Batman: Urban Legends #19 [Part One] - DC Comics

BATMAN: URBAN LEGENDS No. 19, November 2022

Leading with a twenty-two-page plot which could easily have held its own as a standalone comic book issue, Brandon Thomas’ second instalment to his “Signal And The Outsiders” storyline certainly seems to show just how a super-team should co-ordinate a multi-pronged infiltration of a villain’s nefarious headquarters. In fact, Metamorpho’s tense, well-penned exploration of Doctor Alan March’s Rose Creek Rehabilitation Clinic proves an incredibly intriguing experience, as both the likes of Katana, Black Lightning and even Batman, as well as the reader, wait with bated breath for the metahuman to give the word he has located Duke’s long thought dead mother.

Enjoyably, this sense of anticipation is arguably only heightened by Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque’s layouts, which prove particularly strong once Kirk Langstrom’s father-in-law transforms into a monstrous Man-bat and leads an attack upon the publication’s astonished protagonists with an army of zombie-like convalescents. These sense-shattering scenes are especially noteworthy as Signal is desperately trying to ensure that he doesn’t hurt any of the innocent invalids attempting to savagely stab him to death, and this concern is impressively pencilled upon the youth’s cowled face throughout the increasingly desperate confrontation.

Much darker and disconcerting in tone is Zac Thompson’s “Tiny Hands In The Dark”, which depicts Batman investigating a series of grisly murders which apparently point at a small, homicidal child committing the night-time mutilations. Gruesome in its depiction of slit throats and spilled human intestines, many within this anthology’s audience will probably be hard-pressed to imagine a more disturbingly sinister spirit to just a “Teen Rated” tale concerning the Caped Crusader, as the World’s Greatest Detective discovers the trail of corpses he's doggedly following leads back to the footsteps of the Monarch Theatre where his crime-fighting persona was born; “I like stickin’ peoples guts! I like swimming my hand in ‘em! Spillin’ em like psaghetti!”

Ensuring that this already decidedly grim yarn is even gloomier is Hayden Sherman, whose marvellous layouts atmospherically add a genuine feeling of claustrophobia to the storytelling, particularly once the true villain is revealed and the Dark Knight has to fight for his life against a real psychopath. Also well worth highlighting, as they add bucket loads of atmosphere to the “award-winning” author’s narrative, are Dave Stewart’s colours, which splatter all the pulse-pounding proceedings with a traumatic gizzard-pink hue.

The regular cover art of "BATMAN: URBAN LEGENDS" #19 by Dike Ruan