Batman #6 – Review

By: Scott Snyder (writer), Greg Capullo (pencils), Jonathan Glapion (inks), FCO (colors), Richard Starkings (letters), Katie Kubert (assistant editor), Harvey Richards (associate editor) & Mike Marts (editor)

Four Things: 

1. This is a real tour de force artistically. – Man, it’s hard to even know where to start gushing about the art in this issue.  Every page has something that could be analyzed and called our for being special, but a few things really stood out.  One is that Capullo shows us some really crazy perspectives in this issue.  You know how in a basic art class they teach you to pick a point on the horizon and have everything shrinking towards that point?  Well, Capullo turns that on it’s ear by having all kinds of dominant perspective lines that (a) would never meet up if you continued them into infinity OR (b) are curved.  And, this is fitting given the drug-induced fever dream aspect of the comic, but whereas you see some artists just kinda randomly slinging objects around on the page, Capullo has a very defined plan for his warped perspectives.  Nice!  The second item that really got me was the energy and brutality of the fight between Batman and Talon.  You really feel like these are two big, strong guys beating the snot out of each other.  The sheer vitality of the characters even helped me overlook a few places where I couldn’t tell how the action flowed from panel-to-panel.  The third is how F-ing creepy owls are.  Who knew?  Those talon-hands!  Gah!  It wouldn’t surprise me if people read this and started setting owls on fire just to be safe.

2. Let’s heap some praise on inker Glapion and colorist FCO too. – It’s hard to not screw up pencils like Capullo’s.  The combination of (i) high levels of detail and (ii) intense energy is kinda a no-win situation for an inker/colorist.  There are a lot of lesser inkers who would have this issue come out looking stiff, but Glapion makes it work. Seriously, if you follow artists on Twitter you often see awesome pencils getting posted only to see the final art screwed up by the inker and colorist.  I’m not enough of an artist to know how they’re doing this, but I tend to think it comes down to Glapion’s control over the thickness of all these fine lines he has to draw (love inkers who don’t retreat to the pens just because the line is fine) and FCO being willing to go with the flow.  This is not art that needs all kinds of stupid highlights.  FCO just picks colors and shades that will work and stays within himself.

Dean’s Top Picks

Best From The Past Week: Fearless Dawn: Secret of the Swamp One-Shot – A LOT of good comics in the past week (with Severed #7 and Wolverine and the X-Men #5 being my other two favorites).  Honestly, sometimes when I have a virtual “tie” like this, I choose the winner based on how many panels each comic has left seared into my brain.  That’s a big deal because honestly, by the end of the week, I often cannot remember anything about some comics.  But, that’s not a problem with Fearless Dawn and Steve Mannion’s wonderful art and clever storytelling.  I can close my eyes and recall pretty fine details of ~10 panels from this issue.  It’s THAT good.  Do yourself a huge favor and check his work out.

Most Anticipated: Batman #6 – After the tour de force that issue #5 represented who can wait for this?  Even if I STILL think the spinning page orientation was a gimmick that overshadowed other subtle excellence like Capullo’s art when Bruce retreated back into his corner of the maze….like a bat….  I mean…..the work that Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are putting in here is just tremendous and this is what you get when you have a great writer and great artist who are working together.  Every issue from them is “can’t miss”.

Other picks: Hmm… It’s a very light week.  Amazing Spider-Man #679.1, Daredevil #9, Glamourpuss #23, Thunderbolts #170.  Take advantage and go read some back issues or Jacques Tardi graphic novels.  That’s what I’ll be doing.