REVIEW: Batman the Dawnbreaker #1

Writer: Sam Humphries
Artist: Ethan Van Sciver
Colors: Jason Wright
Letters: Tim Napolitano
Cover: Jason Fabok and Brad Anderson
Review: Art Bee

It’s story time, folks! There once was a great hero called Art of the Bee who ventured into the revered land of Comicdom to collect his treasures from the sacred chest of The Folder protected by Sir Shawn. With treasures in hand, a glorious glimmer distracted Art of the Bee's eye from the end of the treasure shelves. What could this bauble be? It must be investigated! The expedition began, and after trudging mere seconds up a sheer face of carpeting, my eyes beheld a wonderful…shiny, foiled cover of Batman the Dawnbreaker #1, gleaming at me with all of its splendor. It beckoned for my coin, and I did buy.
I guess I am just a goblin at heart! Oh, shiny!

Back to the seriousness of comics…

The cover of this one issue tie-in is truly one of my favorites and could very well earn my vote for a Hammy next year. It’s not very often my money is spent on just a cover, but this was well worth it as the contents are worth as much as the cover. 

Now it’s well known I am not much of a DC guy, aside from some Batman and Joker, but this issue has piqued my interest a bit with the “Metal tie-in” jazz on the cover. My investigation led me to the following quote from Scott Snyder on DCcomics.com:

“I’ve been planning METAL for as long as I’ve been writing Batman, but I want METAL to be built upon the stories happening now in Rebirth. Most of all we want to create new material that feels really modern and different. And above all, it’s going to be fun. Even with terror and nightmares, it won’t be grim. DARK NIGHTS: METAL will be celebratory, huge and crazy.”

What does this sound like to you? To me it sounds like Mr. Snyder is trying to cover his plagiarizing "Spiderverse". How stupid do you think we are Mr. Snyder? Please don’t answer that, sir, because I may have to get violent and violate my beliefs.

As a one shot issue, I have to love this comic book. It strikes me as one of those "What if…?" books Madman is often reviewing on the Tales from the Dollar Box site. In this case "What If" Bruce Wayne was sent a green lantern ring right after his parents are murdered? The picture is very dark…DARK knight indeed!  Bruce finds his parents’ murderer and attempts to kill the man in revenge. The ring refuses according to its primary directive, but Bruce’s willpower overloads the ring, causing it to fracture with darkness. Alas, the Dawnbreaker is born into a murderous vigilante rather than a moral one.

This story reminded me of the comic series The Darkness from Image (of which I am a fan) but not derivative of it. In this one comic book Batman takes on his parents’ murderer, Jim Gordon, Penguin, and the entire Green Lantern Corps, but these outcomes will not be revealed here. There is a reason this is a tie-in to Metal, because this Earth-32 variation of Batman is being recruited by Lord Barbatos (sounds like a pirate’s name from Pirates from the Caribbean).

The artwork inside is just as gorgeous as the cover. Everything is drawn and colored well to be very exciting! For me the clarity of every panel was mind boggling. The feeling of it all was high class art. It really doesn’t get better than what this comic offers. Did the artist have months to work on it or is he just that good? My guess is the latter. These events don’t strike me as being worked on very much in advance.

This issue is almost enough to draw me into this event, but like most of these major events, they are just a gimmick to sell more books. Look! It worked on a goblin like me…shiny, shiny. The purchase was satisfying, so all is well. Sometimes you just have to take a chance (shiny) and take a (shiny) leap of faith. You never know what (shiny) you might find…SHINY!