Detective Comics #1090 [All-In] Review

Detective Comics is a title with a strong legacy. Not only is it the book that DC is named after, but it is also the company’s longest-running title, with the All-In issue marking the one thousand and ninetyth issue of the book.

That’s already a lot of baggage, but on top of that, this is the first issue after Ram V, et al.’s phenomenal run, a run that I believe to be the best Big 2 work while it was running, but also in general one of the best Batman runs of all time. It’s a tall order.

It gets taller when considering the new creative team and how I feel about them. I like Mikel Janín well enough; his work on Batman and Superman and the Authority is excellent. Tom Taylor, though, is a writer whose work I cannot connect with. It’s too safe and too sanitized, and that’s just something that does not gel with my tastes at all. Suffice it to say, it was a steep hill to climb, but I went in with an open mind.

Did they even come close to reaching the plateau must be the question on your mind, and my answer to that, dear Gothamite, is no.

[Spoilers for Detective Comics #1090 start here.]

Detective Comics #1090 starts with a flash-forward to a confrontation between Batman and the new mystery villain – where we find out that they know Bruce is Batman, as well as teasing something his father, Thomas, did years ago. The issue then shifts to a flashback of Thomas, before moving back to the present, and finally returning to a flashback at the very end of the issue.

That first flashback is where the problems with the issue start. It’s Taylor’s worst impulses laid bare: trying to present a situation in which there is drama, building it up, and then immediately taking the more “hopeful” answer, the answer which “sounds” right but thinking about it makes it nonsensical. For context, here’s the situation:

A couple are involved in a car accident, and they are brought to the hospital where Thomas works. Upon seeing the woman, he notices she’s a victim of abuse and opts to save the man anyway – because of the “Hippocratic oath.” Later on, he has a conversation with her, where she says that the father shouldn’t know the baby was ever born, and he brings in his wife, Martha, to help send her away, after which Thomas and Martha argue about it. It’s this argument that a young Bruce overhears, and when he asks why Thomas saved the man, he tells his son:

“We don’t know how a life will be lived. We don’t know its value. And if we can save a life, and we don’t, what would that make us?”

Here’s the problem: In a vacuum, this statement really describes Batman’s values in regard to life in a well-put manner. However, this is, contextually, an answer to why a man chose to save an abuser. Sure, in our superhero comics, an end goal might be to forever be optimistic, that everyone deserves redemption, but what does it say when your protagonist’s driving force is shaped by a statement delivered in that sort of context?

It’s certainly an interesting question. Who decides who gets to live? It’s heavy subject matter, but the problem is, the writer of this book has never been one to really engage in heavy subject matter beyond surface level. I mean, this is the guy who wrote Jon Kent hugging the fascist version of his dad instead of even engaging with what that sort of situation entails.

Moving on, we’re back in the present, where Batman is dealing with a convenience store robbery. He hits the seventeen-year-old robber square in the jaw and lets him run off to help the victim before giving chase, only to find him dead – another in a series of similar murders. It’s here where you can immediately start to see the signs of whether the aforementioned subject matter will be treated seriously when Oracle says of the kid as Batman is giving chase:

“History of family violence and abuse. He had the kind of childhood that would qualify him to be your next Robin.”

How you choose to interpret that is your own business, but that doesn’t bode well for what this story just tried to do.

Afterward, we follow Bruce Wayne, who has been invited to a high society function – greeted by the daughter of the woman from the flashback, known as “Scarlett Martha Scott.” It’s here that we see what she’s working on – a drug that can make someone live longer, make them faster, make them stronger – but the caveat is that it’s only available to the rich. I mean, she literally says:

“I’d like you to be one of a select few to benefit. Because some lives are worth more than others, Bruce.” 

It’s pretty obvious what sort of social commentary this is going for – Taylor is as blunt as it gets, which isn’t bad – unless the way you go about it is not particularly good. For instance, take a look at how he goes about it in Nightwing, in which he posits Dick Grayson as the “good” billionaire but never does anything meaningful with it. They were all empty statements in that book, so why should I expect them to be interesting here, especially in lieu of Nightwing’s thesis on Batman taken from the Twitter argument of “Batman doesn’t really do anything meaningful with his money.” It’s hard to really place any confidence in that.

The book ends right after that with another flashback, in which we find out that the man Thomas Wayne had saved was “Joe Chill” – which is placed against narration from Bruce, where he repeats the same thing Thomas had told him as a child about saving lives.

Based on what we know about this book, we know that the villain’s name is Aesma, and her deal is draining blood from young men, especially their plasma. Sound familiar? It should. Remember Heartless from Nightwing and how his deal was to steal hearts? Also, the villain stealing plasma, and the new character’s deal being a drug to extend life, makes it all extremely obvious if you’re keeping up with the marketing.

We also know that this run will focus on Thomas somewhat, and again, Nightwing focused on Dick’s father somewhat, adding things to his backstory (Dick’s sister). It seems like the same bag of tricks again, just reheated, and at that point, it’s hard to really care and invest any resemblance of faith. After all, why should I? It’s not earned – certainly not after a lackluster ending to a three-year-long mediocre Nightwing run.

At least Janín’s art looks really cool, with some neat page compositions. I really liked how the Batman-focused pages had a different visual identity structurally – going from the regularly placed right-angled rectangles to making them angular, creating the illusion of fast movement. It’s a good way to differentiate the “mundane” from the action, and I hope this is an aspect of the book that’s played with more.

But it truly is a shame that, after a Detective Comics run so into being a meditation of Batman as mythology and his legacy, we’re here with a book that isn’t even a fraction as interesting. Maybe it’ll get better, but I wouldn’t know because I have no interest in keeping up. Should you buy it? That depends on whether you still have any faith in the writing half of this team to deliver something interesting.