Comic Review: Batman #51

Batman #51

DC Comics

Writer: Tom King

Artists: Lee Weeks & Elizabeth Breitweiser

So, you read Batman #50. You’ve been reading King’s Batman run. There’s probably some feelings there. Maybe some thoughts thrown in? Who knows. But I think I can speak for all of us when I say that I didn’t see Batman #51 coming at all. It’s a collection of bold moves and subtle touches that create a legitimately new Batman story – something I’ve been waiting on for a while now. “But Quinn,” you hiss, your forked tongue lapping at the air, “King’s run, regardless of its perceived quality, has been fairly original, no?” And honestly, no. I don’t think so. “Original” isn’t exactly the word I would use, unless we’re talking about Brave and the Mold. The stories in Batman have often felt to me like stories that could happen to other heroes besides Bruce. Anyone could have their opponents take advantage of their past, anyone could be left at the altar, anyone could have their family threatened. The stories King has been telling aren’t new per se, they’re just new for Batman and the method of telling them is new. And that has value! Very few comic books actually achieve originality, and so I have ceased to expect it. There’s nothing wrong with that; I personally love a story that works within traditional bounds. But this issue of Batman has actually created a new direction, a new story, that is legitimately original and promises to be a new high point of King’s run.

Lee Weeks’ art is an extremely welcome change after Janin’s long marquee on the title. Nothing against Janin, but it’s nice to see an issue of Batman that’s actually drawn again. The linework has a wonderfully sketchy quality to it, with nice dark outlines and absolutely top-tier shading. Much of the texture work is shading, in fact, with the majority of non-shaded textures being simple lines. But the shading is thick and dark, calling back to the inking and coloring style of Year One and reminding me exactly how noir Batman can be when the artist is capable of using shading to evoke tone. A backlit James Gordon’s coat is a confluence of shaded folds. Bruce Wayne’s face, contorted in emotional agony, is a half-patchwork of brutal swathes of black. The bottom of a cadaver’s foot is completely black except for several scratches of light across the center of the sole. The choices of shadow are smart and subtle, and the atmosphere of the comic is utterly commanded by those choices. The colors also help the shading immensely, taking over the hard work for brightly-lit scenes. This isn’t your average color shading, where the center of the face is brighter than the rest. Instead, Elizabeth Breitweiser is careful to place shadows at angles, showing an awareness of where the character is in a given space and how the light in that space behaves. Some artists are capable of this at some points, but it takes a special colorist to understand and provide that level of detail. Choices of camera angle are perfect, and the panelwork is actually full of subtle touches. What specifically interests me about the panelwork is the fact that most panels are of inconsistent size – on a given page, most of the panels are of slightly different dimensions. This doesn’t affect you on a conscious level, but it makes it more visually interesting in a very minor way. The art is absolutely excellent.

And the story is even more so! Right after the bizarre ride that was the whole wedding debacle, we’re thrown into one of the most singularly unorthodox Batman stories ever written: Bruce Wayne as a juror in Mr. Freeze’s court case. There are some very strong things about the story, but there’s also some fairly weak things, and I’ll start with the latter. The weak point of the story is character. We don’t get a good sense for what Bruce is thinking, or what anyone is thinking, for that matter. We don’t know how Bruce feels. We don’t know how Dick feels about taking over for Bruce as Batman again. In fact, the character that we know the most about right now is probably Mr. Freeze, and that’s still not much. King is giving us hints to how they feel and he’s trying to ask us to guess. Maybe it’s just me, but I’m not a huge fan of guessing games about my protagonist’s emotions? At least, not on this scale. Not after the last issue, certainly. But that’s my chief complaint, and the quality of the rest of the story comes very close to making up for this particular weakness. The dialogue is also classic King, with Gordon saying to Dickbats “you’re not him. You’re that other him.” Which just leads me to wonder exactly how allergic King is to regular English. It won’t hurt you, Tom! I promise you can just have people talk like people and it’ll still sound good! But oh well. That line is as bad as it gets in the comic, so it’s not a huge deal.

So what do I like about the rest of the story? First off is, as I said before, the originality of the premise. I think it’s great! I love seeing Bruce as a juror for one of his villains. I don’t think there’s been a single Batman story about that before (it’s been an element of stories many times, but never the primary focus), and King is handling it very well. In fact, he’s handling it like a mystery! I’ve given several writers flak recently for not doing mysteries the way they ought to, but I have to give King a round of applause for crafting the beginnings of a very solid mystery story. The mystery is about Bruce, which on the one hand I dislike (because I don’t like my protagonists being a secret) but which on the other hand I really enjoy! It’s a new angle on who Bruce is, it’s an angle on how the wedding storyline has affected him, and King’s tight back-and-forth pacing between the different aspects of the story keeps the reader super engaged. Will King stick the landing on the story? I don’t know! But the story’s very intriguing, and I’m really excited to see where it goes.