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February 6, 2005
review: "Detective Comics #803"
After the "War Games" maxi-series bored me to tears I thought about dropping most every Batman title from my shopping list. The problem with War Games, other than the blatantly obvious marketing trickery of it, and the fact that much of the art stank, was that it was over-long (as a direct result of the marketing gimmick making it cover two or three issues of every Bat-Title). By the end very little was happening and it was taking forever for it to not happen. Instead of getting 12 issues of cross-over fun we had to be sold on 36 issues of crap with weak writing, lousy art and commercial excess.
So, what does all this have to do with Detective Comics #803? Not a lot, except this: this is a pretty good Bat-tale. It's dark (very dark actually) and it centers on Batman doing his thing. He's piecing together a mystery, he's angry about where it's leading him, and he's doing nasty things to nasty people to do it. One great scene gives us the Batman we've been missing scaring the be-jeezus out of a bar full of people when he throws a guy through the window and quietly explains that everyone but the guy he wants may leave in an orderly fashion. They leave.
DC needs to cut back on the attempts to get every red cent out of my pocket and let the quality of the merchandise do it for them. They've got some really great books right now (Superman, Superman Batman, the GL mini-series, Teen Titans). Why not get ONE really great writer to handle one or two of the Bat-books, let a rotating bevy of guest writers do the job on one or two others, phase out the rest and make Batman fans hunger for him a bit more. Right now it's like a meat-lover going to an all you can eat barbeque. Sure it's fun, for the first two servings. But then.... ugh.
(Recommended over most of the other Bat-titles.)
(review by Sean Ferrell)
Posted by sferrell at February 6, 2005 4:43 PM
