Book Review

Batman: No Man's Land
A Novel by Greg Rucka

A number of years ago, DC Comics ran a thing where Gotham City had a huge earthquake. The President of the US decided to not repair the place, just cut it off from everything and declare it "No Man's Land".

This book writes about the year Gotham spent as No Man's Land, detailing Batman and his friends efforts to keep the place in one piece.

I liked the book. I never read the five issue comic series when they did this back in the day, so I don't know how they did it in the comics, but in the book, they had Oracle (the former Batgirl, Commissioner Gordon's daughter) writing little journal entries to her Dad that she planned to eventually give to him. This usually moved the story along pretty well, then the author went back to the action.

In the end, it all worked out well, mostly, for the heroes at least. I liked the way the author wrote the story. He didn't bother trying to insult anyone by telling every character's backstory, he just told the story and assuming you knew who the characters were and what they were about.