Boston, 1968, and 8 year old Bruce Wainwright, a huge fan of Batman comics, suffers the tragic loss of his parents during a burglary of their house. While Officer Gordon Hoover investigates, Bruce’s great uncle Al(fred) does what he can to help the boy over his trauma. A year passes. If only Batman was real - he’d have brought the criminals to justice by now. And then something decidedly Batman-like descends upon the city to fight crime - a creature of the night. But is it real - does Batman exist in our world too??
Kurt Busiek sets out to do for Batman with Creature of the Night what he did for Superman with Secret Identity: provide a different take on a well-defined character by playing around with their story and the audience’s expectations. And, so far, he’s successful with Creature of the Night #1.
Busiek’s real-world approach to Batman’s origin is decent enough and it was cute to see the familiar yet slightly different pieces slot together the way they normally do; nothing too exciting but not bad either. Where Busiek takes the story towards the end, mixing in the fantasy horror element into the realism is when I really started enjoying the comic and it’s firmly hooked me to keep reading the rest of the series.
John Paul Leon’s realistic art lends weight to Busiek’s story though it isn’t the most appealing style for me. I liked that he switched it up for the comic book sequences, going more ‘60s cartoony, adding variety to the visuals while also showing his range.
My only major complaint about this comic was Clem Robins’ lettering - the cursive for Alfred’s caption boxes was killing me! I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: cursive lettering should not be used in any comic and I hate that it’s a feature of too many Batman comics (mostly the Legends of the Dark Knight ones). It is so insufferably hard to read and completely unnecessary!
Anyways, Batman: Creature of the Night #1 is a good comic and a very promising start to this (Elseworlds?) four issue limited series - definitely looking forward to reading the rest!
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