This review dives into full spoilers for Batman #1. For a spoiler-free reaction, check out our advanced review here.
About halfway through Batman #1, Batman encounters a Morpho Menelaus, a butterfly species that is usually found in Central and South America. It’s a beautiful, bright blue butterfly – and blue butterflies symbolize transformation, rebirth, change.
The blue that Tomeu Morey colours the butterfly in is in a similar shade to Jorge Jimenez’s newly designed Batman costume. These butterflies surround Batman and Killer Croc as Matt Fraction writes a beautiful conversation about believing in change, because if there’s one word to describe the first issue of this new Batman issue, it’s empathy.
After all, if there’s anything the best stories about our favourite Caped Crusader encapsulate, it’s that people can grow and be better people. It started with Bruce, after all. His parents’ murder changed him, and he worked to be a better man with the help of Alfred. He then paid it forward, helping his Robins to be better people, allowing a space to change.
But Batman is also a cynic, even as he tries to be optimistic. After this many years in his career, how much more can he allow himself to believe in change, especially when things are cyclical? Is that faith misguided?
Matt Fraction, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey and Clayton Cowles’ first installment in their Batman saga – titled “Vast Colours in the Dark”, tackles this question in an issue that is almost entirely standalone (except for the final page, which sets up #2). This is not Fraction’s first time tackling the Caped Crusader, he did a story with Chip Zdarsky and Aditya Bidikar in Detective Comics #1027, and of course, his DC debut with Steve Lieber in Superman’s Pal Jimmy Olsen!
But this take is different from those, it’s more akin to the Detective Comics story, but even then it’s a more jaded Batman. Fraction has said many times that his style changes from run to run, and that’s true even in this case. He’s got a little Hawkeye in the toys and gadgetry, taking a little Miller in the TV screens and the Gotham showcase (as all good Batman writers do), but after all that is something new for Batman, and not just from Matt, but from Jorge and Tomey as well.
Jorge Jimenez and Tomeu Morey have been on Batman for 5 years now, and they continue to innovate. Just that cityscape in page 6 and 7 is unlike anything they’ve done on Batman before, and then there’s the rest of the story, which looks them, but also new. Put some pages of issue 1 alongside their Batman #125 with Chip Zdarsky and you’re going to see a change in how they portray a story.
Clayton Cowles brings it together in a neat bow, gone is the grey narration box for Batman, in is the blue alongside his costume. The little icons that show off the specs of his gadgets are a nice touch, and I love the changes in colour and size for some different characters throughout the story.
It’s lovely to see Gotham be a character again. That spread of the city showcases a cultural and architectural melting pot. From gothic buildings to modern cityscapes, printed billboards to digital billboards, streets rife with people and traffic, it’s a city full of life that has a very unique identity. Fraction said he spent a year mapping out Gotham to give districts their own identity, gangs their own neighborhoods. You can see that playing out in issue 1 with the Creeps, who talk like the Mutants from Dark Knight Returns but have their own visual style.
Really though, it’s the conversation between Batman and Killer Croc that brings the issue together for me as my favourite debut of the year. The issue opens with Killer Croc having escaped Arkham Towers, where he self-reported for treatment, and that’s where we get Batman’s cynicism of whether or not people can change. He finds out Croc’s whereabouts by noticing the Morpho Menelaus, leading him to the Gotham Natural History Museum. As he prepares to fight him, he notices that Croc has in fact changed, and sits down to converse with him.
It’s a beautifully illustrated sequence of pages, as the butterflies fly around Bruce and Waylon. The former empathizes with the latter, trying to understand, trying to help while a third character comments on the conversation. After all, one of our greatest strengths as people is to just listen sometimes, to be a shoulder to lean on, and that’s something that the whole team here shows off beautifully. It also helps that the issue itself has a one page fight, with the rest surrounding itself on building a world as Batman grapples with whether he can have faith in people changing, to enforce its meaning structurally.
“Some creatures do, in fact, change.”
Definitely go pick up Batman #1, and then get a subscription to go along with it. It helps that it’s not decompressed mess and is one complete story in a package, so give it a shot. I’m sure you’ll dig it.
