Comic Review: Detective Comics, Vol. 6: Fall of the Batmen

Published: June 26th, 2018
Written by: James Tynion IV
Art by: Eddy Barrows, Joe Bennett, Phil Briones, Miguel Mendonca, Jesus Merino

DC Comics, 163 Pages

Review:

Well, I don’t know how the volume after this one is but thus far, this is the peak of James Tynion’s Detective Comics run. This built off of all his stories before this one, tied them all together in a great way and delivered on a few major narrative promises established in earlier volumes.

In fact, this volume made the volumes before this one better. That’s a hard thing to do but Tynion proved to me, here, that he is a pretty worthy Batman writer.

As I’ve stated in just about every review of every volume in Tynion’s run, I don’t like large Bat-Family groups. But Tynion makes the most out of it here and this may be one of the best Bat-Family stories I’ve read in recent memory.

If you are a Clayface fan, which I am, this story is pretty heartbreaking. I don’t want to spoil anything but if you’ve read some of the stuff before this, things come to a head and it’s pretty emotional. And there’s a lot to be said about that, as comics rarely make me emotional these days.

The Victim Syndicate return and we discover that they’ve had a bigger, darker plan all along. While I didn’t like this villain group when they debuted, they really start to gel here.

As should be expected with a comic book title of this caliber, the art is superb and every panel of this book looks great.

In an effort not to spoil more than I may already have, I’ll shut up now. This was a damn solid story with real consequences that the team can’t just walk away from. It’s got me excited to read the followup, which is Tynion’s final volume.

Rating: 8.5/10
Pairs well with: other collections of James Tynion IV’s run on Detective Comics.

Comic Review: Detective Comics, Vol. 2: The Victim Syndicate

Published: May 16th, 2017
Written by: James Tynion IV, Marguerite Bennett
Art by: Eddy Barrows, Alvaro Martinez, Ben Oliver

DC Comics, 142 Pages

Review:

I’ve liked James Tynion’s Batman work and I also liked the volume before this that set things up. However, I was not digging this story at all.

It’s not that it’s bad or that there weren’t some interesting ideas here but it didn’t resonate with me and this new villian team called The Victim Syndicate just seemed like generic, throwaway, one-off baddies.

Also, this story happens in the wake of Red Robin’s death and it shows how Spoiler, a former Batgirl, deals with this loss. Frankly, I’m wasn’t happy with how her character was handled, as it felt like a major and uncharacteristic regression when compared to who she was by the end of her Batgirl run.

And while I’m not a big fan of Batman having a large Bat-Family, I do like how he’s been working with Batwoman in this series, as well as how Clayface has evolved into a character that is trying to be heroic and looking for redemption.

This volume is a mixture of good and bad. I think the good slightly outweighs the bad and even if I didn’t like the story, it wasn’t boring or dull and I still got through it with hope that the next volume in Tynion’s Detective Comics run would be a better one.

Rating: 5.25/10
Pairs well with: other collections of James Tynion IV’s run on Detective Comics.