Review: Batman: Gotham By Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #5

In this review of Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #5, we finally see an old west take on everybody’s favorite Kryptonian. 

Batman: Gotham by Gaslight – The Kryptonian Age #5
Writer: Andy Diggle
Artist and Main Cover: Leandro Fernandez
Colorist: Matt Hollingsworth
Variant Cover Artists: Marco Santucci, Alex Maleev
Page Count: 40 pages
Release Date: October 9, 2024

This comic book review contains spoilers 

The Story

In Luthorville Minehead, Lex Luthor shows Victor Stone a man being perpetually electrocuted in a glass cage while he monologues about his past.  Back in 1859 while studying the chemical composition of the sun, Luthor witnessed a solar flare of unprecedented magnitude that became known as the “Carrington event.”  This incident sent an ancient object that had been orbiting the sun hurtling towards earth: the great meteor of 1860.  It also electrified a lightning shaped archeological relic whose power seared the hair of a young Luthor’s head and left his lab assistant frozen in a state of constant electrification.  This poor soul’s name is Jay Garrick and Luthor’s been using his unfortunate fate to more deeply explore Isaac Newton’s theories of time and gravity.  His ultimate plan is to track down this meteoric device and harness its power for his own purposes.  Sickened by this, Stone leaves in an automobile that Luthor has unfortunately rigged to explode.  And that’s exactly what happens.

In Gotham, Bruce and Selena say their goodbyes before Bruce leaves in a giant coal powered Bat-Zepplin headed towards the site of Edith Silverton’s derailed train in Colorado (the same train that was carrying Alan Scott and the Ring of Jong Li if you’ve forgotten).

Back in Luthorville, Victor Stone wakes up in a medical bed with three missing limbs and a thick metal cable extending out of his left eye socket.  Lex Luthor taunts Victor into imagining choking him with a phantom limb.  Off to the side, a mechanical arm reacts to his mental commands.

On a ship going down the Suez Canal in Egypt, John Constantine hosts a poker game that is crashed by a stranger in a fedora and a green medallion.  On the deck, the stranger asks Constantine about a mysterious powerful man he’s searching for.  When Constantine attempts to negotiate a deal, he is levitated into the air before crashing back down onto the deck.  The stranger says he has sifted through Constantine’s limited knowledge before disappearing from the ship.

Finally, in Smallville, arealist Alan Scott touts the mystical power of his recently acquired ring to a skeptical Lois and Jimmy when a tussle breaks out in the town square.  One of the perpetrators is a sharp shot going by the name “Deadshot.”  Soon enough, a bespeckled sheriff arrives with broad shoulders, a red coat, and a bright yellow tie.  He takes two bullets at point blank range but gets right back up, unscathed.  He melts Deadshot’s two pistols just by staring at them and then handcuffs them as an onlooker watches holding three small knives behind his back.

Analysis

Nearing the halfway point of this story, Andy Diggle’s dense and intricate storytelling is still firing on all cylinders.  And while there are still so many disparate plot elements that it may make your head spin, it finally feels like things are starting to coalesce.

Starting off, Diggle gives us the most callous Luthor we’ve seen in recent memory.  This version is sort of a cross between the John Byrne corrupt businessman archetype transplanted into the late 1800s, and the original Silver Age mad scientist iteration.  All the while, he’s given the perception that general human empathy is simply an obstacle for scientific progress: “put aside this petty church morality. It ill suits a man of science.”  Luthor’s flagrant disregard for human life reads more as a period choice than a purely psycho-villainous turn as this story is set less than three decades after the abolition of slavery in the US.  Victor Stone even remarks on this: “you have kept Jay Garrick a slave to your ambitions– since the very days our fathers warred to end such evil.”

Speaking of which, it was cool to get confirmation that the man in Luthor’s cage will likely become The Flash, but it was Victor Stone’s fate that was particularly gruesome.  The scene where he wakes up in the bed, post explosion, and Luthor acts as a disembodied entity hovering over him is pure nightmare fuel.  And that’s not even getting into the body horror of cables and wires growing out of Stone’s wounds and amputated sockets.

Superman’s first appearance, while being spoiled on the cover (which is terrific by the way), fully lives up to its promise.  This version of Clark pulls from the Christopher Reeve variety (my personal favorite), with awkward rounded shoulders, an innocent boy scout demeanor, and pushing up a pair of glasses.  The idea of him being a small town sheriff is both surprising and strangely perfect.  Think Andy Griffith meets Tom Platz (if he was bulletproof and had laser vision).

I can’t say the John Constantine and Phantom Stranger vignette was the issue’s strongest moment, as it’s still unclear how that segment of the story will relate to all the others, but it’s more than worth it to see Victorian takes on these more peripheral DC characters.  Likewise with Alan’s Scott brief appearance.

While Leandro Fernandez’s skill for cinematic framing is on full display here, his characters are more snarly and murine than ever.  Look no further than Luthor’s bizarre likeness on the very first page or his Elvisisan lip curl on page 4.

Conversely, the panels where Fernandez’s leans into his particular skill set, such as the Bat-Zepplin floating over Gotham and Colorado, are majestic.  And for all the weird kinks in his standard characters, Fernandez’ version of Mike Mignola’s Batman by Gaslight still kicks butt.  Sorry purists, I’ll take seeing Bruce’s enraged pupils through cutouts over the usual white eyes any day.  And Matt Hollingsworth’s colors are just delicious.  They’re like a bag of M&Ms, just looking at them makes you feel warm and happy inside.

Final Thoughts

As long as you don’t mind a densely packed narrative, Andy Diggle, Leandro Fernandez, and Matt Hollingsworth deliver on pretty much every level here and the titular Kryptonian’s debut appearance is everything you would want it to be (and possibly more).