Who even knows how many Batman comics are regularly published anymore? After all of the movies and the toys and over sixty-five years of comics, do we still need more? As with any of the classic comic properties, the folks who own the character still see a need to publish stories. As long as they keep up the quality of tales told in the collected volume of Batman: Detective by Paul Dini, then I can agree.
Detective differs from other recent Batman trade paperbacks in that it is a collection of individual stories (issues 821-826 of the series) that begin and fully resolve within twenty or so pages rather than one arc stretched throughout the entire book. Dini's technique was actually quite refreshing for a casual reader of comics. If a reader is like me and has not kept up with the continuity of the character over the past ten years, then reading some comic stories can feel quite jarring and unfamiliar. A reader can pick up Dini's book without any more knowledge of the character than having seen any of the movies or cartoons.
Dini takes the reader back to the original Batman: the detective. Each of these stories feels like a throwback to the 1940's comics and to black and white detective movies. We start with the mystery, we see a villain, we try to figure out the case, and inevitably Batman solves the case before we can. Dini does a great job throwing in little one-liners that make you wonder if that statement is an important clue or merely an aside. I kept marking spots in the book to see if some of these random statements gave away the ending of the story. Sometimes the statements were helpful, and sometimes they were merely ramblings to throw me off the trail.
Taking us through short stories with villains both classic and new, Dini has created a fun romp that I can fully recommend.
