In Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #4, Writer Andy Diggle, Artist Leandro Fernandez, and Colorist Matt Hollingsworth show no sign of slowing down in the latest installment of their globe-spanning 18th century epic.
Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #4 cover by Leandro Fernandez & Dave McCaig. Image: DC Comics
Title: Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #4
Writer: Andy Diggle
Artist: Leandro Fernandez
Colorist: Matt Hollingsworth
Letterer: Simon Bowland
Cover: Leandro Fernandez & Dave McCaig
Variant Cover Artists: Martin Simmonds & Chris Weston
Release Date: September 11, 2024
This comic book review contains spoilers.
The Story
In Colorado, the sole survivor of a train crash stumbles out of the wreckage: arealist huckster Alan Scott. The woman he was seated with bleeds out, but not before entrusting him with the coveted emerald Ring of Jong Li. The League of Shadows assassins who derailed the train in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #3, are after the ring as well, but when they attempt to retrieve it from Scott they are incinerated by the ring’s burst of green energy.
Back in Gotham Harbor, a vessel carrying a new shipment of contraband is ambushed by the Batman himself. After dispatching the crew, he leaves the captain with a final demand: “you smuggled assassins into my city. So if you ever want to take another breath, you’re going to tell me everything you know about the League of Shadows!”
Zipping all the way down to Antarctica, we catch up with professor Adam Strange who is coming to terms with the apocalyptic implications of what Diana of Themyscira told him last issue. The two of them board a ship for South America in the hopes that Bruce Wayne will be able to get them an audience with the US President, so they can share with him what they know.
Next, we get our first glimpse of Victorian Metropolis and a very analog Daily Planet. Turns out a corrupt business tycoon named Lex Luthor wants to buy the paper and hothead reporter Lois Lane isn’t happy about it. She’s convinced it’s part of a larger plot by Luthor, which involves buying up mines in rural areas such as Smallville, Kansas, and she wants out there to get to the bottom of it. It takes some convincing, but editor Perry White finally agrees and sends Lane along with freckle-faced photographer Jimmy Olsen to get to the bottom of it.
Finally, in what’s been named “Luthorville Minehead, Kansas,” Lex Luthor recruits a man named Victor Stone to assist him with select science experiments he’s conducting. When Stone asks for clarification on exactly what Luthor means, he guides him to a vaulted room inside the mine where a man is being electrocuted at high voltage.
Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #4 variant cover by Martin Simmonds. Image: DC Comics
Analysis
If you’re worried about the creative team behind this book being able to maintain the high standard they’ve set for themselves, rest assured. All the things that are great about the first three issues are still great in Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #4. Namely, the propulsive globe-spanning narrative and the intriguing artistic representations of the 19th century DCU. Much like I praised the Holmesian tactility of Leandro Fernandez’s Batcave, I was thrilled to see the post-industrial Daily Planet full of papers and books and scrolls and cubbies.
Notably, Batman seems more and more like an afterthought as Diggle’s scope continues to zoom out to include more corners of the DC Universe. That doesn’t mean I don’t like the glimpses of him we get here. I like the way the officers aboard the contraband ship talk about Batman: “They say the bat can’t be killed! Say it’s a vengeful spirit, summoned up by the heathens for what we done to ‘em.” The rumors are appropriately cranked up for a time period when people were more prone to superstition.
Alan Scott’s deadly metamorphosis into Green Lantern is brutal and well handled even if it’s only afforded a handful of pages. The same is true of Lex Luthor and Victor Stone’s introduction, which leads me to my main problem. Andy Diggle’s ambitious scope causes the narrative to jump around so much, it prevents me from getting emotionally invested in any one character.
After four issues of setup, the book is at risk of developing a problem with narrative momentum. We’re now following 10 independent threads (not counting flashbacks) that have yet to meaningfully intersect:
- The Kent’s discovery of a Kyrptonian meteorite in Kansas.
- Selina Kyle and her home for destitute women.
- The League of Shadows and their pursuit of the Ring of Jong Li.
- Adam Strange and Wonder Woman leaving an Antarctic expedition to warn of an alien threat.
- Queen Victoria conferring with John Constantine in the crypts of Balmoral Castle, Scotland, to bring about glory to the British empire.
- Alan Scott coming into possession of the real Ring of Jong Li in Colorado.
- A Martian awakening on Mars.
- Lois Lane and Jimmy Olsen convincing Perry White that they should investigate Lex Luthor.
- Luthor’s mining operation and human experiments with Victor Stone.
- Oh and don’t forget this is a Batman book, so he’s in the mix as well.
What this means is we end up getting little more than a handful of pages before jumping across the world to follow an entirely different storyline. And Andy Diggle’s penchant for dramatic revelation is such that we often switch scenes just as something incredibly interesting is about to happen. Now obviously this is an old storytelling technique, and it can work great, but it’s at risk of being overused when nearly every scene in the past four issues has ended that way.
Since we’re right at the 1/3rd point of this arc, we should be nearing the end of first act setup and entering into the period of more substantial narrative collision. Let’s just hope Diggle has a plan for all these spinning plates.
Unfortunately this issue is not a showcase for the strongest of Leandro Fernandez’s art either, but it has its moments of visceral efficacy in scenes like Batman’s assault on the contraband cargo ship in Gotham Harbor. On the flip side, he has an unfortunate tendency to draw certain characters with prominent front teeth, which leaves Lois looking like Shelly Duvall and Jimmy looking like a cross between Moe Howard and a post-transformation Peter Pettigrew.
Matt Hollingsworth ends up being the real MVP of the issue, giving every page a welcoming and satisfying balance of colors. He has a real talent for creating a dynamic page from color perspective, careful not to let any one pallet overly dominate a layout. A good example of this is the first page establishing Gotham Harbor: Full of cool blue fog, but with a single burst of hot red in the water’s reflection of a buoy.
