By: Scott Snyder (writer), Greg Capullo (pencils), Jonathan Glapion (inks), FCO (colors), Richard Starkings (letters), Katie Kubert (assistant editor), Harvey Richards (associate editor) & Mike Marts (editor)
The Story: It’s a complete mind-bender as the Court of Owls has Batman trapped in a maze. Or do they??
Three Things:
1. Interesting mechanic with the twisting storytelling. – I read this comic digitally (as I do with an increasing number of comics). And, about halfway through the issue, we started getting to panels where the orientation was “off.” By that I mean, the iPad’s concept of what was “down” was different than what my eyes said. So, to read it you had to lock the iPad’s orientation and rotate it from page-to-page. I presume the same had to be done with the dead tree version of the comic. Mixed feelings on this….. First, the twisting very much fit the story and was a good way to make the reader experience the confusion that Batman was feeling. Second, it’s great to see creators trying something different. Not everything experimental is going to work, but you don’t advance the artform by doing the same old things. Third, I really didn’t like the effect. I had to step away from the story to remind myself how to lock the iPad’s orientation, so that I could read the panels and once I’m reading an iPad technical support page, the mind-bending effect is lost. So, in summary: I credit the creators for trying something experimental and hope they never do it again. Honestly, it wouldn’t be that hard for DC to “fix” this. Just reorient those pages!
[EDIT added by Dean on Jan 25, 2012: Another thought on why the twisting orientation MAY not have worked so well digitally.... When reading on an iPad, having to reorient the device to view a double-page spread is ROUTINE. It happens about once per issue whereas reorienting a paper comic is rare (usually only for those centerfold spreads). Not sure what that means, but it is another way of explaining why it has a different effect digitally than on paper.]
2. Is this all in the mind?? – Man…..this is a really twisted story (literally). It’s impossible to tell how much of Batman’s experience in the maze is mental and how much is really happening. And….we’ll probably never know. This story immediately reminded me of two other Batman stories. One is Snyder’s own Black Mirror where Dick Grayson get’s a whiff of hallucinogenic poison that makes him see weird stuff (but you never really know if some of it is real). The other way the classic, Batman: The Cult, just for the effect of seeing Batman having a mental breakdown. Maybe Jason Todd will save him? This was a really unsettling story. I don’t even know if I enjoyed it, but I know that I’ll remember it.
3. Great bits of visual storytelling by the art team. – Twisting panel orientations aside, there was some great visual storytelling. You know how there’s always this hand-wringing from fanboys if an artist makes Batman’s eyeballs visible under the cowl? Well, I love how Batman is shown in this issue with one classic, triangle eye and the other side with the ‘lens’ smashed and showing his eyeball. For one thing, it allows Capullo to wring a lot of emotion out of Batman with the cowl on. You can’t really do that with the triangle eyes. For another, just seeing him like that says, “Man, that dude is fucked up!” Especially because this isn’t battle damage….this is more like he got disoriented and smacked his face into something and was too disturbed to fix his mask. The rest of the issue is great, from the barrage of little, tight panels that sell the disorientation, to the Owl-man’s eyes lurking behind Batman, to the scenes where Batman’s hands look more like owl talons, to the scene where the owls crawl out from inside someone…. This issue has a LOT of memorable visuals. Who knew that owls were so creepy? I always kinda liked them before.
Conclusion: A real masterpiece of a comic. Most comics you read and just kinda toss them to the side. This issue is full of visual moments that will stick with you for a long time. Wonderful storytelling by the whole creative team. But, let’s not make digital readers leave the comic and go into the iPad’s settings to be able to continue the experience.
Grade: A (ignoring the weird twisting thing and counting on DC to FIX it in the digital store)
-Dean Stell
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Filed under: DC Comics Tagged: | Batman, Batman #5, Batman #5 review, DC, Dean Stell, FCO, Greg Capullo, Harvey Richards, Jonathan Glapion, Katie Kubert, Mike Marts, review, Richard Starkings, Scott Snyder
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Criticizing the book for having to mess with the settings on your e-reader device seems…. unfair. These are comic books, meant to be read in a material form with something paper in your hands to truly interact with. Critiquing this comic for not working well on an iPad is sort of like critiquing a color movie because it doesn’t work on your B&W TV.
I respectfully disagree….. Paper comics are the norm right now. But it wasn’t like I downloaded this off a pirate site….I downloaded it from DC’s own app. This is an official DC product and if they’re going to sell a product in multiple formats, they should consider how it will work in those multiple formats. At the very least, they have to accept that people will review it if they sell it in this digital format.
It’s kinda like when I review single issues of a Vertigo series and say, “Hmmm….its’ moving a little too slow.” and a commenter will say, “That is a silly criticism because it will be fine in trade.” But, if they persist in selling decompressed single issues that are clearly written for the trade, they have to accept that people will review them.
For what it’s worth, I did still give the comic an “A”. And….I still think that the twisting is a shame because the comic is brilliant without the gimmick of the twisting, but because of the twisting….all most commenters are talking about is the twisting instead of the insanely good storytelling that Capullo did. I reread the comic today and kept finding new awesome elements.
My biggest memory of Batman: The Cult is when they reversed the pages in what, issue 4?
I think that’s right. I should revisit The Cult. It was a great story as I recall and one of the few that featured a heroic and non-annoying Jason Todd.
You are an idiot for reading this issue digitally. Support your local comic stores.
How does it make me an idiot to buy a comic in the format I prefer? There’s no moral duty to support a comic shop if it is selling products that I don’t want.
And….I do spend a LOT of money at my LCS. But some series I don’t want the paper clutter around my home, so I do them digitally and Batman is one of those.
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I loved the was it was written, it reminds me of an issue of the Sandman except they took it a notch above that and made you rotate multiple times.
Oh man…I’m glad there’s nothing wrong with my issue of Batman #5.
I couldn’t tell if they were trying to make my head spin or if the pages were printed upside down by accident…but either way I really didn’t like it. Especially because when you get to a couple of upside down pages, you have to flip the book upside down and then read the page on the right before the left. I wasn’t sure what they were going for there, so I had to check out the first panel of each page and that killed not only the momentum, but also the effect. It wasn’t unlike your iPad debacle.
Glad it wasn’t just me or a problem that was exclusive to the digital version. They clearly were trying to create a sense or disorientation and it ALMOST works. I’ll give them credit for trying something new too and I’m sure these great creators will learn from the feedback and tweak it next time. That’s how progress happens.
I agree that it’s good that they’re trying something new. I think if they had done a page at an angle between the landscape and upside down pages it would have had an easier transition and it would have seemed more deliberate.
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Hey Dean. Like you, I’ve had a hard time picturing owls as scary. I actually thought that the concept for the villains was one of the weakest parts of this story arc. But wow, was it affective here. It actually reminded me a LOT of another time a bird a thought was pretty innocuous was used to terrify me; when I watched Darren Aronofsky’s Black Swan. This arc has been great. I’m seriously foaming at the mouth to see what happens next.
This has been so good. I think Snyder has a fixation with the freakishness of things that can turn their heads around backwards since he’s doing it in Swamp Thing too.
the “weird twisting thing” was freaking awesome, and I usually hate landscape comics.
It made the reader’s experience mirror Batman’s experience of the crazy ass maze. Loved it and like the guy above me said, that won’t carry through to the digital comic.
Yeah….if I have one regret it’s that I won’t be able to experience the twisting orientation. Even if I bought a paper comic, I’d know what to expect and the feeling wouldn’t be the same. And….since the digital experience was different, I’m slightly annoyed that I missed out on one of the cool moments of the year.
not to be a Luddite, but i think it’s cool that the low-fi paper version was actually the more successful one for conveying the creators’ innovating storytelling idea. undoubtedly, there will be certain issues of certain books in the future that will be written for digital first, with the paper version struggling to convey the same message. but for me, comics will always be a paper medium, and it was nice to have that physical aspect of the book play a role in enjoying this issue.
Oh….I don’t think that makes you a luddite. It’s just publishers need to consider different formats when they publish now and what will work best in each of them. With a paper comic, twisting the comic is very natural and readers are used to it. Going full “upside down” is a little unusual, but the double page spread that needs to be viewed longways isn’t uncommon.
But, on an electronic device, it’s a cumbersome process. On the iPad, there is a switch on the side and you can set it up to EITHER be a mute switch OR a switch to lock the orientation of the screen. 99% of people default it as a mute switch so they can silence annoying websites and things like that. And to change it, you have to exit the comic book. And, then when it is upside down, you have to swipe the pages backwards or else you go back a page (which I did). Both of these are little things that pull you out of a comic story that is tight, personal and claustrophobic and that’s what I was taking issue with.
It really wouldn’t be that hard to make the digital experience just read normally. DC just needs to rotate those images. It just shows me that they’re not considering the digital applications and are just porting the same comic over to digital.
The reason this is important to consider is that within a couple of years, comics will be mostly digital. This Snyder/Capullo run has the makings of a modern classic, and if people go back to read it in 15-20 years, they’re almost certainly going to read it digitally, so I’d like to see DC have a little more of an eye on the long term applications for their comics.
BTW….I do tend to agree with you about single issue comics. I’m a HUGE fan of comic binding (and wrote and article about it recently on this site), but I can’t bind everything and don’t like longboxes, so I just decided that anything I didn’t know I was going to bind would be digital.
Anyhow….thanks for the comment.
Unfortunately, in a recent interview at newsarama with a DC sales guy (can’t remember his name), DC has said that they’re going to really focus on print for the time being.
I’ve heard that too. I just think it’s really short sighted when little things can make a big different. Double-page spreads are a great example. They don’t ALL have to go, but creators should really reconsider those double-pagers that Bendis calls for where it’s just a collection of panels that read all the way across the page. Unless there is a REALLY good reason for such a layout nowadays, those should never happen anymore because they SUCK digitally and don’t add anything to the paper version.
For what it’s worth, the artists seem much more on top of the effects of digital than the writers. And some of them are a little frustrated by the fact that writers keep calling for unnecessary double-page spreads. And, at Marvel/DC, the writers and artists are not always even in direct contact. They often communicate only through the editor. So, there’s no way to say, “Dude….this is stupid!”