YMMV / Gotham Academy

• Adorkable: Maps is a Serpents & Spells nerd, and she's adorable with her endless cheer and social awkwardness (i.e. making loud nom nom nom noises as she eats).
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Is the spirit of Amity Arkham really possessing her daughter's descendants, or do the Silverlock family just have the misfortune of having powers and a mental illness?
  • Is Batman an idiot for not believing that Calamity, AKA Sybil Silverlock, is possessed by her ancestor, since the supernatural exists in the DC Universe? Or is he just displaying a healthy amount of scepticism, since he regularly deals with Maxie Zeus, who claims to the reincarnation of the Greek god Zeus and (in this continuity, anyway) Mr. Freeze, who is convinced that a woman who's been cryogenically frozen longer than he's been alive is his wife?
• Cargo Ship: When Damian hands her his grappling gun, Maps fantasizes about marrying it.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Maps. Her determination combined with her ability to make friends out of anyone and everyone and often very creative means to resolve conflicts has made her the most notable character out of the entire Gotham Academy ensemble. Her chemistry with Damian is so well-received that the concept of the Robin movement during We Are Robin's pre-release promotion had many readers excited with the possibility of Maps becoming a Robin. DC eventually would tease her as a new Robin, with a Robin outfit belonging to Maps in the Batcave during DC Future State and her dressing as Robin and teaming up with Batman during DC Infinite Frontier.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: When DC released promos for new books launched for DC You, 4chan alerted them, replacing taglines with snarky commentary. One for Gotham Academy was "Runaways are never, ever coming back. So try this." Originally it was to much of confusion of both fandoms, as the similarities between two books were at best superficial, but as Gotham Academy went on it started touching on more themes Runaways dealt with as well. Later, however, a sad irony dictated that the last issue of Gotham Academy: Second Semester was published exactly one month before the first issue of Runaways revival.
• It Was His Sled: It's hard to talk about the plot of the Annual without revealing that one of the villains is time-travelling Blight from Batman Beyond.
• Les Yay: Between Maps and Olive. Theirs is a fast-growing friendship, and even after being told that the one thing that connected them (Olive and Kyle's relationship) was no longer a thing, the trajectory of their friendship still remains.
• Periphery Demographic: This book is rather popular among adults who enjoy a lighthearted fare in contrast to many of DC's more traditional (and often violent) superhero books.
• Tear Jerker:
  • Killer Croc keeping an eye on Olive because he was friends with her mother.
  • Harvey Dent's appearance and the reminder of everything he's lost.
• Unexpected Character: Who would have expected one of the villains of the Annual to be a time-travelling Derek Powers/Blight from the Batman Beyond potential future?
• The Woobie: To put it bluntly, Olive's life sucks. Her mom was confined to Arkham before being put on life support after part of the building collapsed, no one in her school understands her (leaving her feeling like an outcast), and she might very well be part of some sort of dark plot involving witchcraft. And her father was killed by her mother.