Listening To The Demons Within — Reviewing ‘Batman: Dark Patterns’ #6

Personal defense mechanisms take many shapes and sizes. Say, for example, creating a whole new gangster related ventriloquist’s dummy persona.

The newest holder of the Scarface identity has led Batman on a merry chase of mystery. With the lives of everyone in the building on the line, the Dark Knight makes one final move against this semi-foe. It all comes crashing down as Dan Watters, Hayden Sherman, Triona Farell, and Frank Cvetkovic wrap up Batman: Dark Patterns second mini arc.

Between this title, Absolute Wonder Woman, and Into The Unbeing, Sherman is absolutely killing it in comics right now. They’re pushing every boundary and just delivering on what variety and gorgeousness this medium is capable of.

The big. The small. The confined or the free. It doesn’t really matter. Sherman masterfully showcases everything and makes the spaces feel deep and intricate. They bring those levels of depth and detail which really wrap the audience into the story. Their work is mixing and matching, really giving everything a very familiar tangible almost realistic flavor while still presenting it with such fantastical whimsy.

It just feels like Batman.

It seems easy to say when there are a million Batman books being published up and down the timeline. Yet, there is a very distinctive line for artwork that just screams perfectly Batman. Not to say that other artwork is not good or doesn’t work for the character. No, there is just something about some art that seems to breathe with the dark knight in just the right way.

This is that case.

Paired with those pencils is a color palette with lots of washed out and toned-down baseline bits that accentuate those which are wilder and more vibrant. Farrell has worked on quite a number of Bat-related pieces, giving her the right insight into what those parts of the DC Universe should look and feel like. Part of that means encompassing everything with just the right level of shadows or darkness to befit the dark part of the knight name, while still keeping it somewhat light and hopeful, because at his core Batman still radiates those things under the right lens.

All of the artwork has this really gritty roughness attached. Helping build that street-level sort of feeling through the whole endeavor. It’s matched with the way that Cvetkovic handles the lettering. He lets the words move from lighter to heavier at any given moment, with just some minor shifts, altering fonts and bubble shapes to create the perfect voices we’ll be hearing in our heads the whole time.

Meanwhile, Watters just gets Batman.

It’s as simple as that. These stories are so intrinsically Batman from start to finish, swimming within the pool that is his dark knightness at all times. Choosing to go with the multiple small stories, with minor connections, was a brilliant one. We have a self-contained adventure which allows us to really see the character in action and do the detective thing at an equal level to the hero thing.

Not something we get at all times.

At the same time, the villains are perfectly in line with what we want from those Batman faces. Complex, flawed, sympathetic to an extent and not just cackling evil masterminds. There can only be one Joker, and the rest need to be at least understandable rather than a chaotic force of nature. We get that here with the Scarface situation- A woman who lived in an abusive situation needing an escape and power, finding it through the wrong means.

I like that there is no actual resolution here, as with the last story. Yes, we like to see the hero “triumph” at the end, but sometimes things are not neatly wrapped up in life. Most likely this is all leading somewhere through the remaining two three-part tales of the series. Even then, I imagine Watters will not put the absolute neatest of bow on things. That’s just because a large part of this run so far is how the messy world affects people and how we can’t always stop or save that.

Batman: Dark Patterns #6 is now available from DC Comics.