Review: BATMAN #29

BATMAN #29
Written by Scott Snyder
Art by Greg Capullo, Danny Miki, and FCO Plascencia
Published by DC Comics
Release Date: March 12, 2014

batman29coverdsThe “Dark City” chapter of Batman’s Zero Year reaches its devastating conclusion as the Dark Knight pushes himself to the limit — and falls short… although in absolutely glorious fashion.

After a month’s break from the Zero Year storyline, the team is back in grand fashion with an issue that thrills with a ton of action page after page… after page! 40 gorgeously rendered pages in all, that is, and far from suffering the extra burden, penciller Greg Capullo thrives — handing readers some of the most detailed, perfectly produced pages we’ve seen in a comic ever. Certainly the best issue artistically of their Batman run so far, #29 is solid proof that creator love for a story translates in the final product. Every shot Capullo gives us of Batman cascading across the sky facing Doctor Death is a mini-masterpiece. Rain fills nearly every panel, and it’s not just an effect layered on top of art that could have been made for a sunny day or cool, dry night. These figures are IN the rain, their motion adapting to it. It’s a brilliant effect, and a hell of a lot of work from only the most skilled hand. And Capullo utterly nails it.

While most of the story to date has been — oddly enough — happening in the daytime, here we get the Dark Knight in his element, but the day-glo nature of the coloring carries over into these insanely gorgeous deep pinks and fluorescent greens. We’re slowly seeing FCO’s palettes blurred between that which is Gotham and that of the Riddler himself, further emphasizing the easy take down Nygma performs on Batman and Gordon’s city. The entire art team is singing together in this book, whether its to represent the continued disturbing growth of Doctor Death’s appendages, or to give an ode to Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns in a gorgeous full page image of what is now unmistakably the Zero Year Batman silhouetted against a lightning filled sky. There are so many moments in this issue I just treasure, especially the brief appearances of Harper and Cullen Row amid the evacuees, but everyone will assuredly have their own.

And to some degree, that’s what clearly defines Zero Year as a modern classic, that ability to pull out moments that just feel timeless, that have their own clever appeal, and balance both creativity in rendering and narrative construction. Snyder has developed a young Bruce (both child and young adult) who is so unlike the Batman of today, but we can reflexively now find echoes of in other stories. That’s a very difficult feat, to reverse engineer qualities in a young man that we now can see in other stories, some not even Synder’s. It’s a testament to the writer’s true understanding of the character, and careful recrafting of his history that I can’t tell whether I just never knew Bruce well enough or I am meeting this version of him for the first time. Sure, Zero Year is a very different take on the Batman’s origin, but at its root, it feels deeply elemental for its humanity. This is Bruce Wayne not as a super-hero god, but as an actual, breathing human being. And the changes we know to have occurred are merely armor worn over that core being.

It’s difficult to get everything Snyder, Capullo and company are doing in one reading (the reference to Tokyo Moon, for instance, now brings me right to the image of the Bat signal), so I’d encourage you not to try. Read it again. And again. Revel in the pages. Mull it over. Enjoy it now. Enjoy it for years to come. Don’t worry. We’ll still be talking about it, I’m sure.

The Verdict: 10/10

 

Authors

Related posts

Top