Review: An Unexpected New Beginning In ‘Batman’ #1

There have only three Batman #1s before 2025. It’s a special milestone to have the fourth, and it’s even better when the debut is the best Batman has been in a very long time.

Matt Fraction, Jorge Jimenez, Tomeu Morey, and Clayton Cowles kick off the next big era of Batman with a whole new Gotham.

Waylon Jones has escaped from Arkham Towers. But Batman isn’t just hunting one of his most brutal and monstrous rogues. Killer Croc is mutating but Batman is about to find something unexpected in an even more monstrous Croc.

I knew I was going to like this just based on the creative team. Fraction’s work always has a baseline of good — often great. Meanwhile, Jimenez and Morey have established themselves as one of the definitive Batman art teams of the era. It would have needed to bomb hard to be bad.

Thankfully, it exceeded my expectations.

First of all, the story delivered. Most of the issue was focused on the single issue adventure — Batman hunting down a dangerously mutated Croc, Waylon Jones without an ounce of humanity. But then Bruce takes a breath and instead of the brutal confrontation the issue had been building towards, Fraction shows readers that he gets Batman on a deeper level than most writers do.

Instead of beating up the angry and feral Croc, he takes off his cowl, and sits with the child-like giant, and sees the world through his eyes. Waylon is no longer an animalistic monster, he’s a broken child, trapped in the body of something frightening. In an instant, the issue went from a strangely cynical Batman that’s acting out of character to showing the right way to write Batman — the same hero that has lollipops in his utility belt to calm scared children.

And all of that is ignoring how Fraction builds his version of Gotham City subtly the entire issue.

I started to struggle a little with Jimenez at times during his run with Chip Zdarsky. Here though, something about this script reignited what he had before. His design work through the issue is great — the script is extremely tech heavy, and Jimenez delivers each time a new gadget is introduced. On top of the designs, the storytelling is excellent. His layouts are clear but energetic, and all of his figure work looks fantastic.

The other side of the equation is Morey. His colors make the newly designed suit come to life, but he also gives Gotham so much personality. Instead of the reds of the Zdarsky run, or neon glare of Tynion, here he fills the pages with blues and complementary shades that set a tone in the story and show how different this is from the past. And I love what he does with Jimenez’s tech designs to deepen them. 

Cowles has become one of the strongest parts of this creative team. He mixes well done dialogue pacing with the unique elements Fraction always adds to his scripts. Here it’s strong location captions, creating a sense of true place for Gotham, and identifying the tech in short, snappy captions. Both have a great sense of identity for this run, nailing what Fraction was going for in his script.

Batman #1 is available now from DC Comics.