Despite having been writing comics for 30+ years at this point, Garth Ennis has written surprisingly few mainstream superhero comics. He’s written frequently for both DC and Marvel but he tends to favour “street level” characters like Hitman for DC and The Punisher, Nick Fury and one very forgettable and short-lived stint on Ghost Rider for Marvel. So Ennis finally doing a mainstream superhero comic, and for the biggest superhero no less, is kind of an event, particularly if you’re an Ennis and Batman fan like me.
Disappointing too, because Batman: Reptilian #1 is really underwhelming and dull!
Someone is mutilating Batman’s rogues gallery (Black Label!) so Batman starts roughing up randoms in dive bars to find some answers.
Oh… it doesn’t sound like much of anything because it isn’t. Hmm.
In his dedication, artist Liam Sharp mentions that the original artist for this miniseries was intended to be Steve Dillon so this script has been knocking around for a while given that Dillon passed away at the end of 2016. Sharp is an unusual choice given that his art style is nothing like Dillon’s.
Sharp seems to be channelling ‘90s Simon Bisley/Dave McKean with his painted art for this series. It’s skilful and Batman looks suitably menacing though the villains’ character designs are among the worst I’ve seen in some time. Joker in particular is horrendous - in one panel he looks like a Blue Meanie from Yellow Submarine!
I’d been looking forward to this one for a while now so it’s a bit of a letdown that this first ish turned out to be so boringly empty and overstylised for no reason. Hopefully the series picks up going forwards - or maybe this lacklustre, uninspired effort is indicative of why Ennis doesn’t usually bother with superhero stories in the first place?
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