All-Star Batman #6 Featured Image Reviews 

“All-Star Batman” #6

By | January 12th, 2017
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With Batman’s high octane road trip across America with Two-Face come to a close, “All-Star Batman” #6 kicks off its second arc with something a little colder. Not allowing themselves to stagnate like the issue’s villain, Scott Snyder, Jock, Matt Hollingsworth and Steve Wands have put their all into making a Batman issue that feels unlike any other.

Read on below for our full, spoiler free review of “All-Star Batman” #6.

Written by Scott Snyder
Illustrated by Jock & Francesco Francavilla
“Cold to the Core”! Batman travels to Alaska to confront Mr. Freeze as he attempts to extract the world’s oldest ice core and bring humanity to a new Ice Age! Powerhouse artist Jock joins Scott Snyder to bring you another of the Dark Knight’s rogues like you’ve never seen him before.

What made Scott Snyder’s run writing “Batman” feel so fresh was he was never afraid to experiment and play with the very concepts of what makes Batman the character he is. With his frequent artistic partner, Greg Capullo, the run pulled the Caped Crusader apart to his constituent parts, even replacing the man behind the symbol for a spell, only to put him back together again at the end. It was enthralling to read such talented creators who told stories about such an iconic character with equal parts reverence for the stories of the past and fearlessness to tread their own path. Now, with a title like “All-Star Batman”, Snyder is free to take that sense of fearless experimentation and ratchet it up a thousandfold.

While the first arc of “All-Star Batman” may have felt in line with the format of the stories Snyder told with Capullo, working with John Romita Jr. allowed him to bend the structure of what a Batman could be with an injection of an almost Smokey & The Bandit-style chase. Snyder kicks of the second arc with artist Jock, who worked together way back on the ‘Black Mirror’ storyline in “Detective Comics” prior to the New 52, and the two of them are doing the damndest to completely reinvent how Batman stories are told.

Focusing on a new conflict between Batman and Mr. Freeze, what is immediately striking is how the storytelling is formatted. Eschewing the classic notions of dialogue balloons and narration captions accompanying the art, Snyder scripts prose-like captions throughout the issue to accompany Jock’s artwork. These captions pull double duty containing both the issue’s dialogue and extended narration in a more prose structure that allows Snyder to delve deeper beyond the surface of the conflict.

Freeze has frequently represented the depression, the survivor’s guilt that has hung over Batman and so this issue slows things down. There is very little in the way of physical conflict between the two and so the slower pace allows Snyder to explore the emotional conflict at play here; the specifics of Freeze’s plans don’t matter so much as the metaphor it’s wrapped up in and this use of prose captions is able to capture that metaphor more readily than he would had he stuck to a more conventional style. I certainly have to commend the experimentation of form at play here, especially concerning such an iconic character, but I can imagine that some will feel this issue is much less action packed than the usual kinds of Batman stories Snyder writes.

What’s more, this issue’s story starts pretty much where most Batman stories would end. Batman has tracked the villain to their lair, revealed their master plan and likely has some seemingly impossible way of stopping them at the last second. These beats all play out like it’s the last issue of the series, like the reader somehow didn’t pick up the previous five issues that lead to Batman marching his way through the Arctic circle for a climactic showdown with Freeze. However, just as things come to a head, Snyder is quick to remind readers that this is but the first issue of the arc and there’s something about starting where most stories would end that brings so much more weight to the end of this issue. It’s been a long time since the end of a Batman story has left me struck with a genuine wonder as to how the rest of the story will play out.

Continued below

What is most impressive about “All-Star Batman” #6, though, is how the prose narrative compliments the visual storytelling of the artwork. Jock works with colourist Matt Hollingsworth to bring a stark visual design to the issue, using a lot of negative space in the panels. Jock has a tendency to construct pages using a larger bottom panel whose background fills the page while the initial panels are insert panels on top. Jock uses that effectively through the first four or so pages as Batman enters Freeze’s compound. This allows the background colours of these pages to start off as this brilliant white-blue, evoking the a tundra wasteland of ice and snow, through successively darker shades of blue until Batman is trapped and cornered and literally draped in pure black shadows from which icy blue hands grab at him.

If Snyder’s use of prose narrative captions was an exercise in evoking the emotionality of the characters beyond the visuals, the artwork of Jock and Matt Hollingsworth is in exercise in evoking a deep mood and enveloping atmosphere throughout the issue. Jock’s characteristically scratchy linework feels almost minimalistic, building panels out of as little detail as possible to build the shape of the story. This allows Matt Hollingsworth’s colours to fill in the gaps, draping Batman in pure black ink shadows while using a brilliant blue-white scheme to contrast the darkness. The closest thing this issue has to a warm colour is the muted pinks of Freeze’s lenses, something that punctuates the issue throughout as a reminder of warmth and almost comfort.

Hollingsworth also seems to have worked closely with the real MVP of “All-Star Batman” #6, letterer Steve Wands. The fact that these narrative captions flow and compliment the artwork so much through the issue is a testament to the work of Wands. Using captions that mimic the cascading panels of Jock’s pages, falling across the page in a seemingly haphazard way, Wands uses these boxes of text to guide the reader’s eyeline through the pages. Not only that, but the use of colour in each of these captions is exquisite. Mimicking the way the palette of each page of beginning of this issue darkens as Batman enters Freeze’s compound, Wands captions go from free-floating text without a caption box in blue with a white border to white text in blue caption boxes to blue text in white caption boxes to white text in black captions boxes.

These style changes can happen multiple times across each page, with each style both complimenting the colour palette of the location the caption is placed in on the page and the content of the caption. The one constant throughout the issue in terms of how these captions are coloured is that Freeze’s dialogue is coloured in the same hue of Freeze’s goggles, that muted pink that feels like watching the warmth drain out of a room. This is all on top of the masterful choice of type face, a bold, serifed font that evokes a storybook quality while a slight texturing of the letters compliments the scratchy linework and halftones of Jock’s artwork.

If anything, this issue should celebrated for how in sync this creative team are. From a writer experimenting with his own form to an artist and colourist building an amazing level of mood and atmosphere throughout that captures the weight of the ordeal the character goes through to the letterer entrusted with bringing the writer’s experimentation to life through masterful work. I very much believe this issue would not have worked if any of these creators had given any less than their all and it’s clear on the page that that’s exactly what they give. Everything is on the page here, from every line to every shade and hue to every letter, this is a clear dedication to making the best possible comic that they are capable of. It’s just a bonus that it happens to be a great Batman comic too.

Final Verdict: 9.4 – With a story that feels like the culmination of a story arc, I cannot wait to see where the rest of this story goes.


Alice W. Castle

Sworn to protect a world that hates and fears her, Alice W. Castle is a trans femme writing about comics. All things considered, it’s going surprisingly well. Ask her about the unproduced Superman films of 1990 - 2006. She can be found on various corners of the internet, but most frequently on Twitter: @alicewcastle

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