Gotham Academy

Gotham Academy
Publication information
Publisher	DC Comics
Schedule	Monthly
Format	Ongoing series
Genre	Superhero
Publication date	December 2014 – Ongoing
Number of issues	18
Creative team
Writer(s)	Becky Cloonan, Brenden Fletcher
Artist(s)	Karl Kerschl

Gotham Academy is an ongoing comic book series published by DC Comics. The series takes place in the DC Universe's Batman mythos and follows Olive Silverlock and her friends, who attend the prestigious Gotham Academy.

Publication History

Gotham Academy was launched in October of 2014 as a part of the ninth and final wave of comics under DC's New 52 imprint. It was created by writers Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher and artist Karl Kerschl. A second volume of the series, titled Gotham Academy: Second Semester, is scheduled to debut with DC's Rebirth initiative. A crossover miniseries between it and Boom! Studios's Lumberjanes is also planned for release in June 2016.

Characters

• Olive Silverlock: The series' protagonist whose mother was once a Gotham super-villain named Calamity before being put in Arkham Asylum by Batman. Olive resents the dark knight because of this. She returned to Gotham Academy after some time off with a newfound depression, being an outcast from several of her old friends, aside from underclassmen Maps and Olive's ex-boyfriend, Kyle.
• Mia "Maps" Mizoguchi: A curious underclassmen and Olive's best friend. Maps is optimistic and admires Gotham City's superheroes. She is obsessed with urban exploration and cartography, hence her nickname.
• Pomeline Fritch: An occultist and Olive's on-again, off-again friend, Pomeline is directly involved with some of Gotham Academy's mysterious ghost sightings, and teams up with Olive to put the spirits to rest.
• Colton Rivera: A prankster and the academy's number one source of illegal fireworks. Colton also has expertise on lock-picking and other useful skills.
• Kyle Mizoguchi: Olive's ex-boyfriend and Maps' older brother, Kyle is a tennis prodigy. Although Olive and him are broken up, he is still concerned for her well being, especially as her outings and emotional state affect his little sister.
• Tristan Grey: Gotham Academy's mysterious new student, he is infected with a virus that causes him to turn occasionally into a half-bat creature. He and Olive are romantically interested in each other.
• Sybil Silverlock: Olive's mother and fire-based super-villain, Calamity. She is one of Batman's most mysterious adversaries, who was put into a coma after the collapse of Arkham Asylum.

Plot

Issues #1-6

The series follows Olive Silverlock, a teenage girl attending the prestigious Gotham Academy. After distancing herself from her friends and breaking up with her boyfriend over the summer, Olive attends a new school year at the academy after a run-in with Batman. She finds herself bullied at the start of the semester due to word spreading that her mother was instated at Arkham Asylum. At the behest of her friend Mia "Maps" Mizoguchi (who is also her ex-boyfriend's little sister), the two begin exploring the archaic halls of the academy. After seeing some masked figures on campus, Olive investigates, only to find her classmates Pomeline Fritch and Pomeline's boyfriend Heathcliff are part of a secret society, and they are attempting to capture the ghost of Millie Jane Cobblepot, who is apparently haunting the grounds. Olive interrupts them in the midst of a ritual, and apparently this was enough to cause Millie Jane to run amok across campus. Olive promises Pomeline that she will attempt help catch the ghost, who is connected to a rare book that Olive has, The Diary of Millie Jane Cobblepot. While searching for the ghost, Olive and Maps spot a blonde boy who Olive swears is familiar, but she cannot recall how she knows him.

Realizing that Millie Jane's ghost is connected to the abandoned North Hall (which was destroyed after a fire earlier in the year), Olive, Maps, and Pom ask Colton Rivera for help, a student and fire-cracker dealer who can sneak them into the off-limits hall. Inside, the four find strange symbols on the ground next to a large hole. Pom drops her phone into the hole on accident, and when Olive attempts to fish it out, a large hand burst from the hole, and the group runs out of the hall screaming. This alerts campus security, and the hall is put on lockdown, making entry nearly impossible.

The group decides to investigate the strange symbols they found in North Hall, and realize that a paranoid boy named Eric has been drawing them. Olive and Maps interrogate him, but he only mentions seeing them in the girl's dorm. That night, Olive and Maps spot the ghost of Millie Jane, and Olive attacks the spirit, only to discover it is a dummy attached to strings. Following the strings to the rooftop, Olive discovers that Heathcliff has been faking the ghosts existence in hopes of convincing Pom that her rituals were doing something, as he did not wish for his girlfriend to be disappointed. Olive promises to keep it a secret, and begins walking back to her room, when she spots the mysterious symbol on the wall in a staircase. She pushes on the symbol, discovering it leads to tunnels that connect the entire campus between the walls and underground. She begins looking through the tunnels, and discovers on the wall outside of her room, there are pictures of her and her mother taped up. Just then however, Olive turns to find that a startled Killer Croc has been living here, who broke out of Arkham when it collapsed, the collapse that also put Olive's mother into a coma.

Wanting to find out the connection between Killer Croc and her mother, Olive explains everything to Maps, Pom, and Colton, the three promising to help Olive. Maps figures out that the only place Croc could be hiding is in the North Hall, though the group needs Colton's fireworks bag to get through a blocked tunnel to the hall, which is in the headmaster's office. Luckily, a dance was being held that night, creating a diversion for the group to sneak into the headmaster's office. Here, Maps finds a crossbow, and gives it to Olive in case they need it against Croc. On their way there, Olive spots a figure she assumes is Batman following them, and shoots it out of the sky. Olive finds it is the blonde boy, Tristan, who has been affected by the Langstrom Virus, causing him to sometimes become a mutated half-bat creature. He explains that he knows Olive from the night the North Hall burned down. Olive was sleepwalking and was in the midst of the fire, when Tristan flew in to save her. He flies away, and the group continues onward.

Finally breaking into the North Hall, Olive and the others confront Croc. He calms down, and they begin to talk with him. Croc explains that he knew Olive's mother Sybil from Arkham, and she gave him a picture of her and Olive, asking him to look out for her daughter. In the midst of talking however, they find smoke-bombs thrown into the building as Batman descends and begins to fight Croc.

The cops show up amidst the battle, as the group runs, all but Olive, who lights the bag of fireworks that Colton left behind, effectively burning the North Hall once more in an attempt to kill Batman. The roof begins to come down, and Croc pushes Olive out of the way, saving her and retreating into the tunnels. The two walk through the catacombs, Croc explaining how her mother had two personalities, a caring one, and a frightening, darker one. He says how he connected with the caring side of Sybil, and is upset at himself that he made Olive's life worse rather than protecting her as he promised. Olive assures her that she can take care of herself. The tunnel exits into a swamp, where the two bid goodbye, Croc telling her that she should come and find him one day.

Olive walks back to campus, reunited with Maps and Pom. Later that night however, Olive goes to the roof, where Batman is waiting for her. It is revealed that she despises Batman because he is the one who put her mother in Arkham, but Batman tells her that Arkham was the only place that could protect Gotham from Olive's mother. He tells her that she will understand all of this one day, and he asks her for Millie Jane's diary. Olive claims it burned up in the fire, and Batman vanishes.

The following Friday, Maps' older brother and Olive's ex-boyfriend, Kyle Mizoguchi, confronts Olive, and the two realize they are still in love with each other. Colton and Pom join them in the cafeteria, and Maps suddenly realizes that the mysterious symbol is two inverted, interconnected "A"s, that the five assume stands for Arkham Asylum, explaining that the tunnels connected to the asylum before its collapse. The group takes pride in their work, and decide to call themselves the Detective Club, Olive taking pride in the friends she has made.

Later, someone breaks into an empty room, where Millie Jane's diary is still intact. The perpetrator takes the diary and heads to the headmaster's office, where Bruce Wayne is sitting, and it is revealed that the culprit is Damian Wayne. Damian gives Bruce the diary, the headmaster welcoming Damian to the academy.

Reception

Gotham Academy has received extremely positive reviews since its beginning. IGN called the first issue "Great", saying that "Gotham Academy offers a fresh take on the Bat mythos, driven by Karl Kerschl's fantastic art." Newsarama gave it a 9 out of 10, citing "If this is a mark of where the ‘new’ New 52 is going, then the Bat-Signal is shining a little brighter this week."