Derek Fridolfs

So fun! I love Dustin Nguyen and Derek Fridolfs "Lil Gotham" and this appeared to be just as delightful.

did not disappoint. It's a fun what if of the school AU variety that is very popular in fanfic, reimagining the Caped Crusader, Man of Steel and Amazonian Princess as elementary school kids investigating super shady shit at their new school. Like NINJAS. So. Many. Ninjas.

Anyone with passing familiarity with the universe with recognize the students and teachers alike (Pamela Isley? Victor Fries? Brainiac?) and guess the Principal's identity, but as a primer for the young set this will appeal to them I think.… (mehr)

Four stories take the familiar faces of Gotham and transplant them into classic fairy tales.

In the first story (and the strongest one in my opinion), young Damian Wayne is stuck home sick and falls asleep while trying to read "Pinocchio," resulting in him dreaming of a "Waynocchio," a little wooden creature who dreams of being a real "boy wonder" one day who can fight crime alongside his doting parents.

The second story involves the GCPD interviewing "the usual suspects" after a jewel is stolen and each one of those telling a tale tall of their own, with riffs on Jack and the Beanstalk and more. With all the stories within the story, this one will appeal to readers who enjoy the Rashomon-style of storytelling.

The third story finds Alfred in a "topsy-turvy" world after he drinks some poisoned tea. This tale was pretty entertaining too, with all the Bat-universe characters taking on roles from Alice in Wonderland, which is particularly fun given how much Lewis Caroll's work inspired various Batman villains over the years.

In the final story, Batman travels alongside a mysterious snow queen to find a frozen man he needs to unearth and reanimate. This one was based on The Snow Queen, which is a fairytale I have no familiarity with so it was entirely lost on me. It was also a lot darker and more serious than the other stories, with the lovelorn Victor and Nora Fries as main characters.

Overall, this was a fun read. It definitely will go over well with older kids (and adults) who are familiar with the original fairy tales as well as a wide berth of Batman characters. The illustrations are really interesting, sort of cartoonish but more sketch-like and watercolor-based than animated.… (mehr)

It's a cute idea with decent art that doesn't do well in black and white, and is all-in-all executed terribly.

This is by far and away not the first AU iteration of familiar DC characters - with a particular emphasis on the Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman mythos - in school environments, and it does nothing to stand out from any of the others. Compared to "Gotham Academy", which barely even has appearances by the mainstay Batman characters, this is pathetic. The school isn't a school, and it seems stupid from page 1 that any of the main trio would go there. It's not even amusing or believable on a "well it's sort of funny that they went to a supervillain training school". Because that seems to be the premise. But it's not really a supervillain training school so much as a supervillain reference environment where apparently unsupervised children are left to run rampant most of the day without any consequences or purpose. Well, the purpose is to have one or three things every page that someone familiar with the DC Universe can say "I get that reference". That's it.

Compare this to the "Lois Lane" novels by Gwenda Bond. The series takes place in a relatively normal school, with familiar characters like Lois Lane, Clark Kent, Bruce Wayne, and Lex Luthor, all aged down. For all that weird stuff does go on in the background, forming the basis for the mysteries to solve, the school is still by and large a NORMAL school, where NORMAL things happen. Kids and adults can and frequently do face consequences for actions that break the rules of the system, and teaching is involved in the system. The school isn't just a nostalgia box. And when it makes a reference, it works fluidly in the story.

Dustin Nguyen's art is fine, although it's really difficult to appreciate without color (the gray just kind of blends together). Backgrounds are basic to nonexistent, so characters are running around in voids, even if most of what we see is mostly snapshots. Character expressions verge on the statuesque to the bizarre, with Bruce occasionally looking like a pig, and ages for non-child characters being extremely ambiguous. Due to the lack of environments, characters and plot seem to spontaneously spawn, with Brainiac's first appearance being the notable example, particularly given its "introduction". Or lack of introduction. Basically Bruce sees the Brainiac insignia on a piece of paper and is potentially weirded out by it(?) (it's not explained). He then shows Clark and Diana for no apparent reason, and they're potentially shocked by it too for some unexplained reason, and then Brainiac appears to no one's apparent surprise before going off on its merry way. And then Bruce and Clark and Diana are besties now.

Plots are picked up and dropped with no rhyme or reason. No one likes Bruce and he's frequently apparently dumped in garbage or covered in food from food fights and mistrusted by the school leadership, yet his locker is filled with love letters on Valentine's Day. Why? Because Batman is a notorious heart-throb in comics, therefore mini Bruce Wayne must also be.

Characters like Diana and Clark and Mr. Freeze have superpowers but this is only a slight oddity that Bruce occasionally comments on but is largely nonplussed by. It's fine to have a world where having superpowers isn't unusual, but there's no evidence that this is what's going on. In fact, it's implied that it's the opposite - that superpowers aren't the norm. The antagonists of the story seem to be aware, unaware, suspect, and know the extent of the superpowers of the protagonists. It's very confusing.

I just wonder if some of these writers have any clue what it's like to go to public or private school. Parents/guardians don't typically hear that their children are being bullied by literally all students and assaulted in hallways and then tell them "school isn't meant to be enjoyed". I certainly don't understand why Alfred is saying that. Certainly, school isn't supposed to be a vacation. But it's not just "let's assault the new kid" ground. There's absentminded parenting, parents not believing their kids, parents believing that hazing is good for kids to learn to toughen up, and then zombie parents who just exist because children must have guardians and guardians don't care about kid's feelings because that's how all school dramas are written apparently.

Overall the story is boring at its best, nonsensical and dumb at its worst. The art, given its presentation, is meh. There are plenty of better alternative "familiar superhero characters as kids in school" stories out there, like "Gotham Academy", Gwenda Bond's Lois Lane series, "JL8" the webcomic, and so on. Plenty of those are things that children -and adults- would enjoy reading. Skip this.… (mehr)