The Batman Who Laughs #4: We All Go a Little Crazy Sometimes

This is possibly the best single book starring Batman Who Laughs that Snyder has dished out.

The story is so gripping, so entertaining, so heart wrenching at times.  The confrontation between Batman and Alfred left me stunned.  I mean yes, seeing Alfred fight and gain the upper hand was amazing, but it was Batman finally coming to his senses, realizing what he almost did.  This entire series seems to be about paving the road to hell.

Jock’s art is as good as I’ve ever seen, setting the mood perfectly (along with Baron’s wonderful colors).

But oddly enough, I want to focus on one particular aspect of this book that isn’t the writing or the art or the colors.

I don’t compliment a letterer very often.  I was even told on twitter one time that a good letterer is often invisible, you don’t often notice their work, it should blend in perfectly.  But I wonder if that is inherently wrong because I noticed the letterer here.

I noticed Sal Cipriano’s work.

Because as good as Snyder and Jock’s story was, it was brought to a crescendo with Cipriano’s letters in this issue.

See, Batman is dealing with almost a split personality here.  He has the Joker’s madness creeping in on his sanity.  And the mixture of the normal font and white colors with the red words (sometimes even a fade from white to red or from red to white) tells a story almost as much as the actual words and images do.  We can see Batman’s descent into madness with more depth than we ever could with only Snyder’s words or only Jock’s pictures.  The style of the letters is as integral part of this book as I’ve ever seen.

This is honestly an amazing book.  Had my heart racing until the end, waiting to see what might happen.  Yeah, the cliffhanger is almost cliché, but by then I didn’t care, because I was blown away from the start.  And a good chunk of that is thanks to Cipriano.