Detective Comics #1065 // Review
Ubu has a whole bunch of dynamite strapped to his chest. Thankfully, he’s not in the middle of Gotham City. He’s at the docks. There ARE a lot of people around him, though. A lot of people could die. Batman’s got only a very narrow window of time to save everyone in Detective Comics #1065. Writer Ram V enters part four of “Overture” as things get crazy in Gotham harbor. Rafael Albuquerque keeps the action moving. Meanwhile, Harvey Dent is plagued by his inner demon in the opening chapter of writer Simon Spurrier’s “A Tale of Three Halves.” Trippy nightmare visuals bind Spurrier’s tale to the page courtesy of artist Hayden Sherman.
Batman is disappointed in himself. He’s made a few mistakes along the way to his showdown with Ubu. He will not let that get in the way of doing what needs to be done. It isn’t going to be easy, though. Ubu’s got enough dynamite strapped to him to blow Bruce Wayne into a fine mist. Elsewhere, Harvey Dent is really trying to hold it together. He’s being confronted by a part of himself that he’s desperately attempting to suppress. It’s trying to convince Dent that he needs it. As much as Dent might like to think otherwise...it might have a point.
Ram V opens the issue with action. Batman only shows up briefly. There’s a hell of a lot of drama and intrigue to pour in around the edges of the fourth chapter of “Overture.” The dynamics don’t feel any more compelling than they have in the first couple of parts of the story, but the author maintains an overall edge that keeps the dramatic momentum. In the back-up story, Spurrier opens his three-part series with a peer into the psyche of Two-Face, which could prove to be insightful.
Albuquerque hurls action across the page with a careful aim. The kinetics of the fight between Ubu and Batman feel suitably jarring. The artist leads into that with a tense rendering of the Gotham City police clinging to their guns while taking cover behind cars. The drama that follows is a bit dull, but this is more of a problem with the writer’s script. Sherman’s art in the back-up features drips with a stylishly nightmarish abstraction once Harvey Dent falls into a confrontation with his inner demon. The horror isn’t actually disgusting or disturbing...it just looks cool.
Two-Face is the one guy who shows up in both features. It would be interesting to see him become the central character in Detective Comics. It won’t happen, but both Ram V and Simon Spurrier are making him feel like a much more fascinating character than Bruce Wayne. It’s kind of a fun journey from the first feature to the second. Spurrier’s story picks up Two-Face’s journey more or less directly from where Ram V leaves it at the end of the main issue. Sherman’s art is a natural shift into Harvey Dent’s perspective from the less stylized art of the main feature.
