Now this is more like it. Superman #1 was a pointless mess that did nothing for people like me who don’t read much Superman and get most of their information from the first film and the Dean Cain series (Oh, what? I liked it. Until Lois started eating frogs.) Batman #1 is a hell of a lot better. My enjoyment of this is probably down to fact that I love Batman a lot more than I do Superman, and find him a far more interesting character. That’s not enough to make a good comic, of course, and we all know there are plenty of bad Batman comics out there. But these comics manage to hit the nail on the head and manage to be not only a good Batman comic, but a good comic in general.
First of all, the writing is much better. Whereas with Superman #1 I could have – and did – taken a red pen through half of the dialogue to tighten it up, the Batman comics feel like the author actually bothered to do that himself. While the amount of words in both Superman #1 and Batman #1 probably equals out to about the same on the average page, Superman’s dialogue felt flabby. Batman’s dialogue, be it Bruce Wayne addressing a large crowd of people or Batman monologuing during a fight, is always interesting to read, it never feels like a chore. More than that, though, it stays true to the feelings that run through Batman. When he’s speaking about his parents he talks about their death, but also how they influenced him before that. The narration in Superman #1 was an emotionless ‘Superman did this, Superman did that…’ When he is narrating about Gotham City at the beginning of the issue, talking about a long running segment in a newspaper “Gotham is…”, he tells us some of the entries: “Gotham is damned, Gotham is cursed, Gotham is villainous, Gotham is Batman’s city.” Had I never read a Batman comic before – and remember the goal of the New 52 is to have a fresh start for new readers to join – I would have understood perfectly the world Batman lived in and his motivation for doing what he does.
The writer also does another clever thing: he has Bruce test some new gadgets, a direct link to the Bat-computer, and a facial recreation program, which he uses on Tim, Dick and Damian:
What this allows is for the reader to be quickly told who these people are, that they are all former or current Robin’s, and their current role. It’s a brilliantly quick way of giving the information without falling back on pages of narration that so often plague American comics. When we think of Batman using gadgets, we tend to think of him whipping out a can of Shark Repellent©, but much like Arkham Asylum, in this comic Batman uses them as an aid rather than a substitute for his brain, and the writer uses them to quickly and concisely give the reader information.
The art is lovely and my only (minor) quibble is that Bruce Wayne looks a bit boyish. The design gets a bonus point added to the non-existent scores for getting rid of the underwear-on-the-outside. The colour, too, does a great job of setting the mood from the black, grey and brown of Arkham to the softer colours of Wayne Manor.
I don’t want to give anything away about the story. I would be happy to do so if the story was terrible, but since it’s not, I don’t want to give anything away. But I will say that what starts off as a simple murder mystery soon grows into something darker and the ending to the first issue will have you wanting to move straight on to second. It’s also nice to see the return of some old, familiar faces, for example Commissioner Gordon, who I really miss from the newer comics, most notably when I was reading Gotham Central. It’s also a lot of fun for me to see Harvey Bullock again as the sight of him always reminds me of the early nineties, when I was first getting into Batman comics.
Superman #1 was rubbish and I don’t care to read another. Batman #1 is the flipside of that. It tells a story that has depth for older readers of Batman, and for newer readers, gives them the information in an easy to digest way. When the issue ended I went straight into the second one. Issue #3 is in the post and I can’t wait to get my hands on it.
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