By: Scott Snyder (writer), Greg Capullo (pencils), Danny Miki (inks), FCO Plascencia (colors) and Nick Napolitano (letters)
Back-up by: Snyder & James Tynion IV (writers), Andy Clarke (art), Blond (colors) and Dezi Sienty (letters)
The Story: Batman and Gordon separately try to solve crimes while Gotham is in blackout.
Review (with SPOILERS): This issue continues the bit of magic that Batman found last month in Batman #24. Batman is really, really good again and that’s great because the world just seems more centered with a Scott Snyder-written Batman comic among the best comics in publication. He’s been doing this for 3 years now, folks. It’s pretty amazing.
But, let’s mix the review up a little bit and talk about his artistic collaborators first. Even an art fan like me always talks about the art second and that’s not really fair…
This is really a glorious issue from an art standpoint. The team accomplishes the two stretch goals for any comic: (a) no crappy panels and (b) memorable images. I can’t emphasize enough how important the “no crappy panels” rule is. It’s all well and good to have a snappy story and a few wickedly good panels of art, but if the art stumbles anywhere the entire comic can be like that lady in Ode to a Louse where the lady is all pretty and beautiful for church, except for the louse crawling around on her bonnet. Yuck! It kinda ruins the image! Well, singular crappy panels of art can make a reader have to repeat pages or stare at a panel long enough to break the rhythm of the comic. It’s amazing to me how Capullo and Co. create so many great panels, but maintain their excellence to grind out even the most mundane panels. It’s really professional.
As for memorable panels, it’s easy to get distracted by the energy of the new Batmobile (a little too Plymouth Prowler for my taste…) or the scary Dr. Death (imagine his flossing problems!), but let’s instead go to the page where Bruce and Alfred crawl out of the Batcave and find Gordon waiting on them. The panel at the top shows Bruce halfway out of the hole and Gordon, squatting to look down at him as he emerges. Bruce is looking up at him like a little kid would look at a grown-up and Gordon is returning the gesture of looking down in a kindly fashion at a little boy, the way you might look down at a little boy who had just jostled into you in the crowd and fallen on his butt. Everything about the panel is amazing. It frames the dynamic between the two men perfectly, the anatomy is perfect, and the facial expressions (in profile, no less) are perfect. The color is perfect. Yeesh… Do you know how easy it is to screw up a panel like this? A weird expression, a weird wrinkle of clothing, having Gordon’s knees not bending properly… There was a lot that could be screwed up and they instead created a tour de force of a panel.
Then at the bottom of the page, there’s an interesting little panel… It shows Alfred coming out of the hole, but Bruce is already walking away and Gordon is between them. Just interesting to see that nobody is helping old Alfred out of the hole– Bruce walking away with his two father figures…
The colors are also glorious. FCO Plascencia doesn’t get enough credit for the look of this comic. I love how at home he is with oranges, purples and pinks. It reminds me of the comics I read as a kid where color was often used to set a theme for the story rather than be a brutally accurate rendition of the color of the sky. Go look at those classic comics and half the time the sky would be purple or orange for no good reason. But it made for a visually exciting comic. Love how FCO is bringing that style to today’s comics.
Okay, now Mr. Snyder can have his turn. Once again, he has created a really creepy problem for Batman to deal with. He does horror-Batman so well that I really don’t care if I ever see “Detective Batman” or “Superhero Batman”. This Dr. Death is creepy. The situation he puts Bruce into at the end of the comic is classic cliffhanger stuff. Love it, love it.
But all throughout, I love how he’s illustrating what life is like for a young Batman in terms of dealing with Gotham’s police force. Not only is it nice to see a Batman who isn’t totally accepted by the police, but it’s one of those “manhunts” where the Gotham police clearly have better things to do (i.e. city in blackout) but they’re busy trying to catch Batman. Have you ever watched the YouTube series on Reason.com called, “Don’t cops have better things to do?”
The only nitpick that I have with the issue is that we’re meeting an awful lot of the Batman supporting cast in just one story. I’m not sure I want all of their origins to be told at once. It could get a little M. Night Shyamalan-y. But, that’s more a fear of what could happen. Snyder has proven capable of juggling before, so I’ll trust that he knows what he’s doing in linking so many characters to a single story.
Conclusion: Another great issue of Batman. You won’t find better art in a comic book and it’s amazing to think that Capullo has been grinding at this series for 2 years now. He’s kinda lapping the field at this point.
Grade: A
-Dean Stell