More tales of Gotham.
Creative Staff:
Story: Marc Guggenheim, Marguerite Bennett
Art: Scott Koblish, Megan Hetrick
Colors: Nick Filardi
Letterer: ALW’s Troy Peteri, Marshall Dillon
What They Say:
Story #1: A terrifying assassin is on the hunt for a Gotham City billionaire. It’s up to Batman to save…Bruce Wayne?
Story #2: Harley Quinn investigates a haunted house and leaves with something she never expected–a new best friend!
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Going for the two short stories approach with this installment, the opening gives us a pretty fun piece featuring March Guggenheim writing for Scott Koblish’s artwork as we combine Batman and several other of Gotham’s heros. It’s a solid piece that looks good from top to bottom. The second story has Marguerite Bennet writing with Meghan Hetrick handling the artwork for it. Both are some of my favorite creative people in what they bring to the page but are also ones that don’t exactly “feel” Batman in the traditional sense, which is why I was really curious to see what they’d do here. Add in Nick Filardi coloring for both of the stories and you get some good projects here.
The opening tale isn’t exactly convoluted but it has a bit of an amusing end to it that is clearly Batman through and through. With an assassin targeting Bruce Wayne that’s of world renown, he’s figuring the best thing to do is to spring the trap. There’s a good bit to this in that it’s setup for the unveiling of a statute for Leslie Thompson in a park, which means lots of good locations to target him with. I like that he’s not stupid enough to avoid bringing in help as we see Nightwing, Red Hood, Robin, and Batgirl to step in and help and spring the trap so that Batman can eliminate the threat. It’s simple and handled in a straightforward way that delivers. It’s not huge on the action but the flow of it works well which isn’t easy within a short page count like this.
The second story is one where story doesn’t quite matter so much and it’s just a visual ride. Harley’s still not my favorite of characters with the over-exposure of stories for her but Bennet and Hetrick have fun here with a visual delight as she basically wakes up into a kind of horror story with a face-stealing ghost or something. Honestly, it doesn’t matter much because it’s just a pretense in order to have Harley racing around, smashing things, and dealing with the usual range of weirdness in her life. Hetrick’s artwork is great as she’s got a good handle on Harley herself and the flow of it as they hit room to room or engage in the action shenanigans. Filardi’s color design for this is exquisite and really blended well with Hetrick’s artwork.
In Summary:
I definitely enjoy the variety of the stories that we get from Batman: Gotham Nights though it’s always of variable quality for obvious reasons. I’m less thrilled with the issues that try to work the two stories within it because neither gets enough space. But both of these are fun for different reasons. The first does a good job in a tight little assassination plot while the second just goes for a surreal haunted house kind of approach. They’re both fun for different reasons and we get some solid artwork and storytelling from both as well. It’s a quick and easy pickup and read.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology and Amazon Kindle
Release Date: October 5th, 2020
MSRP: $0.99
