Excellent, it's excellent.
There's real care taken with the story. Everything is weighed, placed and sequenced to perfection. For the first time since the Titans book came back, I was thrilled. Gone is the feeling of a clumsy Titans reunion (I didn't really like the story with Neron), finally something concrete. Tom Taylor has stepped up a gear. The pieces of the story fall into place one by one with great precision. Amanda Waller bides her time. There's a sense of danger and impending doom. Nicola Scott does a wonderful job. His pencilling is exceptional. The scenes are vividly rendered. Well done, Nicola. I can't wait to read more. more

REVIEW

The first thing that stands out in Gargoyle of Gotham #1 is Rafael Grampá’s unique style of dark and twisted illustrations. From the opening panel to the closing “to be continued” box, the visual tone of this book is unabashedly Grampá. As a Dark Knight story about a serial killer, the art is gratuitous and Grampá doesn’t hold back with plenty of blood spilled. On one page, Batman pokes the eyes out of a henchman in gory fashion.

The killer Batman is hunting has an unhealthy obsession with an older cartoon with a dark past and one of the more interesting visual representations in this first issue is a scene involving said killer watching old reels of the cartoon as he waits for Batman to find him. Grampá employs a black and white palette for these panels to great effect. The killer himself is always shown entirely in black with pops of white to highlight his eyes and his penchant for crying on cue. It’s a captivating look that isn’t matched by equally compelling character. The cartoon obsession allows for an interesting visual yet it doesn’t do anything to create much in terms of complexity for the character. The final page reveals that he has a connection to Bruce from long ago, which was both highly predictable and entirely uninspiring. This type of motivation or explanation for villains’ fixation on Bruce Wayne/Batman is overdone and lazy.

This new villain is a microcosm for my main problem with this issue (and my worry for the rest of this miniseries) — it all looked great yet nothing in the story felt like it was breaking new ground, exploring new depths of Batman’s psyche, or providing a new wrinkle to the Dark Knight lore. Batman wants to become a darker version of the Dark Knight and eliminate the public life of Bruce Wayne so he can achieve it? That’s a tough story to tell when it’s already been done in the iconic work of Frank Miller. It’s all been done before so any writer looking to attempt a story about it needs something to establish their story as a worthy addition to the Dark Knight pantheon.

There’s a random monologue from Batman about the ills of Gotham being perpetrated by the city’s wealthy elite. In theory, it’s not a concept I disagree with. However, it’s quite the u-turn from Batman’s recent defense of Gotham’s aristocracy from Catwoman’s plans in Battle Lines. These two stories aren’t happening in the same universe but it was still a weird argument for Batman to make when that opinion didn’t come back to mean anything in the context of this issue.

Another random scene that fell flat involved Alfred posing as “the biggest collector” of the artist who created the villain’s cartoon obsession. Batman puts him up to the task of paying a visit to the artist’s widow hoping to learn more about the cartoon and it’s blatantly obvious that Alfred is in over his head. The widow calls out several inconsistencies with Alfred’s story and yet doesn’t feel any cause for concern as to a strange man in her house? Not of it made any sense.

FINAL VERDICT

There are three issues left for Grampá to establish his own perspective, but, as the review’s title implies, this story came off as Dark Knight Rises fanfic. And mediocre fanfic at that. When the pitch said the limited series was Grampá’s “twisted vision of the Dark Knight,” I didn’t realize how much this would echo Miller’s Dark Knight stories, including Batman planning to fake the death of Bruce Wayne. Such strong connections to those iconic tales make it hard not to compare the two and, unfortunately, Gargoyle of Gotham can’t stand up to Miller’s work. I worry that we are treading into the territory of DC wanting a really cool visual and being ok with whatever story was paired with it.

Rating: 5/10 more

Poor characterization with soap opera writing.

As gripping as the best slasher films. I never really have the urge to “skip ahead” when reading comics, but this arc has had me jumping to the bottom of the right page just to see what happens.

Jacob Phillips is at least as good as his dad, and the art gets a lot of room to breathe thanks to Chris Condon’s brevity and frequent use of silent panels. Condon is a strong writer who doesn’t need to cram a bunch of dialogue into every page to tell a good story. more

This book took a major u-turn with this issue and not for the best. First issue was good and seemed interested in telling a good story. Here we just get big doses of weird lefty ideas and I can't say I enjoyed that. Plus I just burst in laughter when I saw how Ivy looks here. She's fat because lefties think being fat equals "eMpOwErMeNt" but she just looks ridiculous, especially because being a femme fatale was always a major part of her character. Kinda hard being a sexy femme fatale when you look like you're stuffing your mouth with fast food 4 times a day. There still are some decent ideas but the quality took a serious blow here, especially during the second half of the issue which was horrible and I am starting to worry about what kind of book this will turn out to be. more

Yeah, this was a weird one. 3 for the Penguin story, biggest wtf from this book, 5 for the Scarecrow one. I have to take the time though to talk about G Willow Wilson's story which is truly horrendous. I liked that she at least admitted, unintentionally though, that Ivy is an extremist and a terrorist, that's something a lot of people have forgotten these days, they just consider her heroic because she kills people who are polluting. Also, I laughed out loud at the cringy dialogue between Ivy and Janet. "You look gorgeous in a non-harassment kind of way"??? Who the hell talks like that? I'm pretty sure no real person has ever uttered those words. Yeah, it's a 1 for this story, is just wrong on so many levels. 7 for the Red Hood story, 6.5 for the Mad Hatter one, 7.5 for the Killer Moth one, 8 for the Ra's one and 6 for Talia's story. All in all, pretty disappointing one-shot, I expected a lot better, though it's par for the course for DC in the last years, they don't put good talent on these books. more

This is very, very bad. The biggest waste of money I've spent in a long time. I basically just bought myself an excessive period of boredom. Guess I've got to be more frugal when it comes to comic books in the future. Oh well. The least I can do is complain about it online in a vain attempt to persuade people not to buy it. Ah, who am I kidding? Nobody's gonna see this.

"Bird Cat Love" is just weird. I didn't expect it to be well-written, but even Dan Mora's art looked blander than usual.

"The Fearless Man" mostly confused me. The art's pretty nice to look at, but I had no engagement in the story whatsoever.

"Ophiocordyceps Lamia" was fine. The art was very pretty and I mostly liked how Ivy was written.

"For the Sky is Red" was pretty solid. It definitely had a powerful ending.

"The Perfect Fit" was just way too much exposition. The most boring story in a very boring collection of stories.

"The Happiest Man in Gotham" was my favorite. It took advantage of its short page count and was a nice, surprisingly wholesome story.

"Demon's Game" just felt like a very cliched and uninteresting R'as al Ghul story.

"The Second Eye" had its moments, but ultimately ended up pretty bad. more

It's been a looong time since I've read Long Halloween, so I may not have picked up on everything here, but what we got was pretty good, I guess. Nothing mindblowing. Tim Sale's art is definitely not on the level it once was, but they still manage to make some cool images across the one-shot.

It goes without saying that this has been worth the 25 year wait. Loeb & Sale are back and on fine form.

What really struck me about this book was that it both managed to capture spirit of the original without feeling dated at all, showing that some comic book series are in fact timeless.

I know that many, including myself have always found the last page reveal in the Long Halloween disappointing, that it was a twist for twists sake and didn't add anything to the story. And that's where this book comes in. Due to that twist a set of stakes are set up which really adds a tension to the story.

I can only hope this book does well enough that DC invests in a new series from this incredible team.

Loeb dialogue is minimal and tight which gives the book great pace, and knows just where it needs to hit with a laugh or dramatic reveal.

And as for Sale's art. Perfection. His work is minimalist and atmospheric in a way few others can even approach.

If you are a fan of the original series, then this is a must read. But please, don't do into this blind or having only seen the animated movie. more

Absolutely fn amazing the next great DC book

The only disappointing thing about reading this issue was finishing it and realizing I have to wait another month for more. The whole series has been strong, but Condon has been really hitting his stride in the past couple issues.

I bought this because I’m a fan of limited series, one-shots, and self-contained graphic novels. I like to avoid stories that require you to keep up with series X or Y to figure out what’s going on. This was advertised as a self-contained Huntress story, but was actually a part of whatever is going on in Detective Comics. Not much happens, and you don’t learn anything about the character. This went in the trash because I’m running out of room in my comic boxes and will never have a reason to reread it.

The art was solid. more