Batman: The Imposter Review (Mattson Tomlin, Andrea Sorrentino)

In just three years, the Batman has made a huge impact on Gotham crime - but that good work is threatening to be undone as footage of “Batman” executing unarmed prisoners emerges. There’s an imposter out there - but who? Batman and Detective Blair Wong set out to uncover the mystery.

Mattson Tomlin is one of the screenwriters on the Rob Pattinson Batman movie out this week which I’m sure is how he got to write a Batman comic despite having no previous comics credits. And The Imposter reads like a proper comic but it’s also not a very good one either.

Tomlin’s Batman is younger than usual - early to mid-20s - with a more grounded take on the character and his world, focusing on how someone could realistically be Batman: setting up zip lines around the city, rather than relying on the dubious grappling hook, and stashing motorbikes to get around quickly. It makes me wonder if this is what we can expect from the Pattinson movie too.

Not that that’s a bad thing in itself (there’s a detail over why he’s not got access to his family’s billions that’s a clever touch) but I think Tomlin’s fallen into a typical pitfall when writing Batman which is that he's gone much too dark and overly serious. Sure it’s more grounded but it’s also not fun. Sometimes a deathly serious tone works but it’s better if a writer has earned that right by building up to it in a series - which Tomlin hasn’t.

Andrea Sorrentino’s realistic art works well with the story approach, and he does his best to make the pages lively despite Tomlin’s verbose script, but the effect sometimes is that the pages look too busy for what is often a fairly straightforward scene - there’s too many boxes and word balloons cluttering things up, so many of the pages don’t breathe. The lack of colour too adds to the oppressively gloomy atmosphere of the book.

Elements like one character having the same tragic backstory as Bruce, implied domestic abuse between Wesker and his son, and another character blowing their brains out don’t help either. At the end of the day, it’s a story about two guys dressing up as bats and fighting each other - I’m not saying it should swing to the Batman ‘66 end of the spectrum but a little levity would’ve gone a long way.

Still, I appreciated that Tomlin didn’t pick any of Batman’s usual rogues for the story - Arnold Wesker/The Ventriloquist and Otis Flannegan/Ratcatcher are the two here, both depicted less as villains and more as broken, sad people (realism!). The overall coldness of the book is I think partly due to Alfred, who often serves as the warm heart of Batman, and Gordon, a stalwart confidante, both being excluded from the story - in this timeline Alfred abandons Bruce while he’s still in school and Gordon’s off the GCPD for reasons - so Leslie Thompkins, presented here as Bruce’s therapist, has to step in to nurse Batman’s wounds.

Mirroring seems to be a theme in this story: the Imposter is Batman without his moral code, and Wong is Bruce without his money/desire to mete out vigilante justice, although neither seem to be presented as options we should be favouring. Because what Bruce and Batman are in this book instead is kind of a boring alternative to both: humourless, dull, and quite one-dimensional overall - effective though, apparently.

The romance subplot didn’t really add anything and felt contrived while the reveal of the Imposter’s identity was underwhelming. There are also a couple of sloppy narrative beats, like when some robbers say “He’s real?!” when they see Batman, as if we’re meant to believe no-one in Gotham has seen this figure over the past three years despite having such a supposedly seismic effect on crime. And then later on Batman breaks into Wesker’s facility effortlessly but he needs Wong’s help to break into the GCPD? Come on, it’s the same thing.

There’s not a whole lot to recommend The Imposter. The main draw is Andrea Sorrentino’s art but details here and there show that Mattson Tomlin has put some thought into his realistic take on the character, and it’s a fairly coherent narrative. However it’s also uninteresting, too grim, and ultimately very forgettable. Here’s hoping the new Batman movie is more compelling.