Let me help...

I finished the Asaro book and quickly read "Batman: War Games Act One Outbreak". I've always liked Batman. What a cool character. None of these pansy-wussy-loser super-powered heroes for me. Triumph of the individual over society. Or at least the attempted triumph. This story is about an all-out gang war that breaks out in the gang-laden streets of Gotham. To save the city Batman and his 'friends' struggle to keep the the violence at bay and the people alive. What the story is really about though is the relations between the 'friends' of Batman. Truly, Batman is hardly in this one, and what I see of him I'm not sure I like. He doesn't seem right somehow. But that's not the point of the story: it's about the various (and rather different) Robins (a common theme), a character named Tarantula, the turned-from-the-Dark-side Catwoman, and a handful of others. There's also a quiet theme of "Does Batman et al really help, or does this kind of response to crime and violence only beget more?"