Written and penciled by David Finch
Trapped with childhood friend Dawn Golden deep beneath Gotham City, Batman’s only hope for escape also happens to be one of his worst enemies! Meanwhile, Etrigan the Demon turns against his masters and confronts a twisted, evil incarnation of Ragman with the help of Alfred. Only Batman knows the secret to defeating the demon possessing Ragman — but The Dark Knight is nowhere to be found! (Ed. Note: This only vaguely resembles the actual issue.)
Here lies the final issue of Batman: The Dark Knight. Until #4, which is #1. But should you care? About anything? Look after the jump.
It’s hard, but we’ll just have to work past this together: I don’t want to make this whole review about how egregiously late The Dark Knight #3 is. At this point, if you don’t expect it, not only from David Finch but also from high-profile projects built around specific creators’ participation, then you really have not been reading superhero comics for very long, have you? Yeah, it’s late. No, it’s not the greatest thing since the development of computer coloring. There. Over, done. Now we can talk about the actual comic.
One thing that surprises me about Batman: The Dark Knight is how I really expected it to be… darker. On David Finch’s Marvel work, especially when inked by Danny Miki, his pages were drowning in ink, and the coloring backed it up with stony greys and muted nightscapes. Here, Finch is inked by Scott Williams and Richard Friend, who leave more negative space in the art for color to fill — ironic that only on Batman does Finch’s work step out of the shadows. The colors themselves aren’t exactly neon, but they’re brighter than I can recall any of Finch’s recent work being. His Gotham City is blue, like his Batman. The cool blue palette makes things like headlights and explosions stand out as glaring exceptions, without making the pages descend into unintelligible murk: the effect is like a constant twilight settling on the streets that’s not grey enough to reflect Timm or black enough to reflect Nolan. And it works. All credit to Alex Sinclair and Pete Pantazis, the issue’s two colorists — even moreso for keeping it consistent between the two of them.
For the past two issues, Batman’s hunted the missing Dawn Golden, taken for mysterious reasons. Added into this mix: a demon-possessed Ragman, and the Demon himself, Etrigan. Their roles stay unclear this issue, but between the magical overtones, the name of the victim, and the fact that the story arc is titled “Golden Dawn,” well… it’s definitely going to get more and more occult from here. The influence for all this, almost certainly, is the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, an English magical order from the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th. Temples were founded, deity-invoking rituals occurred, magical rites were codified in secret documents. An entire hierarchy was established, and as with any pursuit of the wealthy and strange, vastly complex social intrigue followed. (Among the members: William Butler Yeats, Arthur Machen — perhaps the single most influential horror writer of all time — and, wouldn’t you know it, Aleister Crowley, who rather took the whole thing as a crash course before going his own way.) I’ll call it here: characters here, presumbly the ones we’ve never heard of, will turn out to be cultists of some kind. Still, as Peter Milligan proved in “Dark Knight, Dark City” way back in the day, combining Batman with the occult is fertile ground, which is rarely covered these days. So, Finch earns a point there.
Three issues is about enough to get a sense of where David Finch is headed as a writer. He favors brief scenes where people talk without illusions, strung together by the sour-faced, teeth-clenched narration of Batman himself (whose authorial voice as a fictional character is more consistent than some real writers’ — unfailingly glib and gruff). Finch’s scripting is less like the typical mode of modern crime and crimey comics, where people speak in elusive, cryptic fragments or stay silent to retain what little power is theirs to control. In The Dark Knight, characters interact in the style of procedural shows like Special Victims Unit or NCIS — if something’s on their mind, they say it, without hesitation or even self-awareness. It’s an economic way of intertwining plot exposition and character pathos when done right, but it does lead to strange moments like the diner scene in this issue, where a rival of Jim Gordon’s comes in and basically all but threatens to kill Gordon in a joint crowded with cops. Likewise, when a mysterious urchin steals the Batmobile, how she does it is less important than the fact that now we know she can do it, and we know she’s in over her head because she says as much out loud.
Continued belowThis style of writing is the kind you don’t really see anymore, outside of maybe Jim Shooter. It’s as if the 90s and 00s and half the 80s never happened. DC’s Bronze Age revivalism is usually rooted in concepts and stories — that is, bringing back characters and plotlines that were buried by Crises or other retcons. Finch’s writing is a Bronze Age revival in almost solely stylistic terms, with the purple prose of an omniscient narrator and continuity-tracking thought balloons replaced by the house-style Bat-narration of the modern day. His writing and art both prize clarity and efficiency, which honestly seems odd, looking at Finch’s past works. Tease subplot #1, work the main plot a bit, establish subplot #2, continue subplot #3, adorn Batman with an explosion and a girl, cliffhanger. It doesn’t break atoms, but it also doesn’t break down.
Batman: The Dark Knight is comic book pizza. As long as you don’t screw up “cheese on top of tomato on top of bread,” you have a pizza, and it’ll probably be at least okay, and certainly not inedible. David Finch is following the same maxim, taking basic Bat-concepts and combining them in a way that may not feel fresh and innovative — but it’s impossible to take offense to, unless you’re the sort of person who gets worked up over comic books. In that case, maybe go outside a little more. Take a break from comics for a couple months. By then, #4 or #1 or whatever’s next should be out.
Final Verdict: 6.0 – Pizza
