Gotham Academy: Second Semester vol. 2 — The Ballad of Olive Silverlock

The spirit of Amity Arkham has possessed her descendant, Olive Silverlock, and it’s up to her friends Maps, Olive, Colin, and Kyle (with a little help from Damian Wayne) to save the day.  Aside from a vengeful pyrokinetic spirit, the only things standing in their way are Two-Face, The Penguin, an animal-headed secret society on the Academy grounds, and some centuries-old Gotham secrets.  It’s a lot, to be sure, but happy endings aren’t given away — they have to be earned.

So it’s a little bit disappointing to see the storytelling in this volume regress a bit back to frantic pace that dragged down its second volume.  After a nice haunted circus one-off, the four-issue title arc kicks off and dives headfirst into raising the stakes with the appearance of some A-list Bat-foes while the kids try to puzzle out the mystery of Amity.  It shows that main writer Brenden Fletcher (Becky Cloonan and Karl Kerschl are once again credited as co-plotters here) was trying to cram in too much story here as the plot jumps awkwardly around as the story reaches its climax.  Not helping matters is how an unwelcome and unconvincing twist sees Maps lose confidence in her best friend.

THIS IS NOT SOMETHING THAT MAPS WOULD DO!  The real star character of this series is utterly devoted to her friends and Olive most of all.  That’s something this series has made clear from the start and it’s character details like these that will keep you invested in the story to the end.  No matter how crazy things get, you’ll want to see things through to the end to see how the kids earn their happy ending.  (And if you’re me, sigh at the fact that Damian never became a proper member of the cast because he really does make a great fit for them.)  Some people may lament the fact that this series never found the single-issue commercial success it deserved.  The catch here is that “Gotham Academy” did get the chance to tell its story to completion, warts and all, over the course of these five volumes.  Which is all the success any series can hope for.