Written by: Bruce Jones
Art by: Sean Murphy
Colored by: Lee Loughridge
Lettered by: Nick Napolitano
Editor: Matt Idelson
Publisher: DC Comics
Scarecrow has never been a favorite of mine. A little too goofy to really pose a threat to Batman or the rest of Gotham City.
But because he is in the new Batman movie, we of course get a new story with him in it. And it’s not great. It’s not bad, mind you. But it’s just sort of useless. We didn’t really need to augment the origin of Scarecrow, mostly because we didn’t really care that much to begin with.
But I have to hand it to the team here, they do go further in depth than any other Scarecrow story I’ve read. But it’s lacking in other ways. The tone seems off.
I think it has to do with the art. Sean Murphy seems very talented, but he doesn’t seem to fit here. His style, while not being cartoony, is not as scarily realistic as the story warrents it should be. He does a great Robin, so maybe we’ll get to see more of that someday.
And Bruce Jones just continues to disappoint me. I just am not feeling his Batman stories. I don’t know what it is. This could have been the story that he knocked out of the park, but it’s kind of weak. The whole thing seems rather redunant. Knowing that it’s a “Year One” tale already takes some of the punch out of it, because we know everyone is going to get out just fine, so this really needed something to be great.
It could have been a really excellent tale of fear and hurt, but it’s just an average Batman story.
