In Batman #133, Writer Chip Zdarsky dishes out Part Three of The Bat-Man of Gotham. Along with Mike Hawthorne on pencils, Adriano Di Benedetto on inks, Tomeu Morey on colour and Clayton Cowles on letters, the drama is laid out in dark fashion.
We’re clearly in a different universe with Batman. Gotham is the same dank and dangerous place of course, where a red Riddler is interrogating and terrifying captured children. Not for the faint of heart, this episode delves into new versions of our well beloved characters and strongly hated villains, big time.
It’s a twisted tale to be sure, tracking the ‘whatever universe we are in today’ antics, the inevitable collabs and confusion, and the well rendered panels of sturm und drang. It’s a drag net of evil, snatching up innocents, with the baddies in a battle to show how truly bad they are. It’s all good and all dark and shadowy, like. The visuals are really stunning, showing many shades of subtlety.
The back up story, also written by Zdarsky, with art by Miguel Mendonca and colours by Roman Stevens (Clayton Cowles letters) is again ‘off-universe’, with Robin being Toyed with. It’s an episode of ‘madman at the torture chamber’, I suppose, and not for the squeamish. The art and colouring is alright, but figure proportions vary widely and the colouring is rather literal.
DC Comics, Batman #133, $4.99 for 31 pages of content.
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