Ill-planned Crossovers . . .

We've just wrapped up Bruce Wayne: Fugitive. A great concept and story idea with great talent to tell the story. However, it had piss poor execution.

It started with BW: Murderer? I didn't mind the 12-part crossover. What I did mind was how it could have been condensed to a maximum of 10 parts, probably even further down to 8.

First, most of Chuck Dixon's issues had nothing to do with it. At least in Birds of Prey, I didn't mind the secondary story. But in Nightwing, it meant I had to suffer through more of that crap that they call art, and in Robin . . . well, I don't even know why DC forced us all to waste our money on those two issues that didn't even tie into the story, and still screwed with continuity!

Still, I forgave them, and expected that Fugitive would be better. After all, it was only four issues a month, so it should be a tighter story.

I have finally gotten all 18 issues that were labeled, and five issues that weren't labeled, but either should have been, or were continued from or into Fugitive. Looking back, the only real investigating happened in issues of series which have titles that do not include the word 'Batman'.

Still, I think that Gotham Knights #27 should have been part of it, but it wasn't. Yet, Batman #601 was, and it barely had anything to do with Fugitive.

To make matters worse, each of the individual series is having their own arcs running through the books. Detective has a 3 parter, of which only two are Fugitive chapters. Even worse, only 8 pages out of the entire 3 issues told anything related to Fugitive. Gotham Knights and Batman both have a 2 part arc of which only one issue of each is part of Fugitive. And don't get me started on the GK/Azrael crossover.

Now, I might have picked up some or all of the non-Fugitive Batman books anyway, but knowing that I have to, just to follow the story in those issues labeled just pisses me off.

But to make things worse, I've had more enjoyment reading Birds of Prey, Batgirl, and Nightwing. At least in those issues, something is happening. Well, Gotham Knights did have some development, but Detective only showed the cops talking to Alfred.

Still, at least the stories were decent (with the possible exception of Rucka's drug arc. Did anyone out there really like it? Everyone I've talked with didn't like it or hate it, they were all indifferent to it.). I would probably like them better if they were more tightly plotted, and the editors would do their job.