Gotham Academy is back for a new school year, and things are starting out a little on the mysterious and dangerous side. So, about what you’d expect. Click the jump for preview pages and a review of Gotham Academy: Second Semester #1.
Olive Silverlock is on campus for the holidays (she could hardly hang out with her mother, what with the whole (spoilers) Arkham Asylum situation) and Professor MacPherson is trying to make her feel comfortable with a nice post-holiday dinner in the formal dining room (which considering the nature of all Gotham formal dining rooms, and you know what I mean, doesn’t make anybody comfortable.)
Professor MacPherson says they’ll have dinner again the following night, but the next panel we see a note from her to Olive that cancels it due to a “prior commitment.” It doesn’t look like Olive is horribly angry, but more about that later.
After a bath she comes back to her room to find a new roommate bringing in her stuff, and we find out two things: Amy ate Olive’s sandwich, and she’s touching her stuff. So apparently we should hate her. (I’m not being sarcastic. Don’t touch my stuff. And do NOT eat my food.)
Amy ends up being a bit of a bad influence, encouraging Olive to throw a rock through MacPherson’s window for daring to cancel a plan, and then needling her into looking around the terribly off-limits Wedgwood Museum.
Inside they find more secrets and mysteries (and Olive passes out and no one finds it odd) which I won’t get into because you may want to read it yourself. Except to say the seance room isn’t just a seance room, and Amy turns out to be (unsurprisingly) a big jerk.
The story and writing are good, but as a jumping on point for new readers it’s a little disjointed. You should probably check out the wikipedia page for a little more info before you read it, because the story is better if you have a little history going in.
I enjoyed the art, it’s very much like animation art, with a lot of clean lines and motion. (The art, plus the straightforward tone of the story, makes it appropriate for younger readers I think.) I’d been worried when I heard Karl Kerschl wasn’t doing the interior art because I’d loved his work on volume 1 of Gotham Academy, but Adam Archer’s pencils and Sandra Hope’s inks are fun to look at.