DC Round-Up: BATMAN #1 by Fraction and Jimenez delivers a stunning new take on Gotham City

This week: As the flagship Batman title begins a new era, we take a look at some of the ambitious groundwork being laid by this first issue. Plus, a new Superman book arrives with Adventures of Superman: Book of El, Resurrection Man Quantum Karman concludes, and more!

Note: the review below may contain spoilers. If you want a quick, spoiler-free buy/pass recommendation on the comics in question, check out the bottom of the article for our final verdict.

Batman #1

Writer: Matt Fraction
Artist: Jorge Jimenez
Colorist: Tomeu Morey
Letterer: Clayton Cowles

On the second page of Batman #1, we get Killer Croc jumping through the Gotham City sky with a lightning bolt crackling behind him. Because this is a Batman comic (and a big, new #1 Batman comic, at that), it can only be read as an homage to Dark Knight Returns. It could be just a fun, somewhat silly hat tip, a way to establish a lighter tone than the usual Batman comic. But I read it as more than that.

I read it as a way of saying that this run wants to give us a different sort of take on Batman in the future. Consider: the very next page is a full splash of Batman, looking right at the reader and saying, “Getting pretty tired of this.” 

This all felt to me like an in-story declaration that this is not the same old Batman run. With Matt Fraction aboard as new series writer, this run is going to be trying some new, different things, all while keeping Batman at its heart and center. And, indeed, the rest of the issue seemed to reenforce all that.

On top of being the start of a new run, this comic has a great single issue story to it. Killer Croc has broken out of containment and is running amok. Batman, of course, wants to stop that. And a lot of space in the book is given to the best way to accomplish that goal. At its start, Batman falls into conversation with Dr. Zeller, who has been working with Croc, and she advocates an alternative to Batman’s usual, punch-heavy approach. She advocates trying to sooth and work with Croc.

While Batman initially resists it, Dr. Zeller’s approach ends up being effective. 

“Waylon Jones is changing, Batman,” Dr. Zeller tells him, and after a great deal of comparisons to Batman and his central trauma are drawn, we are left to wonder if Batman shouldn’t be changing too.

But the beauty of this issue is that you don’t really have to proscribe any of those deeper ideas to this comic to enjoy it. They’re there, of course, if you’d like to engage with them, but Batman #1 is also a great, detective-style surface level mystery about Croc, his biology, and how to stop him. And it’s played in a way where it all relates back to Batman. The ideas about changing, growing, being a stunted child, and responding to trauma. 

It’s a very satisfying Batman story within the space of a single issue.

And on top of it, there are also so many subtle world building (or, perhaps, world tweaking, given how established Gotham and Batman are) touches baked in. The main one is the take on Batman’s gadgets, which get a modernization along with matching caption boxes to emphasize them and their role. And then there’s the Gotham City of it all, too.

Five pages into Batman #1, there is a two-page spread that speaks to one thing I thought a lot about after reading this comic. In that spread, we see Batman gliding toward what is presumably the heart of Gotham City. But it’s Gotham City like we haven’t seen it in recent memory, or perhaps ever, at least not quite in this way.

I have often joked that Gotham City must have an absurdly large and efficient drainage system, one so impressive that it can only exist in comics, given that nearly every time we see it, it’s dark and pouring rain. But that’s not the Gotham City of this newly-launched Batman run. This Gotham is sharp and neon-lit. It’s not bright, not really, but it is colorful. It’s skies look like a sunset, but a lightly ominous one. It’s interesting.

Really, this comic does a fun job understanding that pastel neon can be just as scary a shade as grey or black, when deployed correctly. And so much credit is owed to the team of artist Jorge Jimenez and colorist Tomeu Morey. 

I’ll admit I was hoping for a new artist to join Fraction for this run. Jimenez has been a great consistent presence on the book through at least three writers now, but I suspected Fraction would want to do something very different from other recent runs and wasn’t sure art consistency was what was needed. But Jimenez and Morey work together so well in this issue to bring a new visual language that perfectly matches Fraction’s ideas and tone. I am glad to admit that I was so so wrong.

There were a handful of other things I loved in this issue too. There is perhaps another bit of Dark Knight homage in the use of broadcast news boxes, although they’re more so played for laughs, which is maybe a perfect bit of 2025 media commentary. And there is a police militarization scene that feels painfully timely, given what’s happening in D.C. and what’s reportedly about to happen in Chicago.

And throughout, Fraction is just such a great writer, from the ideas to the dialogue exchanges, to the way this whole issue builds to a killer line from Killer Croc, all the way on to a great last page cliffhanger that makes Batman #2 immediately one of my most anticipated comics.

Phew. That’s a lot of praise, I know, but I really did have a great time with Batman #1, and my expectations for this new run could not be bigger. This could be the start of a classic.

Verdict: BUY

The Round-Up

• This week brings us the finale of Resurrection Man Quantum Karma, and I’m really glad that this series is over. Not because I didn’t like, but because as I wrote last month, I’ve desperately been wanting to read this series in full, start to finish. It’s so complex and ambitious, and I had the sense early on that it would be a book better consumed as a whole, rather than through installments. I think this last chapter bears that out, building upon the book’s themes of universal construction and the nature of existence. This, obviously, is not your run of the mill superhero comic. It’s something much grander, and I think we’ll all need to sit with it a bit to really appreciate its scope. The creative team here is writer Ram V., artist Anand RK, colorist Mike Spicer, and letterer Aditya Bidikar.
• Meanwhile, Adventures of Superman: Book of El #1 arrives this week, essentially continuing writer Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s fan favorite Superman run, the one that brought us the recent War World storyline. And as a fan of that run myself, I’m thrilled. This book was essentially promised to us as well by Johnson’s scripting of Future State: House of El, although it remains to be seen how much (or even if) the two comics will connect. What is known is that Johnson is picking up where he left off, and continuing that early story. And it’s a great first issue, bringing adventure and major stakes to Smallville, before jumping through time to the future. The Superman line as currently constructed is just checking so many Superman boxes. The Superman comic is centering the character within the company’s forthcoming DC K.O. event, while Superman Unlimited is doing a Silver Age-esque adventure of the week thing that builds wonderfully on the recent Superman movie. And Supergirl, meanwhile, is just as charming as a superhero comic gets. This book, I think, wants to serve up cosmic Superman stories, and it’s got a nice ramp to do it with. This is a strong first issue, one that seems to promise more great things to come. The creative team here is Johnson, artist Scott Godlewski, colorist Alex Guimaraes, and letterer Dave Sharpe.
• Finally, while there were some other major highlights this week — including Absolute Green Lantern, Cheetah and Cheshire Rob the Justice League, and JSA — I want to use this last spot to emphatically praise the current Batgirl run. It is, in a word, awesome, and you should all be reading it. There’s family drama, great fight sequences, and a building sense that Cassandra Cain specifically is in for something major. This book has quietly become one of the most consistent in DC’s line. Read it. The team here is writer Tate Brombal, artist Takeshi Miyazawa, colorist Mike Spicer, and letterer Tom Napolitano.

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