I hate this direction superhero comics take sometimes. Vapid, thoughtless storytelling, existing to not say anything but for the writer to purely pat themselves on the back while insulting the reader’s intelligence. But that’s all Detective Comics: Mercy of the Father is. It’s a book that continues to insult the intelligence of the reader, either because writer Tom Taylor thinks he’s too smart for the rest of us, or because his idea of smart is really stupid.
When I initially reviewed the first issue of Detective Comics: Mercy of the Father (which runs from #1090-#1096), I expressed how much I vehemently disliked it. To go from a run that meditates on Batman as mythology to a run with no vision is just flat out insulting. Yes, these runs are all parts of a wider tale and I don’t expect them to always build up from one another, but I do expect some resemblance of quality. Sure, it running alongside ‘Hush 2’ in the pages of Batman might leave you expecting this, but when you’re coming here from the likes of the previous Detective Comics run (by Ram V, et al), as well as titles like Absolute Batman and Batman: Dark Patterns, I can’t help but wonder where all of the quality went.
Before getting into the story and presentation, it’s paramount we talk about this ‘lack of vision’. To me, when you read most Batman runs in the wake of Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns and Batman: Year One, you can tell that they are operating within its shadow, trying to play with what it’s doing thematically. Even if it isn’t a particularly unique vision, it’s at least a vision, it’s an idea.
In comparison, Tom Taylor’s Batman doesn’t seem to even have any vision, any previous Batman run as a guiding principle of some kind. One might make the argument of, “There are other Batman runs that do not do this and are regarded as good, for example Grant Morrison’s Batman is its own thing instead of trying to be reminiscent of anything that came before,” but a statement like that doesn’t work when Morrison’s Batman is reconciling every Batman story ever into one cohesive narrative and making it work. Tom Taylor’s Batman on the other hand is simply an approximation of the character and the mythos entirely based on discourse surrounding them on the internet.
Of course, none of this is particularly surprising when you look at his Batman characterization in Nightwing, as well as the entire storytelling ethos of Nightwing and Superman: Son of Kal-El. Mentions of how the character isn’t necessarily a good billionaire, jokes about him fighting the mentally ill, combined with this compulsive need to show how ‘good’ he is between stopping abusive dads and saving kids, none of it to say anything real or meaningful but to simply appeal to a subsect of fandom that is interested in this “wholesome, hopecore” Batman.
All of it simply just leads to an uninteresting story. This compulsive need to portray the protagonist as morally correct and “woke” at all times just doesn’t work. Flawless characters aren’t interesting! Batman is a flawed, broken man! Even when he makes a mistake, there is no friction, as characters immediately forgive him to make the plot progress further ahead. What is the point of trying to solve any sort of political situation of any kind with superheroes? They’re supposed to inspire us, not lead us.
But even this attempt at being ‘progressive’ is misguided at best, and malicious at worst. Quick summary time: Detective Comics: Mercy of the Father opens with a flash forward where Batman is in a locked room with a masked man and the villain of the arc, “Azema”. Soon after, we get a flashback to the days when Thomas and Martha Wayne were alive, where Thomas is faced with the dilemma of having to save an abuser (who we find out to be their eventual killer, Joe Chill). As he chooses to do so, Martha helps the abuse victim and her daughter relocate.
When a young Bruce asks Thomas why he saves him, Thomas tells him, “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?” Following this, we’re thrust to the present and the tale begins. The core idea is that there is this “elixir” only for the rich, being developed by a team led by Scarlett Martha Scott (Joe Chill’s daughter). The caveat, there seems to be a serial killer hunting teenage boys and taking the plasma from their blood, and they seem to be connected to Scarlett’s company. After 7 whole issues, we find out the serial killer is Scarlett’s partner in the team, who is also her mother.
Now let’s start breaking it down, piece by piece.
Instead of repeating myself about what Thomas says, allow me to quote myself from my review of Detective Comics #1090:
“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.”
And now let’s go further on that. At the very end of Detective Comics: Mercy of the Father, Batman stops Scarlett’s mom, Evelyn, from killing her abuser, Joe Chill. He apologizes, but then promptly sends her to prison… which is odd, considering what his allies are doing at the time. Batgirl, Red Hood, Spoiler, the two Robins and the Signal were concurrently at a juvenile detention center, fighting the guards and intruders in order to save those kids from there. The thing is, knowing Tom Taylor’s writing, this very obvious point of contention means nothing. What’s the point of having certain characters break people out of a prison when others get to go in there.
Furthermore, I just cannot get behind the notion of framing someone who was abused taking revenge on their abuser as a bad thing. Everything about the elixir and her involvement in it is the very same thing so many ‘liberal’ comics do, where a villain shows up to do something more extreme but in some cases justified and the solution to remind the audience they are the villain is to have them do something heinous. It’s crass. It’s nonsense. It also doesn’t work because the whole reason she hates Joe Chill is because he abused her and was going to potentially abuse their daughter too, none of it tracks.
But whatever, sure. Let’s say a writer is writing stuff like this in the big 2025. Is the mystery at least compelling or interesting?
Nope.
When you’re writing a mystery story, I imagine you either want to make the ‘solution’ obvious and make it a game of cat and mouse, or the more common version, solve the mystery alongside the protagonist – where right at the crux the protagonist is either slightly ahead of or behind the reader. What you don’t want to do is to have the reader solve it very early on and watch as the protagonist, who in our case has the title of “World’s Greatest Detective,” stumbles to solve it until the very end of the story.
The problem is, the reveal is so embarrassingly telegraphed that it’s downright impossible to not solve it off the rip. In the second issue, we meet “Dr. Forster”, a woman with red hair who administers the elixir. In the very same issue, we see the villain with red hair too. The only reveal we don’t get is that Dr. Forster is in fact Scarlett’s mother, but I mean, come on. We see Batman trying every thread when the obvious one is right there, and not even in a way that’s commenting on Batman’s lack of experience or whatever, it just paints him as stupid, and I don’t see the point in that at all beyond forcefully decompressing a story for the sake of the trade.
There’s also the structure of it all too. Taylor is so online, and as such has such a tendency to write for the online crowd that you can always just blatantly tell when a moment is meant to be posted there, because the scenes last exactly four pages in length. The plot is so online too – the idea of an “elixir” that extends life that is only available to the rich is ripped from that one guy on twitter that’s taking drugs to do just that. Batman protecting kids from their abusers, his allies breaking a juvenile detention center free, all of it just screams desperation to appeal to an online audience.
At the very least, the art is gorgeous. Mikel Janin draws all of it and colours most of it (with assists in some of the later issues of the arc) and it’s some career best work. Gone is the stiffness I usually associate with him, and instead we’re given a lot of fluidity and interesting page compositions. I just wish they were in service of a better story.
All of this is nonsense. It’s insulting that Detective Comics: Mercy of the Father is put on offer to readers of any kind. What reason is there for anyone to read this when Absolute Batman or Batman: Dark Patterns is available to read. Taylor doesn’t even try, he doesn’t even have a take, he just coasts by and gets nominated for Eisners anyway, and that to me seems unfair to the various far more talented creators that deserve the success and opportunities he gets.
