Gotham Academy #5

[skemono]

When last we left our investigative heroine, she went into some hidden tunnels and found herself facing Killer Croc.




Croc flees, afraid that if anyone else knows he's there they'll blab and he'll be sent back to Arkham. Olive and Maps give chase, but he's blocked their path with debris. Fortunately, Maps has that nickname for a reason and can figure out where the tunnel he ran through leads. So they'll need to get help again to break in.



They persuade a student to distract the headmaster so they can sneak out of a school dance to break into the headmaster's office to retrieve some supplies to clear the path to follow Croc (man, no wonder Maps thinks the world operates like her RPGs). But that might prove a mite difficult...




As they cross the grounds, Olive sees Batman against the sky and shoots him with the crossbow. Only, it wasn't Batman.



He tells Olive how he met her last summer:



And for some reason Professor MacPherson asked him to keep an eye on Olive after this. Seems that's more your responsibility, professor, but what do I know?

Anyway. They get to Croc, so we can have a B:tAS joke:



Cue Batman.


Writers: Becky Cloonan & Brenden Fletcher
Artist: Karl Kerschl

Comments

[lucean]

In the current Batverse, we have this story about a Gotham Academy that is basically an young adult adventure, a weekly series which is burning Gotham to the ground, a main book which is currently about an absolutely brutal psychological and physical struggle between two individuals, a secondary book which focuses on street level events, detectives and police work, another book which focuses on mythological and mystical horrors of Gotham, a book which is about a relationship between a parent and a child (Dead Lord I hate Damian) and two semi spinoffs with one dealing with quirky adventures of Batgirl and the other with Grayson's moral and spiritual struggles while being deep undercover. In addition the same character is a core character in the collection of most powerful heroes in DCU. And all of them are certain degrees of awesome to me, even if I really, really hate Damian, as shown by these scans.

Anytime someone asks me why I love Batman and the Bat-verse as much as I do, I can just point them to stories like this and asks them what other character has been able to support such a rich storytelling world that allows stories like this to effortlessly co-exist with all the other aspects.

And sorry about going a little bit off-rails, thanks for posting this as it again reminds me to collect it.

[skemono]

Uh, if you hate Damian that much, you might not want to collect Gotham Adacemy after this first arc.

[big_daddy_d]

I love the little scamp so that will be a bonus for me personally. :)

[jaxjyls]

and Damian is getting his own solo book, so yay for us Damian-fans

[ebailey140]

And don't forget the other spinoff about the adventures of the crazy clown girl.

I'm really enjoying the variety in the Batbooks, these days.

Oh, and loved the shout out to the 90s animated series. "I threw a rock at him!"

[ebailey140]

Well, it's clear from the most recent issue that Damien is going to be the main antagonist of the next arc, so disliking him may just help.

[mrstatham]

I'm really looking forward to the first trade of this in a couple of months. And I really like that - while slightly goofy - they're keeping a more interesting and varied approach to Croc, a la his appearances in Batwoman and Eternal, rather than just making him a big evil cannibal monster man.

[tigerkaya]

I'm impressed by some of the depictions of croc in the New 52. Between being Roy's intervention in drugs, to being this king of the morlocks and now being this silent guardian its nice to see a bit more humane Waylon Jones over "I'm a cannibal fear me!"

[silverhammerman]

Yeah, I've said so elsewhere, but Killer Croc works surprisingly well as a sympathetic character, and turning him into a cannibalistic monster is basically the least interesting thing that can be done with him.