Batman: Dark Patterns #1: Nails in the Dark

Buried deep within the masochistic horrors of Batman: Dark Patterns #1 is a cozy sense of familiarity that reminded me of Batman tales lost to the endless glut of dusty dollar bins. In a just world, this story would be an arc within the pages of Detective Comics or Legends of the Dark Knight, standing tall as an alternative to the superheroics of the main Batman title. Instead, it’s coming to us in the form of its own standalone series that now has to fight for attention against the other gazillion Batman-related titles releasing from December 1st to January 1st, which is a crying shame. This is a great first issue that brings forward not just the mystery, but horror of Batman as a pulp hero.

Set during an amorphous take on Bruce’s third year beneath the cowl, the series is posed as an anthology exploring strange cases from Batman’s past with particular twisted dilemmas at the center of each one. This first arc, We Are the Wounded, focuses on a serial-killer who goes around Gotham executing folks facing some sort of great pain in life. His motivation is to heal them through sadomasochistic practices that always lead to their death, offering up a distinct and visceral gimmick that walks the line between horrifying and laughably edgy.

Towing that line with subtlety is the strongest aspect of Watters’s writing in this issue. He allows the atmosphere and tension of this ‘new’ threat to simmer, which absolutely sucks the reader into this book without any thought needing to be paid to the rest of the character’s history. While I can’t sight the plot as something that’s all that interesting on its own, its the execution of plot progression that makes it so. There’s a mystery afoot, and it is one that confronts both Batman and the reader with images that are sensibly barbaric yet rooted in the deeply human relationship between one’s mind and its treatment of pain.

Although its premise and texture are very similar to the kind of Batman stories that have defined the character from Year One to The Long Halloween, it still feels like its own distinct project. Yes, it has clear inspirations, but from top to bottom this is a distinct narrative that can co-exist against those stories without feeling like its stuck living beneath their shadows.

The only thing to suck me out of this issue was the dialogue, the pacing of which felt off and never natural. Bruce’s inner monologues and personality were delightfully smooth, it was just the staccato-like rhythm of the dialogue between characters that threw me out of the story.

Hayden Sherman continues to prove themselves to be one of DC’s most versatile artists as they paint a beautifully dark picture of Bruce’s earlier years with such thematic edge that you would’nt asusme this is the same person illustrating the grand epic that is their current run on Absolute Wonder Woman. Their work here is abstract enough to give Gotham a flavor that’s nowhere near recognizable outside of the world of comics, but is grounded enough to make our mystery killer’s treatment of his victims harrowing from the image alone.

At times, the art is up close and claustrophobic, adding to the tension as it becomes difficult to not have your eye locked upon images designed to directly antagonize specific phobias. In other moments, it goes wide to show us the sheer scope of Gotham and Batman’s place within it—him nothing more than a small piece of the city destined to churn out evils until the sun explodes. This is aided by Tríona Farrell’s electric coloring that takes all the atmosphere suggested by Sherman and Watters and injects it with the perfect amount of moody tones and clashing colors that bring this issue to life fully.