Dark Night: A True Batman Story by Paul Dini + Eduardo Risso (2016)

Paul Dini was not the average kid. His self-confidence was going downhill, he didn’t have any friends, and school work didn’t interest him in the slight (okay, maybe that part’s normal). However, that all changed once he let his imagination run free. Suddenly he was going on adventures with superheroes, and his world became colorful again. Fast forward a decade or two, and Paul is writing for Batman: The Animated Series and Tiny Toon adventures. His career is at an all time high, but social life is still underway. One night, after leaving from a failed date, he decides to walk the few blocks to his house, which is in LA. What he doesn’t know is that this walk will change his life forever. Soon after he leave his “date”, he realizes that he is being followed, which follows a brutal assault that leaves his face, and emotional state, in pieces. No longer is he worrying about his next script, but if the shadows around him are going to harm him.

I am not a comic book person, and Dark Night: A True Batman Story is. That being said, keep in my mind that I wasn’t as passionate about the book as someone as could be, and that my 2 star rating could be reflecting my lack of passion about this book. It's also important to mention that this is not a story about Batman, but an auto biography of sorts.

There were about three problems I had with this book (although I do have positive things to say too). First, the plot was extremely slow. The climax of this book, which is the assault, doesn’t happen until about 60 pages in. Now for a normal sized novel, that would be bad, but this comic is only 120 pages long. I felt that there was a lot of unnecessary detail during the first half of the book that the story could’ve done without. Second, the story did not flow well. Since Paul does have a special relationship with comic book characters, there were a lot of imaginative scenes in the story, which I usually don’t mind. However, these scene came up really suddenly, almost out of nowhere, and were hard to understand.  It reminded me a lot of Challenger Deep by Neal Shusterman, except that the book tells a story of a boy with schizophrenia. Third, and this just may be because I am not used to reading comics, but sometimes I found that the comics weren’t laid out in a readable way. There were several pages throughout the book that I was really confused with because the comics were all over the place.

Despite all my problems, I really liked how much the author was truthful about his assault, as well as his recovery. To give you some personal knowledge, last year I experienced a brutal assault, although different from Paul’s experience. However, I found myself really relating to what Paul was going through. I loved how this story communicated that even though an assault is only for a couple minutes, the impact can last a lifetime. For example, right after the assault, Paul is expected to go right back to work, but he literally can’t. All of a sudden, all of the security he used to feel is gone, and now he’s constantly on survival mode. Also, there was a little snipit commenting on how people react differently to an assault on whether it happens to a man or woman. Basically, if it’s a woman, people focus on how the assault could be her fault, whether it’s that she was out late or wearing “revealing clothes” (like, what!?! How does that make sense!?), but if it’s a guy, the focus is on punishing the assailant.

I would definitely say this book is for more mature teens, but is a book that could be used to bring awareness to assault. Unfortunately, I found the book too problematic to enjoy it.

Two Stars