Two issues of Rafael Grampa’s new Batman series have now come out which gives me enough material to give you a sense of what the book’s got going on with it.
A brief background of my experience with Grampa’s work; this is only the third full comic of his that I’ve read. Previously, he did Dark Knight: The Golden Child with Frank Miller, but the first comic I saw of his was his graphic novella Mesmo Delivery.
Grampa’s art is immediately recognizable and his Batman design is unique in the same way that Paul Pope’s Batman Year 100 is – totally specific to the artist. No matter who takes a crack at the design, it will always be recognizable as their design.
Grampa and DC’s Black Label are the perfect fit as he brings a unique artistic voice to Batman as a character and provides an art style that you can’t find anywhere else in comics.
For me, the Black Label line is the only exciting space in ‘Big Two’ comics due to their allowance for singular creators or high-level teams to go and do their thing with little perceived interference from the rest of the publisher’s lineup.
The stories from the line that I’ve read are self-contained and do a good job of being comprehensible for the casual reader with a very basic understanding of the character featured within.
With Gargoyle of Gotham, Grampa is bringing a different flavor to the book. Gordon is beset with Catholic imagery, and there are some little tweaks to the origins of Batman for the story Grampa is telling. Most of these involve the relationship between Gordon and Bruce Wayne.
There’s a secondary plot involving class warfare, which feels less thought out. Elsewhere, a character is waging a campaign against corporate overlords on behalf of the poor, and her talking points are very rote surface-level class warfare diatribes.
We’ll see where it goes, as my hunch is that she’s going to get Bruce Wayne to use Wayne Industries as a philanthropic agent of social justice alongside his efforts as Batman, or nudge Bruce Wayne into becoming an ‘anti-billionaire billionaire’ – or something.
If I’m being charitable, there may also be an element that gets lost in translation between Brazilian Grampa’s view on the politics of class and an American one. These asides don’t quite sink the book, but they are an afterthought compared to the rest of it.
Because they come across as high-school angst levels of political thought, they detract from the impressive art on display.
The tac Grampa takes with Alfred and Batman is similar to the one taken in The Batman, where they are somewhat at odds. He also uses the trope of Batman trying to kill Bruce Wayne. There are a lot of similarities between the new movie and this book in their handling of the characters. While I thought it worked in the movie, it feels less successful here.
From a functional comics storytelling perspective, there are a few places where scenes transition too quickly and leave you a little disoriented with the location changes and how/why a character went from place to place.
Grampa and his colorist, Matheus Lopes, use a mix of full color and black & white plus a sort of film-stock look to differentiate between things playing out in flashback, present, and within the projections-cum-projection rooms occupied by one of the villains.
These choices are very successful, though some of these flashback threads play out over the two issues. If you don’t re-read issue #1 before issue #2, several details can easily be glossed over.
This relates more to the problem with periodical comics that are designed in part for collection. While each issue ends on a nice cliffhanger, they benefit more from being read back-to-back.
Production-wise, Grampa’s art would have been well served to have been printed in the larger format most of the other Black Label books have been printed in. Instead, it’s regular-sized and while DC keeps upping the cost, they are cheapening the paper stock, which is very thin here.
Comics are fortunate because there is a mix of things that go into them and the success of one element can supersede the failure of others. In this case, the narrative is lacking, for me, across these first two issues. However, it’s an aesthetically enjoyable book via Grampa’s incredible artwork throughout.
Does that make up for the narrative? Your mileage may vary.
I can see the political tangent being very frustrating for many – and make no mistake, the politics in the book are eye-roll-inducing. Yet Grampa’s art is so damn good that I have a hard time putting it down.
Nevertheless – and it pains me to say it – I’d have a hard time recommending this book so far to most passive readers. I’ll re-assess when the whole thing has been released so I can see if it all ties up nicely. If it does, I’ll get back to you with good tidings – hopefully.