DC is certainly putting its A team on the Batman books.  This book is hot.

The writing is top-notch, with lots of surprises throughout:  teaming up with the Joker, the Joker surprise, and the great ending.  They all worked and kept it moving.  He is even good a writing dialogue.  I liked the banter between Bruce and all (almost) all of his sidekicks.  I even enjoyed Bruce’s speech about Gotham.  It went on several pages, but that shows how good a writer he is, that I didn’t mind so much.

There are not enough good adjectives to describe the art.  Capullo has been doing other work for several years.  But it is great to see him cut loose on mainstream book.  You can see creative touches in every frame.  He draws the villains with great detail and personality.  They are a bit stylized, but that seems to fit the crazy Batman villains well.  He draws lots of details in every scene, from Gordon’s knuckles to the furniture in Wayne manner.  It would be easy to skip the details but he does not.  Everything is outstanding, but one thing he does better than anyone:  he draws Gotham as a dank, dirty, nasty place.  The street scenes just ooze with detail and grunge.

Running on all cylinders. A   –  Don

It’s a race between Detective and Batman to see which one is the best of the two “core” bat-books. Excellent art, excellent set-up, and a hook-laden story make this an easy one to come back to. Why choose between this and Detective? Both are well worth it. My only minor complaint is how incredibly young Dick Grayson looks compared with his Nightwing appearance. I can chalk this up to artistic license, though.

Another minor sticking point (extremely minor) is that I looked at this book as the one that would play up Batman’s superhero angle a bit more, and Detective as the one to focus on mysteries and sleuthing, but this issue most definitely sets up a lot of detective-style intrigue.

A  —- Ed