Gotham Academy #1

 
Writer: Becky Cloonan & Brendan Fletcher
Artists: Karl Kerschl, Geyser, & Dave McCaig
Cover: Karl Kerschl
Publisher: DC  
 Immediately before even beginning to read Gotham Academy, there is an instant gravitation to the artwork. It has an incredibly animated feel to it, already separating it from the darker tones that are typical for your regular run of the mill Gotham story. Of course the palette still uses darker shades and the overall look still remains rather ominous, but the characters stand out from the darkness and mystery of the school. The main character in fact, Olive Silverlock who literally has locks of silver hair certainly stands out in a crowd, drawing the readers to her. Not much is known about her and as we progress through the issue, only more questions about her are raised, being just as mysterious as the school in which she stays.
 
Aside from Olive, we’re also introduced to Maps Mizoguchi who’s an adorable little firecracker with her bright green backpack and innocent curiosity for her new school. While Gotham Academy will bring on a larger ensemble of characters Olive and Maps are the two we primarily deal with in this issue which are two characters that are perfect for kind of establishing what we’ll be getting from the series. It’s clear that these characters have histories, and it’s also refreshing that we don’t know what their history completely entails because they’re new characters to us. There’s a whole new part of Gotham created to explore, and these two affably charming (Maps) and mysterious (Olive) characters will help us explore it.
 
And for those who are concerned of how all this ties into DC and Batman, worry not. Bruce Wayne already makes an appearance and it’s clear that he, or Batman rather has some sort of story tied to Olive’s character, and as we continue on, we’ll see more of that as well as more characters related to other Gotham characters. Not to mention the classes are very geo-centric as we’ll see they have a “History of Gotham-City” class, which is very interesting to witness even in passing.
 
I’m waiting to see where the story develops a little more before I’m completely sold on it, it’s only natural for a first issue of this nature to raise more questions than actually begin to answer anything, but so far the entire creative team has sold me on the art (most definitely), and the concept and all I can say is that I’m very excited to see where it goes and how much this first arc will choose to explore.