Batman #27 - Mobile Edition

DC Comics
Batman #27
By Hervé St-Louis
July 25, 2017 - 10:13

DC Comics
Writer(s): Tom King
Penciller(s): Clay Mann
Inker(s): Danny Miki, John Livesay, Clay Mann
Colourist(s): Gabe Eltaeb
Letterer(s): Clayton Cowles
Cover Artist(s): Mikel Janín
$2.99

Small time engineer and villain Charley Brown is caught in the war between the Riddler and the Joker. Batman even uses him relentlessly. When everyone’s manipulation causes Brown to lose something dear to him, he makes a decision that will affect his life and that of the Riddler.

Tom King attempted to reinvent Batman’s adventures with many minor characters since starting his run on Batman. He is not the only DC Comics writer to do this. Many minor characters pop out in Kamandi, Bug the Forager, Doom Patrol, the Titans and so on. But few writers handle these old minor characters like him. Kite Man has been around since 1960 and was a joke most of the time. But here, King gives him a worthy motivation and enough back story to make him an interesting villain.

His ‘secret origin’ is not new. We’ve read similar origins with Deadshot and the Scott Lang version of Ant-Man. It’s of course how King tells the story that makes a difference. Everybody including Batman profit and exploit Brown. All he has in the world is his son. Batman failed to protect the son in his quest to use the father to get intelligence on the Joker and the Riddler’s war. Batman is a jerk and that’s why this story is so good.

Clay Mann is not the usual artist for this storyline. That affects the story as the visual style changes a bit too much. While the panels’ layout appears superficially the same, the characters’ idiosyncratic faces which are so important in this story are off regardless of Mann’s effort to mimic Mikel Janín.

Rating: 9/10