Today I'm going to be talking about Batman The Black Mirror, written by Scott Snyder with art by Francesco Francavilla, and JOCK. One things I want to say about this book is that this is one of my top three, if not my top Batman book of all time. I absolutely adored this.
The Artwork
Now this event has two artists at the top of their game. You've got Jock with this real heavy dark and gritty tone, almost almost noir-ish. Then you've got Francesco Frank of Villa, who seems like he couldn't be on a more opposite end of the spectrum. Very, very light on the line work, heavy on the color and the contrast, but that is what works.
There are two completely different styles telling two different stories. Jock's artwork is very rough. It's very sketchy. It's very needed. Every imperfection in the artwork is committed to an ink. Nothing is a erased and made pretty or clean in this, and I think that's really cool. Jock's art works great for this story because every imperfection in our hero, villains and in the city... every dark and gritty aspect...We see it and we feel it in all of those sketchy dark strokes.
Francesco Francavilla his art is almost alarming. Its bright colors, primary and secondary, just contrasting all the time. It's almost like sensory overload. It's dizzying and disorienting just like how Jim Gordon and Barbara must feel dealing with this situation within their family.
But what's crazy is, even though there is a dynamic contrast in these two artists, they're both minimalist, which I think is really, really cool in tying the story together so they don't overdraw. They keep it simple.
The Story
And with art this good, it's easy to even overlook the story, but the story is the icing on the cake. Now, Scott Snyder weaves a masterful tale over three different small Batman arcs and one Big Jim Gordon arc that is all woven together to become one cohesive story at the end. Now, that's not to say that the way that this story was written as three separate arcs, but all leading to what giant story is it without its flaws when you read this as a collected edition because it was done for issue to issue readers, it does feel like it could be taken up later. As a horror writer, somebody coming from that background has a really good handle on this type of darker, violent subject matter. It's a really scary story about a city that is hungry. That's voracious, that wants to consume and destroy its citizens.
I do think that it's kind of cool the parallels that you could draw from this story. If you look at James, if you look at Bruce, the two young men of Gotham shaped by the darkness with singular purpose, they both want to fix Gotham, and they both think that their particular way is the right way.
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And then you look at Dick and you look at James, and there's a parallel there with the father figures. They're both literally symbols of justice in Gotham... but the difference is that Dick's violence is weaponized and celebrated. James's violence, deplorable as it is, repels and repulses his father and his sister. It's some interesting parallels. There are some things being said subtly about how our environment can shape us and how the people in our lives can help us, one way or another to become the people that we are today.
Those are my thoughts are Batman The Black Mirror, two completely different artists merging together to create something brilliant, all directed by Scott Snyder, who's writing three different tales, all woven together to create something brilliant.
This was a great read.