I didn't start reading Batman comic books until after the movie. I had some, but I was a Marvel fan in my youth. After the movie, I started reading them and, since I was a kid, I got Batman collections for holidays. Invariably, these collections contained some of the first Batman appearances.
Matt Wagner's Monster Men is an homage to those original comic books and, by default, it's one of the better recent Batman comic books. Since it's a historical limited series by a low profile artist, DC isn't strangling the quality out of it.... It's not great by any means, but the tone is right and the characters are compelling. Wagner captures the feeling of the old stories--through art and dialogue--though the story is set in a modern context (it's a direct sequel to Frank Miller's Batman: Year One, which feels tacked on in the first issue and disappears immediately thereafter).
Wagner's art is fine in longer shots, but he's got a lot of detail in close-ups and it's a lot of unnecessary detail--hairs on arms sort of detail. It brings the reader out of the action (as does odd way Wagner draws the love interest... she's quite gross). Then there are the moments when Wagner does an excellent job--action sequences and Batman as the icon scenes. There's a great one with Batman and Commissioner Gordon on a rooftop (even though he's not Commissioner Gordon yet). The exuberance is there, the excitement for the material.
Monster Men wouldn't be anything if it weren't for Wagner's enthusiasm for these characters. There's a boyhood glee, for example, when Batman calls the villain a "mad scientist." Wagner turns this mad scientist--who's perfectly terrible--into the story's most compelling character, seemingly unintentionally, just because he's the most the fun. He's the smartest guy around and, since Wagner allows the reader access to all the main characters' thoughts, he's got a lot to say about what's going on around him. While Wagner's Batman is better than the current norm (Batman stops fighting crime because he doesn't want to be late for a date), it's more fun to watch the mad scientist. To some degree, Batman is always going to be kind of lame--it's why Alfred makes fun of them (Wagner's good at that interaction too).
Whatever its faults, Batman and the Monster Men was neither a waste of my time nor my money.
