BATMAN: REPTILIAN
Full scale attack
Batman’s shiatsu technique was a bit extreme.
ISSUES 1-3 Veteran comics author Garth Ennis may have written plenty of well-known characters over the last three decades, but it’s safest to describe his relationship with superheroes as “complicated”. His comics have always showcased a healthy distrust of superheroes as clean-cut, costumed do-gooders – most notably in his ultraviolet satire The Boys – and that outlook is a major factor in his latest work for DC.
Reptilian is a six-issue Black Label miniseries that takes place out of current DC continuity, which gives Ennis carte blanche to pull off some deliriously nasty shocks and portray a much darker Batman than usual. The story itself is relatively simple –a new reptilian adversary (who doesn’t seem to be longtime Bat-foe Killer Croc) arrives in Gotham, and starts hunting down and dispatching Batman’s enemies in terrifying ways – but Ennis builds tension and embraces the horrific tone, while also going against his usual instinct for gory shocks by leaving the most extreme violence off-page.
These first three issues feature a high level of gallows humour, as well as some merciless questioning of Batman’s crimefighting ethics. Ennis’s bleak and pitiless version of Batman is a deliberate throwback to comics of the late ’80s and early ’90s, and the story makes the most of its uncomfortable moral territory while building the central enigma of the unnamed enemy lurking in the shadows. Despite a couple of creaky lines of dialogue, Ennis is on typically sturdy and entertaining form here, and he’s backed up by spectacular, fully painted art from Liam Sharp.