The Bat-Cave: An Strange Anniversary In ‘Detective Comics’ #19

Anniversary issues are often one of the biggest highlights of any comic run. In 2013 Detective Comics saw one of its more unusual anniversaries, as the series celebrated 900 hundred issues… with issue #19.

The announcement of the New 52 didn’t just shock readers because of the abrupt reboot of the DC Universe. For the first time the longest running series in comics, Action Comics and Detective Comics, would be rebooted and renumbered. Action had just celebrated issue #900 but Action was still about 20 issues away, so many people wondered what would happen. John Layman, Jason Fabok, Jeromy Cox, and Jared Fletcher gave readers the answer.

When a mysterious virus spreads through the neighborhood known at The 900, Batman finds himself facing a swarm of angry human-bat hybrids. He has to find the source of this virus and some sort of antidote before it’s two late. If not, Gotham may become a literal city of bats!

I really enjoy the Layman/Fabok run of Detective Comics. They had an unenviable task of running concurrently with Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, but they more than held their own. Though the run is heavily in the vein of the action oriented stories of the New 52, it’s a more thoughtful take on the same sort of stories of the era. However, I’m not talking about the run as a whole, I’m talking specifically about this issue.

Here, Layman’s lead story is much more of an action piece than the rest of the run. He succeeds in creating an outbreak thriller with a disturbing result. As a thrilling standalone, it’s a lot of fun. It really isn’t a solid anniversary issue though, as it’s a solid issue with some back-ups, but it doesn’t feel as momentous as other anniversaries and doesn’t acknowledge the legacy of the series. It also has some confusing moments with Man-Bat’s continuity as it takes place at the point that it was sure what did and didn’t happen in the past.

Fabok’s art is the absolute highlight of the issue though. His art is very definition of the DC House style, but he’s exceptionally good. He has a clear line, but it’s extremely dynamic. His layouts emphasize the story, and are packed full of detail. He also does exceptionally good horror, with a few absolutely terrifying page turns as some of the Man-Bats reveal themselves.

The issue does have some really entertaining back-ups as well, but they’re ultimately inconsequential to the larger story here. Three of the four, all written by Layman, all serve to advance his Penguin plot (which is one of the strongest parts of the run). Meanwhile the fourth, a Bane story by James Tynion IV, and Mikel Janin is a change of pace and does its best to give the longtime villain a new twist.

This is an entertaining issue, and it’s absolutely worth checking out. However, if you expect a massive celebration of everything Batman, you might be disappointed.

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