Scan barcode
A review by billyjepma
Batman Vol. 4: The Cowardly Lot by James Tynion IV
adventurous
mysterious
tense
fast-paced
4.25
This is the best volume of Tynion's run yet, by a decent margin. You can tell that he's pressing up against editorial at times (something he's even admitted to), as the story sometimes feels like it's straining against the boundaries that Future State has given it. But even within that framework, Tynion develops one of the most timely, brutal, and exciting versions of Gotham we've gotten in a long time. I haven't been this high on a volume of Batman in a while, and man, it feels good.
The Mayor of Gotham is losing popularity, so he aligns himself with someone who can convince the city that they need him. How does he do this? By finding a former prison guard—with a documented history of brutality that's been conveniently lost—and turning him into an unstoppable force of violence. What's the first order of business for this new brand of Super Cop? Take a group of social revolutionaries, frame them as actively violent terrorists, and position the new overpowered police force as the only solution to a fabricated problem. The plot might be elevated and exaggerated by its superhero trappings, but it doesn't take a scholar to see the obvious parallels to our current social and political climate. It fucking rules.
But even if you take the political thematics and tensions away, you've still got a pretty good superhero story. It's a lot of setup for the Fear State event, but it's a very effective setup, as it succeeds in getting me interested in a comic event instead of actively dreading it. I'm not as enthused about the pacing and wish there was a little more time devoted to the Unsanity Collective's motivations, but more of this worked than didn't, and by a considerable margin. I think Tynion's settled into his supporting cast, too, as I really enjoyed everything with Harley, Barbara, and even Ghostmaker, who I very much didn't like in the last volume, and yet was somehow won over by in this one.
It helps, too, that Jorge Jimenez continues to produce ridiculously stellar artwork. He makes every page feel like a visceral shot of adrenaline to my corneas and has such a tremendous eye for motion that every action sequence practically leaps off the page and punches you in the face. He draws an excellent Barbara Gordon, and his Harley Quinn is a delight, and he never misses an opportunity to make Batman look like the ultimate badass. Morey's sharp, visceral colors are also killer and give the comic a vibrancy that's as mesmerizing as it is brutal. I love the neon-tilts and noir-adjacent vibes Morey gives Jimenez's art—it makes the comic feel like it takes place in a John Wick movie, and it's awesome. Oh, and the lettering uses bat-symbols to censor the (ample) profanity, which is such a genius move that I can't believe it hasn't been the standard for years.
So yeah, I dug the hell out of this. It's got plenty of stuff I could nitpick, but that's going to be the case for any superhero comic, and this gave me just about everything I've been hoping to see from Tynion and a little more. It may not stand very well as a standalone story, so its ability to stick with me will depend somewhat on whether Fear State delivers. But I hope it does because there's a great foundation in these pages that I hope leads to an appropriately satisfying ending to Tynion's time on Batman.
The Mayor of Gotham is losing popularity, so he aligns himself with someone who can convince the city that they need him. How does he do this? By finding a former prison guard—with a documented history of brutality that's been conveniently lost—and turning him into an unstoppable force of violence. What's the first order of business for this new brand of Super Cop? Take a group of social revolutionaries, frame them as actively violent terrorists, and position the new overpowered police force as the only solution to a fabricated problem. The plot might be elevated and exaggerated by its superhero trappings, but it doesn't take a scholar to see the obvious parallels to our current social and political climate. It fucking rules.
But even if you take the political thematics and tensions away, you've still got a pretty good superhero story. It's a lot of setup for the Fear State event, but it's a very effective setup, as it succeeds in getting me interested in a comic event instead of actively dreading it. I'm not as enthused about the pacing and wish there was a little more time devoted to the Unsanity Collective's motivations, but more of this worked than didn't, and by a considerable margin. I think Tynion's settled into his supporting cast, too, as I really enjoyed everything with Harley, Barbara, and even Ghostmaker, who I very much didn't like in the last volume, and yet was somehow won over by in this one.
It helps, too, that Jorge Jimenez continues to produce ridiculously stellar artwork. He makes every page feel like a visceral shot of adrenaline to my corneas and has such a tremendous eye for motion that every action sequence practically leaps off the page and punches you in the face. He draws an excellent Barbara Gordon, and his Harley Quinn is a delight, and he never misses an opportunity to make Batman look like the ultimate badass. Morey's sharp, visceral colors are also killer and give the comic a vibrancy that's as mesmerizing as it is brutal. I love the neon-tilts and noir-adjacent vibes Morey gives Jimenez's art—it makes the comic feel like it takes place in a John Wick movie, and it's awesome. Oh, and the lettering uses bat-symbols to censor the (ample) profanity, which is such a genius move that I can't believe it hasn't been the standard for years.
So yeah, I dug the hell out of this. It's got plenty of stuff I could nitpick, but that's going to be the case for any superhero comic, and this gave me just about everything I've been hoping to see from Tynion and a little more. It may not stand very well as a standalone story, so its ability to stick with me will depend somewhat on whether Fear State delivers. But I hope it does because there's a great foundation in these pages that I hope leads to an appropriately satisfying ending to Tynion's time on Batman.