Written By: Tim Seeley
Art By: Matthew Clark, Sean
Parsons, Rob Schwager
Letters By:
Travis Lanham
Cover Price: $0.99
Release Date: December 28, 2015
Something Wicked This Way
Comes
*Non-Spoilers and Score At
The Bottom*
Looks like Santa forgot to
drop off some presents on Christmas Eve, because today a brand-new comic book,
never before announced or revealed, appeared as a digital title on the DC
Comics website. But of course, it’s not tied into any big DC Comics properties,
just fucking Batman and specifically the Batman:
Arkham Knight video game and even more goddamned specifically the
critically successful Batman: Arkham Knight
comic book prequels. And with that, I have done more for this book than DC’s
marketing department has done for the entire line of digital comics all year.
What the hell is happening over there anyway? I don’t expect billboards and
prime-time network commercials, but an e-mail, a Tweet, a fucking Facebook post
would be something. Maybe this comic book stinks, huh? That would explain why
DC doesn’t want to talk about it. If only there were some resource we could
exploit, some way we could find out about this mystery comic…wait a second, I
reviewed it! Read on!
Explain It!:
Now we journey to the
Gotham City as defined by Rocksteady Games’ Batman:
Arkham Asylum series, except this time we visit it before the Joker ever
wrecked the asylum, when everything was idyllic and peaceful and…wait, there’s
the enormous form of Killer Croc standing in a sewage runoff pipe, threatening
Batgirl. Yes, it’s Batgirl! You remember her from Batman: Arkham Knight, right? She’s Commissioner Gordon’s
red-haired daughter Barbara, who showed up in a DLC and was used by the
Scarecrow to freak the Batman out in-game. Well, now we get to find out about
the character before she was paralyzed by the Joker, before she became the
intel-dispensing computer whiz Oracle, before she…well, that’s pretty much all
we know about her. She’s a librarian in the daytime, too. And I think she dated
Dick Grayson or something? Anyway, while Killer Croc and Batgirl are having a
chit-chat, Batman swoops in and takes charge, telling Barbara to beat it. It
was nice to see that Batman was an asshole long before he tangled with a
‘roided-out Joker atop Arkham Asylum.
Speaking of which, we cut
to the asylum in question where Dr. Harleen Quinzell is making an appeal to
have the Joker switched to a minimum security wing because he’s been such a
good boy. The warden, not being an idiot, denies the request, and in an awesome
panel shaped like a gavel striking the, uh, gavel-thing, which I liked so much
I’ve included it below:
Dr. Quinzell returns to
the Joker’s cell, which is so maximumly secure that she can just walk up to the
plate glass window and talk him up, despite being described as an intern. She
gives Mr. J the bad news, and then they come up with the bright idea for her to
cause mischief in Gotham in the Joker’s name, and decide on the name Harley
Quinn. This scene disappointed me, because it makes Dr. Quinn’s transition into
Harley a deliberate act, instead of something that grew almost naturally over
time as the Joker made her more and more insane and devoted over repeated
treatments. I know that this is not regular continuity, but it seems like
they’ve made Harley Quinn’s origin more lame than before, and it seems to go
against the Joker we’ve come to know through the Rocksteady games, who is
definitely pathologically insane. Also, I know this story predates the video
games, but the Joker is not really depicted the same way as he is in the
game—while in the other comic book adaptations he usually is. A middling
point—it’s not like we don’t know it’s the Joker—but it would be a better
signifier that we were reading a Batman:
Arkham Knight tie-in if the characters looked similar to the way they look
in Batman: Arkham Knight.
Then we cut to Barbara
eating lunch outside when a monkey dressed like Charlie Chaplin comes over and
hands her a flyer for the Liquid Black Circus and Carnivale, which simultaneously
comes rolling into the park square led by an old steam-powered locomotive
engine, somehow. And then we have what I am calling the Biggest Rip-Off Page in
Comics for the Month of December 2015, shown below:
 |
| Take a bow, Arkham Knight team. |
Right there we are seeing
Barbara looking around the square at all of the carnival delights unfolding
before here—and we get to see some of those on some very stylized pages that
follow—but what we get here are four panels of Barbara shifting her eyes from
left to right. Four. Fucking. Panels.
Since this is a digital title where pages come half-sized (or in landscape
view, if that’s how you prefer it), this constitutes an entire page of this
title. Therefore, this is the worst value in comics for the month of December,
and I defy readers to prove otherwise! Anyway, Barbara is watching all of the
sexy carnies, when the lock on a tiger’s cage is blown with plastic explosives,
and the new Harley Quinn reveals herself and her intentions to Gotham, and
she’s dressed in a terrible costume that bears no resemblance to the one in the
game whatsoever!
I’m actually a fan of
Matthew Clark’s from his time penciling the Doom Patrol five or so years ago,
and there are moments in this book that are lovely: the aforementioned (and
shown) gavel panel, the pages showing what to expect from the Liquid Black
Circus and Carnivale, and even a few close-up shots of Harley Quinn when she
devises her new identity with the Joker. But there were a lot of panels that
looked like afterthoughts, and worse I didn’t see much that would tie me to the
Arkhamverse as I know it. Sure, this is a prequel, but the tie-in comics are
all prequels and yet they evoke more a sense of the game than this issue. The
plot was okay, nothing to write home about, but the origin of Harley Quinn as
described in the story was pretty lame. I suppose there are worse ways to spend
a buck, but I can see why DC Comics didn’t make a big deal about this book.
Bits and Pieces:
Here we get some
adventures of Barbara Gordon as Batgirl and the origin of Harley Quinn as
defined by the Rocksteady video games, and it’s fairly well a dud. There are
some really creative storytelling choices made by Matthew Clark, but they aren’t
really worth the price of admission despite it being only ninety-nine cents.
The sad thing is, if someone does a search for this comic online, they’re
likely to turn up this shitty review since DC Comics didn’t say word one about
the issue coming out. So while I have your attention, have you pledged to Weird
Science DC Comics Blog this year? Thirty dollars gets you a free tote bag.
6/10
No comments:
Post a Comment