Gone Sideways: Batman #5 Review

Normally on Wednesday nights, we throw up a picture of the books we bought for the week and declare the end of broadcast for the day. This is because our local comic store is next to our local bar, and therefore by the time we get back to a computer we are normally hopelessly drunk. Tonight, however, the bar is closed for cleanup following a “human biological incident” that happened on Sunday, which is odd because I was there for hours on Sunday and can’t remember seeing anyone do anything like that. Or anything else, for that matter.

So I figured we might as well jump right in this week an do a short review of Batman #5.

This book is gonna get a lot of attention this week, for reasons that will become obvious as soon as you read it, but I’ll get to that in a minute. Let’s start with what I considered the biggest negative of this issue: it’s a Drive Batman Apeshit Crazy story. And Drive Batman Apeshit Crazy stories are pretty much a dime a dozen: Jim Starlin’s The Cult. Grant Morrison’s Arkham Asylum and, more recently, Zur En Arrh. The Jean-Paul Valley Batman / Punisher crossover… actually, that’s less a Drive Batman Apeshit Crazy story than a Batman Story that drove me Apeshit Crazy, but you get what I’m saying.

The point is, this issue isn’t exactly breaking new ground here; Batman’s been captured by the Court of Owls, drugged, and driven to the brink of insanity as he wanders through what appears to be their underground, labyrinthine headquarters. Batman is hallucinating, seeing giant statues and models of Gotham City while cameras pop in his face… all of which we will be shown later, when Batman is sane and sober, as little models and flashlights, props and blue smoke. I know this because I read it back when it was called The Cult in 1988.

So in short, the greater story of this particular issue feels like a retread. It’s a reasonably well-written retread – Batman keeps talking about how he keeps seeing the same things over and over again, which subtly brings across the idea of brainwashing, and some of his hallucinations are compelling. Clearly, writer Scott Snyder gives good nuts. Wait, that came out wrong…

Anyhoo, yeah, it’s an interesting story, but it’s not exactly a new one. But what is new is the way that Snyder and artist Greg Capullo tell it. Which is something that I won’t spoil here. Suffice it to say that it’s not something I’ve seen in a comic book before, and does better at commuicating Batman losing his shit than any owl hallucination. It’s a technical trick that elevates this book from retread to damn near must-read. And, in my opinion, it isn’t something that will translate easily to a trade paperback reprint, and if you try to read this on your computer, or even an iPad? You are cheating yourself. Make no mistake; what’s happening here is a gimmick like the old hidden ball trick: it’s playing fast and loose with the rules, and it only works on you once… but it works.

I don’t have much to add about Greg Capullo’s art that I haven’t said before: he continues to deliver a mix of Miller, Lee and Norm Breyfogle that works made-to-order on Batman. The hallucinations he draws in this issue remind me of Chris Bachalo’s art on Shade The Changing Man back in the 90s, which is welcome to me considering I loved that book. The only issue I have in this issue is that Capullo went out of his way to draw Batman with one eye out of his mask, meaning we get to see a lot of googly, batshit-crazy (Get it?) eye to hammer home that this man we’re watching hallucinate and yammer to himself is nuts. It didn’t need to be there, but what the hell; it’s good crazy.

This opening arc of Batman has been solid all the way through, and frankly, if this was a normally-written issue about Batman yammering like a spastic, I’d call it a misstep. However, the method that Snyder and Capullo use to communicate that feeling of being left-of-center, and of the repetitive nature of what Batman’s experiencing, elevate this book to something you cannot miss. Sure it’s a gimmick… but so is sno-cone oral sex and you wouldn’t turn that down either.

Buy this comic book. Not the trade, not the digital download, the comic book. You will thank me.