Gotham Academy - Endgame One Shot

Gotham Academy Endgame One Shot

Gotham Academy Endgame is a one shot comic written by Becky Cloonan & Brenden Fletcher, art by Jenny Donovan. A one shot comic is a self contained story that will often involve the characters from the comic but doesn't usually carry on with the regular story arc. The DC event Endgame, taking place in the Batman comics, featured several one shot issues including Batgirl, Arkham Manor and Gotham Academy. While I don't read much Batman I do read Batgirl and Gotham Academy so I picked up the Endgame one shots and they were actually pretty good.

The story begins with the students of Gotham Academy all gathered in the school gym to be kept safe as the entire city of Gotham has been infected by the Joker's virus. Maps, Pomeline and Olive begin telling scary stories to pass the time. All of the stories the children tell, in classic Gotham style, are heavily influenced by the Joker and are far scarier than I expected. By far the best story told is Macpherson's Story about a wandering jester with a horrifying twist to his act, written & art done by Joy Ang.

Gotham Academy End Game has several different art styles, the regular adorable style of Gotham Academy, where Maps makes adorable faces, and one for each of the different tales the students tell. All the art styles are bright, colourful and despite being different all have incredibly expressive faces switching between cartoonish over the top faces to very subtle realistic facial expressions. Overall the art of the Gotham Academy series is simple, refreshing and unusually non-gritty for a Batman related title.

The thing that is so appealing about Gotham Academy is that it's the often very dark and somber world of Batman told through the eyes of children giving it a much brighter and innocent tone that is just so different from any other Batman title. It's very interesting to see how the everyday people of Gotham dealing with crisis after crisis the same way regular people deal with a traffic jam.

I give Gotham Academy 4 out of 5 Joker smiles.

Find out more about Gotham Academy here.