Babs reviews the latest issue!
'Batman: Streets of Gotham' #5
Written by: Chris Yost
Art by: Dustin Nguyen
Inks by: Derek Fridolfs
My undeniable love for Dustin's sleek pencils and gorgeous watercolors are obvious reasons why I chose this as an issue I wanted to review. Chris Yost takes over for two issues for part one and two of two of 'Leviathan' for Paul Dini, taking 'Streets of Gotham' in a whole new direction and bringing in Huntress who must stop ' Man-Bat' from terrorizing the city and prevent him from taking innocent lives. Let us start with the title, shall we?
The fact that Yost chose 'Leviathan' as a title to his two part mini made me smile; not to mention caused memories of sitting in on my Modern Political Theory class to resurface. However, the "Leviathan" in Yost's issue of " Batman' has nothing directly to do with Thomas Hobbes' theory of social contract, but I do think that it is somewhat relevant to the book in that it mimics the era in which the book was written. When Hobbes wrote "Leviathan," he pictured a society where the life of the average person was "nasty, brutish and short." In essence, 15th Century England was miserable for the ordinary person. His theory focuses on the fact that life, at the time, was anarchic and civil upheaval and unrest was dominant throughout society. Does that sound to you like ' Gotham City'? It did to me. "Leviathan" is not only the name of one of the most prominent pieces of political literature to come out of 15th Century England, it is also a word that is used to refer to a large and evil sea creature in ancient Jewish lore. References to the "Leviathan" can be found in the Hebrew Talmud as well as in the Christian Bible (specifically, Job). Why am I talking about this? One can argue that 'Man-Bat' is an evil monster, sort of like "Leviathan."
Now that you have had your dose of socio-political and religious theory for one day, we can move on to the comic book. Is it me, or does Chris Yost do a better job at writing the 'Huntress' than he does with 'Tim Drake' in ' Red Robin'? My only complaint with this book was that the story seemed short, and that from what I gathered in the first part of 'Leviathan,' a longer, more drawn out story could easily be derived. The 'Huntress' should get her own book and Chris Yost should be writing it. Admittedly, I think I will be sad when I have to read part two, and Paul Dini returns to the title.
4 out of 5