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Detective Comics #2 Review

By Dan Horn
October 7, 2011 - 12:00

Last month, I had stated how surprised I was by Tony S. Daniel's scripting and artwork on Detective Comics #1. It was a monumental showing for the creator who's most known for mediocre work on the pre-reboot Batman series. However, the opening pages of this chapter nearly made me laugh out loud at their preposterous goings-on. Inexplicable business deals while rock-climbing, awkward sexual role-playing: all in a day's work for a billionaire mogul I suppose. If Scott Snyder's integration of Bruce Wayne and the Dark Knight in Batman #1 was spectacularly seamless, then Daniel's integration of the alter-egos is equally unseemly. Once past these ridiculous contrivances, though, the story opens up somewhat nicely into the mystery surrounding the Shutter Island-esque disappearing act Joker pulled in last month's issue.

It seems immediately apparent that all of Daniel's efforts had been focused into the debut issue of this series, and after seeing Detective Comics #2, I cringe at the thought of what future installments to this series might devolve into. Detective #2 does feature some bright points of dazzling character development, yet it also smacks of inadvertent camp and a hokey narrative. Tony Daniel knows one thing for certain this time around, though, and that's how to build tension. Silly Batman vs. the mutants from The Hills Have Eyes premise aside, there are some rather notable instances of dread-inducing suspense. A lot of this issue transcends the otherwise awful goth-noire that Daniel is banging out with a heavy hand here. While Scott Snyder gets a huge amount of credit (perhaps too much actually) for his work on the pre-reboot Detective Comics series, the outcomes to Snyder's stories were always painfully predictable. Daniel's new run might not be nearly as clever or eloquent, but I'll be damned if I know where this Dollmaker arc is going or what's going on with the Joker. For that fact alone, I really have to applaud Tony Daniel's efforts here. I'm simply stumped and honestly enjoying it.

Daniel receives an art assist from Ryan Winn and long-time collaborator Sandu Florea, giving characters softer lines and strange east-meets-west sensibilities. Bright colors are missing, making the palette too murky and uninteresting. Gone too is the Frank Miller-reminiscent paneling of Detective #1. Really the only way in which this issue resembles Miller's work now is in the annoying narrative.

Overall, Detective Comics is still a title I'm looking forward to reading for the foreseeable future, but I anxiously await Daniel's regression into his Batman run mediocrity.

Rating: 6 /10

Last Updated: August 31, 2023 - 08:12