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

Batman: Urban Legends #18 [Part One] - DC Comics

BATMAN: URBAN LEGENDS No. 18, October 2022

For those readers of Brandon Thomas’ “Signal And The Outsiders” who weren’t familiar with “the events of The Caretaker and The Fearful”, this opening tale to Issue Eighteen of “Batman: Urban Legends” probably wouldn’t have made too much sense until the twenty-two page plot is at least half-way finished. Sure, the narrative eventually suggests that Duke and his team-mates are primarily fighting for the planet’s future in some sort of three-battle competition against Vogel the Lord and his Subterranean Forces. But these scraps of context are only fed to the audience in a piecemeal fashion as the main narrative focuses upon the teenage vigilante’s obsession in finding his dead mother and difficulty in getting enough sleep.

Happily however, despite this uncertainty as to what is actually going on, Alberto Jiménez Alburquerque’s artwork more than manages to hold the attention until the adventure is played out, courtesy of some particularly well-pencilled set-pieces and wonderfully dynamic splash pages. Indeed, quite possibly this yarn’s best moment comes when the Spanish illustrator draws an adrenalin-charged chase through the streets of Gotham City as Batman tackles the evidently ‘mad as a March hare’ Wonderland Gang.

Far more straightforward, though a tale which simply doesn’t stop in its relentless drive to reach a somewhat succinct conclusion after only ten pages, is “Blood In And Blood Out” by Henry Barajas. Crammed full of depictions of the Caped Crusader battering away at a great mystical eye whilst the demon Etrigan confronts his adopted brother Lord Scapegoat, the pulse-pounding pace of the ensuing carnage begins just as soon as the “Latinx author from Tucson” quickly establishes that Bruce Wayne has bought the haunted Huitzilopochtli Statue so as to return it “back to Mexico’s Museum of Anthropology.”

Sketching all this chaos and insanely fast shenanigans is Serg Acuna, who does an excellent job of drawing both the Dark Knight in his prime, always one step ahead of his foe no matter how bizarre they may be, and the joy had by Jason Blood’s yellow-hued alter ego as he repeatedly batters his goat-headed sibling at the foot of a truly unholy-looking altar. Furthermore, the graphic designer impressively shows that there is much more to the character of Randhir Singh than just being a psychic-skilled ally of Etrigan; “This makes him your half-brother!”

The regular cover art of "BATMAN: URBAN LEGENDS" #18 by Liam Sharp

The Unexpected #4 - DC Comics

THE UNEXPECTED No. 4, November 2018

There’s arguably a hint of desperation behind both the promotion and penmanship of Issue Four of “The Unexpected”, considering that “DC Comics” declared Steve Orlando’s narrative for the twenty-page periodical involves “a race to save Gotham City from exposure to the toxic Nth metal” and it crams in no less than three of the Burbank-based publisher’s current ‘bigger named characters’ within its utterly befuddling plot. For whilst “Answers In The Sky” alludes to the Caped Crusader’s metropolis being where the membrane between our reality and the Dark Dimension is at its thinnest, the New Yorker’s treatment hardly depicts Neon the Unknown dashing anywhere in particular so as to save the “fictional American city”, nor is it ever justified why Helena Bertinelli's alter-ego knows so much about "the poisonous Nth metal." 

Indeed, the greatest danger to Batman’s home town would seemingly be the incredibly dislikeable Firebrand and her increasingly grating sense of self-righteousness; “I am [here to fight] whether I want to or not! Don’t you get it? I don’t have the luxury of that choice, because of how you people handle things!” Just how Colin Nomi contrivingly teleported himself and his fiery friend within the proximity of the Huntress is never convincingly explained, yet it soon becomes evident that it’s the very presence of Janet Fals and her disagreeable desire to battle all and sundry which is putting every Gothamite in danger, courtesy of the loose cannon’s “aggression triggering the Nth Metal isotope.”

Such constant rage genuinely becomes tediously overbearing real fast, as the former paramedic launches into Bertinelli and then later the Signal without any rational reason except perhaps to inject a bewildering script with unfounded action sequences. Admittedly, the crossbow-armed Bird of Prey does strike first and Firebrand needs to “start a fight once every twenty four hours” in order to maintain her super-human abilities. But that doesn't explain why no sooner have the pair’s differences concerning Fals bringing “a dirty bomb into a city of millions” been physically resolved than Janet, supposedly sizzled “back to my senses”, then shockingly socks an unarmed Huntress in the mouth simply for voicing her (entirely correct) opinion that the Conflict Engine-driven ‘heroine’ is “out of control.”

To make matters even more unbearable though, once a surprisingly mature and calm Duke Thomas arrives on the scene, Neon’s travelling companion goes into ‘hostile overdrive’, patronising the “kid” one moment as if the always-angry recent addition to the DC Universe is actually the one trained by Batman, and then in the next threatening to beat the costumed crime-fighter to a pulp even when he makes it clear “I’m not here to fight” by helpfully whisking the travellers off underwater to the Bat Cove.

Storytellers: Yvel Guichet, Cary Nord & Scott Hanna, and Steve Orlando