The Stop Button

This issue, from Michael Fleisher and Steve Dikto, is definitely a strange one. It feels like a Batman comic, but a fifties Batman comic. After saving the city from a radiation leak (fifties atomic scare), Matt loses his memory and lives through, basically, what his dad lived through with the crooked fight promoters.

Even the end feels like a Batman comic.

Dikto’s art feels half like Steve Ditko from Marvel’s Silver Age and half like someone doing an imitation. To works out in Ditko’s favor though and the art’s relatively charming.

Fleisher does such a good job with the comic’s mood, one can overlook the huge plot holes–like where does Matt Murdock sleep when he doesn’t know his identity. Or how does he know he’s wearing a costume under his clothes and not long underwear? And does his costume get dirty?

Still, it works, mostly because of Fleisher’s sincerity.