My Rating
“Gotham Atrocity”
Gotham City, where the creeps never sleep! Nina Skorzeny is busy slam dancing the night away inside a local punk club when a very familiar song starts blasting through the speakers. Wait a minute! That’s a Scare Tactics song—and nobody in the band gave these guys permission to use it. Has Scare Tactics been bootlegged? Somebody better call a lawyer. Better yet, it’s time to bang some heads!
Unfortunately, copyright infringement quickly becomes the least of Nina’s problems. Who is the mysterious vampire that goes splat outside the club? What does his death have to do with Nina and the rest of Scare Tactics? Meanwhile, Philbert has a little explaining to do himself. Seriously, dude, what’s with the severed head? Some souvenirs are better left behind.
Then there’s Scream Queen and that incredible mane of supernatural hair. Is it live, or is it Memorex? With vampires dropping from the Gotham skyline, severed heads turning up in strange places, and the band reunited once again, something seriously weird is happening in Batman’s hometown. All roads lead to Gotham in this bizarre reunion-tour issue of Scare Tactics!
Reviewer Notes
Seriously, what’s with the severed head found in the Alabama swamp? Why did that vampire suddenly go splat outside the punk club? There are several scenes in “Gotham Atrocity” that left me wondering whether I missed something along the way. I enjoy when a comic leaves a few mysteries hanging for future issues, but this one occasionally jumps from one bizarre event to another without giving the reader much time to figure out what just happened.
That being said, I still had fun with this issue. Bringing the gang back together in Gotham City gives the story a great setting, and Nina discovering that someone has apparently bootlegged a Scare Tactics song is a fun way to get things rolling. The series works best when it embraces its strange combination of punk rock, monster horror, and goofy humor. Issue #10 certainly delivers plenty of all three. You have vampires, living hair, severed heads, nightclubs, and enough weirdness to remind you that Scare Tactics was never supposed to be your typical superhero comic.
The cover art for issue #10 may also be my favorite of the entire series so far. Scare Tactics standing in a police lineup with the Bat-Signal glowing behind them is such a simple but clever idea. It immediately tells you that the band has arrived in Gotham—and probably gotten themselves into trouble before they even unpacked their instruments. “Gotham Atrocity” may leave me with more questions than answers, but I’m still enjoying this weird little corner of 1990s DC Comics.