NO? ( )

I love Tom King's dialogue and individual scenes, but I really, really dislike the characters of Bane and the Flashpoint Batman, and even King's fine storytelling is doing nothing to justify their existence in my mind. And the sequence where Bane's incredibly complex and unlikely plan is laid out step-by-step just about ruins King's whole Batman run for me. But I'm just going to chalk up that misstep to DC causing King to rush the ending of his big story by kicking him off the title prematurely. Unfortunately, the next couple volumes will probably be tainted by that whole what-might-have-been perspective. ( )