You’ll recall that I indulged in reading a bound trade copy of the first seven issues of DC Comics ‘New 52 Batman.’

Well, it quickly became clear that if I wanted to continue the story, I’d either have to wait until next spring, when the next six or seven issues were bound, or catch up by reading the latest issues on my iPad, because comic book stores don’t have space to keep back issues like that.

In any case, the title of this darn thing should have given away what I eventually chose.

The physical technique for reading (scrolling?) through on an iPad took a few moments for me catch on to. But the effect is dwnright cinematic. My two complaints are that if you choose to pull back and view an entire page rather than a single panel, the resolution suffers greatly, particularly when reading the dialogue; and that sometimes, you just need to see a larger image because of how the panels are arranged (smaller panels placed over a larger panel, for example), but it doesn’t always make clear when you should pull back and it gets a little confusing. The latter, though, can be mended by practice on the reader’s part.

When I left off, Batman was looking more than a little battered and he remains that way when issue #8 opens. Which, artistically, is a good thing. One of my complaints was that square jawed men tend to look alike and that the only way I could differentiate Bruce Wayne from the character of a particular politician was by Bruce Wayne’s boyishly tousled hair (and I didn’t like him with boyishly tousled hair; too young and hip when I feel he should be formal and old money styled).

Now Bruce Wayne’s hair is tousled from having been been beat up and battered. He looks appropriately aged and appropriately unique. Not just another squared jawed hero, but a particular one. Of course, that also runs contrary to an earlier criticism, which I implied that I almost wanted the earlier Wayne to be more generically handsome and rich than uniquely something. So I hold two ideas at once? So what? Read Kant’s Critique of Practical Reason, ’cause he totally says that’s cool, at least sometimes. Or, at least, he writes about it a lot.

As if taking advantage of the cinematic appearance on the iPad, several action sequences are broken up in that ‘Bourne’ style – with fragments of the body seen, rather than a complete whole. Frankly, that style works a whole lot better in a comic than in a movie. Assuming the comic pulls back to show the whole every so often. Christopher Nolan’s first two Batman movies suffered from incomprehensible action sequences on account of never pulling the camera back to give the viewer an idea of geography – of where characters were situated in relation to each other.

#8 comes dangerously close to the error of making what had been a dangerous, nearly unstoppable villain before (in this case, a sort of owl ninja – which is a lot more impressive than it sounds) into something a little more manageable. In the first seven issues, Batman struggles to fight even a single one of them. Now, he’s fighting a bunch of them and having too easy (though still a difficult) time of it (particularly as he’s still hurt).