Written by: Andy Diggle
Art by: Leandro Fernandez
Colors by: Matt Hollingsworth
Letters by: Simon Bowland
Cover art by: Leandro Fernandez, Matt Hollingsworth
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: October 9, 2024
Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #5, by DC Comics on 10/9/24, brings to light the Victorian-era origins of Cyborg, Phantom Stranger, the Flash and more.
Is Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #5 Good?
There are one or two platitudes that come to mind after reading Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #5. "All things in moderation" and "Too much of a good thing" come to mind. If you've always wondered what it would be like to assemble a Victorian-era Justice League, this series is well on its way to giving you what you're looking for, but writer Andy Diggle may be trying to do too much too fast, and it's become overwhelming.
When last we left the Elseworld in Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #4, Adam Strange and Diana made their way South to deliver a warning about the coming Doom. A con man named Alan Scott receives a powerful ring in the midst of a tragedy. Lois Lane arranges to take a trip out to a small Kansas town where Lex Luthor digs for a rare and precious item in the nearby mines.
In Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #5, you get a little bit of everything from every corner of the Gotham By Gaslight universe all at once.
Picking up from the end of the last issue, Lex Luthor shows Victor Stone a man trapped in a glass cage. The man's predicament is the result of an artifact that flared with strange energy during the Carrington Event in 1859. During the energy flare created by the Carrington Event, Lex Luthor was also zapped by the same energy but only lost his hair, and an alien ship in our solar system was knocked to Earth, crash landing in Kansas, which is why Lex is in Smallville looking for remnants of the crash. What is the name of the unfortunate lab assistant still locked in an immobile state? Jay Garrick.
Disgusted by Lex Luthor's lack of compassion for Garrick's condition, Victor Stone leaves, vowing to alert the authorities. Luthor uses Stone's departure to test out his remote detonator, which gives Luthor the opportunity to use Stone's remains for a robotics experiment.
Elsewhere, Bruce Wayne completes construction on his bat-themed zeppelin and embarks on an aerial trip to find the missing train that carried an old woman and a special ring in her possession. When Batman finds the train wreck, the ring is missing, and he finds two ninja assassins charred to a crisp.
Elsewhere again, John Constantine enjoys the fruits of his gambling labor aboard a ship sailing the Suez Canal in Egypt. He's approached by a Stranger who is familiar with Phantoms (get it?) who is hunting a powerful man, a man Constantine might know. The first meeting between Constantine and the Phantom Stranger ends with more questions than answers.
Elsewhere again, again, Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen arrive in Smallville at precisely the same time that Alan Scott arrives via hot air balloon to offer locals a ride to touch the heavens... for a small fee. Lane and Scott know each other from Metropolis, so Lois is eager to shoo the locals away from Scott's flim-flam tricks.
Suddenly, a gunfight breaks out in the streets between Deputy Peter Ross and famed gunman Dead Shot. Before Deputy Ross loses his life to a gunman who never misses, the clumsy Sherriff Kent arrives on the scene to reinforce his reputation as the luckiest man alive.
What's great about Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #5?
Andy Diggle puts the world-building engine into overdrive by devising Elseworld origin stories for several characters, paving the way for a Gotham By Gaslight Justice League. If you've ever wondered what a Victorian-era version of the Flash and Green Lantern would look like, Diggle does a great job putting the pieces in place.
What's not great about Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #5?
It's too much. Andy Diggle is trying very hard to build out an entire world of characters in every single issue, so when everyone gets attention, nobody gets the attention. It feels like you're reading two of three different stories stitched together, so you get the impression this should have been a graphic novel instead of a maxiseries chunked up into multiple issues.
To be fair, the story flows well enough, and you can anticipate where the threads will intersect, but the sheer volume of disparate threads creates an unfocused comic.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
Follow @ComicalOpinions on YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter
Final Thoughts
Batman: Gotham By Gaslight - The Kryptonian Age #5 introduces even more Victorian-era version of the characters you already know as the Gotham By Gaslight world draws closer to some impending doom. Andy Diggle comes up with creative ways to reinvent classic characters, but there's so much going on that you'll need to take notes before your head starts spinning.
7/10
We hope you found this article interesting. Come back for more reviews, previews, and opinions on comics, and don’t forget to follow us on social media:
Connect With Us Here: Weird Science DC Comics / Weird Science Marvel Comics
If you're interested in this creator’s works, remember to let your Local Comic Shop know to find more of their work for you. They would appreciate the call, and so would we.
Click here to find your Local Comic Shop: www.ComicShopLocator.com
As an Amazon Associate, we earn revenue from qualifying purchases to help fund this site. Links to Blu-Rays, DVDs, Books, Movies, and more contained in this article are affiliate links. Please consider purchasing if you find something interesting, and thank you for your support.
No comments:
Post a Comment