- Cover by Mike Allred
- Written by Jeff Parker
- Art by Ruben Procopio
- Coloured by Matthew Wilson
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BEWARE OF SPOILERS
The Sandman arc wraps up this week in ‘Batman Sleeps Tight’ which follows on directly from last weeks chapter which saw the villainous somnambulist succeeding in putting the citizens of Gotham – including the Dynamic Duo – to sleep in order to steal their secrets and their riches.
This week is a pretty fast paced conclusion which goes on a trippy look in to Batman’s head allowing artist Procopio to really go to school on the visuals.
I talked last week about how the artwork was at the forefront of this arc with Procopio drawing his first issues in this series. The same can be said of this issue whereby the visuals are incredibly strong throughout and enhance the dreamlike quality that flows through many of the scenes.
I stand by statements last week that the artwork in this arc is totally different to everything that we have seen before in ‘Batman ‘66’ but that is also somewhat fitting. Looking back over the last two weeks the caricaturist nature of the art does work in the context of the book but I’m sure some will find it a little like a long-form political cartoon that is so often printed in news media.
I’m not sure if Procopio will be back next week for the back-up story but I do hope that in the future he gets to work on further issues so as to further develop his unique take on the franchise.
The story in ‘Batman Sleeps Tight’ rounds out The Sandman story perfectly as we have come to expect. I feel like I’ve become a bit of a fanboy for Jeff Parker’s work on this series but I just don’t have enough kind words for how well he understands the franchise and how perfectly he recreates it in comic form.
I’ve talked at length about his understanding of the franchise but something I’ve not touched on much is his ability to literally translate the format of one of the TV stories in to the comic. The comic continues to end it’s first issue of each arc on an incident where you can imagine the narrator asking you to tune in ‘same Bat time, same Bat channel’ next week.
This issue has that feel of neatly wrapping up the storyline in a tidy bow just like any concluding episode on the TV show and the ability to bring these stories to us week-by-week is astonishing.
Keep reading guys because this is a franchise to get behind.
7/10
