Not that they are sightseeing or anything, but it is nice to see some familiar landmarks as the backdrop to their investigations. The fight begins, and Batman pieces it all together in his mind as Bane begins to beat down the pair. If you’re not turned off by this story yet I will continue to tell you that this was clearly DC’s attempt at recapturing some of the magic from Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee’s “Hush” storyline. My favorite comic stories are usually straight-forward, especially lately when it seems everyone wants to make stories as complex as possible (as in confusing and hard to understand most of the time. Framing it all is some wonderful artwork that doesn’t always match the story, but is still beautiful in any context.

Otherwise, the more casual reader can probably skip it—unless you want to see a beautiful portrait of Europe through two very demented perspectives.Gorgeous colors from Alex Sinclair; he matches Lee’s finishes very well with gently crosshatched highlights (a very nice touch! So hat der Leser gestalterisch viel Abwechslung, die den vier von den beiden besuchten Metropolen eine bestimmte Note geben. To translate this, the artwork also changes from one issue to another and perfectly captures their physical and psychological decomposition. I will say it again, just having Jim Lee's pencils here gives the art a grittiness that the original issue didn't have. ROCK: BETWEEN HELL AND A HARD PLACE (with Joe Kubert), FILTHY RICH (with Victor Santos), and most recently the all-new ongoing series WONDER WOMAN (with Cliff Chiang).

Eric and myself did talk about this issue on our podcast and I wasn't a big fan then, but I figured I'd clear my head of it all and review this Director's Cut edition to see if maybe I rushed to judgment originally. If you’re one of those weird people like me who actually enjoyed history class in high school, you’ll dig it.

Joker quips on how having the villain reside in italy makes perfect sense, as some of the worlds greatest villains such as Nero and Mussolini resided there. You know you have procrastinated enough when you can't find the images you have screen capped for a graphic novel.