Comic Review -- Detective Comics #9 / Tony Daniel, Sandu Florea, and Szymon Kudranski

I like this cover a lot.  Batman is taking on three Talons and holding his own, when just a few issues ago in his self-titled series, he was having a hard time with just one.  The colors and composition make for an intense, dynamic action sequence that strongly ties in with the Night of the Owls event for this issue.

In this installment of the Night of the Owls, Batman has taken the fight to the Talons, specifically the ones that have come after Jeremiah Arkham in his own Arkham Asylum.  When the doctor realizes his facility really is under attack, he makes a deal with one of his patients--Roman Sionis, the Black Mask--to protect the asylum.  Black Mask does so, but Batman realizes what he's doing and shuts him down quickly.  Realizing Arkham had been in league with Black Mask, Batman knocks him out and takes him off the island, intent on dropping him somewhere he'll be safe on his way to the next target.

This being my first foray into Detective Comics since the New 52 relaunch, there's probably a lot of details I'm missing in this review.  One of the first things I noticed was how very much the look and details of this Arkham Asylum are modeled after the awesome video game Batman: Arkham Asylum, from the look of the facility to the inclusion of security guard Aaron Cash, a character I knew from the game.  I could have my details mixed up, of course, but my first intro to that character was from that video game, and he will forever be associated with it in my eyes.

While this is obviously one chapter in the wide-ranging and fast-paced Night of the Owls storyline, it carries the feeling of a task without any real weight.  Daniel does a fine job of writing it, to be sure, but it seems Batman is making one stop on the way to another--which, to be fair, he is.  Arkham, to my thinking, would be a fairly low-priority target for many reasons, not the least of which is that he's always been portrayed as a naive or corrupted, if not outright insane administrator.  Frankly, I'd be more focused on saving the mayor, the police commissioner, the city comptroller... many others would take priority over Arkham.  But that's just me, and obviously Batman is a better man than I am. :)

Artistically, I have to admit, Daniel has quite a bit of talent, handling both storytelling and penciling duties with a delightful aplomb.  His illustrations are wonderfully detailed, and about as realistic as you can get in comics while still maintaining a hand in the grotesquely fantastic.  Arkham's designation as a mental institution is played up in its dinginess and desolation, from the orange uniforms of its patients to the bare, almost decaying appearance of various rooms.  Great work.

Overall, this is a good read in the Night of the Owls saga, though its necessity to the rest of the story won't be determined until the whole thing is said and done.  The artwork is great, and the telling of it from Arkham's perspective makes for an interesting narrative device.  Batman fans will definitely enjoy it.  Recommended.

GN Review -- Batman: Battle for the Cowl / Tony S. Daniel

When I first heard about Batman: Battle for the Cowl, I was impressed about a number of things, most importantly that DC had the gonads to kill off one of their most popular characters of all-time (I know these things never last, but still).  The promotional art for it suggested that virtually every vigilante character in the Bat-Family would be involved, which eventually turned out not to be the case.  But what we do end up getting is essentially a battle between Dick Grayson and Jason Todd that ends up also being a fight for the soul of the Dark Knight's legacy.

In the wake of Bruce Wayne's demise, Nightwing and a network of Gotham-based heroes and vigilantes have tried hard to keep the city from spiraling into a war zone, to almost no avail.  Knowing that Batman is no longer protecting the streets of Gotham City, Penguin and Two-Face viciously escalate their gangland battle for territory and supremacy on the streets, exhausting the GCPD and Nightwing's assembly of heroes.  Things get further complicated when Black Mask shows up, springs a bunch of Arkham Asylum inmates from their transports, and lets them loose to do his bidding and topple the other two gangs.

Nightwing has tried--hard--to deny himself the necessity of succeeding Bruce's mantle and assuming the guise of Batman, but when a ruthless, cold-blooded psychopath begins taking out street scum and calling himself Batman, he has little choice but to hunt the man down.  What ensues is much more than a battle for the right to become the next Batman.  It becomes a very personal, very brutal conflict between the heroes who seek to preserve Bruce Wayne's legacy as Batman, and the madman who feels not only the need to succeed Batman, but to surpass him--and he'll use any brutal method to subvert the meaning of Batman.

This is my first exposure to Tony S. Daniel's work, and I have to say I'm impressed that he handled both the writing and penciling duties for this story.  The central topic of the story--stepping up and preserving your predecessor's legacy, embodied by Dick Grayson/Nightwing--is handled extremely well, as is the conflicting subject of subverting your predecessor's legacy to what you think it should be, embodied of course by the bitter and psychotic, yet still needy Jason Todd.  I like that we get to see at least a little bit of extra help from the other heroes, most notably the Birds of Prey and Knight and Squire, who are all worked smoothly into the plot without overwhelming it with their presences.

There are a few decisions in the writing that left me asking questions that detracted from the overall narrative.  What exactly was Catwoman's final fate by the end of the story?  Why did Jason wear another mask under his Bat-cowl?  And if that wasn't the real Black Mask we saw for the final time in the story, who was it?  These were relatively minor questions that didn't really affect the overall story, but they did distract from it, and I felt they should have been addressed or resolved in some way.

I did enjoy Daniel's artwork in this story, particularly the good job he did in making Tim, Jason, and Dick all look similar (as they always have, to me at least) yet distinct.  The covers with the split images of the three each in their respective previous garbs and their Batman costumes were also nice touches.  The linework is smooth, the action shots are involving, and the heroes look as heroic as the villains look villainous.

Overall, this was a good Batman story, even without the traditional Batman character.  It suffers slightly from false advertising, as the story I found was much smaller in scope than I expected, but it was well written and nicely drawn.  A good read for Batman fans, as well as proponents of the Nightwing-Jason Todd-Tim Drake conflicts that inevitably arise.  Highly recommended.