Olive does some downtown sleuthing and Tim Drake meets Maps in Gotham Academy #11 written by Becky Cloonan and Brendan Fletcher. Art by Karl Kershl with MSASSYK and Mingjue Helen Chen and color by Serge Lapointe and MSASSYK, Marilyn Patrizio on letters.
Olive hunts for more clues alongside a mask clad Maps, breaking into public records downtown while on a field trip off campus. Maps allows Olive to look for her information regarding her mother and Maps runs face to face with Red Robin. Tim is actually pretty receptive after seeing Damian’s batarang that he gave Maps (and she promptly throws at Tim) and they start talking. Tim talks about the Calamity case and the arrest of Olive’s mom. However it was a bad idea to leave Olive alone as she finds her (silver locked) family tree has a decades long relataionship with mental illness and the entity (or personality and alter-ego) of Calamity as well as pyrokinesis. Maps and Tim manage to get inside just in time. Calamity is told to stand down and Tim is able to fire a bola/restrainer but Calamity vanishes, dropping a piece of key.
Meanwhile it’s revealed Kyle has been missing for nearly 3 hours (interesting…no?) after his tennis match and Olive finds the second half of the key in his locker, forming an Arkham Asylum key. The plot thickens, and Kyle needs to be found!
POSITIVES
We finally learn more information about Batman and “Calamity” and Olive’s mother. A reoccurring theme thus far with a lot of Gotham: Olive’s problems are long reaching and that part is fun and interesting. The reboot has cut a lot of information we knew about Gotham out unless they say a fact about the city and its people are still in canon or flat out tell us if it’s fact now. I understand this pretty much been Gotham’s constant but it’s nice to see more “world building”. Tim looks great under Kershl’s art: small and slim. Tim Drake is not a big person. Please artists. Don’t even try to draw him as being over 5 ft 7.
Tim being so kind to Maps is refreshing when cameos from established heroes usually mean stern “you shouldn’t be doing this” rhetoric, something Tim has and still often does to other characters.
NEGATIVES
Art felt oddly sparse this issue and coloring on characters seemed sketchier and flatter than normal. So not as strong as it usually is. The flashbacks drawn by Chen however are gorgeous and a younger Dick Grayson is drawn wonderfully (no matter how much that suit was more or less Tim’s..I’m still struggling with Dick’s retconned first outfit)
VERDICT
I feel like things are moving a bit better, and I’m still guessing what’s up with Olive’s family and their longstanding history of pyrokenesis. It’s wildly interesting and Kyle’s disappearance is bothersome. Is he a suspect? Go find out!
