Legends of the Dark Knight: The Butler Did It
The rise of digital comics has so far been a rather lackluster revolution; for all the voracious love, hate and vitriol among critics and commenters there hasn’t really been all that much effect on the everyday of the industry itself. Physical sales are still dropping, but these numbers don’t correlate with those being picked up online, though nor do they show an influx of fresh blood like some had hoped; statistically speaking it’s kind of all a mess, which I guess means that the war is still ongoing. The latest barrage from the big two on this front is DC’s new Legends of the Dark Knight range, a series of weekly one-off Batman titles written and drawn by some of the industries biggest names that stand as something of a response to Marvel’s Infinite imprint.
Unlike the alienating technological advances and unfortunate connection to the Avengers continuity that Nova suffered these Batman ( as marketable character as there is right now) stories are entirely self-contained and skew the format enough to be interesting but never step outside the safe zone. They’re particular mixture of both new and old styles is then perfect then for bringing in fans both new and old as are the names of those behind the book; diehard comic book spans will know that anything with Jeff Lemire’s name on it needs to be bought while geeks of other sorts will surely be intrigued by Damon Lindelof’s large letterhead above the title. If anything is going to draw people to try digital comics I daresay that it will probably be this.
