I can't exactly connect to anything about Daniel's writing right now which is frustrating to me because I still maintain that he's a very talented artist and I have never liked looking at the action sequences of a Batman comic book so much like I had with his. This weirdly dissonant feeling reminded me of something I'd rather not revisit; reading Frank Miller's All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder whose lazy and unappealing material was redeemed only because Jim Lee, one of the comics industry's most splendidly astute artists, has illustrated said shite. And now that I'm at the second issue of Tony Daniel's Detective Comics, I'm somehow rendered nostalgic about something that's so terrible in scope and I'm not sure I'll be able to handle walking down that memory lane again. I'm panicking a little about this..
But I digress. I might be harsher than I'm supposed to, and probably still hungover from Hellblazer and I shouldn't force myself to read Batman when I'm clearly not in the right state of mind just yet. Or I should just keep reading and let the story and its characters grow on me. The key is to take things slow so you may have to bear with me in my next reviews for Daniel's line-up because I'm still gathering my bearings and trying to get myself in the right track for this. It happens even to the most Bat-fanatic of us, I suppose, but I know that I'll overcome this and sooner or later I'll be once again carried in the loving arms of my fierce Dark Knight as we go on adventures together.
This issue marks the actual appearance of the Dollmaker and the rest of his children who are as equally mentally unstable and grossly sadistic as he is. Their delightfully repugnant family is like a comic book rendition of The Texas Chainsaw Massacre/The Devil's Rejects and Batman is unfortunately caught up in this deranged serial-killer party of fucks. As much as I'm not emotionally clicking with Daniel's story just yet, he does provide effective cliffhangers (the first issue was a full-paged view of the Joker's face skin plastered to a wall which would give my eight-year-old self night terrors if I read that as a child) and now we get Batman angrily embracing a--chopped-up (?) and badly-sewn together (!) Commissioner James Gordon. I'm not even touching this. Is this like a planned marketing style to make sure the sales of this title don't drop because everyone who would get to the last pages and see those disgusting images of a clown face skin or one of Batverse's beloved characters looking like a ragdoll would almost definitely buy the next issue just to see what happens next? THEN IT WORKS and luckily I own a copy of the first volume of this series and only have to go to the next page (issue 3) already.
But I won't be generous of my rating like the last time. I sure hope Daniel steps it up and gives me more than cheap parlor tricks of gruesome imagery to keep me glued and invested on his plot and characters. I am waiting to be impressed, mister.
RECOMMENDED: 7/10
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