Batman: The Detective

Someone in Europe is offing everyone Batman’s ever saved. Time for Bats to hop over the pond to find out whasgoinonnnnn! <br /><br />Before James Tynion IV was announced as Tom King’s successor on Batman, I thought Tom Taylor would’ve made a better replacement. Having read his first standalone Batman story now though… eh… not that he wouldn’t have been worse than Tynion, but his hypothetical Batman run also probably wouldn’t have been good either going by how poor Batman: The Detective turned out. <br /><br />I can’t get past how astoopid the premise is. The villain-of-the-week is killing everyone Batman ever saved and they’re getting this information from Batman’s own database. Why does Batman maintain a database of everyone he’s ever saved - besides the onerous nature of the task, what’s the benefit of having this information?! Also, large numbers of these people are being killed in one go, ie. downing a flight where all the passengers happen to be people Batman has saved. How likely is this, that the entire passenger manifesto of a plane are all people Batman has saved!?? It’s so contrived. <br /><br />Henri Ducard is the detective in the title and a significant chunk of the book are flashbacks of a young Bruce Wayne in Paris learning how to detect, though we don’t see any good detective work being done in the story. It just feels pointless. The motivation for the main villain is not great, and other features of the story are equally weak - Batman has a gigantic truck on call in mainland Europe, so I guess that whole stealth aspect of his character is something he doesn’t care about outside of Gotham, and the “European Alliance of the Bat” is just naff. <br /><br />Andy Kubert is one of the best Batman artists ever and I enjoyed seeing his work on this book. He gives Batman a cool coat design (similar to Damian Wayne’s Batman 666, also designed by Kubert) though the designs for the villains was kinda terrible. I get that he has to do something because it’s a superhero comic but having them all wear Batman outfits - except they’re white! - was really dumb. They hate Batman so they dress like him? Still, it’s nice to see Batman in a European setting for a change, and England, France and Belgium all looked great, and it was good to see Knight and Squire cameo too. <br /><br />Batman: The Detective is a disappointing effort from Tom Taylor - a badly-conceived story whose pretty art can’t save it from being wholly forgettable.

I was really looking forward to the day Tom Taylor would write Batman after his excellent run on Nightwing. Unfortunately, it's just okay. Maybe it's just the nature of the 6 issue miniseries? It's hard to put a lot of characterization in there. <br><br>The story is about a woman who is killing everyone Batman has ever saved. She and her henchmen are doing it in white Batman suits too. Maybe Jaden Smith is one of her henchmen?<br><br><img src="https://images.gr-assets.com/hostedimages/1658182959ra/33181487.gif" class="gr-hostedUserImg" loading="lazy"><br><br>Bruce Wayne's mentor, Henri Ducard, returns when Batman heads to Europe to find Equilibrium. There, he also teams up with the new Squire. Andy Kubert is a terrific artist but I thought it was a poor choice to draw Bruce like an old boxer. His hands are all scarred up. Anyone with common sense could figure out he was Batman. Anyway, this was just okay.

Interesting ideas about the unintended consequences of Batman's actions, but the gadgets were weird, the sidekicks were underwhelming, and the plot was ho hum.

This was so fun!<br /><br />I loved this one and wow what a fascinating story.<br /><br />Batman retires from Gotham and goes to europe finding that a plane has crashed and it contained people he saved and then we switch to Ducard and now this person Equilibrium and her people are after Ducard and a flashback story to Bruce and Ducard's history and how Bruce saves him, is interrogated by police later and then coming full circle with him finding more people hurt and then finally we learn who Equilibrium is and her connection with Batman and motivations and all that and also fun to learn about Squire and her history and I loved the way all these events tie together.<br /><br />And then the ending with what happens and just shows Batman being a hero and coming full circle and asking for help from his family which just made me love this story even more and the resolution to it is awesome and a great ending. Ducard and Bruce, the equilibrium villain and whatever goes with the new Squire!<br /><br />Its an amazing story and I love the way Tom just fleshes these characters out in a great way and gives each of them a great role in the story and evolves these characters in a fascinating way and the pencils of Kubert just makes this such a worthwhile read. One of the better Books from Tom!

Batman goes to Eurovision, the extra murder-y edition.

A great book. I enjoyed the whole Euro trip by Batman. The artwork works well for the story. I like the older, bigger almost stuck in his ways Batman.<br /><br />What could make Batman leave Gotham? Actually it does not look like it will take much there does not seem to be much left for him there. Batman is bulkier (almost Dark Knight ish), lonelier but just as well prepared. Then again plane full of dead people would get his attention anyway. Add to that it was done in his name. Do the victims have a deeper connection?<br /><br />How will Batman be able to be as effective outside his usual environment? He is Batman. I also like that the book acknowledgments that Batman is older, slower, but craftier. Also you can teach an old bat new trucks.<br /><br />The book finishes with a variant cover gallery and a bit of a sketch book. A very good one off book but I would be happy to see a continuation of this book.

The whole motivation behind the villain of this story was just. Kinda lame? None of it made any sort of logical sense.

Huh, a Tom Taylor book that I didn’t really buy into. I guess it had to happen eventually.<br /><br />A crazy person is killing all the people Batman has saved, and since this apparently takes place when Bruce is in his 40s, that’s a lot of folks. I don’t know how many universe reboots DC has done now - is it double digits yet? I’d believe that if someone told me that was the case - but even in this timeline, surely Batman has saved the entire world. Which would negate the impetus entirely. I kept expecting Bruce to call in a favor to have news organizations broadcast a story about how Batman saved the planet X-number-of-years ago. But if I’m going to take this as an Elseworlds tale, existing in its own little universe, that aspect is fine.<br /><br />What I can’t really get past is how derivative this is of Frank Miller’s <a href="https://goodreads.com/book/show/1117136.Batman_The_Dark_Knight_Returns" title="Batman The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller" rel="noopener">Batman: The Dark Knight Returns</a>. Instead of the new Robin, he teams up with UK’s Squire, but it works out the same. He has a similar bat-tank. The lesson about working together is the same. The bad guys dress up like Batman. Batman has a secret organization. It’s all the same pieces, reshuffled. Setting it in the contemporary world rather than a post-apocalypse dystopia doesn’t really disguise that.<br /><br />It’s still well-written. I don’t think Taylor can do a badly-constructed plot, and his dialogue is interesting. This is just too much of what we’ve seen before.<br /><br />At least it’s not as awful as that Court of Owls offal from a few years ago. By comparison this is a masterwork.

Batman saves people, so here is a group of people unsaving them! They're anti-Batmans! They have inverted colours! And they don't agree that Batman should save people because he saves people who do bad things. "Batman should just kill the Joker!!!!" I am begging you Tom Taylor, stop taking your comic plots from Twitter.

I really wanted to like this, because Tom Taylor writing an Elseworlds Batman story should be awesome, but this one sadly feels pretty samey and ends on a bit of a whimper. Tom Taylor sends Batman to Europe where he must investigate a series of death that all have one thing in common: Everyone had been saved by Batman. Now Batman must find out a way to stop this new villain that is offing people Batman has saved before they get more. There are some cool moments, and Squire shows up which is cool, but this was pretty weak for a Taylor Elseworld book.