Review: Gotham Academy Vol. 1- Welcome to Gotham Academy

Quick Summary

Pros: The characters are great and their interactions with one another are fun to watch. The characters also have a lot of potential and are a solid base upon which to build this series. The book’s central narrative is interesting and has some entertaining mystery to it. The artwork is great and is a perfect match for the series.

Cons: Nothing significant.

Overall: This is a great start to a series that already has a ton of potential. It has wonderful characters, intriguing mysteries, charming moments, and still retains plenty more to dish out in future volumes. It also helps that all of this is backed up by artwork that looks great and matches the tone well. In the end, this is a comic that young and old readers should be able to have a lot of fun with. 

Story

Gotham Academy Vol. 1: Welcome to Gotham Academy, by Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher, is an instant delight. The characters are all interesting as individuals and possess a youthful energy that makes the comic a joy to read. They also all add to the comic’s main narrative and give Gotham Academy room to explore spooky mysteries and complex relationships. In many ways, all of this helps make the series feel like Adventure Time or Steven Universe in that it has the potential to easily appeal to both children and adults.

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Upon starting Welcome to Gotham Academy, most readers will instantly notice how enjoyable each of the characters end up being. Colton is a charming dork, Pomeline is a great combination between insufferable and likable, and Kyle is a stoic gentleman. The two lead characters are even better. Maps is a ball of energy who brings positivity and RPG-style references to the entire book and Olive is a troubled lead who adds plenty of mystery to the story. The characters really drive this series forward and are what gave me hope that this comic could end up being something special.

Each of the characters also adds something to Gotham Academy‘s larger narrative. Pomeline’s interest in the occult is sure to find some unique outlets in a school steeped in mysterious happenings and Colton’s predilection for trouble will likely have an effect on the group as a whole. There is also some interesting romantic tension surrounding Kyle and Olive’s relationship.

However, the most significant harbinger of potential storylines comes from Olive as an individual. This is a character with a troubled past; her mother clearly had some sort of superpowers and was using them in a problematic way. Yet, readers are never given the full history behind Olive’s connection to her mother or what exactly happened last summer. Discovering the answer behind these questions gives the book some long-term appeal and will definitely keep me reading as the series progresses.

It also helps that Welcome to Gotham Academy‘s main story is solid all on its own. It has ghosts being revealed as fakes, dangerous criminals being discovered, and, above all, a group of friends coming together. It feels like a cross between Scooby-Doo and Harry Potter in a way that is constantly entertaining.

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Art

On top of some great storytelling, Welcome to Gotham Academy also contains some great visuals. Karl Kerschl’s artwork is a perfect fit for this series. It is stylized in a way that instantly stands out as something different from DC’s standard offerings. The lighthearted character depictions add to the fun each character brings to the book, and their over-the-top facial expressions add to the comedy. Meanwhile, the settings go from looking like a normal school to looking like something right out of a horror movie at the drop of a hat, which is exactly what this particular series requires. All in all, the artwork in this book looks great and is a wonderful fit for the story being told. 

Continuity

Gotham Academy Vol. 1: Welcome to Gotham Academy starts the Gotham Academy series. This series almost exclusively stars new characters and can be read without any prior knowledge.

The story started here continues in Gotham Academy Vol. 2: Calamity (Review).

This volume also references other comic books, detailed below:

• The destruction of Arkham Asylum is mentioned a few times. This destruction took place in Batman Eternal #30, collected in Batman Eternal Vol. 2 (Review).
• A new singer for Ashes on Sunday is mentioned. This new singer is Black Canary (Reading Order), who began singing for the band in Batgirl Vol. 1: Batgirl of Burnside (Review).
• Killer Croc mentions throwing a rock at someone. This is an ongoing joke with Killer Croc’s character that started in the “Almost Got ‘Im” episode from Batman: The Animated Series.