Batman #14 – Review

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

Back-up by: Snyder & James Tynion IV (writers), Jock (art), Dave Baron (colors) & Sal Cipriano (letters)

The Story: Joker starts to go after Batman’s family by lashing out at its most vulnerable members.

The Review: 

1. Very good Again. - This doesn’t have to be a horribly long review because what made last issue so compelling is back on display here.  This Joker is horribly scary and that keeps the issue humming along.  It’s amazing that a character who has been around for decades and has been so frequently clownish can be turned into something so frightening.  The chaos of the Joker is what can make him scary.  So much of what Batman does centers on game theory and being one step ahead of his villain.  But, for game theory to work, you have to be playing the game with a rational actor and the Joker is anything but.  He breaks the rules and you have to react.

2. Relationships can slow you down. - This isn’t a new theme in a Bat-book, but relationships can make life hard.  Pretty much any partnership or group is going to have a weak member and sometimes it’ll fall on the strong one to help the weak one along.  In this issue we clearly see how Batman’s friends make him very vulnerable to Joker.  I mean, Batman is always hard-pressed to handle the Joker, but how is he supposed to catch Joker and protect his family?  I’m going to trust that Snyder has a better resolution to the story than “Batman’s friends also give him the strength to defeat the Joker.”  Let’s do something crazy, like see Batman go down the rathole to having NO friends at all.

3. Outstanding art. - You’re simply not going to find better art in a comic than this.  Part of the scariness of Joker comes from the words in the script, but most of it is coming from how the Capullo/Glapion/Plascencia team is drawing him.  My god… This is someone who would make you soil your pants if you really saw him.  He’s so creepy and so imbalanced.  You don’t want any part of this guy.  But this art team rules the quiet moments too.  There are a lot of “talking heads” scenes in the comic and those types of scenes rise and fall on the acting of the characters.  We even get a classic Capullo splash page where he made Glapion and Plascencia ink/color tons of little drops of blood.  I always wonder if Capullo warns his collaborators that such a page is coming?  Do they ever play tricks like sending complex pages to the next guy in the art chain at inconvenient times?  Like anniversaries?  Holidays?

4. You can’t trick me. - My biggest misgiving about this story is that it’s a crossover and I’m simply not falling into that trap again.  The Big 2 have played me for a chump too many times and I’ve spent too many thousands of dollars on crossover titles that weren’t very good.  The challenge for Snyder & Co. is to keep BATMAN such that I don’t feel left out because I’m not reading those other titles.

5. Classic villains. - As much as I love this version of Joker, I must say that it bugs me a little bit that the guy is different every time we see him.  I know, I know… That’s part of his charm.  And I know, I know… New 52!  I still don’t buy either of those arguments.  Let’s just come up with a consistent characterization of the guy.  I happen to like THIS version of Joker, but let’s see how long before he is a clown again or something like in Morrison’s Batman, Inc. run.

Conclusion: What a surprise!  Another strong and disturbing issue of Batman!

Grade: A-

- Dean Stell