Gotham Academy Vol. 2: Calamity: Volume 2

Becky Cloonan · Brenden Fletcher

Mar 2016 · DC

About this ebook

The sensational award-winning series continues and welcomes the academy’s newest transfer, Damian Wayne, as writers Becky Cloonan and Brenden Fletcher team with artists Karl Kerschl and Mingjue Helen Chen.

At the beginning of the term, Olive Silverlock returned to Gotham Academy as a shadow of her former self. But thanks to her new friends and their Detective Club sleuthing, Olive was finally starting to feel whole again.

But now, Olive is seeing ghosts. A spectral, robed figure is haunting the Academy-and haunting Olive in particular, appearing to her and giving sinister instructions. Could this spirit be the key to unlocking the secrets of her family’s dark past? Or is Olive simply losing her grip on reality?

Collects GOTHAM ACADEMY #7-12 and DC SNEAK PEEK: GOTHAM ACADEMY #1.

Ratings and reviews

This volume was a bit all over the place, with different style as well as different elements in the storyline. Mainly it is about the secrets of Gotham Academy and Olive's family legacy of being fire elementals (I think?) or being possessed by one? The heart of the storyline is Maps, whose enthusiastic investigative skills has the squad getting into adventures. The standalone story about her and Damian Wayne having an adventure on their own had particularly good artwork - the lighting, the character design, the coloring were all so beautiful. As for the main story, it had them hunting a werewolf on campus, then using Kyle's tennis tournament to sneak into Gotham city, ultimately revealing Olive's family secret (which she doesn't entirely reveal to her friends so we have that drama to look forward to in the next volume oof!). However, the scene transitions were choppy in these, and the story kept jumping forward without proper cause, making it feel like the storyboard was not well planned. Overall, a weaker sequel, but I am optimistic about the next one.

Calamitous!

Awesome sauce

About the author

Born in Pisa, Italy in 1980, Becky Cloonan began her career self-publishing mini-comics in 1999. Since then she has gone on to work with publishers like DC, Vertigo, Dark Horse, HarperCollins and Marvel, winning an Eisner Award along the way. In 2012 Becky broke a glass ceiling, becoming the first woman to illustrate an issue of Batman. In her spare time, she "keeps it real" by self-publishing a new short story every year.