Batman #12 Review - Mobile Edition

DC Comics
Batman #12 Review
By Dan Horn
August 14, 2012 - 17:24

DC Comics
Writer(s): Scott Snyder
Penciller(s): Becky Cloonan and Andy Clarke
Inker(s): Becky Cloonan, Sandu Florea, and Andy Clarke
Colourist(s): FCO Placencia
Letterer(s): Richard Starking and Jimmy Betancourt
Cover Artist(s): Greg Capullo
$3.99 US

As Batman reaches its one-year mark, artists Becky Cloonan and Andy Clarke provide fill-in art for Scott Snyder's script with Greg Capullo taking a well deserved break. Cloonan and Clarke don't collaborate in this issue, mind you, leading to a jarring art transition late in the issue. Both artists turn in some truly brilliant work, Cloonan with her thick-limned, manga-influenced cartooning and Clarke with his hyper-detailed illustrations and ingenious layouts, but the uneven and not-so-subtle shift between the two might be enough to suck you right out of an otherwise great reading experience.

Batman #12 fleshes out the character of Harper Row, who first appeared in a brief cameo earlier in the series. Harper is an emancipated teen and electrician who looks after her brother, a boy who is constantly tormented and brutalized by others in the slum, the Narrows, for being gay. When Batman intercedes in a violent confrontation on Harper and her brother's behalf one evening, Harper develops an obsession with the Dark Knight and her background as an electrician maintaining Gotham's aging power grid puts her on a collision course with the vigilante.

Snyder's latest Batman offering is dense, socially relevant, progressive, and exciting. His characters, old and new, are immaculately realized and empathetic. Snyder is in his zone when channeling relatable metaphor into his superhero fiction, and this issue's narrative focusing on electricity and self-made destiny crackles like one of Gotham City's old power cables.

Snyder does his best to compliment his artist's sequential narrative with an indirect, sometimes subtle, and concurrent narrative, but at times his voice overpowers the visuals of the comic. A Snyder script is often so dense that you lose track of what you're viewing by getting wrapped in the reading of myriad captions and word balloons, and this undermines the effect of the sequential art itself, almost superseding the visuals in some hierarchic manner. Coming from a literary background, Snyder's predilection for overwriting isn't surprising, nor is it entirely bothersome, but here at least he gets somewhat carried away. It's hard to find a bit of quiet in this book.

Rating: 8/10