Future State: Gotham #6

Future State: Gotham #6

DC Comics 2021

Written by Joshua Williamson & Dennis Culver

Illustrated by Giannis Milogiannis

Lettered by ALW’s Troy Peteri

“Hunt the Batman” reaches its penultimate chapter! ALL OUT WAR! Jason Todd, now known as PEACEKEEPER RED, must join forces with THE NEXT BATMAN to defeat the NEW supervillain WARMONGER. The only thing standing in their way is every cop and Peacekeeper inside Magistrate Headquarters!

With Warmonger on the loose and the new Batman and the Red Hood making a plan to infiltrate Magistrate Headquarters will they be able to finally stop the madness that has enveloped Gotham? Unlikely but it sure did sound good didn’t it? The boys writing this sure do know what they are doing because this literally has everything we could possibly want to see, no romance though and that’s good. I’m such a fan of this book and I hadn’t thought I would be but with Joshua and Dennis at the helm and such wondrous work by Giannis I couldn’t pass up the chance to give this a shot. This has been extraordinary to see unfold with all the infighting and mistrust things couldn’t be any more interesting than they are here.

I am very much enjoying the way that this is being told. The story & plot development that we see through how 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 dialogue, the character interaction as well as how we see them act and react to the situations and circumstances which they encounter. This does a wonderful job in keeping their ever changing, evolving personalities at the forefront. I really like and appreciate the complete change in personalities with this new regime being the norm in Gotham as it’s really shaken up the status quo and brought things we’d never thought we’d see. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how whether ader learns information is presented exceptionally well.

I appreciate how we see this being structured and how the layers within the story continue to emerge, grow, evolve and strengthen. I like how we see the layers open up new avenues to be explored and new alliances and dare I say friendships forming and old ones with the possible new starts, these add so much depth, dimension and complexity to the story. How we see everything working together to create the story’s ebb & flow as well as how it moves the story forward is impeccably achieved.

The black & white interiors here are a bold move for a DC book and I have to say it pays off in spades. The work is impeccably rendered and the linework is strong, clean and crisp plus with its varying weights and techniques being utilised to create this level & quality of detail within the work is utterly outstanding. I’d like to see more backgrounds but how we see the composition of the panels brings out the depth perception, sense of scale and the overall sense of size and scope to the story. The utilisation of the page layouts and how we see the angles and perspective in the panels show a masterful eye for storytelling. The gray tones we see are utilised perfectly and add depth and dimension to the visuals with such skill.

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I’m not one who is big on these gimmicky events but this book is really good, strong and so long as it’s contained to some unnamed Earth and it doesn’t affect the “regular” universe I’m all for this continuing on for as long as this creative team can keep the tales fresh, interesting and dynamic as we’re seeing right now. The writing is spectacular, the characterisation is stellar and the interiors are just bloody awesome.