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Written by: Jeremey Adams, Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Art by: Salvador Larroca
Colors by: Luis Guerrero
Letters by: Dave Sharpe
Cover art by: Brad Walker, Trish Mulvihill (cover A)
Cover price: $5.99
Release date: October 9, 2024
Written by: Phillip Kennedy Johnson
Art by: Javi Fernandez
Colors by: Marcelo Maiolo
Letters by: Steve Wands
Cover art by: Javi Fernandez, Dave McCaig (cover A)
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: October 9, 2024
On first readthrough, Batman And Robin #14 is not bad, barring an odd bit of character work that won't sit well with longtime readers. Phillip Kennedy Johnson takes over for Joshua Williamson with a new arc that puts the father/son crime fighting team at the heart of a mystery that feels like a return to form. Batman And Robin #14 begins mid-battle as the dynamic duo chase down a group of cars set to explode on one of Gotham City's bridges in the name of The Order of the Green Knight (you'd have to read the current Poison Ivy ongoing to know who that is). Of course, Batman And Robin save the bridge and the bystanders in spectacular fashion.
Right off, Phillip Kennedy Johnson is off to a good start. The chase scene and its crescendo are the stuff that makes superhero comics gloriously fun, so Johnson sets a tone of high adventure. Back at Pennyworth Manor, Bruce debriefs Oracle and preps Damian on the fundraiser father and son will attend later that night to support a good cause. Bruce is eager to see a family friend, Dr. Bashar, who was elected the head of the Sacred Heart Medical Center. Damian, however, would rather go patrolling again, and he spares no opportunity to whine, put, complain, and grumble about it. Johnson's scene between Bruce and Damian may annoy several longtime fans of Damian due to how much his personality reads as a step backward. Damian first came on the scene as a rambunctious brat, but a lot of work has gone into maturing his character and softening his irritating edges. Here, Johnson roughs up those smooth edges to present a Damian who's as stubborn and whiney as he is capable. During the fundraiser, Bruce makes the rounds to greet attendees and make introductions. Damian, however, is incensed at having to sit at the children's table. After Damian angers Bruce by making rude comments to some guests, Bruce receives a transmission from Oracle that someone is shooting in Sacred Heart's basement. Bruce orders Damian to stay behind to protect the attendees while he races to the lower levels to investigate. Suddenly, the power is cut. Damian notices someone blocking the door to prevent escape. The issue ends with armed intruders, darkness, an oil fire where one shouldn't exist, and a terrifying face from Bruce's past.
About The Reviewer: Gabriel Hernandez is the Publisher & EIC of ComicalOpinions.com, a comics review site dedicated to indie, small, and mid-sized publishers.
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Batman And Robin #14 is a perfectly fine start to a new Batman and Robin adventure with a new creative team. But for a step backward in Damian's character growth, the setup and new villain introduction are well done. Overall, the new creative team is headed in the right direction.
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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
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.
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.
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.
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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.
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Written by: Mark Waid
Art by: Clayton Henry
Colors by: Matt Herms
Letters by: Dave Sharpe
Cover art by: Clayton Henry, Tomeu Morey
Cover price: $4.99
Release date: October 9, 2024
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
Action Comics #1070 starts a new adventure that prompts Superman to visit the Phantom Zone. Mark Waid's particular knack for quintessential superhero fare is on point, and Clayton Henry's bright, hopeful art is immaculate. But for a less-ideal backup, and one or two hand-waving plot hole covers, this issue is off to an excellent start.
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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.
