Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunset #1 Is a Cool Kick-Off to the Dark Knight’s Next Big Event (Review)

As usual, Batman is the most powerful force in comics. Absolute Batman is a consistent bestseller, finishing nearly every month at the top. Meanwhile, Batman has been amazing since Matt Fraction took over, working with Batman artist extraordinaire Jorge Jimenez (he’s drawing himself into contention for greatest Batman artist ever) and the greater Bat-books have all been pretty good; Nightwing is hitting new levels, Poison Ivy has been chugging along for years now, and fan esteem in the Bat-books is pretty high. However, one way to slow that sort of thing down completely is an event story and DC is dropping one of those on readers with Batman: Bad Seeds, which pays off longrunning plotlines from throughout the Bat-books. It’s a risky proposition, especially with things going so well.

Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunset #1 kicks off this bold new story with a pretty awesome bang. The book is written by Fraction and Poison Ivy mastermind G. Willow Wilson, with art from Giuseppe Camuncoli and Cliff Rathburn. That’s quite a team and they do a fantastic job of setting up this massive event book. Batman: Bad Seeds is something of a daunting event, but it couldn’t ask for a better kick-off.

Rating: 4 out of 5

Pros	Cons
Fraction and Wilson are able to give readers everything they could want from an event kickoff	There’s really nothing wrong with the book at all, it’s just pretty much everything you could have predicted if you had been reading the Bat-books
Camuncoli and Rathburn make for a fantastic art team, truly capturing the danger and action of the story
The issue is able to set up numerous cool plot lines to get readers through the door

Fraction and Wilson Are Growing Something Sinister

Gotham City has been in a state of flux for a while now. Vandal Savage was able to take the job of Commissioner, using the Gotham City Police Department to shore up his own power. Meanwhile, Poison Ivy was elected mayor, leading to a power struggle between the two villains. That’s where we find the city at the beginning of this book. Now, I haven’t been reading Poison Ivy, so I don’t know what her book did to set this up… or at least I didn’t until reading this book. Wilson and Fraction do a fantastic job of catching you up on everything you need to know coming in. Events are a big part of DC history, and it’s nice when creators take the time to catch readers up on the book’s build-up a bit. It’s a little thing, but it makes a lot of difference.

Beyond that, the two of them do a fantastic job of setting up this story. This event is honestly pretty daunting, running through a lot of books, and it could easily become a time when fans take a vacation from the Bat-books (like X-Men fans did with “Age of Revelation last year), but this issue goes a long way in making the argument for sticking around. Nothing in this comic really surprised me too much, per say, but it was all so well done that it didn’t matter. It’s everything you would expect from a comic where the Green took over Gotham, as all of the sides of conflict scramble to set themselves up for the battles to come. The writers are able to establish something of a frenetic pace once the story really gets under way, which is exactly what you need to do in a comic like this. You want to get readers to get caught in the momentum and pick up the next chapter. All in all, if you’re on the fence about this story, this book should do a good job of getting you into it.

Camuncoli and Rathburn Capture the Horror of the Situation Perfectly

The Bat-books have a surplus of great artists right now, so any event kick-off is going to have to match that. Luckily, DC decided not to skimp out on Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunset #1, with Camuncoli doing art breakdowns and Rathburn finishing them up. Camuncoli does a fantastic job with the page layouts, helping establish the book’s feeling of creeping doom, and giving the story a great pace. I think letting Rathburn do finishes on the art was the best way to make the book look better. Camuncoli has a very clean style, but it can be kind of simple at times. Rathburn is able to take Camuncoli’s art and give it just the right embellishment for it to stand out.

The book’s art grabs you right away, which is important in this case. This is one of those event comics that promises to change a major piece of DC geography and readers are going to want to see those changes. This issue delivers everything you could want in that respect – the art team does a fantastic job when it comes to the Green-overrun Gotham City. The issue sets up the threat of the Green and the art is able to capture just how terrifying a force that nature can be. We get a great fight between Batman and a plant monster, a fluid, intense battle that looks fantastic, showing off what the art team does to well. This is an A-list Batman event kick-off and the art gets that across.

Batman: Bad Seeds has the chance to slow down the momentum the Bat-books have built up, but judging by this kick-off issue, that might not be a problem we need to worry about. Fraction and Wilson do a great job of exciting me for a story that wasn’t something I was looking forward, all while Camuncoli and Rathburn give the issue the fantastic imagery it needs to hook readers. This isn’t a perfect comic, but it really is everything you could ask for from a book like this. You couldn’t go wrong picking up this one (although your wallet might not thank you).

Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunset #1 is on sale now.

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