Batman Black and White Review

I love Batman, and I love black & white art when it's done well such as in many great independent comics, so when I was reading this book I expected to like it, because of those reasons as well as the many top-name creators involved. After reading this book, I have to say, if you read only one Batman book in your life, this should be it. Batman: Black and White is four issues worth of anthologies containing Batman stories with black and white art, with stories by great creators such as Ted McKeever, Bruce Timm, Joe Kubert, Howard Chaykin, Archie Goodwin, Walt Simonson, Neil Gaiman, Klaus Janson, Chuck Dixon, Dennis O'Neil, Brian Bolland, Bill Sienkeiewicz, and even Katsuhiro Otomo. I'll give an overview of the stories I liked the most, to be brief, but each one is amazing in its own right. Ted McKeever writes and illustrates the first story, which tells the story of Batman autopsying a woman's corpse, with flashes back to the way she dies as Batman discovers more through his autopsy. The art is gorgeous and reminds me of Eisner's work on The Spirit with a more abstract feel. The best part of this story is that it explores Batman's guilt over the problems that he can't fix and that the even the greatest detective with forensic technology has limits. The second story is by Bruce Timm, and his art is great as always, but in black and white I think that I like it even more, because it doesn't really need color, and works better this way. It uses a concept that appears in the Dark Knight Returns, and in recent Batman stories, of Harvey Dent's rehabilitation and repair, but the story, which might feel like a rip-off of Miller's work, is very successful and explores the idea in a much more personal way than Miller's or the modern version, and it is amazing in its own right without diminishing the effect of any other stories on this topic. Walt Simonson's story is a story of the Batman in the far future, and the story of him told by a mother to her child in the midst of a totalitarian state. Anything else I'd say would ruin the story, but it is totally worth it. Neil Gaiman and Simon Bisley do a story which presents a metafictional take on the Batman mythos where Batman and the Joker are actors in a comic book story, which is probably the funniest Batman story I've read ever. Or at least that's what I thought until I read Bill Sienkiewicz's story. It deals with Batman's discovery of a single father who kills his son's cat in a fit of frustration, and the interaction between the father and Batman as Batman takes the father to task, in a story that goes deep into the father's, son's and hero's psyches and is both funny and meaningful. Brian Bolland tells a story about a man's plan to do something terrible, so that he can be truly good, because he doesn't want to do it out of fear, but out of having done good and evil, and knowing that good is better. The evil thing that he plans is killing the Batman. Quite possibly the scariest story I have ever read, and that's a good thing. The last story I'll talk about is the last story written and drawn by Katsuhiro Otomo, famous for his work on Akira. This story deals with a serial killer with multiple personalities each of which is a killer. This brings into conflict the Batman and Bruce Wayne personalities in a story with many layers. This book won the Eisner for best anthology and best short story of 1997. I can't think of anything that deserved it more.