I don’t know how you folks out there do it, but when I get a stack of comics I determine my reading pile by placing the most anticipated, or “main event” book at the bottom, and stacking them up until the first book I read is the “least-anticipated.” This doesn’t mean that the stuff before the main event book is bad; I’m just not anticipating reading the stuff near the top of my pile as much.
I’ve noticed a small trend over the last two issues of BATMAN: it’s slowly working its way closer to the bottom of the pile, which means that I like it more and more. Tony Daniel seems to have finally found a reasonable voice for Dick Grayson, and the story he’s crafted over the last couple of issues seems to be something rather unique, or at least something that hasn’t been done in a while.
With a new character thrown into the mix, along with a familiar and slightly mystic I-Ching, Daniel is creating a story that is shrouded in an enigmatic mystery of the East that is imposing itself into the concrete jungle of Gotham City. Departing a bit from his first story “Life After Death,” Daniel seems to be making this book a more distinct example of traditional super-heroics by including more mystical elements, but also keeps it a Bat-book by making sure that Gotham, Dick Grayson, and other familiar characters aren’t off doing things that they shouldn’t be.
I remember criticizing Daniel’s artwork last issue as being very “scratchy,” more evocative (but not nearly as stylized) as a style like Sam Kieth’s. In this issue, Daniel appears to have revised his main style yet again. He maintains a certain amount of scratch but it’s mostly used for shading purposes. The lines are much cleaner this month than they have been over Daniel’s last few issues and covers, and this is a revision that I welcome.
Sandu Florea’s inks may have been a large part of this cleanup, but it seems like revisions to the pencils had to be made in order for the change to be distinguishable. Ian Hannin’s colors are awesome, I’m loving the coloring work in this book. The urban sprawl of Gotham and the night sky are all very appropriately subdued, and Batman’s costume is shrouded in black while still giving off a vibrancy that a suit of blue and grey doesn’t have any right to give off, but does. It also makes other more colorful characters pop off the page in a traditional four-color comic book tradition, and the lighting effects just add to the sense that Gotham is very much a living, breathing city.
Continuing the trend of the impression I had when Daniel returned to the book last month, BATMAN still seems to be heading in the right direction. There are a couple of beats that seem convenient, but I also understand that setting a story in 22 pages (soon to be 20 next month, that’s the “cost” of the line-wide price drop) can be a daunting task if there’s certain benchmarks you want to reach.
There’s also a return at the last page of this issue that I’m not particularly pleased with, because it seems to be dialing back on progress of this character. If you’d followed my reviews in the past few months, it shouldn’t take much effort to figure out who that is, but regardless, my recommendation will stand.
BATMAN is fun again, and it feels good to be able to type that.
