In Detective Comics #1081, as Batman fights his way through a mysterious desert, The Question investigates in his absence, and a group of victims plots vengeance on the evil Dr. Hurt.
Title: Detective Comics: Gotham Nocturne: Act III: An Elegy of Sand, Part 1
Writer: Ram V, Dan Watters (Backup story)
Artist: Riccardo Federici, Stefano Raffaele, Hayden Sherman (Backup story)
Colors: Lee Loughridge, Triona Farrell (Backup story)
Main Cover: Evan Cagle
Variant Covers: Riccardo Federici, Inhyuk Lee, Sebastian Fiumara
Release Date: January 23, 2024
This comic book review contains spoilers.
An unknown narrator tells us the story of Batman, rowed by Talia in the last boat from their wrecked ship out of Gotham City, as Barbatos and the azmer demon battled for control of his soul. Talia drags Batman’s body across the desert, meeting mysterious people and apparitions. She leaves his body by their fire and promises to wait across the desert for him.
Batman awakes and sees Dr. Hurt on a throne, surrounded by monsters. Dr. Hurt says that Batman’s almost-death brought him to the sand between places, the tea Talia gave him to drink makes things as real as he wants to be, so he can answer the question: Who are you, really?
In Gotham, Renee Montoya, the Question, roams the nighttime streets, investigating Detective Fielding’s murder. A mugger runs from his victim without her watch, terrified of the Batman he cannot remember.
Batman fights the azmer demon and wins – but he realizes it will rise again, and his battle will be eternal. He sees a tree and staggers to it but collapses when he realizes it is a nightmare of corpses. Someone gives him water, calling him “Aras.”
The Question finds Alan Nash, Fielding’s partner, dead of suicide with a confession of murder in front of him – but she knows that Nash did not slaughter his friend of his own will.
The man who gave Batman water says he is Farhad, the man from Damian’s story in Detective Comics #1080. He says the only way out of the desert is to know himself. Bruce says “I’m Batman,” but Farhad says that Bruce is more than words. Batman travels on, finding a city full of men in neat rows, wearing identical masks, with Dr. Hurt once again on the throne. Hurt tells Batman that this city is a Gotham saved by Batman.
The final act of Gotham Nocturne begins with An Elegy of Sand! With the finale of the book approaching this fall in issue #1089, Ram V says that this arc of Detective Comics was the seed of the idea of the whole “opera.” A spirit journey through a desert to discover who Batman really is. I think it’s interesting that Ram V positions the azmer demon similar to the eagle that eats Prometheus’ liver every day – a threat that Batman can fight and seemingly defeat every day, but will rise again to eat his soul the next. A poetic image – strongly bringing to mind Kelley Puckett and Tim Sale’s Black and White story (exclusive to volume 2 of the collected edition) “Night after Night.” After a brief battle, a captured Joker tells Batman “You’re insane…Oh, sure, I have one or two small delusions of my own, but you — you actually think you can stop crime.” Batman smiles and says, “What do you mean? I stop it every night.” Combined with Tim Sale’s powerful art, it’s something that’s stuck with me for decades – Batman stops crime every night so that little boys don’t have to lose their parents. Ram V seems to be hinting at something similar, but the muddle of the Orghams and the azmer demon seems to have confused the clarity of Puckett’s lines. Hopefully as he builds to the climax, Ram V will find a similar clarity and show it to us. With just 8 issues left to go, hopefully Batman is able to find himself in one or two more issues, so that the final battle with the Orghams in Gotham is satisfying.
Once again, two artists grace the main story by Ram V, but instead of shifting from artist to artist attempting seamlessness, there are two stories, one artist apiece. Riccardo Federici handles the dreamlike and monstrous Batman desert sequence, while Steffano Raffaele gives us a more clean lined Question segment. Both are quite gorgeous, and Raffaele has contributed several segments throughout Ram V’s run.
The Question story helps keep what’s happening in Gotham present – though the frustration as to when this whole storyline is supposed to be happening rears its head, as Gotham forgets Batman for weeks and weeks, probably months. Renee discovering what we already know because we saw the murders of Fielding and Nash on page feels a bit anticlimactic. It’s nice to see her judgement of character in observing Nash’s mother – but still a significant number of pages that give us almost no new information, and not as much emotional connection to Renee as I’d appreciate, given her deep potential. Alas, her position as Commissioner and the Question have been so badly manhandled, both in this run and in I Am Batman, that seeing her acting like The Question should is too little, too late to really engage. Perhaps upon a trade-reading, it will function more effectively.
The final page of this issue promises a “Gotham saved by Batman” – which sounds, once again, quite similar to Chip Zdarsky’s run, this time, his alternate universe The Bat-Man of Gotham, in which Batman deals with a Gotham in another world, taken over by one of his great enemies, and learns something essential about his own nature.
As a last bit of information, Ram V chose to add a piece of lore to Talia’s history – her “true name” “Tal-Yahe”, which Ram V mentioned on twitter is translated as “The Dew of gods or the Tears of gods.” A nice bit of texture for Talia, and the weaving in of Damian’s nightmare from last issue’s backup is cleverly done, though everything is still so dreamlike and ambiguous, it lacks a sense of danger or consequences to the revelation of Talia’s “true name” (shades of A Wizard of Earthsea here).
Detective Comics #1081 variant cover by Riccardo Federici
Title: His Name Was Dr. Hurt, Part One
Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Hayden Sherman
Colors: Triona Farrell
A group of four broken people meet and share their stories. Annie tells of her husband, Simon, who abandoned her after a complete gaslight marriage. A man tells of his master, who claimed to have trained Batman, and then gave him a grapnel gun with no rope after two years of training. The man fell from a skyscraper and now slowly heals in great agony. The group leader reveals the same man hurt them all – torturing him to exorcize a demon that wasn’t there. The leader tells them he plans to kill Dr. Hurt that night.
Dan Watters picks up the Dr. Hurt thread in Gotham that Ram V dropped a few issues ago. It will be very interesting if it actually leads to a major plot development, though it feels like these are all red shirts set up to die, proving the evil and power of Dr. Hurt. Though I still do not understand the need for an additional villain in this run, given the sketchy, unfinished nature of the Orghams, it is nice seeing Watters and Ram V pass themes and characters like excellent jugglers. Artist Hayden Sherman provides clean lines, very reminiscent of Franco Francavilla (though a bit more delicate than Franco usually is), and Triona Farrel’s flat, simple colors emphasize the mood – the pain these characters share intensely.
Our main cover by Evan Cagle shows a nude Batman, cape fluttering behind him to provide modesty, walking towards a skull in cowl desert ruin structure, clearly symbolizing the journey into death Batman faces (the same art in black and white graces the 1 in 50 incentive variant). Riccardo Federici’s variant shows a fully clothed Batman facing the abomination tree from the story – a handy ability the interior artist has to incorporate his cover work into the interior! Inhyuk Lee’s variant plays with many dualities – Batman and Talia’s torsos like an hourglass, Talia’s face split by her sword into skin and skull, the city and the bloody skulls and roses – powerful imagery indeed, rendered in Lee’s typically clean and smooth textures. Sebastian Fiumara’s 1 in 25 incentive variant shows Batman kneeling in the desert, the brutal sun and wind destroying his body, withering into bones collapsing onto the sand.
Editor’s Note: DC Comics provided TBU with an advanced copy of this comic for review purposes. You can find this comic and help support TBU in the process by purchasing this issue digitally on Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.
