Review: Gotham Academy Vol.1
Summary
Gotham City’s most prestigious prep school is a very weird place. It’s got a spooky campus, oddball teachers, and rich benefactors always dropping by…like that weirdo Bruce Wayne. But nothing is as strange as the students!
Like, what’s up with Olive Silverlock? Is she crazy or what? Where did she go last summer? And what’s the deal with her creepy mom? And how come that Freshman Maps is always following her around? And is she still going out with Kyle? P.S. Did you hear the rumor about the ghost in the North Hall?!
My thoughts
When I first heard of this new comic series I knew I had to get it. I love Batman (the movies) and I’m currently in love with the TV show Gotham. I hadn’t read any comics set in Gotham but always wanted to, so why not start with a brand new series?! Sadly I wasn’t as blown away by it as I hoped I would be.
The artwork
I liked the the artwork a lot. I only recently started reading comics because I rarely like the styles and how people are drawn, but this is one of the few cases where I actually liked it. Characters are drawn with a few soft lines which I prefer to “real” looking people.
As for the panels. On the one hand I liked how they varied and weren’t strictly ordered on the page and came in different arrangements. On the other hand I got confused sometimes because the panels continued in a way that not always made it clear that there was a change of setting/time passing between two panels. Maybe that’s just me not having read an awful lot of comics before but it could have been done better in my opinion.
The story
My main problem with this one was that I just expected something different. It was a typical case of “it is me, not you”. I knew this was going to be about younger characters (which is a first for me in comics) but it still felt somewhat childish to me. It was more like a middle grade adventure book and I was hoping for more crazy action than what I got.
It also didn’t help that I didn’t care too much about the characters and the whole mystery that was surrounding one of them was a bit too obvious for my taste.
I also wish that it would have had more of Gotham’s typical craziness but centered around a school and kids, I guess you can’t expect epic villains like the Joker. At least Batman has his part in it. I still hope it gets more interesting in future volumes though.
Overall
I’ll definitely read at least another volume to see if it picks up a bit but I’m not too impressed at this point. Maybe I should have finally read a Batman comic instead.
