Batman: One Dark Knight by Jock Review

GCPD are preparing to transport a dangerous meta-villain from Arkham to Blackgate - but Gotham’s gangs have other plans. The villain in question has electro-magnetic powers which get triggered once the convoy is attacked and soon Gotham is in a city-wide blackout. Batman must single-handedly carry the unconscious prisoner to Blackgate on foot through the dark night, while dodging the roving gangs, intent on ending both lives before the dawn arrives…

Jock is the latest artist who’s having a bash at writing as well as drawing and, like most such experiments, his Batman book, One Dark Knight, is One Bad Comic. It is woefully written and so stupid that I can’t review it properly without going into SPOILERS so I’ll say that now and recommend everyone who’s leaving the review here to save yourself the time and effort, don’t bother picking it up and avoid this utter drek entirely.

Everything about the premise is contrived. Why are they transporting the prisoner in the evening? Because then new character Edward M. Pressler, aka EMP, (woah - his initials are the same as electro-magnetic pulse, which also happens to be his power set!!1) can cause a blackout at night-time for the story to be set. Also, Gordon tries to dissuade Vasquez from doing the operation on this particular night because the city is all hot and bothered right now - yes, that’s the actual reason he gives! Wha… ?

Joining EMP is another new character, Rita Vasquez, the Head of the Prison Bureau of Gotham City, who conveniently happens to have major beef with EMP. So, all of the gangs in Gotham (by the by, THIS many gangs still operating in the city? Batman must be mega crap at his job!) unite to kill EMP and Batman. There’s no reason given for why they want to do this but I’m going to be charitable to Jock and suggest that he meant to imply that Vasquez was offering a substantial bounty for them killing EMP - because this simple explanation is never once mentioned in the dismal script.

But if Vasquez wanted EMP dead so badly, why does she create this entire plan of moving EMP from one location to another across town, especially as it then attracts the involvement of Batman, a major impediment to its success - if she has the resources to have all the gangs in the city, along with a number of GCPD, in her pocket, why doesn’t she simply use that reach to have EMP killed while he’s resident at Arkham? And why is she trying to use EMP’s son - who also happens to have the same power set - to kill EMP instead of just letting the gangs do it? It’s all so needlessly convoluted.

It’s such bad writing: the gangs are simply generic bad guys with seemingly no motivation while the main bad guy has a generic motivation and the ending is so cheesy, with the villain monologuing their entire diabolical plan only for Batman to reveal he was recording it all for the cops the entire time. It’s Scooby-Doo-level writing.

One Dark Knight would make a decent storyline - for a video game. Because I can see something like this working well as an Arkham game premise. That would also explain the abundance of gangs on the streets: plenty of targets for the player to have fun beating up, like in Arkham City, because the best part of the Arkham series was the fight mechanics of those games, which was second-to-none.

But as a story without the gameplay? It’s completely brain-dead and uninteresting to read, making its flaws all too noticeable. Jock is one bad writer and this Batman book is an amateurish waste of time.