Batmanga...

As a general rule, I'm not a big manga guy. I've seen Princess Mononoke and own Spirited Away, but that's about the depth of my forays into the genre (pretty much no reading of anything manga).

This one I grabbed pretty much 'cause it was a Batman graphic novel that I hadn't read and because it was on the shelves at my local library. Didn't know a thing about it.

I really enjoyed the combination of the harsh Dark Knight with the much lighter in tone heroine of the story, a typical manga teenager with the slightly upturned nose and the relatively wide eyes (not as wide as some in manga, thankfully). The black and white pages show off the difference in the darker Gotham with the lighter Tokyo (at least lighter in this novel, never been there m'self.)

It's not the best graphic novel ever, but it's another great intertwining of two cultures in a graphic novel.