It’s time to have some fun!
Creative Staff:
Story: Brenden Fletcher, Derek Friddles, Katie Cook, Scottie Dog
Art: Adam Archer, Sandra Hope Archer, Dustin Nguyen, Katie Cook, Kris Mukai
What They Say:
An all-new era of GOTHAM ACADEMY begins here with the four-issue ‘Gotham Academy Yearbook’ story! It’s yearbook time at Gotham Academy, and Olive, Maps and the gang share some lost adventures from the past year. Some of the best writers and artists from comics and beyond join forces with the creative team behind Gotham City’s top boarding school for this very special new chapter.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Gotham Academy had its Robin War tie-in last time around and has had some fairly dark adventures so far, through broken up with some good levity. The serie shifts gears for a four-issue run under the banner of Gotham Academy Yearbook in which we get a trio of short stories from a range of writers and artists with some solid bridging. With Maps unable to join the yearbook club, Olive suggests creating their own for all the stories that they can’t put in there because of their supernatural nature. That has them reminiscing about some of the stories together and with Pomeline as she gets drawn into it all, making for some pretty good standalone fun.
Derek Friddles and Dustin Nguyen get to have some fun with a story involving prank week that has a couple of the guys trying to raid Langstrom’s lab to get something cool, perchance a sheep. It’s a simple snatch and grab in their eyes, amid the other chaos of prank week, but this school isn’t like others so you know it’s going to be a little weird and a little bat-filled considering Langstrom. It has some nice moments to it and I love the actual punishment that Langstrom doles out and the way everyone handles it. A lot of the appeal here is definitely Nguyen’s artwork as there’s such a lightness about it that this series really doesn’t delve into often, though I lament that it didn’t involve the girls more than the last panel because I really want to see more of his interpretation of them.
Going in a whole other direction artistically, Katie Cook writes and illustrates a very fun story involving the glee club. This one has a kind of pied piper thing going on with Dillyn as she’s singing and drawing everyone into her thrall, which Olive and Maps manage to avoid and investigate. It’s a cute tale with Cook’s style as it plays out with its silliness of an enhanced app, one that even gets Olive under its spell, but it has Maps saving the day with the bestest thing ever. How many times have cat videos been used in comics? Quite a few. But as a way to save the day? Perhaps this is the first (and best) use of it. I love Cook’s style here as a break from the norm, same as Nguyen’s, and the diverse styles helps to make it all the more engaging amid the more standard artwork that breaks up the stories.
In Summary:
While the bridging stories worked for me and the first two pieces worked, the third on from Scottie dog and Kris Mukai about Professor MacPherson when she was here back in the 80’s really didn’t. Like, flat out just didn’t connect and didn’t even feel like I could engage with it. thankfully, the other stories in it worked really well for me and just tickled the right spot to make me grin and to feel more attuned to the characters and the little things that happen along the way. Whether this can work well for a four issue run remains to be seen, but I’m certainly game as there’s a lot of appeal in trying to do different things and shake it up a bit.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 13th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
