Rating:  -
If you like Batman in the "Year One" tradition, or the Dennis O'Neil "Shaman" or Jim Starlin style then get this book. Paul Dini is great. Possibly the best Batman writer of recent times.
I can't say enough good about it. Get this and then get Batman: Death and the City
Rating:  -
With Paul Dini's return to Batman as regular writer of the monthly Detective Comics, readers were promised a back to basic stroytelling approach, with one or two part mystery stories of batman confronting his classic foes. Paul Dini delivered the stories, but after a great first issue drawn by J. H. Williams III, the quality of the artwork drops with the switch to Don Kramer as regular artist on the series.
Don Kramer, who is still learning the ropes as an artists, fails to elevate these stories above the average, and lets Dini's scripts and readers down.
A Poison Ivy story featuring art by Joe Benitez, as well as another featuring Dr. Phosphorus drawn by Marcos Marz save the rest of this collection from being a complete wash.
The srength of Dini's writing comes from its simplicity, so the wrong artist impacts the story all the more. Any new readers DC Comics aquired with Paul Dini's name on the cover were quickly lost after being subjected to the mediocre art that has more often than not been a staple of Batman comics. Will DC please hire an art director!
Rating: -
It is refreshing and encouraging to see that, in this day and age of the arc, single issue stories, as evidenced by this trade and the monthly Detective Comics from which it was comprised, can still be a viable and entertaining format in the comic industry. Critics will argue that this approach allows for little depth and characterization, and their points are valid. Despite these inherent limitations, they can be an effective way to tell an enjoyable, albeit brief tale, and with that in mind who better to employ for this format than Batman, who can effectively be written in short stories battling antagonists from everyday criminals to brief encounters with his great rogues gallery. To offset the obvious problem that limited pages creates, it is imperative to have a fairly wordy script with a relatively high panel count in order to give some substance to the tale. No decompression allowed here folks. Every word and scene must be able to carry its' own weight and have relevance, which is exactly how any story of any length should be told anyways, but rarely are in these times of extending and padding in order to fill up a graphic novel. This was the bread and butter of DC's heyday during the Silver Age, and while times and methods of storytelling have certainly changed over the years, it is one of the strengths from that era that should be further studied, explored, and emulated. All that is missing is a backup feature starring the Elongated Man. What a blast from the past that would be.
Rating: -
This is a collection of stories from the "One Year Later" portion of DC's continuity. The collection contains 6 separate story's from the pages of Detective Comics.
What makes this book special is that you don't need to have read the last 10 years of DC TPBs to fully understand and enjoy the story.
It brings Batman back to his roots, not sulking around rehashing his psyche, but solving crimes in a way which reminds the reader why Ra's al Ghul calls him "The Detective".
All in all a great read, for the casual reader and the enthusiast alike.
Rating: -
this is the best dini could do? i'm a big fan of his television work, so i had high expectations for this collection. i found it to be a near-complete disappointment. these stories didn't do a thing for me. i like the idea of self-contained stories in each issue, and some of the things dini's doing with the villains is somewhat interesting, but this book isn't doing it for me. the opening chapter is by far the strongest, but it has the benefit of being drawn by jh williams, who is an a-list artist. the rest of the art is third-rate. it tells the story well enough, but there's nothing worth really looking at besides the first chapter and the covers by simone bianchi, who does a nice job. i'm sure i would have liked the book better if the whole thing was drawn by williams, but i'm sure the art could only do so much to elevate the writing. and i feel like the first chapter probably would have been just as drab as the rest if it was drawn by don kramer, but taking it as a whole this book was a colossal disappointment.
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