The quiet before the semester!
Creative Staff:
Story: Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher, Karl Kerschl
Art: Adam Archer, Sandra Hope, MSASSYK
Colors: Chris Sotomayor, Serge Lapointe
Letterer: N/A
What They Say:
GOTHAM ACADEMY is back with an all-new storyline for its second semester! When you’re Olive Silverlock, winter holidays can be a drag. Luckily, when a new student shows up at Gotham Academy to keep her company while the other students are away, Olive finds what could be a brand new friend…or a whole lot of trouble!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
With a largely solid first semester/series behind it and a decent annual that we got recently, Gotham Academy was the kind of book that appealed to me in a big way. It spends its time playing in different areas of Gotham without really using all that much with the usual characters. It’s not a big Batman book and it doesn’t really use a lot of characters from the world, though when it does they’re played in a neat way. The Yearbook arc was an interesting concept that went on too long so I’ve been wary about getting back into the book with the second semester run. Thankfully, it seems like most of the good things are back this time around, though it’s a complicated mix of people involved in the artwork that does reuslt in some really good looking pages.
The premise for this issue is a welcome bit of quiet within the academy as it’s almost time for the new semester to begin. Olive is one of just a couple of people that are there with it mostly seeming like it’s just professor McPherson being the other one. The two have spent a good bit of quality time together during the break and there’s a nice bond that we see existing there. With their nightly meals together it provides a little continuity for them, though we see that the prof at least gets some time away from campus as she’s off with Bruce Wayne for one of those nights. The downside is that when that happens, a new transfer student arrives a day early and is rooming with Olive, much to Olive’s surprise. The chaos of a new roommate, especially when she believed that Maps would be coming back in with her, is pretty jarring.
Amy is exactly the kind of person you kind of fear when getting as she comes across as nothing but trouble. She digs into all the stuff in Olive’s room, moving Maps’ stuff around, and being really probing about things. When Olive offers to take her on a tour of the campus she ends up prodding Olive into a bit of property destruction and then breaking into one of the preserved museums that’s on campus. That leads to its own trouble but mostly we just get to see what kind of influence Amy is and how she’s going to be a spanner in the works when the rest of the detectives club gets back together. We also get to see that Olive is being cautious about things since she doesn’t rat out Amy with what happened, which is kind of mixed depending on how you view it. Still, when you get to the end and see the return of everyone else, it makes everything really welcome.
In Summary:
While I’m not ready to go back on subscription mode with this series as I’m still feeling a touch wary, this is a pretty solid start to the second semester. I’m curious to see what kind of role Amy will play, partially because I want her to get smacked down for being so intrusive, and I’m also excited to see the gang all back together and finding new things to explore within the academy and all its lore. There’s a lot of fun things that can be done in this setting and the first series only scratched the surface. This installment also works better for me than some other recent pieces as the artwork gets back closer to what it was at the start of the first series, which was a huge part of the draw for me compared to the varied yearbook designs.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 17+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: September 14th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
