Comic Corner- Batman: The Adventures Continue #1

Previously- Criminal Sanity #4|Coming soon- Captain America: Captain of Nothing

Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 was written by Alan Burnett and Paul Dini, with art by Ty Templeton. The colours are by Monica Kubina and letters by Joshua Reed.

What do you need to have read?
This is the start of a new Batman series, so you do not need to have read anything.

What do you need to know?
Only the very basic Batman facts. Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same person. Batman and Superman are friends (mostly) and often work together with the Justice League of America. Lex Luthor is Superman’s nemesis.

I was drawn to this comic because of the art, which mimics the art from the TV show Batman: The Animated Series. It very clear and simplistic, focusing on bloc colour but there’s something utterly charming about it. Perhaps it’s my nostalgia from the TV show but I enjoy this art.

The art is used in this book to give the reader a very visual form of storytelling. There are a lot of wordless panels, where you’re following action, with extended fight sequences or set up scenes to establish location. This makes it great for younger readers, perhaps who are looking to get started with comics. That said I should also mention that there is punctuation swearing [e.g.@#&#] that you may want to be aware of should you be recommending it to a younger reader.

As with the art, the plot of this book is very straightforward, bordering on simplistic. There’s not much indication that this will change, and I do think that this also makes it suitable for younger readers. However, the inclusion of Lex Luthor and some Superman tech does mean that the word is not reduced to Gotham. As someone who loves Gotham, I have to ask myself whether this inclusion detracts from the city itself. Perhaps we will have to wait and see how the story pans out. It also makes me wonder whether there will be a similar sort of Superman series with this sort of art. It so this storyline could arguably be set up for that series.

We don’t get a lot from the characters, though I don’t mind letting that slide for now. We learn that Bruce has just adopted Tim, which ground the story at a certain point in his evolution. Unfortunately, we don’t see Tim, so we don’t get anything from him directly. I am looking forward to seeing the dynamic between him and Bruce because I’ve never read a Tim story before.

Overall this was just okay for me. I’m not a Superman fan in general so the storyline doesn’t hold a lot of appeal for me. To enjoy it I am going to need more character development. While there were plenty of similarly simplistic storylines in Batman: The Animated Series, they also knew how to deliver a hard-hitting story such as in Robin’s Reckoning. I also hope that the series isn’t going to rely solely on the fun fight scenes because they’re not adding to the plot in the way that they should. Sure their fun, but when you’ve got such limited pages you always need to be making sure that your story is moving forward, and the fight scenes can become static.

Batman: The Adventures Continue #1 is available from Comixology, Forbidden Planet, or your local comic book store.

Coming Soon… Batman: The Adventures Continue #2

In the meantime, why not check out… Batman: Sins of the Father, or Mad Love and Other Stories.