Batman by Matt Fraction vol. 1: Daylight
It’s a new day in Gotham, and… things are actually kind of different. Jim Gordon is now a beat cop. Vandal Savage is running the Gotham Police Department. There’s a new villain known as the Minotaur controlling the city’s criminal underworld with an algorithm of crime. An assassin known as Lady Death Man (or Ojo) stalks the streets. There’s also a new doctor in Arkham who’s genuinely trying to help its most criminally insane inhabitants… or make them go even crazier than they have before – it’s really too early to say. What hasn’t changed is that Batman is still fighting to keep the city’s streets crime-free, and he’s got a new light-blue suit to do it in.
While “Absolute Batman” has seemingly sucked up all of the sales, acclaim, and discourse regarding the character in past months, the most recent “Batman” relaunch from writer Matt Fraction and artist Jorge Jimenez hasn’t done too badly for itself either. People have been praising its lighter tone, strong character work, and ongoing storytelling while also saying that we’re currently living in another golden age for the character. I wouldn’t go that far, based on this first volume, even though this is definitely one of the better superhero stories I’ve read from its writer.
Fraction is a writer who I like, yet he’s also been a very uneven one over the years. One need look no further than his run on “Invincible Iron Man” which had him steering the character’s adventures in the wake of his groundbreaking first movie to initially thrilling, then dismal, then thrilling effect again. If anything, his best-loved series at Marvel, “Hawkeye” with David Aja and friends, shows that he’s the kind of guy who thrives when working on lower-profile characters that he can be as eccentric as he wants with. See also the glorious “Superman’s Pal: Jimmy Olsen” maxiseries which should’ve jumpstarted his DC career right then and there, but didn’t for whatever reason.
He’s here writing “Batman” now and if you’re expecting to read something that really upends the character and gets you to look at him in a whole new light… this isn’t it. He’s still fighting villains on the streets, about to deal with a new criminal mastermind who’s been building an empire right in his backyard, and dealing with a GCPD that’s now openly hostile towards him. Some of the pieces have been rearranged on the board, but this is still very much “Batman” the same as it ever was.
And yet, there’s a relaxed charm that flows through this volume that’s quite appealing. While the first issue jumps around to get us acclimated to the current state of Gotham, along with a newly escaped Killer Croc, the expected confrontation never materializes. Batman takes out some thugs, makes sure pedestrians are all right, and then just talks Croc down when he realizes that the brute isn’t jonesing for a fight. Subsequent issues do raise the stakes – a Robin gets shot, the Minotaur makes his violent debut, assassins threaten Bruce Wayne’s date night – yet the story always makes time for digressions to show its protagonists at their most human, or that they’ve got things under control. This is a comic that not only flashes back to showing how Bruce taught Tim Drake to drive a stick shift, but in the process of showing how that becomes relevant to the present day tells us that the Batmobile has thirteen gears with three of them alone for spatiotemporal crisis events with the thirteenth gear itself being “secret.”
In short, this is a comic that likes to show its characters doing cool things and have them enjoy themselves while doing so. Nowhere is this more evident than in the fifth issue where Bruce’s date with Dr. Annika Zeller when assassins on motorbikes with swords show up. Not only does Bruce get to show off his driving skills by using this regular car as a weapon against his assailants, but he even manages to save a lock of Dr. Zeller’s hair after it gets cut off. It’s all incredibly stylish fun that keeps getting bigger until the issue’s end where a slip-up from Damien threatens to undo everything that’s come before.
Making all of this look effortlessly stylish is Jimenez, who’s now on his third “Batman” writer after James Tynion IV and Chip Zdarsky. It’s rare to see an artist with that much staying power on a single title these days, yet the series is lucky to have him as his “Justice League” work from a few years back showed that he was star material. His work here has a thinner line with a more wiry look to it that’s still very appealing and conveys an impressive kineticism. That car battle sequence in the fifth issue – hell, the whole issue, really – is some best-in-class work and it’s good to see that he’s continuing to stick around for the foreseeable future.
If you’ve read enough “Batman” over the years to the point where only radically new takes on the character will get you out of bed, then this isn’t the comic for you. Fraction and Jimenez aren’t reinventing the wheel here, they’re just making sure it looks cooler than you’ve seen it recently. Which is enough for now, even as the setups for longer-term plotting are multiple and varied as they’re established here. To bring it back to the current state of “Bat”-comics, “Absolute’s” dominance may actually be a good thing for this series. With all the attention on that title it’s clear that Fraction is free to enjoy himself on this one and the fun is infectious so far.