Detective Comics #1073 // Review
Orgham Place was blown up during its opening ceremony. It was a massive tower. Now, it’s a whole lot of rubble. So Gotham City is a bit more of a mess than normal. (And that’s saying something.) There are a few heroes topside, but Batman’s still somewhere beneath it all. And now, it appears as though he’s being broadcast in Detective Comics #1073. The venerable monthly anthology tells another story grounded in the most totally troubled place in the DC Universe in a story written by Ram V with art by pencilers Ivan Reis and Goran Sudzuka. Embellishment fulls-out the rendering courtesy of inkers Danny Miki and Goran Sudzuka. Color comes to the page thanks to Brad Anderson.
Nightwing managed to save a few kids. Cass got out of the tunnels. She’s watching the whole thing burn to the ground. There isn’t much that she can do. Babs is trying her best to hold everything together from the command center, but she’s going to have a hell of a time of it. Her father just called her asking if she’s in touch with Batman. She isn’t. He’s a little busy at the moment...confronted by a woman with a disturbing faceful of eyes. She’s addressing the people of Gotham through cameras that have also been pointed at Batman.
Ram V is telling a story that rests on multiple different levels as a whole bunch of different concerned parties all try to deal with the central problem that is Gotham City. Batman has occasionally been beaten up. Seriously. He’s been through a tremendous amount of problems over the years. He’s been half killed. He’s had his back broken. (Even ended up in Arkham Asylum.) The hell that Ram V finds for Bruce Wayne this issue is its own kind of misery entirely. It goes a long way toward breathing a bit of fresh life into the character.
The art team is well-integrated for the issue, which moves around various levels of Gotham City quite fluidly. Throughout the main story, the visuals remain remarkably immersive and atmospheric, which is actually quite an accomplishment given how much the narrative jumps around on the page with as many artists as there are involved in delivering the story. Though it lacks physically aggressive brutality, the story bears enough subtly disturbing and haunting visuals to keep it firmly grounded in its own kind of darkness.
As bad as it is, Gotham City’s been through worse. Ram V is putting it through the usual kind of torture. It’s fun to watch him go to work on it with a strange mix of horror, superhero conflict, and straight-ahead psychodrama. There’s nothing in the story that is specifically new in any practical way, but it’s pretty rare for a writer to dive this far into the psyche of Batman and still make it seem like it’s something at least vaguely new. Batman’s been torn apart and reassembled so many times by so many authors that it’s truly rare to see Ram V manage something as interesting as Detective Comics #1073.
