Review: Batman #5

Written by Scott Snyder
Illustrated by Greg Capullo

Deep beneath Gotham City lies the Court of Owls’ deadliest trap — and Batman has fallen right into it! Can he escape, or will he perish in a maze of nightmare? Enter the labyrinth, Batman — if you dare!
This issue is also offered as a special combo pack edition, polybagged with a redemption code for a digital download of the issue.

Hey look, another week, another Batman book! Scott Snyder has been killing it in the Bat-Universe since he took over Detective Comics last year, when Dick Grayson was still The Gotham Guardian, and he continues his Bat-Dominance with the eponymous Batman title. But how good was it? Was it that good? Well, quite frankly, it was.

But how good was it? You’ll see beyond the cut. Face it; you want to know how it could be that good.

Scott Snyder is probably the best writer in DC’s stable today. All of his books have been consistently praised by fans and critics alike for his visceral storytelling and creative takes on familiar concepts and characters. American Vampire for instance turns the Vampire Mythology and flips it on its head, making sure that the ever-present and ever-popular vampire monster is seen in an entirely new light. The same goes for the character of Batman.

Batman has been around for close to 73 years now. Since then he’s been in countless stories told in a thousand different ways. Sometimes, in your humble reviewer’s position, the creators have rested on the laurels of others before them, telling the same story over and over; because they think Batman is an easy character to write. Not Snyder, who challenges the status quo of the character, putting him in a situation where everything he relies on to be who he is, and by extension, what we ourselves rely on him to be, cannot be trusted. Like he did with the book American Vampire, he turned a familiar character on their head.

I do mean that literally too. It’s been a long time since a writer has used the space they’re given so creatively to tell the story they mean to tell. One of the best parts of the book is how Snyder experiments with how books are presented in the printed form. I’m not sure you can read this book digitally to fully appreciate it, either. This is a book that most certainly needs to be picked up physically and not on an iPad, much less a computer screen. His technique in telling the story transcends the comic book medium and challenges you to engage in reading in a real and intuitive way. But the end of the issue, you’re not only reading the exploits of The Dark Knight, but you feel like you’re in his shoes, struggling to solve the mystery of the Court of Owls. You get lost in the book and by extension, you get a new look into the mind of Batman. However, while most of the book focuses on Batman and where he is and what he’s doing; Snyder deftly gives us an insight into how the rest of the Batman Family are handling his disappearance.

In the Batman universe, he’s been missing for nearly a week. Everyone, from Alfred to Harvey Bullock, is understandably worried about him, but while Bullock and Commissioner Gordon discuss turning off the Bat-Signal because it might burst, Gordon delivers a heartfelt speech about the importance of not only The Caped Crusader, but how important the symbolism of that light in the sky and what it means to the city and his allies. But even while the book ends in a truly jarring way for the character and the reader alike, further blurring the lines between real life and fiction; it ends in a way that elicits a true emotional reaction from the reader. If that’s the true endgame for any book, then not only did Snyder and Capullo win, they won in true dominating fashion.

Speaking of Greg Capullo, too much can be credited toward Scott Snyder in this book, and he should get a lot of credit, but this is a collaborative medium, dear reader, and the twists and turns could not have been told nearly as well with any other artist. Capullo expertly renders the world from the perspective of someone whose grip on reality is getting more tenuous with every moment to every character whose tenuous grasp onto hope that their mentor is still alive. Every emotion is right there on the characters faces plain as day.

But anyone can make a sad face; what makes this book’s art special is how Capullo took the words that Snyder put into the script and transform them into such a beautiful and enthralling experience for everyone to enjoy. The way he plays with visual perspective makes everything in any given room as much a character as the humans (or bats) who are speaking. Bruce’s cape, for example, is one of the best drawn Bat-Capes I’ve seen in recent memory, gracefully gliding across the floor, and filling the room, slowly showing how small Bruce feel he’s become while trying to journey through the labyrinth.

The book itself may not be the most action packed in the history of Batman books, but the art is still as dynamic as it could ever be for a Batman title. The character work and mood elevates the already powerful words into something that can transcend words or pictures into a real work of art. This is easily the best book I’ve read so far in this young year, and it’s likely the best DC book I’ve read since the entire line relaunched in September. We have an early contender for single issue of the year if you ask me.

ÊŽnq – 9Ë™6 :ǝɹoÉ”s ןɐuıɟ