5.