Review: Detective Comics #1070

Overview: As Oracle meets the Vigil, Batman and Batgirl start their more strategic campaign against the Orgham invasion of Gotham in Detective Comics #1070.

Editor’s Note: Due to the anthology nature of this collection, we will feature a synopsis and analysis for each story rather than breaking up the synopsis and analysis. Spoilers are sure to be revealed.

Story #1: “Gotham Nocturne Act 1” Part 5 by writer Ram V and artist Stefano Raffaele

Synopsis: As Detective Comics #1070 begins, the Orgham troops unload fully automatic rifle fire on Solomon Grundy as he attacks them in the sewers. They attach an azmer demon to him, but he literally punches it out of himself, and in desperation, the troops hurl grenades. As the smoke clears, Cheshire Cat (Lian Harper) teams up with Grundy to get out of the sewers, away from the Orgham azmer army program.

Bruce walks through the Wayne cemetery, pondering his next moves against the mysterious threats he faces, remembering his lost future with Selina (in Batman #50), and wondering if he’s made a mistake. Prince Arzen of the Orghams approaches him and says that the Orghams are looking at the Wayne land (since the Wayne family is no longer as financially dominant because of Joker War). Bruce says the land will never be for sale, and Arzen speaks of the death of his father, who went on a quest to save a city but failed and died, and speaks of history repeating itself. As Arzen leaves, Bruce calls Oracle (Barbara Gordon) and works with her and Batgirl (Cassandra Cain) to start developing a planned campaign against the threat to Gotham, which he suspects has to do with the Orghams.

In the Water District, Batman fights his way to Talia al Ghul’s door, and his former lover tells him more of Prince Arzen’s family – and how her father, Ra’s al Ghul, killed Arzen’s father.

Meanwhile, in the Clock Tower, Barbara is approached by a mysterious vigilante calling himself Arclight, part of a four-person team (including Castle, Oracle’s counterpart, Dodge, and one more) called the Vigil, who are in Gotham watching the Orgham and the Bat-Family.

Analysis: Act 1 of Ram V’s opera completes part five with Detective Comics #1070, and a lot of information is dropped – perhaps information that should have been dropped a lot earlier. One can see the purpose of Ram V’s structure – to focus on Bruce Wayne/Batman’s experience of the invasion of his city, slowly learning more about it – but as I’ve mentioned in my discussions with Steph and Theo on the TBU Comic Podcast recently, I don’t feel the benefits of that structure are worth the tradeoffs of confusion and the sense that Batman is flailing and failing constantly. Though there have certainly been many times when Batman has felt similarly outmatched – the early 2000s, after No Man’s Land comes to mind, when Batman spends years being outmaneuvered by villain after villain in Bruce Wayne: Murderer/Fugitive, Hush, and War Games – outside of Hush (primarily for Jim Lee’s art and the chance to see many classic villains instead of the original characters and gangsters the early 2000s tended to focus on outside of that year), that period is not well remembered for a reason. I think that a Lord of the Rings movies style prologue, or even something similar to what happens here, with Talia giving Bruce additional lore (but not nearly enough, though the next issue may give us more), would have been a much stronger opening than the seemingly random fights and Barbatos visions we’ve had up till now.

The revelation that Ra’s al Ghul murdered Prince Arzen’s father (though the family relationships of the Orghams, stretched over the same millennia that the al Ghul family’s relationships are stretched over, are still quite murky and confusing), gives some hints as to the direction this story will go. I can easily see the Orgham prince becoming consumed by vengeance in trying to destroy Talia, and Batman, driven both by justice and love, rescuing her and defeating the Orgham threat. Perhaps a bit predictable, and Ram V is a better craftsman to take quite such an easy path (at least, in my experience so far, though the Annual had a few frustratingly predictable pieces to its recreation of Gotham in the 1770s), but I can’t help but think that this family drama intertwined will prove crucial to the upcoming rising and falling battles.

Ram V works very well with artist Stefano Raffaele and colorist Adriano Lucas – one of the three artists who worked on the last issue. Raffaele has quite the task in front of him – the powerful Gruny battle opening the issue, the lyrical, lovely graveyard memories that trace Bruce’s personal journey from Tom King’s run to today, and the more exotic flashbacks to the Orgham tales of Arzen and Talia. Though much more clearly distinct from Ivan Reis and Rafael Albuquerque’s powerful pencils that set up this run, Raffaele’s style still fits quite well within the romanticized version of DC’s house style that Ram V has worked with his masterful artists to create. It does continue to be a bit unsettling that DC isn’t trying harder to secure a consistent art team for their highest-numbered book, though. The art is consistently really top-notch, but why can’t it be by the same artist?

Story #2: “Absolute” Part 2 by writer Simon Spurrier and artist Caspar Wijngaard

Synopsis: As Mr. Freeze cryo-freezes Dr. Mead (Two-Face’s therapist), and she hears the terrifying spiritual entity Earworm, his experiment fails, and he throws a tantrum. Believing Dr. Mead is dead, Freeze leaves as Earworm tells her that something is coming that she should fear. It’s the boy discovered by Gordon, calling himself Sorrow, who says he’s here to save her as she thaws.

Analysis: Si Spurrier and Caspar Wijngaard’s icy tale of Two-Face’s shrink continues in the middle part of three in Detective Comics #170. Oddly, after the cliffhanger reveals Earworm’s terrifying form to the literally freezing Dr. Mead, the new monster takes a back seat to Mr. Freeze and the boy Sorrow. The emotional pieces of the narrative are nicely handled by Spurrier and Wijngaard together, with a clean, appealing, dreaming style that is reminiscent of Marguerite Sauvage’s work, though a bit darker than Sauvage usually goes. This very much feels like a transitional piece of the story, with no major events happening, and it feels odd that a three-part story would need so much transition from part one to part three. The title of this backup story, “Absolute,” has a resonance with Mr. Freeze talking about Absolute Zero, which is ridiculous, as there’s no way that can be truly achieved in any real sense outside of laser-frozen atoms, certainly not in any kind of experiment in a sewer laboratory, but hey, this is comic book science – but does it have to be so blatantly silly?

Evan Cagle continues to provide the main cover to Detective Comics #1070, this time featuring Oracle inside Batman, a very nice reference to Batman finally forming a plan with his family to fight his foes, though it would be nice if Oracle’s part in the story were less of a prop to advertise a different comic book. Ivan Reis’s cardstock variant of  Batman and Talia in a skull-decorated crypt with Grundy behind them plays well with the ideas in that part of the comic where Talia reveals the truth of the dead to Batman, as does Kelley Jones’s variant, featuring Batman walking on a skeleton and not so skeleton bodies with a lantern – also available as a 1 in 50 foil incentive variant. Seb McKinnon’s 1 in 25 incentive variant deploys a painted style with a huge Bat, Batman emerging from its demonic mouth over a ghostly ballet/wedding tableau. Lastly, Travis Moore pops in with a  Shazam 2 movie promotion variant – quite nice, but as with most movie promotion variants, absolutely nothing to do with the comic itself (though it’s quite a good movie and recommended!)

Editor’s Note: DC Comics provided TBU with a 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 Comixology through Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.