Batman #30 (Comics Review)

With their first arc of Zero Year, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo delivered something wonderful. With their second arc, it felt as if they had kind of lost their way a little bit since it felt less focused and less… immediate. While their entire run on Batman thus far has been nothing short of spectacular, with Zero Year they went big and delivered some amazing stories and dealt with some classic Batman villains. I loved the first arc, second arc not so much. But I remain a fan because Scott is usually a damn good writer and because Greg Capullo and Co. are all similarly amazing, usually.

With Batman #30 the creative team begins its third and final arc of Zero Year: Savage City. The Riddler is now in control of Gotham and things have changed big time. No more heroes. Gotham is an island, cut off from the rest of country and struggling to survive. This is the Gotham that Batman aka Bruce Wayne wakes up to after the disastrous events of the previous arc, and things are gonna get a whole lot worse before there is even a slimmer of hope that they will get better. And as always, the art is good, but it felt a bit too colourful and overdone in some places.

Batman #29 (Comics Review)

This week, Scott Snyder, Greg Capullo and the rest of the Batman creative team brought their “Dark City” arc to a close as the Riddler’s plans for Gotham finally became clear, to a degree, as did Doctor Death’s own role in the proceedings. The first arc of the mega-story Zero Year was one of the best arcs that the team has yet done on the series since its launch. Secret City was a fascinating look into the early years of Bruce Wayne as he set on to become Batman, and his first villain, his first nemesis. But, Dark City has never really captured me the same way and this issue crystallised that for me.

Batman #29 is a decent issue on its own, but as part of Dark City and of Zero Year it does miss the mark because it doesn’t provide the same kind of closure to the arc that Batman #24 did for Dark City. There is a distinct lack of proper closure here, and the issue is just a “oh, so this is all going to happen and this is how it happens, and this is just transition so just wait for the next 4-issue arc”. It kind of works, yeah, but it doesn’t wow on any level. The art remains utterly fantastic, but it too goes sideways a few times.

Batman #28 (Comics Review)

Frustratingly enough, just when the Zero Year arc on Batman is winding down to a close, we get a filler issue with a story that doesn’t begin for almost another two months. I’ve liked most of Zero Year that I’ve read so far, and while some of the things have been dragged on a bit, such as the entire second half of the arc involving the Riddler and Doctor Death, it has definitely been a fun story thus far, and I really, really want to see how it all ends. That said, I wasn’t really sure what to expect from this story, and what I ended up getting was packed with a bunch of awesome it turns out.

Batman #28 is a story that sets up Batman: Eternal, which will be a new series that DC is going to launch in April this year, and is meant to be a weekly series, with a rotating cast of 4 writers for the first big arc. As such, the story is set in Gotham’s future, quite a few years from now, and it posits a world where Gotham has suffered some kind of near-apocalyptic event. Perhaps a zombie apocalypse? Hmm, that might be a good story actually! Anyways, this was a fun story with James Tynion IV coming back to co-write with Scott Snyder and this time the art isn’t handled by the series regulars, but by guest artists who I presume will be working on the new series.

Batman #27 (Comics Review)

The end of Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo’s Zero Year arc on Batman is just around the corner now. From the very first issue of this arc, they’ve both delivered a fantastic reading experience (minus #25 which was a bit of a downer), and the extended art team has also been on top form. Retelling the origins of as iconic a character as Batman is no easy feat, but I feel that the team has performed admirably thus far. With Batman #27, out yesterday, we are in the final arc of this chapter, and the dominoes are all beginning to fall together finally.

In the last couple issues, we’ve seen a ton of character exploration while the plot continues to progress forwards. The overall arc took a bit of a detour with introducing a new villain in Batman #25 and while we have yet to see much of him, or the Riddler for that matter, the story has been good. Seeing a young Batman’s violent interactions with the Gotham City Police Department, and Gordon in particular, has definitely been a big highlight, and this issue is all about that.

NANP: Matters Dickensian

Lyndsay Faye, today’s guest on Names: A New Perspective, is another author that I’ve been waiting to read for quite a while now. If not for Mount Arcstoberead, I could get to it right now! The premise of her novel The Gods of Gotham is quite intriguing: 1845 New York, newly formed NYPD, murders, the worst slums of the city. Very exciting stuff. Police procedural type fiction isn’t typically my kind of reading, but as with all such cases, she comes highly recommended from the blogosphere. Given such a… contemporary historical setting for the novel, Lyndsay’s approach to names is just as fascinating as from any writer of SFF fiction.