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| ARKHAM MANOR: ENDGAME No. 1, June 2015 |
Despite being a Bat-title and forming part of the
multi-issue “Endgame” story-arc which highlighted the return of the Dark
Knight’s most memorable nemesis The Joker, this one-shot does not actually even
contain a mention of the Caped Crusader, let along actually feature the
character. But that doesn’t necessarily mean that Frank Tieri’s storyline is a
bad one. It isn’t. However his rather bizarre twenty-page ‘prison break’ plot is
not a terribly good tale either.
Purportedly the ‘grand finale’ to the
short-lived six-issue run of “Arkham Manor”, this comic has been officially
described as answering the question “what do Batman’s villains do on the
craziest night in Gotham City?” Disappointingly they apparently all simply ‘club
together’ and follow an ex-con hospital guard in a somewhat surreal attempt to
escape their incarceration within Bruce Wayne’s former home… and “make it to
the stairs.”
Admittedly there may well be some semblance of logic to such a
narrative. The former writer of “Grifter” manages to cram the vast majority of
Batman’s Rogues Gallery into his yarn. With the likes of such notable villains
as The Joker, Victor Zsasz, Bane, Mister Freeze, Clayface, Clownface, Poison
Ivy and the Mad Hatter all potentially being ‘big draws’ for comic book fans.
But in order to incorporate so many ‘familiar faces’ the American author has had to use
them sparingly and certainly can’t afford for them to utilise their super-powers;
otherwise Clayface would have simply smashed a route to freedom through the
nearest brick wall.
Instead Tieri has to limit their roles to that of
inconsequential ‘sidekicks’ and give the lion’s share of the story to former
Blackgate inmate turned security officer Stone. Such an anaemic use of such
recognisable classic criminals is rather disappointing and leads to
some truly irksome scenes, such as where Bane, a man powerful enough to have actually
‘broken the Bat’, inauspiciously asks his gaoler to “get us out of here.”
Perhaps the biggest
anti-climax however has to be this magazine’s final reveal that the white-faced
green-haired lunatic responsible for shutting down the prison’s electrical power
and releasing ‘Joker gas’ throughout the facility is not actually the Clown
Prince of Crime but a mentally deranged Jeremiah Arkham. Whilst a somewhat interesting
conclusion, the sudden spiral into insanity for the institution’s warden would
perhaps have been something more worthy of a multi-issue story-arc than a humble
one-shot.
Putting aside the inadequacies of this comic's writing, especially
as the escapees headlong dash through Wayne Manor is actually quite entertaining at
times, this periodical ultimately disappoints because it features the artwork
of no less than four different illustrators. Just why Flexi Ruiz fails to illustrate
the comic’s middle five pages is something of a mystery. But no more so than Editor
Mark Doyle’s decision to utilise the drawing skills of Roberto Viacava and
Walden Wong for just two of the missing sheets, and then Christian Duce for
another three. To be brutally honest none of the artists are likely to ‘set the
comic book world on fire’, but Duce’s manically smiling Joker and heavily lined faces do stand out as the better panels from the bunch; especially when they’re printed directly alongside the rather wanting pencils of Ruiz. In addition Nick Filardi’s consistent work as colorist also goes
a long way to ensure that each transition is essentially unnoticeable.
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| Writer: Frank Tieri, and Artists: Felix Ruiz, Roberto Viacava with Walden Wong, and Christian Duce |
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