Batman: Gotham Nights
Written by Brad Meltzer, Sal Giunta, and Larry Hama
Art by Jim Lee, Mirko Colak, Scott Williams, Alex Sinclair and John Kalisz
Lettering by Chris Eliopoulos and Travis Lanham
Published by DC
‘Rama Rating: 5 out of 10
After starting off on the right foot with yesterday’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow, DC’s expanded digital offerings stumble with their sophomore effort, Batman: Gotham Nights – reprinting the lead story from the recent DC Giant Our Fighting Forces #1. Whereas Superman’s oversized issue neatly stuck a balance between exciting action and engaging character work, Batman: Gotham Nights feels lightweight with its two eight-page stories – while there’s a common military theme between Brad Meltzer and Larry Hama’s stories, the end result still feels like a head-scratching angle to take during a sparse superhero publishing landscape.
Of course, plenty of readers will jump on board thanks to big names like Brad Meltzer and Jim Lee, who tackles Gotham Nights’ opening story. Unfortunately, while it’s always a pleasure to see Lee go through his paces in Gotham with his longtime cohorts Scott Williams and Alex Sinclair, Meltzer’s story makes it all feel like an empty exercise – as well-intentioned as they might be, mapping a boilerplate Batman episode to a real-life Medal of Honor recipient Sal Giunta’s story feels almost crass, as Meltzer has Batman perform almost a word-for-word recreation of a Barack Obama speech. The story is too short to make such a twist feel anything other than a gimmick, and there’s not enough connecting the two disparate influences to make it not feel jarring.
That said, while this story isn’t necessarily Meltzer’s finest outing, there’s going to be a contingent who are going to love it just because of Lee’s art – and they wouldn’t be wrong. I’d even go so far as to say seeing Jim Lee interiors isn’t just the highlight of this book – it’s the only reason to buy it. It’s almost remarkable to see how little Lee’s style has changed since the days of “Hush” or even his “New 52” run on Justice League – there’s a consistency to his take on Batman that feels as engaging now as it did in 2002, as the action feels less fluid and more just purely iconic.
Unfortunately, after just eight pages of Jim Lee artwork, Gotham Nights switches gears to a Kate Kane prequel story from Larry Hama and Mirko Colak. And while there’s some connection to the previous story in terms of themes, it feels a little reductive to boil Kate down to yet another flashback to her military days. While Greg Rucka mined this territory frequently during his run of the book, he balanced well-researched military jargon with engaging character work on Kate’s sexuality and sense of duty – real-life veteran Hama, on the other hand, hits us over the head with a veritable firehose of Army lingo at the expense of forward momentum or characterization.
Meanwhile, you can’t really fault Colak for the visuals blurring together – he’s doing what he can to make this story seem realistic, but you can’t help but wonder, why waste half of a Batman comic with a story that has almost no visual connections to the Dark Knight whatsoever? While the inevitable use of bats feels heavy-handed in the script, to Colak’s credit he at least makes the page alluding to Kate’s future look powerful and heavy-hitting.
But at the same time, if DC wants its digital offerings to find true purchase amongst the fan base, they’re going to have to deliver something more substantial than Batman: Gotham Nights. If you’re taking the anthology track, you’re going to need more than just two short stories to really justify an audience’s dollars — judging by how well yesterday’s Superman: Man of Tomorrow worked as a standalone story, I can only hope DC takes any future cues from the Man of Steel, rather than what feels like a watered-down outing with the Dark Knight Detective.