Things get theatrical in Gotham Academy #10 written by Becky Cloonan and Brendan Fletcher. Art by Karl Kershl with MSASSYK, color Serge Lapointe
After an apparent vision of Calamity, Olive’s mom’s villainous alter-ego that has been appearing to her, chases everyone from the thespian club with a fire, the director Simon Trent is left without a cast. Olive volunteers instead. Creepy Katherine appeals to be in it too, but Trent is rather dismissive. As Olive and friends a sandbag is cut. Turns out “Katherine” is much much more than she seemed, bringing to mind one little girl from The New Batman Adventures. Â The mystery just keeps spinning from there.
POSITIVES
Olive is certainly compelling and I really want her to find some answers. The slow information being revealed about Olive’s mom is both smartly breadcrumbed but also frustratingly slow so it is in a way a double edged sword to the book. This issue was rather good but still. I liked the cameo (hint: Clayface) villain of the month.
NEGATIVES
Art is still beautiful but as Karl Kershl wraps up and some art is done by MSASSYK the original feel the art has been a bit diluted. There were fewer really “wow” pages this issue, but nevertheless you can’t say this is bad artwork by any means and some pages are striking in their composition. While I like the immediate continuation from the first issue, I feel like there’s a flighty if not alm
ost amnesia-like feeling that permeates the book. I’d like a few more scenes having everyone regroup and actually talk about all the bizarre things that have been happening and are centralizing upon Gotham Academy. These kids have been through a ton and it sort of seems like it’s become just a casual thing to be attacked by your gym teacher and have giant fires every other week, let’s immediately be in the play. Olive of course has the best carry through of emotions from event to event and the most frequent pauses to show that she’s thinking about it all, but even she is swept up in the “okay moving on sorta” narrative. I’d like to see that improve a little there.
VERDICT
Still going strong and the mysteries surrounding Olive’s mom and the Calamity entity and Olive’s own powers are all really good. I’m excited to see where it continues to go but I think plotting needs to be a bit more weight and decompression. Just seems odd at times.
