Arkham City The Order of the World #2

Arkham City The Order of the World #2

DC Comics 2021

Written by Dan Watters

Illustrated by Dani

Coloured by Dave Stewart

Lettered by Aditya Bidikar

The Joker’s attack on Arkham Asylum left the long-standing Gotham establishment in ruin, most of the patients killed or missing, and only a handful of surviving staff-a few nurses, a gravely injured security guard, and one doctor. In the chaos of the assault, it is believed that several of the asylum’s patients escaped and scurried off into the dark nooks and crannies of Gotham City. Now, these Arkhamites walk among us, and it’s up to the Asylum’s one remaining doctor, Jocasta Joy, to round up her former patients. Meet these Arkhamites: a woman with no face, a pyggy in search of perfection, a man who feels nothing and burns everything, a woman who must devour life to save herself, a man unfit for the waking world who looks instead for Wonderland, a body with more than one soul, a being unbound from time who lives in the present and the past, a boy who seeks the comfort of vermin, and the twisted man who sees them all for who they are. And witness the avenging angel who stalks them.

Last issue introduced us to this story and Joy and this issue takes that and really amps up the feelings that I had from that. The way that this is being told is phenomenal. The story & plot development that we see through the way that the sequence of events unfold as well as how the reader learns information is presented exceptionally well. The character development that we see through the narration, the dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter continues to flesh out these personalities beautifully. The pacing is fantastic and as it takes us through the pages revealing more of where the patients are the more I want to see and learn about them.

How we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen is exceptionally well rendered. How we see the layers open up new avenues to be explored is phenomenal. I'm talking about The Ten Eyed Man’s look at the city, and how this adds so much depth, dimension and complexity to the story. The way that everything works together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how we see it move the story forward is impeccably rendered.

The interiors here are dark, moody and a bit insane in their own right. It fits the subject matter exceptionally well. The linework is bold, thick and how it brings about the detail within the work is amazing to witness. There’s this creativity and imagination on display, mainly when it comes to Double X, that really takes us outside the box of what we think and shows us so much more that’s possible. The way that backgrounds enhance and expand the moments or how the composition within the panels brings out this depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story is wonderfully handled. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels shows an interesting eye for storytelling. The various hues and tones within the colours being utilised to create the shading, highlights and shadow work are so well rendered.

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Joy being a Doctor at Arkham and so focused on her patients shows that she’s lost touch with reality in ways that make her just as dangerous as her patients. The curse of Arkham is such a real and palpable thing. At some point she’ll need to be in a cell alongside her patients and I doubt that there’s anything she can say or do at this point to sway my feelings about that and yet it’s a driving factor behind this story that makes it so compelling. With such amazingly strong writing and deep dark characterisation alongside these sytlised interiors we see how much Arkham has changed those it housed as well as how it changed the very city itself and that’s a powerful thing to convey.