Batman: Reptilian

I went through a range of responses while reading Reptilian. For example, at first I found myself really grooving to the art by Liam Sharp, which has a thick, painterly atmosphere to it. If that art was dark, well, that’s the Batman universe. And not just any Batman universe, but the DC Black Label Batman universe.

But then I didn’t like how the art stayed so dark, and how the thickness started to just seem muddy. There were action sequences where, even going back to examine them more closely, I honestly couldn’t tell what was going on. There were climactic moments, such as Killer Croc appearing with an external womb like Nola in The Brood, that I couldn’t see at all. I had to take cues from the text to understand what was happening. This was a shame because Sharp really imagines the characters in interesting and original ways but I felt like I was only seeing them through a glass, darkly. Batman himself is all shadow and silhouette, which I guess is apt for the character but also got tiring after a while.

I felt the same mix of good and bad with the writing. Garth Ennis is a writer known for pushing the boundaries of what I’ll call good taste. This title isn’t as crazy as some of his stuff, but then he was writing for an established DC character and they probably had him on some kind of leash. As it is, his Batman is a cold, sarcastic bastard and Killer Croc a sympathetic villain. There’s also a violent plot (though the violence is mostly witnessed in the aftermath) that involves a lot of xenosexual shenanigans. In sum, it wasn’t what I was expecting, but it was something new, which isn’t easy to pull off when we’re talking about a Batman comic. Some of the dialogue felt awkward, and given the aforementioned issues I had with the art the story became hard to follow in places. But on a second reading I did think it all made sense.

So I came away respecting it. I could see a real Batman purist taking offense, but that’s the Black Label brand. The art at least had a lot of interesting design elements, though the monster looked a bit too Giger-ish and as noted it’s all far too dark. And Ennis did come up with a story that I think even his detractors will admit is hard to forget. There aren’t many comics that give us that much.

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