Review: Detective Comics #863
I'm still pouting about Greg Rucka leaving DC but I also have to face one fundamental truth: Detective Comics is really good right now and nothing can change that. I suspect that there are those who feel this particular arc - which reaches its conclusion with this issue - has from time to time not been as strong as the rest of the story because it hasn't had the gravitas of backstory and prophecy and metaplot and you know what? That's part of what I like about it.
I covered that already, though, in my reviews of this comic: that I am glad we finally get a view into what is more or less Batwoman's "normal" life as a crime fighter. What really entranced me about this issue is that the building duality of Batwoman and Batman's search for similar criminals finally paid off in that almost every pair of pages, or nearly every pair, was split into Batman on the left, Batwoman on the right.
There's probably a poli-sci thesis in there somewhere, just waiting to happen.
That mounting and frenetically split-screen visual sense of the previous couple of issues really finds its full-on you-got-your-Fellini-in-my-David-Lynch flower with issue #863 and starts parading it around the page. I had initially assumed that Batman and Batwoman were pursuing the same case from different angles - perhaps an admission of density on my part, but I simply assumed that Batman was wrong about the killer's identity and that this story would be about how only Batwoman was right (in fact, I thought that was the deal with Batwoman's story being on the right-hand page, that she was "right" and he wasn't) but no, this issue made it apparent to me that the two of them were in fact working entirely different, mirror image cases and they're both correct about their own investigation.
The resolution of each story is full of tension and action and the requisite appearance by Gotham City's more regular uniformed authorities at the end does an excellent job of reminding us what story we're reading, too: we're reading a comic with detective in the title. The point of Batman's story isn't to super-punch bad guys, it's to put criminals behind bars. That classic formula of someone with a Bat emblem slipping into the shadows cast by floodlights and police flashers is one we've all known our whole lives at this point and seeing each of Gotham's newest heroes experience it - possibly for the first time - is both an affirmation of a recipe we know works so well and an opportunity to highlight how much has changed. Commissioner Gordon knows that the mask is the same but Batman isn't; Kate Kane knows that the woman whose squad arrives on the scene could be the great love of her life if she isn't careful. Now that's what I call complicated.
Truly, the more things change, the more they stay the same.
In fact, seeing all that unfold felt merely natural. It was exciting, yes, but it wasn't the source of the new in this narrative. That came from an unexpected frisson of grisly excitement at knowing there were two possible murderers instead of just one. This was a Detective Comics storyline in which plain old kidnapping, murder and mutilation could be exciting again, one that didn't require a big name or a global conspiracy. it was Detective Comics at its deepest roots, almost Morrisonian in the way Rucka renewed an old tale through its repetition, a ritual form known and used in every age and culture ...and that's what I'm going to miss.
Dang, I went and did it to myself again.
As to the art, I think the new art style - new compared to J. H. Williams III's unbelievably beautiful illustrations for month after priceless month - finally finds its own in this issue. I liked it before, yes, but I didn't like it as much and I was having a hard time admitting that to myself. In this issue, though, I really loved it. It's a little messy and a lot big and it's all shadows and half-light, fitting for the way each case is brought to a close.
Sigh.
The good news, I guess, is that this means J. H. Williams III will get to do something else. Maybe I'll get really lucky and it'll turn out to be new issues of Promethea.
Klarion
Posted to Review on 9 April 2010
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