More secrets teased.
Creative Staff:
Story: Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher
Art: Karl Kerschl
What They Say:
This month’s assignment: Uncover the hideous secrets of Gotham Academy’s North Hall!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Gotham Academy has certainly been teasing its secrets throughout the first four issues of the series while providing not exactly answers, but more teases with a sense of everything slowly coming into focus. With Olive having found places between the walls to sneak into last time, we had the surprise of Cros being in there, though the coloring makes him a little more blue than usual, which definitely works in this rather animation-esque looking series. It was comical, scary and intriguing that he would be the one that was in there and to see Olive chasing after him, as well as the way he did his best to not give anything away at first.
But what we learn between the two of them is definitely far more intriguing, as he has a picture of Olive’s mother with him and apparently the two had spent some time together at Arkham, which his why he’s been looking after Oliver since she ended up at the Academy. Olive’s past is pretty much one giant mystery with a few edges teased out so far, so getting elements like this is huge interesting with what it could mean. But just as we’re getting more details, things have to turn humorous as Maps has found her way between the walls as well and has come bounding to where they are, which is something that Croc absolutely doesn’t want to have happen. He really feels like the scary monster in the walls that’s more afraid of you than you are him, but it has a very appropriate feeling within the context of this series and it makes him a more accessible and interesting character since it’s not just another round of beat ‘em up going on between hero and villain.
This installment spends a lot of time moving around, first in the tunnels and then the group slowly coming together again to try and put all the pieces together. What I like is that they do make a plan and work at it by using the dance as a ruse to get to their larger goals of sneaking into the headmasters office to get items they need, but when the operation is underway, it turns in surprising directions. While Olive is out in the woods, the site of a bat sends her into a panic and she ends up shooting her crossbow at it only to realize that it’s actually Tristan that she it. Tristan’s arrival has been an interesting element in the previous issue, but discovering here that he’s been infected by Langham’s Man-Bat concoction changes your view of him considerably, especially as we see him in flashbacks with how he helped Olive.
Learning some of the tricks of what’s happened recently in the North Hall works out well, but in the end I just love that we get this weird mix of a kids horror series in a way that has Olive and the gang trying to figure out the bigger picture here of what’s going on while hanging out with Croc in the charred ruins of said North Hall. All while he’s just wearing the tattered remains of his orange prison jumpsuit. There’s a kind of almost 70’s kids oriented horror feeling about it with the mystery angle that works nicely, though you get a sense that there’s going to be at least a temporary dynamic change about to happen since Batman is finally arriving on the scene. When the adults get involved, things get complicated.
In Summary:
Though I felt uncertain about this title at the start, largely because there felt like there was such a gap in trying to figure out the basics of what’s going on, Gotham Academy has really become one of my top must-read books. The first five issues have told an engaging tale with a lot of layers to it while largely avoiding the trappings of the larger DC Comics universe.Granted, we had a Bruce Wayne appearance before and now we have Croc, and a Batman appearance at the end, but these feel like smaller parts of the whole. And the whole is just beautifully illustrated and filled with characters that have layers to them that are being peeled away and explored as they interact more and come to grips with some of what’s going on in the Academy. This is a series that feels like it could have a hundred issues ahead of it easily – and an animated series to bring it all to life – and I’m desperately hoping it gets the chance for all of it and more.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 25th, 2015
MSRP: $2.99
