With the holidays coming to a close, Olive Silverlock finds herself alone at Gotham Academy, waiting for her classmates to return. Her days seem pretty boring and she spends them mostly thinking about her loneliness. Luckily for her a new student shows up and is ready to find an adventure. Olive is intrigued by her new roommate at first, but could she be more trouble than she’s worth? Is it good?
Gotham Academy: Second Semester #1 (DC Comics)
Gotham Academy: Second Semester’s first issue is a simple and well put together story of our lonely protagonist Olive wanting to find some entertainment while her friends are away for the holiday. The dialogue actually starts out in depressing fashion, displaying Olive’s sadness in great detail. The writers briefly give Olive a mentor figure, but she is taken out of the story pretty quickly — almost certainly to give our new character free reign on the campus.
Olive is a saint. Amy, on the other hand, is a jerk. I actually found myself getting upset with her in a few scenes. I would have decked her; her personality is pushy and over the top intrusive. Overall, however, this made me realize that Fletcher, Cloonan and Kerschl write teenager girls very well.
Is It Good?
There are a few mentions of Arkham which should cause for interesting series growth. The visuals stay true to the Gotham Academy Annual-prequel issue. The scenes are dark and ominous which definitely makes the “I’m alone at a creepy school” feeling much more believable. The details are great but I think the architecture really jumps off the page. Gotham has always had a certain style in most people’s minds and Archer and Hope are really portraying it well.
There are a few pages that the scenes get confused. The dialogue is all over the page which makes it difficult to follow the pattern of the story. It was a bit frustrating. There wasn’t a big connection to the prequel released a few weeks ago. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing but being a new reader to this series I was hoping for some background conclusions. The plus is this new series starts fresh and you don’t have to read and Annual-I would recommend you do anyway.
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