Written by: Peter Tomasi

Art by:Fernando Pasarin and Scot Eaton

Inks by: Matt Ryan and Wayne Faucher

Color Art By: Chris Sotomayor

The month of DC 50th issues continues! With that, we continue the PCU look at some of the 50th issues each week. Here, I’ll take a look at Detective Comics. While I read the first arc of this book, I quickly fell off in favor of the Batman main series for my bat family fix. That said, I knew absolutely nothing about this story going into this issue.

I was expecting a 50th issue in the vein of last week’s Green Lantern, where the story is almost stand alone, or the start of something new. This issue of Detective was the exact opposite; being the conclusion of the previous arc. The story itself didn’t scream out to me, though. Gordon, Batman, and Bullock are investigating a series of murders tied to statues in Gotham. The story ends as you’d expect, just being a solid all around Detective story. What really stood out to me, though, was the Gordon representation. In Batman, I’ve struggled with Gordon as Batman. I couldn’t really put my finger on it, he just felt…off. Here, however, it really feels like Gordon. To me, it all comes down to the detective work and the interaction with Bullock. Tomasi has always had a good grasp of the Batman universe, and he shows it well in this issue. Even though it didn’t blow me away.  As I said before, sometimes a nice back-to-basics story like this is nice. I’m not really sure where this book will take us going forward. Since that relaunch is coming, and Bruce Wayne will be taking up the mantle again, I’m sure there will be a shift  for the final set of issues.

Pasarin’s art is a little bit perplexing to me. While I love his rendering of figures and his detail work, it sometimes seems a little stiff. While each page is pretty, I would be willing to lose a little bit of that for some dynamism. In addition, Scot Eaton’s pages didn’t flow as smoothly into the story as I was anticipating. When he hopped on, you noticed a bit of a drop in the rendering, but a higher factor of motion. While they each hit the weaker points of the other, having been in the middle of the same issue made it a little too jarring. I did, however, really like the rendering of Jim Gordon in the Batsuit here. Much like Capullo, these guys make Jim very lean in the suit. While we are used to the traditional, bulkier, Batman silhouette, this is a nice contrast given the circumstances of the character. The little story in the back, which featured some really good artists homage old Detective covers, really stood out in comparison to the rest of the issue, however. It’s not really fair to compare that oversized issue to pin ups by talents like Rafael Albuquerque, Frazer Irving, Shawn Crystal, Chris Burnham, Kelley Jones, John McCrea, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Cameron Stewart, John Paul Leon, Carlo Pagulayan, and John Timms.

Detective Comics 50 embodied the overall feel of the Batman books that aren’t the ones in the headlines. While the stories are always solid, they won’t blow anyone away.

 

3 Statues out of 5