Gotham Academy #1

Why couldn't this be a lenticular cover so I could see their underwear from an obtuse angle?

I think Gotham Academy needs a jaunty, tween theme song to get us all in a Degrassi Junior High-like frenzy of super drama and teen hormones! The underwear shot would have done that but it's only available on the Pervy Adult Variant Cover, so the rest of us will have to make due with this great theme song! Sing it with me, okay! It's sung to the tune of whatever song is currently stuck in your head!

Gotham Academy! Gotham Academy! Climbing up ropes and solving mysteries!
Gotham Academy! Gotham Academy! They wear underwear under their skirts!
Gotham Academy! Gotham Academy! Gonna kiss a boy or a girl or whatever!
Gotham Academy! Gotham Academy! Batman? Batman? Batman can suck it!
Gotham Academy! Gotham Academy! GO GO GOTHAM ACADEMY! Teen titans!

That was a short theme song because I decided not to bother with any more of it because I'm not getting royalties.

In their plaid skirts they climb up ropes! GOTHAM ACADEMY!
Always stumbling around in school aged tropes! GOTHAM ACADEMY!
When there's studying, they're playing Wii!
Still pass their tests because they're smarties!
Ditching nerdy hall monitors on patrol!
Gotham Academy Go!

That was a bonus theme song because it demanded to be sung.

Hopefully the Narrator is Olive because then I'm already crushing hard on Olive. If it's not, I'm in love with the Narrator.

Whoever heard of walls being built with stones older than the walls themselves?! Ridiculous!

The Narrator already has me feeling like I'm in an overly dramatized environment ready to totally freak out over the smallest problems that hardly matter at all! So just like Scott Snyder's Batman!

Here we see the main character, Olive Silverlock, being explicitly told by Headmaster Hammer to take her boyfriend's younger sister, Maps Mizoguchi, into the most dangerous and mysterious and secretiest building on campus. It's also possible this is her ex-boyfriend's younger sister!

Karl Kerschl's art is gorgeous and still makes me feel like I'm reading a Macross comic book.

Let's take a moment to study the character's names! Headmaster Hammer is called Hammer Head by the children of Gotham Academy. That must mean he's seen as thick-headed and unreasonable, and a tough father figure making sure that all the nails get pounded in so they're ready to maintain the structure of civilization. Olive Silverlock has silver locks. Plus everybody loves her and/or she's very kind, thus "All Love." Also she probably has a gross, icky pimento-like substance deep in her soul that takes time to become fond of. Maps Mizoguchi must be named for her ability to find her way around things. I'm sure Maps is just a nickname because she always knows how to find a Taco Bell. Seeing how she acts here, my guess is the name Mizoguchi might be more for her brother's sake. It might suggest he's overly fond of ceremony and tradition, or that he is a poet and lover of beauty. His sister just seems like she might be an adventurous little troublemaker whose curiosity is going to get them all in hot water and teenaged drama!

Next, the two intrepid cuckoos go on a Family Circus style adventure across campus as Olive, the Narrator (yay!), thinks about how she's trying to break up with Kyle. She's also thinking what every other teenager on campus is thinking: "Nobody understands me!" Although in her case, it might be closer to the truth because she is the main character and the story is going to focus on her and she probably has some pretty strange ties to The Batman!

On their way to classes (I guess the tour starts later when they have more time to find themselves in the Haunted North Hall of Madness), Olive runs into her Fremesis, Pomeline Fritch!

I don't know why her name is Pomeline Fritch. Because it sounds unlikeable?

Here we meet Pomeline, the truly most misunderstood person on campus! Probably. I'm sure she acts out because she's afraid to let anybody close to her because she's afraid they won't like who she really is. So she never writes comic book commentaries in her true voice because people might criticize that voice and then her feelings would be hurt. So instead, she acts mean and tough and overly criticizes everything she reads as the only means of armor she has to protect herself in a society that scares the crap out of her because she knows she would never be accepted by anybody that actually fits into it.

Or at least that's the feeling I get from the two panels she's in so far (three if you count the back of her head in the Family Circus Dotted Line Runabout!

In Macpheson's history class, we meet a couple of other future main characters!

The girl flipping the bird is my new favorite! Olive can suck it now!

Olive continues to feel differently from any other teenager that ever existed in that she doesn't feel like she fits in. Hey, guess what teenagers?! That feeling never goes away! Ha ha ha! That whole "It gets better" campaign?! It doesn't actually get better! You just become more cynical and calloused and less impervious to assholes that feel worse than you do so they try to make you feel worse than that! That's what we call "civilization"! Everybody just moping about wondering why they don't actually fit in. Some try their dangdest to fit in and put on a happy smile and go about working their forty hour job and kissing their spouse and patting their children on the heads at the appropriate times while shaking their heads in disappointment at other appropriate times. But deep inside, they still just want to crawl under the house and hug their tear-soaked teddy bear close to their heart.

Olive seems to be trying to adjust to herself, seeking the woman she's becoming and how things changed last summer when...well, I don't know yet. Something about her mom. She's trying to separate herself from the people who know her best (Kyle and Maps) so it's easier to transform into a new Olive. But she doesn't like the things she sees in her new self, and so she reaches out to Maps who, it seems, knows her best. And that's how they wind up exploring the Haunted North Hall of Madness which Hammer Head told them to visit earlier by saying, "Don't you dare visit that place, young ladies!"

Maps also may or may not be into LARPing.

A "Welcome Back to Gotham Academy" assembly is taking place later where Bruce Wayne will be speaking. Olive has a Wayne Foundation Scholarship but that doesn't mean she feels like she needs to hear stuffy old Bruce Wayne speak. Hunting ghosts is a far more efficient use of her adolescent time. That statement seems so obvious I'm not sure I should have even typed it! Who wouldn't want to hunt ghosts over hearing some stupid billionaire gentrificationist blah blah blah for a way too high percentage of your lifetime?

Oh my crap! G-g-g-g-ghosts!

The girls climb up to the top of the belfry, ignoring all of the boarded up entrances and crumbling architecture. This school seems really unsafe! Forget the Haunted North Hall of Madness! Why are the students engaged in an assembly directly beneath this crumbling bell tower?! At the top of the bell tower, Olive and Maps see the Batsignal high over downtown Gotham. Too bad Bruce Wayne is downstairs giving a talk to the students! I guess Jim Gordon is going to have to save the day like regular cops in regular cities all over the world: by finding some patsy and pretending the crime has been solved so that the public still feels safe to go about their capitalism.

Part of the Bell Tower balcony collapses and Maps falls over the edge, leaving her hanging from a gargoyle. Unless it's a grotesque. Olive has to save the day by swinging down on the belfry's rope, causing a lot of bonging and disturbing all the bats, including the man that is a bat! Was that poetic? No? Okay, fine! Whatever.

I guess if Martha and Thomas Wayne's commitment to Gotham Academy meant ignoring maintenance for years and years, kudos, Bruce!

Bruce recognizes Olive and, later, Olive freaks out when she thinks Batman is coming for her too. So is her mother in Arkham? Is that why Olive got a Wayne Foundation Scholarship because Bruce felt he needed to help her out while her mom, um, decompresses? Is her mother a super villain?! Oh! I have more questions too! Who is Mr. Trent and why was he speaking at the Welcome Back Assembly? He starred in House of Secrets (the best house, by the way) with Basil Karlo! Does Mr. Trent work at the school and is it a name I should recognize from the five hundred New 52 stories already done on Clayface? Why is there an eye in Olive's dorm room? And why is Olive's dorm room filled with cracks and holes? I don't think Bruce is committed to this place at all! Throw some money at it, asshole!

Gotham Academy #1 Rating: This book is the kind of fun comic book I've been telling DC Comics they need to invest in. But they never listen to me because I usually call Dan Didio a douchebag or Geoff Johns a gopher hole fucker or Jim Lee a guy that scribbles on everything he draws. Maybe I should try to be more like honey than vinegar! Anyway, this book will take over the empty slot at #7 because how can it not? It's cute and whimsical and filled with g-g-g-g-ghosts and Degrassi Junior High School Drama! That's like my favorite thing!