Batman: Venom

I read Batman: Venom recently based on an article that I can’t remember now – this is the prelude to Knightsfall, which I tried reading right after I read Death and Rebirth of Superman some years ago, but failed.

Venom is quite a good read – it’s pulpy in the way mainstream comics will largely be, and it’s rather ’90s at some points, but it tackles some uncomfortable subject matter, ideas of masculinity, and doesn’t do a shabby job with them.

But I did find my favourite comics panel this year while reading it. It’s drawn by Trevor von Eeden and Russell Braun, inked by José Luis García-López, and takes the incident – police cars show up to a house – and turns it into this gorgeous piece of art:

There’s so much I love here – the geometric composition, the horizontal layout, the top-down shot that looks almost like a flat-lay, and then we come to the specifics. It’s mostly made up of horizontal and vertical lines with circles, except for the shadows, which cut diagonally. There’s just a little disarray in the composition – the lawn up top, the off-kilter square on the rooftop, and possibly my favourite bit, which is the squiggles by which the car exhaust is rendered, looking almost like the wake of a ship in the sea. Then there are the little figures of eight formed by the car headlights, which are a yellow that pops from the grey-and-blue background.

All of that for a panel that most readers are going to look at for a second, think Okay, there’s police cars reaching this house, and then move on.