Batman #15: To Catch A Killer

Warning: Light spoilers for Batman #15.

Coming off the “Bad Seeds” event, Batman #15 is a return to the assassins storyline that was setup back in Batman #12 with the arrival of Verity Pennyworth as Bruce’s new butler and six assassins in Gotham.

Bruce Wayne announces he is leaving Gotham

The issue sets itself up quickly. Bruce makes his plans to leave Gotham public knowledge by going on a talk show, luring the assassins looking to collect the contract on his head into a trap. Hosting a grand gala as his last public appearance in Gotham City, Batman forces the assassins to move on him there.

Matt Fraction’s caped crusader run has leaned heavily into this flavor of crime noir and urban intrigue over more traditional superhero antics. Batman #15 is no different; the issue’s plot is essentially one large ruse. Bruce Wayne’s public departure from Gotham is the bait, and the grand gala he’s hosting as his send-off is the hook, both trying to catch the six assassins who have recently come to Gotham for Bruce Wayne and have run into the Batman instead.

Despite how much it has to go over in one issue, Batman #15 is very well-paced. The dialogue brings many of the other Bat family characters into the plan naturally. Cutaway panels are used repeatedly early on and again late in the issue to blend different pages together so the story doesn’t fumble its footing.

Jorge Jiménez’s line art in this issue is clean to the point that many of the lines become nearly invisible on the page save for panel borders. The issue has a lot of variety in the layout, with pages shifting from a grid of small panels to one large scene with a few small overlays. Jiménez is able to stack as many as eight or nine panels onto the pages while leaving enough room for readable narration and dialogue, just to transition into a splash page that changes the scene entirely.

The entire issue has a cinematic quality of carefully controlled camera angles and stunning shots. There is a fair bit of motion in the artwork as well, small details like Bruce swiveling his head during an interview or Superman’s cape seemingly billowing between panels.

The colors change the way the characters look across different scenes. As seen in the page above, Tomeu Morey casts different characters in shades that change with their surroundings. A lot of comics excel at ambient lighting, it’s one of the colorists’ main tasks, but Batman #15 flips back and forth between different sets of natural lighting on the same page in a way that doesn’t break immersion.