Hidden Pasts Of The Caped — Reviewing ‘Detective Comics’ #1107

Connections between many superheroes run far deeper than a shared affinity for costumes, theatricality, and punching villains in the face. Sometimes those connections were formed in a very different period of life.

Black Canary and Green Arrow swing into town as Detective Comics #1107 kicks off a new arc that promises to uncover a lost past. This vigilante trio is brought together by Tom Taylor, Pete Woods, and Wes Abbott.

Heroes don’t get to just pal around on small little missions anymore. Every time heroes cross paths in modern comics it tends to be either multi-part arcs of depth or big, massive crossovers. There are occasional reminders of those smaller catch ups, but not so often. This beginning issue is not a return to that, but a continuation of heroes in a deeper arc together.

That’s not to say that Taylor doesn’t dangle some more character-rich moments into this beat. There is some banter between Batman and Green Arrow over vigilantes and territories. We get fallout from Wildcat’s death in JSA #6 and Tim Drake’s recent retirement from Batman #6, giving some continuity catchup threads. It’s always nice to see books at least minimally acknowledge they exist simultaneously.

For a debut issue of an arc, this is mostly fine. There are some slightly cringe references to AI and the issues in the real world at one point. Someone murdering witnesses and some fallen never-met-before hero is basically the overall thread. Though the murders get very little space to even be much of a mystery, there’s boxing to be done and retcon reveals to really delve into.

Woods has a very welcoming style of art, albeit sometimes just a little too whimsically animated for the particular series style. There is an overall lightness to this issue that doesn’t fit with the murderer on the loose killing off eyewitnesses. None of that takes away from the issue in the long run per se, it’s just something to note.

Darker tones find their way into the colors, giving the story the more serious bump it’s asking for at times. A lot of this takes place at night and in the (very perfectly timed) rainy graveyard. This palette works to bring down a bit of the aforementioned lighter whimsy of the pencils.

Whether through bubbles or captions, Abbott delivers solid voices for each character. Unique and purposeful through and through. There are some different utilizations of font thickness where many words feel very lightly sketched into place, for the lack of a better term currently. Abbott never misses when doing the lettering and here it works well with the subject matter.

Detective Comics #1107 is now available from DC Comics.