Tuesday, July 29, 2008

God bless Steve Niles

Steve's writing the best Batman comic being published right now. Gotham After Midnight is a 12-issue mini-series that not only pits Batman against a creepy, new menace, but also against some of his classic villains who are mysteriously deviating from their standard methods of operation. It's super-fun and Kelley Jones is obviously having a great time drawing whatever insane things pop into his head. His Batman with the crazy-ass cape has never looked so awesome.

And then there's the most recent issue.



Okay, first of all, that title "The Malleable Menace" is awesome. But even better is the story that has Clayface learning to increase his size by absorbing more and more of Gotham's citizens. Eventually, he gets so big that there's no way Batman's going to be able to handle him the conventional way.

So of course Steve does the only rational thing and turns it into a giant robot vs. giant monster comic.



Ha! Look at Clayface's face! Issue #4 is going to be goooooood.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

One thing that bothers me about the Christopher Nolan series is that he'd never touch a villain like Clayface. He's even said that Penguin is "too unrealistic" to even be considered. WTF?

I think realism is only good up to a point...mainly until you begin losing the fun stuff. For example, it kind've bothers me that Nolan's Batman doesn't have that big exposed jawline. It may be (slightly) more realistic to have him tucked away in the cowl...but it also makes him appear a lot less confident and more vulnerable.

Anyway, "War of the Gargantuas" sounds like its going to be a pretty awesome issue.

Michael May said...

EXACTLY!

I love Nolan, and his movies are great, but they can't replace the comics. Gotham After Midnight is a perfect example of why that is if for no other reason than that you'd never be able to replicate Kelley Jones on the screen.

I'm okay with Nolan's sticking to the "realistic" villains as long as I can keep reading comics like this.

Anonymous said...

That GOTHAM COUNTY LINE series Niles did was great, too.

Michael May said...

Yes, indeed. Any comic that puts Batman in a jetpack is okay with me. :)

It's funny how it takes a horror-maestro to finally lighten up and have fun with Batman. (Okay, maybe Morrison and Dini are having a good time too, but I still like Niles best.)

Siskoid said...

I agree totally that this is the best Batman comic put out today.

A lot of it has to do with the art, but the crazy story is great too, and uses Batman as a detective, a gadgeteer, a fistfighter, and a superhero. I'm loving it.

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