Creative Staff:
Story: Collin Kelly, Jackson Lanzing
Art: Brian Ching
Colors: Kelly Fitzpatrick
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Luthor MUST crush the Garage to please his master, but victory has never felt farther from his grasp.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Part of the fun of not following solicitations closely is that you don’t know what’s coming in most series beyond the obvious of familiar tropes. The downside to that is discovering that the installment you’re reading is the end of the series, which with this issue essentially makes this a twelve-issue print book. Which should make for a pretty nice single oversized collection at some point and makes it worthwhile that Brian Ching served as the artist for the bookends of it. Kelly and Lanzing put together some fun stuff here that hit its stride just before the halfway mark and got me to feel more invested in it than I was feeling and they then carried it through the rest of the run to good results. With a strong range of artists in the mix along with Ching, Gotham City Garage largely delivered well.
As you’d expect from a series finale mired in battle for the last issue or two, it’s more battle than anything else with some nice thoughts as to what the future will bring. It’s a bit chaotic on the outside with events which makes the focus early on between Bruce and Lois work so well as he’s intent on eliminating her and what she represents so that nobody will ever know of her. That Barbara saves the day is nicely done and it helps to really put her on the right path and staking out her place in things alongside Kara as the two will certainly work all things out. I also really liked this segment as we get to see Bruce in this fascist-like form in a clear and angry way and to see Lois holding firm and fighting against him in her own way right to the very end.
The action outside the Garage is a bit more limited in a way, focusing on it from a distance and big picture kind of view as Kara finishes demolishing Luthor and narrating how much of what’s been done is to set the world right from the wrongs that Luthor put upon it after things went so horribly bad. While I love the uplifting element at the end with Kara’s discovery, a lot of this is kind of a montage piece in how it finishes out, how the group deals with Luthor himself after everyone else has been defeated, and figuring on what’s next with the Garage destroyed. It’s a good bit of closure with more than enough of an opening for more to come – which I’d certainly be game for. Luthor’s fate is made clear if you want to map it out simply and those from the Garage are able to basically look forward instead of being trapped in the past.
In Summary:
Admittedly, I was hoping that Gotham City Garage was going to be as open ended as Bombshells is for DC Comics because it has plenty of potential with that. With the twenty-four issue digital run, we got something that was a whole lot of fun once it got its legs under it and figured out how it really wanted to proceed. I think there’s a lot more to mine in this area and things to explore and I’m hopeful that Kelly and Lanzing will be able to revisit the world as I’d love to see more of what these and other characters are up to in a world like this.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 14th, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
