Batman One Dark Knight

Product Information

No more of Gordon from then on before he conveniently pops up in the last pages for a hackneyed twist. 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. If anything — and here even I’ll suggest I might be reading too much into it — there’s a little bit in terms of the colors Jock uses and the sparsest of homages that suggests to me a way in which One Dark Knight might be further understood. I just felt it was way too self-serious at times, the story never expands on any of the cool ideas Jock throws at the reader, and the mapped-out Gotham feels underused somehow. If the action is decently managed the plot itself reads as a rulebook which isn’t very entertaining when you’ve read so many already.

You can change your choices at any time by visiting Cookie preferences, as described in the Cookie notice. To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. 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. Starting at the end, what we come to find after Batman’s long trek across Gotham carrying the rogue villain EMP is that much of this was a setup. In this story, Batman has to take a dangerous criminal that every gang is out to get through the streets in a blackout.

I'm much more into story than art, but I will recommend this book, while it could have been better I still ended up liking it. Jock’s gritty Gotham is certainly appealing, but among a glut of continuity and non-continuity Bat-books, I’m not sure this one necessarily rises above the pile. s past crimes influencing the current situation involving street violence, vengeance and the occasional superpowers, One Dark Knight is at its best when it just embraces its action-filled premise that evokes John Carpenter’s films such as Escape from New York.

And I would still recommend this to those who like Jock’s Batman art or street-level Batman tales though. Jock has also produced key art and concept design for films including Dredd, Annihilation, Star Wars: The Last Jedi, and the Oscar-winning Ex Machina.

As a DC Black Label title, sure you have characters dropping F-bombs, but it is really an excuse for Jock to go unhinged with his art, which is some of his best work to date, with a greater use of double-page spreads, as well as Batman’s extravagant case having a mind of its own. I would say, however, that the book’s unrelenting, street-level violence put me very much in mind of the classic Jim Starlin/Bernie Wrightson miniseries Batman: The Cult, and a Batman logo from the Starlin era among Jock’s sketchbook cemented that impression.