Batman/The Maxx: Arkham Dreams

It's a story about The Maxx with Batman playing a supporting role. If you're not familiar with The Maxx, you'll be lost. I personally enjoyed the nostalgia trip. The ending was pretty abrupt and disappointing but the ride was fun. As for Sam's art, you either love it or hate it. The proportions are always wrong, there's no consistency in character portrayals from panel to panel, and sometimes it's splash page after splash page. But it's all about texture, detail, and story telling with Sam Keith. He understands texture and conveying form and depth so masterfully that fans (of which I am one) can overlook the q-tip heads, the necks the make no sense, the occasional baby arm on a grown man, and every other thing they train artists to not do. If you can look past your training and/or understanding of basic human anatomy, there's so much fun to be had in a Sam Keith book. I'm glad this one is in my collection.

I am very much biased when it comes to The Maxx. I grew up with this comic series, I loved it, the MTV cartoon was awesome too and I really wish we would have gotten more. I remember when they advertised a feature length film based on the comics we never got and I'm still bitter about that. The Maxx is a rare and wonderful oddiety in a world of bog standard super hero comics and shows. I have always loved the gritty nature of the art of this series, better yet, The Maxx ended up doing several cross-overs. My favorite being Green Dragon. I was never aware of the original run of Arkham Dreams until I happened to see this on Amazon as a pre-order. I was thrilled and overjoyed to know that there was more content from The Maxx I could consume, I am literally starving for more. It's pretty much what you'd expect from The Maxx as far as art and writing goes. People complaining about the writing must not have ever read the OG series, as The Maxx is well known for exposition. The people complaining about not having enough special features must have already had access to the first run of Arkham Dreams. For people who never even knew this cross-over existed, the collected comics are already enough. Batman and his villains also cross-over and blend really well with this style of artwork. I'd really love to see more Batman work in this vein. If I have even a single complaint, it's more along the lines that Amazon sent me a damaged hardcover book with a huge dent in the spine. I was really upset by this, but I can't judge the product poorly based on Amazon's subpar shipping.

Great comic book my brother likes it

So for fans of the series, and people who pre-ordered this, you know it's been a looong wait for Sam Kieth to get this series out. It faced repeated re-soliciations and many of us thought that it would never actually finish. Then when it did, we were convinced we would never see a collection. Kieth and IDW have happily proved all of us wrong though, and I was pleasantly surprised to come home to this book on my porch after pre-ordering it more than 6 months ago (convinced it would never ACTUALLY come out, haha). Now on to the actual book: The Good: This book collects the entire series, including all of the alternate covers that Sam Kieth produced for store exclusives and retailer variants on the series, as well as 4 pages of black and white ink in the vein of IDW's world famous Artist's Series releases. The reproduction of the art is solid, and IDW wisely chose to go with the slightly sturdier library styled binding rather than the thin profiled cheaper bindings that you find on the majority of Marvel and DC's basic Hardcover releases. All 5 issues are collected in chronological order here for the first time. Reproduction on the art is clear and vibrant and there's not a lot of gutter loss because of the bindery choices. That's about all you get though. No bells, no whistles, you don't even really get anything exclusive to this release. The Bad: The entire "extras" section of this book is nothing more than a cover gallery really. There's no words from Kieth about the delay, and in fact, no words about the series at all. The 4 pages of original art were originally printed in the IDW Lost Year book, so if you were picking up all the releases as they came out - you already own it. Yes, the cover gallery includes a host of variant covers (some presented in a "virgin" format with no Title Heading). Yes, getting all of those covers will set you back a pretty penny - but there's only 2 of them that are by Sam Kieth. The rest basically equates a pinup gallery by other artists. I was really hoping we would get something interesting in the back of this release that would give some insight into Kieth's process on the book, and maybe why it had fallen almost a year behind schedule. Instead we get a glorified pinup gallery and 4 precious reprinted pages of original art. If this were a Marvel or DC release I likely wouldn't have found this lack of extras to be very pronounced, but I know I, as well as many others, kind of hold IDW to a higher bar for their collected releases. They usually do a pretty amazing job, and I get the feeling there probably just wasn't a lot more to offer though. If you're looking for a solid reprinting or collection of this series for a nice price that won't fall apart on you, this book will suit you just fine. For those of us that picked up the issues as we went along and were hoping to get something new from this release, you might be a little disappointed. A solid, but unremarkable release for better or worse. So why 4 stars? Well, at 16 dollars, and free shipping if you're a Prime member, you legitimately can't pick up the issues cheaper than this at your local shop. Heck, at 16 dollars, it's actually cheaper than most of Marvel and DC's trade paperback collections. This along with the higher quality binding (would have been nice to get an actual dust jacket though, just saying IDW!) and the attention paid to stuff like gutter loss and presentation make it a no brainer for people who just want to read this series. And that's the REAL point of a collection, so it gets a solid 4 out of 5 stars for quality and pricing. I would pay more for a "Deluxe" style edition of this book with more extras, especially more original art page though just in case anyone at IDW is reading this, haha!

Great art and dialogue but if you are not already involved in The Maxx’s world you will be lost.

The more spunky book!!

Fue un regalo y a la persona le gusto

Been wanting this for a while. Weird comic crossover, but love the drawing style that The Maxx brings to the Dark Knight.

Couldn't be happier with it

This was a strange crossover. It wasn't bad, but i think Batman kinda muddied a lot of the Maxx's organic symbolism and established motifs and just became... I don't even f***ing know. Kinda ended in a very strange, almost Soprano-esque manner on the Batman angle, too. This wasn't Batman's finest hour. I think the Maxx needs to stay in his Outback.

The book showed up clearly used and covered in something sticky and very dirty. There was also water damage on the inside few pages. Extremely unhappy and would like a refund.

Llegó en excelente estado, un buen trabajo de Sam Kieth

Wer The Maxx kennt und liebt, braucht dieses Buch. Wer Batman liebt, braucht dieses Buch. Beide gehen zusammen auf eine Reise durch ein Unterbewusstsein. Das alleine sollte schon Anreiz genug sein, um einige Zeit in diesem Comic zu verbringen. Grundvoraussetzung ist von beiden Charakteren ein fundiertes Wissen zu besitzen und einige Werke mit besagten Charakteren in der Bibliothek zu haben, ansonsten funktioniert dieser Comik nicht. Tut mir leid für Quereinsteiger, dieses Buch ist nicht für euch.