Batman, Volume 1: I Am Gotham by Tom KingMy rating: 2 of 5 stars
Well, that was an unexpected disaster to walk into! Got this off Netgalley, which was super-exciting because I never succeed with the comics department. But, unfortunately, despite my initial excitement to get into another of Tom King's works, this was achingly bad.
Having recently completed King's superlative The Vision, Volume 1: Little Worse Than A Man, I couldn't wait to see what he would do now that he had his hands on a Batman title - what I didn't expect was the disparity between this volume and all of The Vision.
'I Am Gotham' is a frenetic, poorly paced, poorly judged series. Batman has no substance, and the newly introduced characters are nothing more than extras fighting for panel space. There's Duke Thomas, whose role is little more than that of an analyst - I didn't see the point of him cropping up from time to time, only when Batman needs him. He has no personality, no ambition, no plot.
The characters this series is based on, Gotham and Gotham Girl (yes, commence eye-rolling now), are haphazardly thrown into the mix. Suddenly they are of importance, yet they add no value to the series, or to Batman. Bats decides to team up with them, but his dealings with them are all backwards. Their entire story arc is cliched - it's painful how cliched it is. And Gotham Girl is there only for decoration. She's hardly ever on screen (or on page, as it were). She's badly drawn (what's new, she's a typical anime recreation with bobble-head and giant eyes) and has the most ridiculous outfit ever (seriously, how have her legs not frozen from all that flying?). I don't get why she's called Gotham Girl, but her brother is just Gotham. Why not Gotham boy? Just because he's male, he doesn't need a gender tag for his codename? Then why does she? I initially thought she was his daughter (she's drawn small enough to be a young girl, especially next to his oversized muscular frame), which would at least have made the discrepancy in their codenames understandable - but no, they're siblings, and that makes it worse.
Spoilers up ahead.
Not only is the dawning of their superhero cravings contrived (yet another young boy almost witnesses the death of his parents in front of him), but their story hinges on yet another emotion-manipulating villain who turns her - get this - scared, and him, angry. But, of course. Gotham Girl spends an entire issue shaking like a leaf, while her macho dudebro smashes Gotham to pieces. She then goes totally crazy, shaving off her head, talking to her dead brother and weeping all over Bats. My eyes have rolled so far back in my head it's not even funny.
End spoiler.
The writing and dialogue is atrocious. Dialogue is re-hashed over and over again, running around in circles and not making much sense. Alfred is the king of snark, which would work well were it not for the timing of it all. People are dying, Bats is headed to his death, this is hardly the appropriate time to be making jokes.
Oh, and Amanda Waller is thrown into the mix as well, but I still can't figure out what the deal is with that.
There's a Justice League moment in this series, which... honestly, it lasts like one page, I can't even remember what they were doing here.
I read DC comics sporadically, but more often than not I find myself regretting the decision. This series is truly appalling, and I can't get my head around the fact that Tom King wrote this one. I feel like his connection and love for The Vision far outweighs his interest in Batman, but Bats is a gig no one can refuse; the lacklustre result appears to prove this theory anyway. I'm guessing it's quite similar to how JJ Abrams pretty much took Star Trek through the mud, but successfully embodied the Star Wars universe in The Force Awakens because that's the one he's a real fan of.
This is all conjecture, but the worry is that this is but the first volume of 'I Am Gotham', I shudder to think where the rest of the story is going. I hope it gets better, but it's unlikely I'm going to be looking out for it.
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