What a nice pilot for a new Detective Comics. Batman and Batwoman are partners–their mission is to train the vigilantes of Gotham to fight some new threat. This threat follows them around with little bat-drones, but Batman can’t figure out they’re still being followed. It’s a team book, but with familiar Bat-family members and a decidedly modern approach. Heavy on the one-liners, heavy on implied action, light on actual content.
Is the problem the art or the story? Well, Eddy Barrows’s art isn’t there but it might be with a better inker. Eber Ferreira doesn’t have a feel for the art. He rounds it, reduces it, instead of emboldening it. Would better art make a significant difference? No. Would great art make a significant difference? Sure. But it’s a monthly superhero book and Barrows delivers it.
So is it the writing? Yeah, sure? Sorry to be so noncommittal but Detective Comics feels pretty noncommittal. Writer James Tynion IV mostly gives everyone sound bites instead of dialogue. Spoiler and Robin have a conversation, Batman and Batwoman, Batman and Clayface, but these are quippy, fast conversations. It’s meant to entertain not tell a story, because Tynion doesn’t have a story to tell.
I suppose Detective Comics is better than I was expecting (though nowhere near what I was hoping for). But it’s just a mediocre superhero book (in desperate need of better editing).
CREDITS
Rise of the Batmen, Part One: The Young and the Brave; writer, James Tynion IV; penciller, Eddy Barrows; inker, Eber Ferreira; colorist, Adriano Honorato Lucas; letterer, Marilyn Patrizio; editors, Dave Wielgosz and Chris Conroy; publisher, DC Comics.
Something important happens this issue of The Woods. It becomes “‘Lost’ with teenagers.” I can’t believe it took Tynion this long. It might not have been so sadly apparent if artist Dialynas were maintaining the previous issue’s level of quality, but he’s not. The book can’t handle the writing losing any ingenuity as the art becomes problematic.
Tynion loses a lot of momentum with all the characters. He’s got two things going on–he’s got the kids who went into the woods and he’s got the school. The school has kids and adults. He splits the issue into two and a half–the kids in the woods, the adults at the school, then less on the kids at the school.
While The Woods seems like the most movie or TV ready comic to come out in a while–a high school is teleported to an planet with flying demons–writer James Tynion IV never actually panders to that goal. Even with a couple really uneven sections and a problematic soft cliffhanger, he's writing a comic. It's nice to read a comic, not a pitch.