Batman The Dark Knight 1

This is the first comic in a very long time that I have bought for the artist rather than writer – well, they are the same person, but I like his art a lot and had never read his writing. I guess the fact that Batman is a fresher proposition now than for ages helped incline me towards trying this, too.

Though in fact this doesn’t really link into the Batman Incorporated strand – there’s a brief reference to it by Alfred, and I guess he is running with the technical upgrades Grant Morrison has been introducing, but otherwise this is straightforward, mainline Batman: Bruce Wayne in Gotham, a couple of rogues’ gallery villains, Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Bullock and all that.

It does a bit of retcon, creating yet another woman, Dawn Golden (FFS), for Bruce to be halfway in love with, undoubtedly briefly, but flashbacks aside, she is in this just the maguffin, a kidnap victim Batman is chasing. There are a few false notes around this point: the panels where she and Bruce wrestle and stop to gaze into each other’s eyes need them to be about twice their ages to convince; and Batman goes after Killer Croc, who is unbelievably easily intimidated into admitting that he snatched her. I’m no expert on Killer Croc, but I didn’t buy how quickly he was scared into confessing, and there is no hint as to how Batman suspected him – up to there it read as if he was just jumping on someone in the hope of learning something.

These are unconvincing, but there is worse: the clear implication is that she was raped by this monster, who also says he handed her on to a pal, Croc clearly thinking that this was for more of the same. I am risking prejudging the story here and might be proven completely wrong, but I’m kind of sick of women important to male heroes getting raped when the only real point is to give the hero reason to be extra angry and intense – as if Batman, of all characters, needs that. In fact, so far he has shown no reaction to this at all, which may be even worse. I’m not sure how superhero comics can handle sexual violence – I wouldn’t necessarily say that they shouldn’t, but there are limitations on what they can do. I’m sure mainline DC and Marvel titles wouldn’t show a rape – I don’t mean in a pornographic way, I mean showing the suffering it causes – let alone maturely depict the effects. Without that it becomes just another plot motor, and a particularly distasteful one. I don’t think mainstream superhero comics can deal with this difficult subject well, and that leaves dealing with it badly: add in the still prevalent context of superhero comics as male power fantasies – we still routinely get the muscles exaggerated on the men and the sexual characteristics on the women – and it’s even harder to do well. Maybe I do think they shouldn’t touch the subject…

Aside from these points, the writing is pretty assured, surprisingly so for someone who, as far as I know, is new to scripting. The tone is easy to hit for Batman, admittedly, but he gets the atmosphere right, and the characters’ voices, and the Alfred/Bruce conversation is very well handled. There is also enough in the plot to intrigue, and a passable cliffhanger ending.

But I bought this because I really like Finch’s art, which is aided here by detailed, faithful inks from Scott Williams and boldly naturalistic colouring from Alex Sinclair. Finch impresses me on every level – layout, timing, flow, control, faces, bodies, expressions, clothing, settings, atmosphere, tone, monsters, impact – when was the last new mainstream artist so very strong in every area? (I’m kind of placing Darwyn Cooke a step outside the mainstream in thinking that.) It seems like decades to me. His writing is a long way behind his art in standard, much as this is a mostly pretty good debut, so I kind of hope he doesn’t get distracted from something he could be great at in favour of something he may prove to be merely decent at, especially if his star-artist status means, as has often been the case in the past, that he doesn’t get the editorial help he needs in these early stages. But the art is enough, combined with generally decent writing, that I’ll be buying the next issue, at least.