By Archie Goodwin & Scott Hampton (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-066-6
One of the most important scripts in the incredible writing career of the late, great Archie Goodwin addressed a social issue that very much plagues us still, but is now so ubiquitous a plot maguffin, and often so poorly handled by contemporary creators in all narrative arts media that it threatens to become just another fashionable story device, and a weakened, trite one at that. That problem is child-abuse and Night Cries is one of the most effective stories dealing with it that comics have ever produced.
This is not a polemical or attention-seeking tale. The subject is key to the plot, affects the characters fundamentally, and is dealt with accordingly. There is no neat and tidy solution. This isn’t a soap-box subject and the victims and perpetrators aren’t paraded as single-faceted ciphers. This is a serious attempt to tell a story in which child-abuse is an integral factor and not cause nor excuse for violence and pain, but since the whole subject is a controversial one readers should be aware of the facts going in.
Gotham City is a pit of everyday horrors but when a serial killer is identified who seems to target entire families even Batman and Commissioner Gordon are troubled by the suppressed feelings the killings dredge up within themselves. Suspecting a link between the killings and a child-abuse clinic funded by Bruce Wayne, detectives interview a traumatised little girl who saw the killer. She identifies The Batman…
Moody, dark and chilling, this examination of family ties and group responsibilities reveals a complex web of betrayals and shirked duties that weaves throughout American society. When a connection to US servicemen, used, abused and betrayed by their own government is revealed, the metaphor for a system that prefers to ignore its problems rather than deal with them is powerfully completed.
Powerful and unsettling, yet blending startling action with horror and drama, this is a perfect vehicle for the talents of Scott Hampton, whose eerily haunting painted pages subtly disclose uncomfortable secrets that have been suppressed for far too long. This lost gem is out-of-print and long overdue for another release.
© 1992 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.