Writer and artist: Jock
DC Comics, September 2022
Jock is a highly talented comic book artist from the United Kingdom. We first became aware of his talents in the early 2000s when reading The Losers, a reimagining of a team of special forces soldiers out to uncover a global conspiracy involving a petroleum company. Of all of the comic book covers we have encountered over the past ten years of operation of this review site, and decades of comic book reading before that, it is Jock’s provocative and dynamic covers for The Losers which we rank as amongst the best, ever. Little wonder he won an Eisner Award for one of them in 2006.
Since then, Jock has become identified by readers of the American oeuvre as an influential artist on Batman comics.
With that context, Batman: One Dark Knight is both drawn and written by Jock. Here is DC Comics’ promotional copy:
It was the sort of mission Batman had run a thousand times. From high above the sweltering summer streets of Gotham, Batman would escort the GCPD as the dangerous metahuman super-villain known as E.M.P. was transferred from a temporary holding cell to his permanent home at Blackgate Prison in Gotham Harbor. E.M.P.’s electrical powers posed a dangerous threat, but the situation was well in hand. Until it wasn’t. Now every light in Gotham is out, the police have been knocked into disarray, and a broken, bleeding Batman must fight his way to Blackgate, block by block, dragging E.M.P. behind him. But it’s not just the gangs who want to make life difficult for him. The dark corners of Gotham contain many surprises…and E.M.P. has many more shocks to deliver before the night is through!
One of the most iconic Batman artists of the 21st century, the incomparable Jock (The Batman Who Laughs, Batman: The Black Mirror), has focused all his storytelling powers on the tale of one very, very dark night in Gotham City. It’s always darkest before the dawn—if it ever comes… Collects Batman: One Dark Knight #1-3.
It does not compared to Batman: The Imposter which we recently reviewed. Batman is in One Dark Knight involved in a reverse caper, of sorts: riding shotgun on the tricky transfer of a formidable supervillain from one incarceration facility to other. The ostensible bad guy is a gang leader unimaginatively called EMP, and as the name suggests is capable of producing an electromagnetic pulse. In the Batman mythos, a loss of electricity and a descent into darkness was first seen in Frank Miller’s out-of-continuity The Dark Knight Returns when a Soviet “Coldbringer” warhead explodes over the United States. An aged Batman takes control of Gotham City by crushing rioters and opportunistic criminals through leadership of some reformed street gang members. In this title, however, Batman must run the gauntlet of several tough gangs to bring EMP across town.
The plot itself is engaging enough. It suffers needless diversions – Batman’s monstrous adversary Killer Croc appears unexpectedly at one point, and is quickly dispatched in a pointless distraction from the story, and the major subplot about Vasquez and her dirty cops is hard to follow and not very interesting. There is an oddity to the ease in which the Gotham City Police Department reestablishes control at the end once power is restored (the LAPD could not quell mass civil unrest during the Rodney King riots, electricity or otherwise). But the idea of Batman taking a physical hammering while pursuing his mission against extreme odds is entirely on point with the characterisation of the hero over the past 15 to 20 years: the depiction of sheer relentlessness will always draw applause from Batman’s loyal audience.
The major aspect to the title which grates badly, though, is the dialogue. The quips between Batman and Alfred about hot cocoa and marshmallows, and ducking out for a quick martini, do not portray two men working at ease in a well-honed team environment, as they are certainly intended to by Jock. Instead, the exchanges are cringeworthy. And the histrionics from the supporting characters have the sophistication of a comic from the 1970s: “His first time in the open in years… it could be even worse!” From the same page: “They’ve had him suppressed at Arkham for so long, he’ll be like a ticking time bomb in Gotham… let’s pray they catch him in time!” And then we have the Morlock-like worshippers of Killer Croc with their broken powers of speech: “Buuhhhh… BAATMAANN!” “YESS… BAATMAANN! Get BATTMANN….” Does living in a sewer really convert people into babbling zombies?
It is a disappointing story from a talented artist. But Jock’s art of itself is as gritty and compelling as ever. The dynamism of the depiction of Batman as he leaps from building to building, across a page, while chasing his prey, the grid work of external fire stairs framed in the city’s ambient light, is wonderful. The penultimate fight on the ruined bridge across several pages features Jock at his best – it conveys an exciting, desperate fight. Perhaps most thoughtful art in the title are the maps of Gotham, which serve as markers to the story. The first map is Gotham as a taxi driver might see it, describing the Upper West Side, the Financial District (inexplicably next to Blackgate Prison, but still), Robinson Park and so on, and is used to plot out EMP’s pathway to his new jail. But then after disaster strikes, the same map, rendered in black and dark blue, describes Gotham as Batman might see it. The proper place names are gone, replaced with the names of the gangs which occupy each district and their movements: the Bertinelli Mob, the Pénitente Cartel, the Dockyard Dogs and so on. The illustration cleverly transforms from a tourist guide to a war map. When Alfred finally gets the Batcave’s power working, the map is divided up, shattered into small rectangles (ostensibly computer screens), each lit up in purple, red and pink. Chaos is everywhere, on too many fronts. It is a brilliant set of graphics designed to convey to the reader how the tension within the story has escalated.
What would we have done differently? Far from us as mere critics, ordinarily, to tell a seasoned comic book professional how to manage his task. But it seems to us that the story could have been stripped of some of the fluff. EMP should have been a mere criminal and the electromagnetic pulse could have been caused by a bomb (entitling the story as “Batman: Coldbringer” would have been a nice nod to Mr Miller’s seminal work, rather than the cliched “One Dark Knight”). The gangs should have each had much better articulated motivations in trying to stop Batman from his task. Dropping Croc from the plot seems like a no-brainer. And Batman and Alfred were on a mission, not a date: their exchanges should have been tense and focussed, not flippant and silly. Dialogue is not easy to craft, and that, unfortunately, is clearly not Jock’s strength.
