Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunrise #1: An Unexpected Ending

Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunrise #1 is almost a direct continuation of Batman: Bad Seeds – Sunset #1. It benefits from several of the tie-in issues, but almost nothing from them is required reading. Fraction and Wilson do a good job delivering the very essential information of how the cold blast, released in Detective Comics #1114, saved the city. In this way it’s an effective conclusion to an event that advanced virtually no critical plot points between its two framing issues.

Heavy character focus has been central to almost every Bad Seeds tie-in issue. Batman Bad Seeds Sunrise #1 doesn’t allow for much of that beyond Poison Ivy’s storyline. However, what is missing in narrative is more than made up in artwork. Camuncoli has many strengths in this issue, and chief among them is his ability to depict emotions on every character in the issue. Poison Ivy by far benefits the most. From her encounter with the Parliament of Trees of her conflict with Vandal Savage to her final scenes with Batman, Ivy is put through the ringer. In Ivy’s case much of the emotional expression is revealed via her eyes. Camuncoli doesn’t add a lot of other facial details via feature defining lines. Her eyes widen and narrow throughout the issue depending on the circumstance the story puts herself in.

Vandal Savage gets almost the opposite treatment in how he’s depicted. Certainly his eyes are communicative, sometimes to the point of over-exaggeration. But Camuncoli adds a lot of facial feature detail via thick lines, reinforced by Rathburn’s inking. Though he doesn’t have any kind of emotional journey in the issue, Savage is by far the most expressive character.

Fraction and Wilson open Batman Bad Seeds Sunrise #1 with a quick panel by panel check-in on where every major character from the tie-in issues finds themselves at this point in the story. The writers don’t dwell on any of them. These panels aren’t really that communicative. Readers who followed the other tie-ins don’t need them and readers who didn’t won’t understand the significance. The quick crosscutting through circumstance is, however, a good way to ramp up the story’s pace going into the cold blast and eventually catching up with Poison Ivy and Vandal Savage. The writers actually repeat the final pages of Poison Ivy #49, the connective tissue between Detective Comics #1114 and Batman Bad Seeds Sunrise #1.

The strangest and most surprising aspect of Batman Bad Seeds Sunrise #1 is the focus on Vandal Savage. Fraction and Wilson lay responsibility at Ivy’s feet, but that isn’t the real conclusion to the Bad Seeds story. This issue is mostly about Vandal Savage, his continued thirst for power in the wake of the plant invasion, and whether he can maintain his grip on the city.

This confrontation with Savage leads to all of the issue’s action, the lion’s share of which involves Savage himself. Camuncoli and Rathburn don’t go quite so far as to give him a larger than life feel, but the high background detail–both with the setting and surrounding characters–helps emphasize his size and power. Savage is always dynamic, and there is a lot of energy when he is in the panel.

These action sequences pop off the page nonstop thanks to Morey’s choice of blue for the frozen backgrounds in Gotham City. It contrasts with everything else on the page leaving every character to jump out in focus. The background detail is very good, but it is never once the star of a panel.

Cowles does a good job keeping dialogue bubbles and caption boxes out of the way of all of this dynamic artwork during the more text heavy portions of the issue. At the same time, he keeps it all flowing well through the page and very easy to follow.

A focus on Vandal Savage doesn’t exactly feel like a bait and switch, but it does beg the question of how necessary it was to make Bad Seeds an event. In retrospect, the Bad Seeds story feels unnecessary. Furthermore, the events here as they relate to Vandal Savage feel surprising and rushed. There’s an argument to be made that his recent, somewhat unhinged behavior depicted in recent Batman and Bat adjacent issues have led up to the sudden events in Batman Bad Seeds Sunrise #1. But even so, it feels a little too much like Fraction and Wilson simply decided that they were done with the status quo and this was the easiest way to make a change regardless of how smooth it went.