Batman: City of Madness #3 – Christian Ward, Writer/Artist
Ray – 10/10
Ray: Black Label has become an artist’s showcase in recent years, with solo outings by top talents like Cliff Chiang and Rafael Grampa, but none has delivered as spectacular a writing debut as Christian Ward. His chilling tale of a Gotham under Gotham inhabited by supernatural beasts delivered great scares, but is grounded by a simple tale of Batman trying to rescue a child from a twisted copy of himself. Accompanied by a ruthless Talon aiming to preserve the Court of Owls’ watch over Gotham Below, he descends into the depths, but it’s pretty clear from early on that Bruce and the doppelganger have very different approaches to the monsters that inhabit the depths. There’s a showdown with a monstrous version of Killer Croc that delivers some of the best action of the series, but behind it, the twisted Batman Below is shaping his “Robin” into a monster like him.
At the heart of this story is Bruce’s own trauma, as well as the way he was (sort of) healed by those around him. And below, a very different story played out. An Arkham Asylum invented as a place of healing and perverted into something very different by a horrible crime. A child traumatized and then abandoned. It all weaves together into a brilliant reveal that turns the Batman Below into one of the most disturbing villains we’ve seen yet in the comics in a long time. Where this story succeeds so wildly isn’t just in Christian Ward’s wonderfully surreal art, which feels perfectly suited to the Lovecraft-inspired story, but in the way it’s so rooted in who Bruce is and how Alfred was essential to his mission. There are some surprisingly emotional moments in this final issue, which hit all the harder when compared to the supernatural storytelling. I think this goes down as a new Batman classic.
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GeekDad received this comic for review purposes.
