Gotham Academy

Who knew Gotham had its own, Hogwarts-like boarding school, complete with cavernous halls, buttressed ceilings, and a haunted wing? This new series, focusing on teen Gothamites, follows Olive Silverlock and her friend, Maps, as they poke around the creepy building investigating the mysterious ghost, a secret society, and other strange goings-on at their school. Meanwhile, Olive struggles to piece together her summer, her memories of which are distressingly blank, and find out what happened to her mother. Cloonan and Fletcher excel at giving their characters authentically youthful voices and behaviors, and they cleverly and compellingly unspool Olive's story at a tantalizing pace. Kerschl's warm, manga-inflected artwork employs eye-catching layouts, fantastic panel design, and a rich, inviting color palette unlike the shadowy, grim color schemes many Batman fans are used to. With plenty of intrigue and personable characters, this is the perfect vehicle to wrangle teen readers into the Batman universe. Fans of G. Willow Wilson's Ms. Marvel series or Brian K. Vaughan's Runaways will be just as pumped about this one.--Spanner, Ben Copyright 2016 Booklist

Gr 7 Up-This slick volume collects the first six issues of the DC comics set in a prestigious school in Gotham City. After a traumatic summer, Olive Silverlock struggles to get back into her school routine while showing around new student Maps Mizoguchi and trying to avoid her ex, Kyle, Maps's older brother. But with a possible ghost knocking on the walls and secret societies roaming the halls, Olive isn't coping well with the knowledge of her mother's precarious health condition, her studies, and her classmates' bullying. When the teen begins to recover strange memories about a fire and keeps running into a mysterious stranger with glowing eyes who seems to know her more than she knows him, she bands with other school misfits to uncover some of Gotham Academy's dark secrets. Filled with spunky and quirky characters and unexpected plot turns, this work adds an intriguing and fresh layer to the Batman mythos. In this tale, Bruce Wayne, the school's benefactor, is treated with disdain by Olive and the Batman signal is a daily occurence. Kerschl's campy art is by turns luminous and gloomy, enhancing Cloonan and Fletcher's energetic and sometimes contemplative text. The size and shape of the panels are used to great effect, adeptly building momentum with panache and verve. VERDICT The emphasis on friendships and high school drama mixed with action-packed sequences and an otherworldly tone makes this graphic novel perfect for not only fans of the franchise but those who enjoy boarding school fiction.-Shelley Diaz, School Library Journal © Copyright 2015. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.