Tom Taylor was onto an exciting new concept in Detective Comics #1101 that leaned into maritime horror, but continued the idea of Batman battling biological weapons from his first two arcs. This was rare for a comic featuring The Dark Knight, which at least promised to take Bruce Wayne in an interesting direction that wasn’t a retread of one of his iconic storylines. But like Taylor’s first storyline involving Asema, he once again revealed the villain’s identity too early.
In this case, it was obvious who the new villain was in Detective Comics #1101, due to the not-so-subtle clues Taylor planted towards his identity: The flashback of one of Batman’s earlier cases traumatizing a boy named “Leo,” and the mystery villain developing a drug that removed fear going by “The Lion” in the present. These two clues alone gave away that Batman’s newest enemy was the boy from the flashback sequence. It also established that he (as an adult) was developing this deadly biological weapon as a means of removing his own fear of Batman to confront him about his father.
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Detective Comics #1102 confirms that this is exactly the case, which means Taylor missed a perfect opportunity to build a compelling mystery around this new character for Batman to solve at his own pace. At best, Taylor did try to throw in one major red herring about The Lion’s identity, but it wasn’t a strong enough diversion to mislead the reader. Much of this, however, boils down to the fact that it’s a recurring trope in Batman stories for new villains to hide their identities as much as possible. Tommy Elliot did this as well in the original Batman: Hush from 2002.
To avoid another “Tommy Elliot is obviously Hush” situation, Taylor needed to throw in more red herrings over the course of the story to keep the reader guessing. But since he confirmed the villain’s identity in Detective Comics #1102, he now needs to capitalize on the other strong idea he has to give this story the emotional weight he’s aiming for: the idea of Batman’s war on crime being equally traumatizing to a young child. It’s a promising concept, especially since it can easily establish that Batman unwittingly recreated his own trauma with another child. But whether Taylor succeeds at building that story to a satisfactory conclusion will depend on the execution.
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This gets us to the other thing that doesn’t quite work in favor of Taylor’s story, and that is the sudden shift in tone, which makes the story feel a bit disjointed. This also causes some of the story’s earlier momentum to peter down rather quickly. What started out as an exciting new mystery about biological weapons being tested on the unsuspecting passengers of a freighter ship in Detective Comics #1101, suddenly pivots to a spy thriller akin to Casino Royale in #1102. The sudden shift in tone also makes Bruce’s infection with the deadly virus from the earlier issue feel like an afterthought, which could have been avoided had the story maintained its horror tone.
Though the story is proving to be hit-and-miss two issues in, the consistent high point of this era of Detective Comics continues to be Mikel Janín’s art. Janín once more knocks it out of the park with his attention to detail, character design, and use of bright colors – all of which allow his artwork to pop and stand out from some of his earlier work. Janín also does an exceptional job at drawing dynamic action sequences to help create issue #1102’s spy thriller feel, much in the same way he effectively captured the tone of maritime horror in the previous issue. Janín doesn’t even hide his James Bond inspiration in his artwork for this issue, which helps elevate the story.
All in all, “The Courage That Kills” is off to a rocky start, but it does still have the opportunity to smooth out its rough edges and stick the landing. Taylor just needs to figure out what kind of story he wants to tell so that he’s not changing tones from one issue to the next, and without giving away his mysteries too early.
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