Not Afraid Of The Big Black Bat — Reviewing ‘Detective Comics’ #1101

Bringing fear to a cowardly and superstitious criminal lot is one of the foundational concepts upon which Batman built himself. What if though, all that fear was negated in both criminal, vigilante, and citizen alike?

A person without fear is a dangerous concept, and it’s one that Detective Comics #1101 presents for the caped crusader and the city he defends. A whole new arc begins as Tom Taylor, Mikel Janín, and Wes Abbott continue their run following last month’s milestone issue.

This is an intriguing concept with the weight of excess narration which pulls down the beginning quite a bit. Like pulling off an adhesive bandage, I’m going in quick on this issue’s main quibble- There’s just a bit too much caption narration.

Batman is one of those characters who can be deathly quiet, not a word to be said, or he can be quite verbose but in a concise (often terse) sort of way. Various levels of in-between exist for him to dabble within, depending on the situation and those who might be around him.

I appreciate that Taylor did some research, but the flood of caption boxes that kick things off here were quite a lot. It’s nothing bad or overly out of place, but they sure dragged down the overall motion. Glad that Batman is so knowledgeable, but that was a lesson that wasn’t really something I needed in that much detail. Granted, that’s a personal thing, but I do feel it kind of pulls away a bit.

I don’t need to know the details to know that falling in cold water sucks and Batman had to move fast to save her.

Visually it feels a bit cluttered at times, but Abbott does his best to make it still flow and not overwhelm as much as it could, still giving the overly wordy voice the aspects that one expects from a Batman voice and giving the boxes and words a distinctive look which matches the overall book artistic style and the whole aesthetic of Batman himself. It’s something that is employed with all the various lettering aspects across the pages.

The rest of the story is pretty solid. It’s a very slim issue as it all mostly takes place on the mystery ship as Batman does some actual detecting, discovering the secrets of this death-filled ship, and ending up in a very precarious situation. A vigilante who relies on fear of others and risks himself now dealing with a disease stealing his fear away isn’t a good thing at all.

Such an eerily beautiful series.

Janín just really delivers time and time again- dense expressive massive feeling artwork that finds a way to be small and focused at the same time. It’s really living in the moment and space with these events, allowing every single sequence to feel weighty and authentic at every turn and creating characters that feel like they could walk into our space at any moment and not feel that outlandish.

Attached to this is the choices for the color palette consideration. A lot of harder, darker colors are at play to give the story it’s moody feeling, but also fitting the time of day, location, weather, and more of the given moment. Gotham is always a darker city and even out in the water we feel it there. The color art continues giving these harder moments more of a depth and weight with the choices.

Sprinkled in though are the lighter, firmer colors, letting certain elements pop more to give more focus or power to them. It keeps the fantastic or outlandish more attuned to a setting that feels familiar to us and keeping alive a very distinct appeal to Gotham and it’s defender that has been so central to not only this run, but Janín’s work across the bat line past and present.

Detective Comics #1101 is now available from DC Comics.