Gotham By Midnight #6 Review

writer: Ray Fawkes / artist: Juan Ferreyra / DC Comics Welcome back to the darkness! Gotham by Midnight is back, and to be honest, I didn’t realize how invested I had become to this series until I thought DC might drop the title. This is the first horror series I’ve ever enjoyed – not including Hack/Slash, if something that campy counts – and I find myself attached to its cast in a way one wouldn’t expect from a genre that thrives off shock value and the devaluation of characters’ lives. But alas, here we are at issue #6, with Gotham by Midnight still on shelves and readers seeing the aftermath of Spectre’s dark, grand scale battle for the city. And here’s where I’d like to note one of the things that makes comics like these special: in the city of Gotham, these stories are largely unaffected by Batman. In fact, our Dark Knight is pretty useless against the dangers they face, and it’s a beautiful thing. It brings weight to new characters, and it makes their responsibilities important knowing that Batman’s brilliance is largely inconsequential here. There’s no swooping in to save them. They have to figure things out on their own. And then they get called crackpots and receive no recognition for it. Being a hero really is a C-, fam.

This issue begins the series’ second story arc with a new artist, having Juan Ferreyra replace Ben Templesmith. While Templesmith’s artwork fit well with Gotham by Midnight, Ferreyra’s more realistic style manages to be quite different without chan…