Detective Comics #1070 // Review
Cheshire Cat searches for life in the face of death deep beneath the city. Batgirl has her own reasons for exploring Gotham City’s subterranean shadows. Batman seeks for clues from an old love. There’s a powerful energy looking over the shoulder of Barbara Gordon in the clock tower. The mystery deepens in Detective Comics #1070. Artist Stefano Raffaele and colorist Adriano Lucas find form and fashion to writer Ram V’s mystery in a satisfying issue that gives Gotham City a bit more of a close-up than it typically receives. The complexities are welcome, but the story could easily careen in a very silly direction if Ram V isn’t careful.
Bruce Wayne is visiting his father’s grave for a few traumatic flashbacks before heading off to the Water District to meet with Talia. She’s found a nice place for herself that allows her to be pretty close to Batman. He’s convinced that a conversation with her could illuminate a bit of the current situation in the city. He’s also working with Barbara Gordon on the investigation. She gets a visit from a mysterious stranger who reveals a potential consciousness emerging from the very substance of the city itself. Stranger things have happened. After all...this IS Gotham City.
Ram V has the central mystery of the story running along multiple lines at once. The various threads that he’s pulling together are intriguing and disparate. There’s a lot to capture the reader’s attention. The real danger lies in how he’s going to bring them all together. The idea of Gotham City being its own entity is actually kind of cool, given all of the dark energy that seems to be rolling through it, but it’s a premise in SERIOUS danger of becoming mind-numbingly ridiculous if it’s not handled perfectly.
Raffaele gives the darkness and the shadow of Gotham City a griminess that feels suitable to the city. When Batman visits Talia in the Water District...it’s a rainy night in Gotham City. Raffaele manages to give this particular rainy night in Gotham City its own accent. The emerging character of Arclight has a look that is both familiar and foreign. A glowing zero in a unitard with various other bits of ornamentation makes for a unique fingerprint on the page. Arclight would be a lot less interesting without the green sheen and glowing gold granted to him by Lucas’s colors.
Ram V is letting the mystery into Detective Comics in a way that feels fresh and fascinating. The story might be running the risk of heading down a ridiculous path, but it’s nice to see a writer trying something new with the series. There have been countless issues over the decades that have played it WAY too safe with the series. Ram V’s work is positively courageous next to the drudgery that had been the series for so much of the mid-to-late 20th century.
