By: Tony Daniel (writer), Guillem March (artist), Tomeu Morey (inker)
The Story: Riddle Me This, Part One: Batman is called to a weird murder that doesn’t quite fit easy theories. Who shows up to help out and make suggestions? Edward Nigma. No one is comfortable with his help, but he seems to be on to something in terms of spotting a series of copycat murders. As the story goes on, it becomes increasingly clear that someone is trying to play Batman, but who is it, and will Dick get out alive?
What’s Good: Guillem and Morey draw some very evocative art. The blotches of color in the dream sequence, the scratchy darkness, the mutilated corpes and a grim-faced Batman make Gotham come to life in its lurid, creepy way. Nigma, with his stringy, greasy hair and fluid mouth fits right into the creepy. And everything is textured: the rain, the pavement, the buildings and the faces. I really enjoyed the effort the artists made to evoke this reality. At the same time, I think that Daniel offered us a typical Batman puzzle, although I had some issues.
What’s Not So Good: I didn’t feel that this was Daniel’s finest plotting. Daniel passes the basic test of having filled a comic book with a story, but it felt uninspired and a little underdone. For example, Daniel spent the first three and a half pages of this issue on a Dick Grayson dream sequence. While it might have been revealing in terms of character, when we find out on page four that the dreams are a lingering after-effect of the toxins Dick was exposed to last issue, I’m wondering why this sequence was left in at all. There are easier and more effective ways of showing self-doubt. And while the villain was toying with Batman like he had a fish on the line, I thought that Nigma’s involvement in the investigation seemed to be accepted far too easily and unquestioningly by Batman and Commissioner Gordon. The photos Nigma showed them also seemed a bit too good to be true. If I as a reader can see the implausibility of Nigma managing to get pictures of a pretty outlandishly-dressed villain in the crowd around a crime scene, shouldn’t Batman? And my suspension of disbelief was pretty strained when they ran those grainy pictures through “a facial profile on the Bat-computer” and got a first and last name Batman could track down. All in all, it felt to me that Daniel wasn’t giving his all and the plot holes and logical inconsistencies were just too much.
Conclusion: It felt like Daniel just mailed this in, which is unfortunate, because I’ve read better stories by him and know he’s capable of more. I can’t recommend this book.
Grade: C-
-DS Arsenault
Filed under: DC Comics Tagged: | Batman, Batman, Batman #698, Batman #698 review, Comic Book Reviews, comic books, comic reviews, Comics, DC, DC Comics, Dick Grayson, DS Arsenault, Falcone, Gotham, Guillem March, Reviews, Riddler, Tomeu Morey, Tony Daniel, WCBR, Weekly Comic Book Review
I agree this first part felt…half baked, I guess? None of the panels really gelled for me, and it felt much more random than it should have.
Frankly though, I’m just excited to see Riddler again. I’d rather see him leaving riddles and traps for Batman than “helping” him, frankly, but just having him in the book is nice. He’s always been my favorite of Batman’s rogues.
The Dark Knight homage was *very* cool and packed some emotional punch in terms of Dick becoming Batman. DSA
Who caught the Dark Knight Returns panel as Dick was chasing the guy in the hat? Cool!
Seriously, I thought this issue was confusing. I like Daniel’s basic stories, but he just can’t figure out the pacing. I think he’d better off learning how to write one-shot stories first and then move on to stuff like this. I just end a lot of his issues going, “Huh? What the heck was that?”
I did, and if it made you stop long enough to comment on it, I’m guessing that you’re right in your criticism. I’m pretty sure Tony Daniels has done one shot stories in the past…. Of course, I could be wrong.
In any case, taking on this 3 part story to build to what will certainly be the big reveal in #700 may be too much story for him to handle in simply the three issues he’s been given to tell it. Although, as I said before, I’m willing to reserve judgement until this story arc ends….
I believe it goes to why Dick didn’t realize who it was he saw at the end of the issue, and his slowness on the uptake to deal with Nigma…. On a 3 part story, the setups in act one may not payoff until act two, which is next issue.
Hey Matches! I’m not sure I follow you. If the toxins from the last issue are going to play some important point in the plot of this arc, then I suppose that the dream sequence could work, but there was nothing else in this issue that led me to believe that the toxins were anything other than an excuse for Dick to have some weird dreams. I’m glad you enjoyed the issue though. We’ll see what Tony Daniel has for us next!
DSA
Well, I was going to post a blog entry incorporating this stuff, however, riddle me this… Does Commissioner Gordon positively know that there’s a different man under the mask? I believe that’s why we have the first two and a half pages that you don’t like. Furthermore, for those of us that did NOT read #697, doesn’t it make more sense to show rather than tell what the toxin’s effects are? Especially for those of us that again, didn’t read the previous issue? What about first time readers of Batman? This is their first story. Do you give the same criticisms? I don’t think this is weak at all, however, the weakness I see is that it wasn’t quite clear to me what the ending was, until I gave it a second read. And this is again, still the opening act of a three act play….
Hey Matches! You bet that issue #700 is bound to be something that DC will put some effort into and I’m looking forward to it. But when creating a story with impact, it’s only as strong as it’s weakest link, so this set up should have had just as much care as issue #700. We’ll see.
DSA
I have to mostly disagree with what you didn’t like, simply because I think he’s setting up a payoff in part three.