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Batman #12 Review
By Dan Horn
August 14, 2012 - 17:24
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
Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12