After a pretty strong opening arc, nothing but mediocrity follows.
What They Say:
There’s been a series of assassinations in the criminal underworld – and The Penguin is among Batman’s first suspects! But when seemingly ordinary women become part of the killings, Batman discovers a common denominator that leads him on the trail of a vicious killer who is spiraling down a path of destruction. Bruce Wayne’s girlfriend, investigative reporter Charlotte Rivers, ends up on the killer’s hit list. And with her missing, can Batman uncover the layers of lies and deception within the underworld in time to save her?
The Review:
Overall, I was pretty pleased with the opening story arc for the new Detective Comics. The terrific first issue followed up with an interesting villain that appeared to have had something to do with what happened to the Joker. Despite its rushed ending I was enthused and looking forward to more. The next story arc completely kills that enthusiasm.
Issues 5-7 reintroduce the Penguin to New 52 readers but he’s actually more of an aside than the focus. The arc opens up with Batman patrolling the streets where he witnesses a masked clown figure murder a group of mobsters engaged in some sort of deal. Batman attempts to fight this figure and proceeds to chase him through the city. Mixed into all of this is a large group of protesters demanding justice for the Joker’s apparent murder, which has a unique but wholly uninteresting spin on the Occupy Wall Street protests. With these opening scenes, the start of what could be an interesting story takes place. We have a mysterious assassin that appears to be a follower of the Joker, the protests, and a very noir-ish tone aided with Batman’s inner-monologues.
However, what follows is an extremely overly complicated plot involving Snakeskin, the Penguin’s new Hotel/Casino, and outsider villains making a deal with the Penguin to house their dirty money. It’s overly complicated because none of it ultimately means anything. Jill Rivers and Snakeskin appears to be triple crossing each other and everyone around them, the Penguin doesn’t do anything at all except appear on screen and talk big, and the story ends with nothing being accomplished or discovered by Batman. With all the double-crossing and hidden dealings we are given an intricate web of plot that never pans out. It all is so unnecessary and feels as if the author was just adding these intricacies to make the reader think something bigger was going on, to think of how complex it all is; when really it is just bland. It feels as if this whole arc exists solely to have Penguin appear in the new series. He isn’t being particularly sinister, his motives are never made clear, and in fact his motives appear to only be about ripping off other villains of their money. There is absolutely nothing to care about in this arc, nothing that propels a greater story (since the Joker protests are dropped immediately after the initial scenes), and nothing that urged me to read the next book in the arc let alone the series.
Before you know it, the story is over and I just read some horrible filler arc. Issue 8 decides to not start a new arc but rather a self contained story. The story starts off quite interestingly with Scarecrow basically playing the role of Jeremy Irons in Die Hard With A Vengeance, ordering Batman to accomplish a series of tasks before it is too late for some unknown victim. However, the story quickly devolves into Batman doing detective work for the Scarecrow himself, basically he is used as a lackey for the Scarecrow to discover who has stolen his fear formula. There is a moment where Scarecrow appears to have good intentions for this scavenger hunt because he seems to want Batman to save this victim. Since he is a villain we know he shouldn’t be trusted but Batman moves forward anyway (after leaving Scarecrow for the cops to pick up of course). The issue ends with a needlessly sentimental turn of events that leaves a small plot thread exposed for future use but just makes you want to roll your eyes. I’ll spoil it for you, in the last panel Batman monologues “The intended victim was Gotham.” So nothing else mattered? Scarecrow really was looking out for the well-being of the city? With a much stronger story preceding it I would’ve been able to buy into this but instead I am left underwhelmed by an interesting idea that was executed poorly with a trite ending. After reading the absolutely terrible Penguin arc…this issue did no favors.
In Summary:
I cannot express how deeply disappointed I was with these issues. The grittiness of the first arc is gone, the main draw to the series at this point is all but forgotten, and a need to convolute matters to ‘create’ an interesting story sideline everything I was enjoying about this series. It has sidelined it so much that I am at the point where I just don’t care to follow the series anymore. I already purchased the next issue (part of the Nite Owls arc) and unless that blows me away I am completely dropping this series. I’ll wait for the internet to tell me when they get back to the Joker story and I’ll pick up the collected graphic novel. This series has digressed so quickly that there is no reason to follow it on a monthly basis anymore.
Grade: D
