Batman: Dark Patterns #1 Review

On a very foundational level, most of the Batman stories I read growing up were tales where he had to do detective work. The Court of Owls, Year One, and The Long Halloween, all operate on the basis that he’s a detective first and foremost. It’s my favorite aspect of the character, and any Batman story that shows him working his way through a puzzle is sure to grab my attention.

Written by Dan Watters, with art by Hayden Sherman, colors by Tríona Farrell and letters by Frank Cvetkovic, Batman: Dark Patterns #1 is a book that caught my attention as soon as it was announced. The creative team definitely helped, I’ve loved Watters’ work since I first read his Azrael stories in Batman: Urban Legends and his recent work on The Six Fingers definitely got me hyped. Hayden Sherman’s current work on Absolute Wonder Woman is legendary and redefines how Wonder Woman’s books can look.

Batman has a benefit that a lot of other characters do not, which is simply how mythologized he is, to the point where you don’t need to reintroduce him again. Everyone knows him, everyone knows his deal, and Watters uses this to his advantage to throw us right into the meat and bones of the story at hand without falling into a lot of ‘#1-isms’ that we see in comics today, where the first issue is more spent on explaining our protagonist and our status quo rather than just diving right in.

“Three years of stalking her streets at night have taught me there are heinous things in Gotham I can do nothing about. I cannot save people from themselves. Instead, I grit my teeth against the pitch-black tumult of her chaos… and wait for a light to cut through the dark.”

Watters handles this really well through the dialogue. Within the first five pages of this 24-page comic, we’re told that this is a Batman in his early years, explained through his narration in which he talks about his outlook on Gotham, as well as dialogue that tells us Gordon is still a Lieutenant. Gotham is treated as a character too, in conversation with everything. For your Detective tale to work, your setting needs to have personality, and Watters shows off that personality. But this effect isn’t only possible through the dialogue, it’s also through the art, and Hayden Sherman is so brilliant at it.

Hayden’s work on Absolute Wonder Woman feels revolutionary because of how they compose pages, using circular shapes and other unconventional means to show off flow that makes you read differently. Batman: Dark Patterns is more of that. Sure, there are more traditional pages, but there are more pages that show why this is a story that only works within the sequential art format. In the opening pages alone, Bruce going down to the cave and wearing the suit is juxtaposed against other panels that show off the dread of Gotham he’s talking about, selling the impact and making you feel just how Bruce feels. Farrell’s colors perfectly emphasize the tone too. It’s dark and moody, just like the story, with Bruce’s symbol always shining a bright yellow, even in the dark. The suit is also a blend of the ‘89 one from the Keaton movies with the eyebrows from the ‘66 West look, and it is beautiful.

Cvetkovic’s letters are also perfect, in line with the flow of Sherman’s panels. My only nitpick is that I wish the font on Bruce’s monologue was more in line with Batman: Year One’s cursive, given that this book is set around that time frame, but I also understand that the cursive lettering is hard to read for people. 

To go back to the narrative, I really dig how the mystery unfolds. Usually, when I read a mystery in comics nowadays, it’s hard to follow through given they’re usually structured like J.J. Abrams’ mystery boxes, but this feels concrete. You as a reader don’t feel lost in the shuffle, but rather you’re picking up the pieces along with Batman, and even if you’re a few steps behind the World’s Greatest Detective, you’ll still catch up to him eventually, and that rules. The villain of the story, based on The Wound Man, creates a really interesting dilemma for Batman too. How do you fight someone who you can kill even with a light punch? That’s interesting. The usage of Hans von Gersdorff’s diagram also works great for this, especially for people who have watched NBC Hannibal, which also uses the same diagram.

By the end of #1, something I was left thinking was, “Why isn’t this a story in the Detective Comics title? It fits right in with the title, it’s a detective story.” But I digress because Batman: Dark Patterns #1 is the third in a series of Batman titles published by DC this year that show off why he’s one of the most flexible cape characters, alongside Ram V, et al.’s Detective Comics: Gotham Nocturne and Scott Snyder & Nick Dragotta’s Absolute Batman. If you want a great detective story, I cannot recommend this enough. The team crushed it.