Detective Comics #1

Full disclosure: Frank Miller sucks. He doesn't always suck, but most of the time...he sucks. Why does that matter in a comic that he doesn't write? Because one Mr. Tony S. Daniel has apparently channeled his inner-Frank Miller to write and draw the debut to Detective Comics. (Side note, I found out here that the 'S' in Tony S. Daniel stands for Salvadore, that's freakin' sweet!)

Feedback from readers on this issue is mixed. Some think it's amazing, others think it's merely good. But the most common thought is "this is the best Tony Daniel written piece I have ever read." Any of these thoughts are understandable, if one understands where different types of Batman fans are coming from.
 Batman comics fans come from many different places, and usually (key word, this is not a universal rule) their favorite iteration of the character is what they are exposed to first. Some of the most common first exposures are "Batman: The Animated Series" by Bruce Timm and Paul Dini among others, "Batman & Robin" by Grant Morrison and "Batman: The Dark Knight Returns." For the purposes of understanding this issue, one must understand that many, many consider Frank Miller's work the best interpretation of Batman ever. It's TDKR (The Dark Knight Returns), Batman: Year One (also by Frank Miller) and everything else is at least one step below in quality.

However, it is in my opinion, that in general Frank Miller is highly overrated. For certain, Year One is good (not great) but the world famous TDKR is boring, drawn poorly and nonsensical. Miller has always been big on inner-monologue, which makes him a natural style for Tony Daniel to copy off of, as he shares that trait.

I'm going to back-track here a bit. One of the criticisms of Daniel's work on "Batman" was that Dick's inner-monologue didn't sound much different from Bruce's. What made it Dick was that he was drawn a bit leaner, and the plots often were more relevant to Dick than Bruce. I'm starting to think that it wasn't just ambiguity on Daniel's part, he just think Bruce is much more the character Frank Miller portrayed (super angry, vengeful, rude) and not the nuanced character that Bruce has shown to be time and time again. So if you compare his Bruce to his Dick, hell yeah, it's a stark difference, he just rights them both way more serious and wound-up than they actually are.

But it was like this inner-monologue served as a catalyst for taking other pieces of Frank Miller with him. In particular, the art. Take a look:

This is a prototypical Frank Miller Batman. He's hulking (I'm using that word again, blame it on the fact that I've both read and watched "The Great Gatsby" this week), and always has that scowl on with the clenched teeth. It's almost prohibitive how bulky he is. I almost feel bad for that horse as it's probably carrying a good 600 pounds.

He even throws in the classic Frank Miller Batman teeth clench.
Also, he draws from his inner Rob Liefeld here, refusing to draw feet.

Here's a full body shot of Tony Daniel's new Batman. Again, notice how overly bulky he is. His leg looks the size of my torso. And those should muscles, I mean really? Is that humanly possible? I know speed isn't exactly Bruce's game, but again, this is prohibitive bulk, usually reserved for Frank Miller.

But Daniel has drawn Bruce before, and he wasn't overly-hulking. He was built like a superhero (see pic below for Bruce as drawn by Daniel for "Batman R.I.P."). There's more to this Frank Miller-new Tony Daniel comparison, but I'm merely trying to point out some obvious similarities.  And in all honesty, maybe this is a good thing.
Tony Daniel's writing so far has been mostly average. While he has decent plotlines, his storytelling sucks and his dialogue is worse. While his storytelling takes a step forward this issue with the change in style, the dialogue gets worse (he sounds like Frank Miller).

And oh does the dialogue get worse. He speaks in silly one-liners. Among my favorites include "This is your stop, Joker", "We need to talk" and "I've always been in Gotham, I am Gotham" to Jim Gordon.

But again, this might not be a bad thing. Before the dialogue was convoluted and boring. Now it's simple and dumb, but at least it's easy to follow.

This is how Batman should look.

What I enjoyed: The plot in this is actually pretty awesome. Reminiscent of Chris Nolan's "The Dark Knight" this is a Joker who's got Bruce all confused and frustrated, and one that wants to be caught so he can be put away for his own purposes. And it's always fun when Joker is one step ahead of Bruce (sorry Bruce, it's true).  Also, outside of his depiction of Bruce, the art is really good (not as good as when he's only drawing and not writing, but it's still quite good).

What I didn't: Frank Miller's ....err I mean Tony S. Daniel's dialogue is hilariously bad. Just because this isn't a bad choice for Tony Daniel doesn't mean it's a great choice for all Batman-readers. Frank Miller fans are going to love it, those of us who loathe Miller are going to think it's just a boring knockoff.

Conclusion: Many of the titles I have criticized for being lackluster and underwhelming when they have to be bigger and better for this relaunch. This book does not have this problem. The action is intense, the visuals are vivid (and kind of gory, this comic is not for the young ones) and the stakes are high. Bruce is clearly at the end of his wits trying to track down Joker. He's desperate, and this is when Bruce can be at his best. Also, the cliffhanger is awesome. Perfect. It gets a 79/100(C+), there's a lot to like here, but plenty to dislike, which is what holds it back.