Following up “Batman: Arkham City” is no easy task. The story in that game was sublime, and managed to cut to the core of both Batman and Joker’s characters. So when it came time for Peter J Tomasi to write the followup comic in “Batman: Arkham Knight” #1 I’m sure I wasn’t the only person who was a little skeptical.
WRITTEN BY: Peter J Tomasi
ART BY:Viktor Bogdanovic, Art Thibert
PUBLISHER: DC Comics
PRICE: $3.99
RELEASE: March 11, 2015
For the most part the comic succeeds at picking up all the important threads left over by the previous game. The story picks up immediately where things left off, and Batman gives Joker’s body over to the GCPD. Of course even the Joker’s body has a trick up its sleeve.
Narratively speaking this story has a lot going for it. The stakes are high, Gotham is in disarray after the fall of Arkham City, and Batman is exhausted. The Arkham Knight is introduced albeit subtlety and it works wonders to build intrigue around the titular character. Plus there is the ongoing mystery of exactly what the Joker was up to even in death.
Tomasi spins these multiple plates with relative ease. Nothing gets overly complicated or takes up too much of the page count. It never feels daunting or unmotivated. That is, up until a point in the final third of the story. There is something here that defies explanation or even any sort of resolution. It puts Batman in mortal danger and then immediately resolves the problem by showing nothing.
Narratively I found this to be a huge bump, and something I couldn’t get over as I flipped toward the final pages. Just what the hell happened and why do I feel like I missed something drastic. I went back and reread the section and still nothing is clear.
Despite this, the art in the book is serviceable. Everything has a slightly orange hue in the coloring, and manages to capture the feeling of the video game universe. But there is nothing stunning about the work on display. Paneling is conventional and the storytelling is by the numbers.
So with my insane amount of anticipation going into this debut, the burning question is: did the book live up to my hype? And the only answer is – sort of. It certainly picks up threads left over from the last game, but doesn’t really begin with the bombastic opening I’ve come to expect.
The book meanders for a little while, in a thoughtful place of retrospect and mounting tension, but when the tension finally snaps, the result is a confusing narrative choice that defies. Yet, I still find myself looking forward to #2.