Tom Taylor and Mikel Janin’s issues of Detective Comics have filled a void in the Batman titles in a weirdly specific way: they’ve not only been mystery-based stories, but with the inclusion of Green Arrow and Black Canary, it’s become a spiritual successor to the old Brave and The Bold team-up series. That team-up appeal has helped the book stand out in a crowded shelf of Bat titles, and with Detective Comics #1111 we get to see the team fully lock in as a unit in the modern day. It makes for a particularly gripping penultimate issue as we get to the grand finale next month.
With the revelation that Prion’s daughter Arabella has been a brainwashed assassin (it’s weird but that’s comics, baby) Batman, Green Arrow, and Black Canary make their attempt to rescue her from her captors, which include her grandmother. As the battle takes shape, Batman and Green Arrow provide cover from the outside as Black Canary fights her way out with Arabella, which is a surprising move on her part since Canary admits to Arabella that she’s the reason her father died. During a random sparring match, Canary hit Prion in the side, and thanks to a rare condition known as “Commotio Cordis”, Prion suffered a fatal heart attack and died. This freak accident is the cause for this entire attack on our three heroes, and gives us a very surprising and meaty revelation that I wasn’t entirely expecting. As Green Arrow and Black Canary take Arabella outside Gotham City, Batman stays behind to inspect the bodies of the deceased informants from earlier in the story, where he’s attacked by Prion’s mother. Remembering the last words Prion spoke before he died, he recites them to his attacker, which causes her to have a mental lapse which reveals that she too has been brainwashed like her granddaughter!
One of the great things about this story in particular has been how well Tom Taylor has stacked his reveals. The initial reveal behind Arabella from last issue could have been enough for most writers, but Taylor uses that as just a tease for an even larger conspiracy that upends what we and our heroes were expecting going into the final part of this storyline. I know I myself was extremely surprised at the last page reveal, and not knowing where we’re going leading into the final issue of the storyline fills me with a sense of excitement I wasn’t expecting to feel at the beginning of this storyline.
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Additionally, Detective Comics #1111 finds Tom Taylor doing another thing he excels at: humanizing Batman. From the opening flashback with Batman finding Prion in his abandoned home to a stellar moment involving the Bat-plane, Taylor goes to great lengths to again show the humanity that exists within the Dark Knight while also not completely abandoning or betraying what makes him such a fascinating character. In a lot of ways, Taylor’s Batman feels the closest to Kevin Conroy’s take on the character from Batman: The Animated Series, and the little touches of humanity Taylor gives him makes him more compelling to read.
Taylor also gives more moments for Black Canary to shine as well. After the previous issues pushed her more to the back of the three person team, having her not only be responsible for Prion’s accidental death but also the one to rescue Arabella makes for a nice bit of “full circle” character narrative, and makes up for the fact that she was sidelined for the first few issues of the story. Of course, that means someone has to take the backseat, and this time it’s Green Arrow, who gets a few good quips and quiver pulls of the ol’ bow, but not much else.
Mikel Janin doesn’t need me to praise him more than I already do, but I’m gonna do it anyways. Janin’s always fantastic, but he’s really doing something special here. I particularly love the way that he mixes up his style ever so slightly in our flashback moments, giving us a modern day feel of bronze age comics without fulling crossing over into those throwback art styles. It creates a great sense of the past without locking in an exact date or time frame, and it’s something I wish more creatives would do when it comes to depicting flashbacks in comics.
Detective Comics #1111 has really come into its own as a solid Batman title that is cementing the Dark Knight not as a lone avenger, but one that works within the larger DC universe (albeit on his own terms). Judging by upcoming solicits, it looks like future issues will go back to having the title be a solo adventure series for Batman as it enters the “Bad Seed” crossover event, but I really hope that once that event wraps up, we get another story with Batman teaming up with a new set of heroes, as it really makes for a fun shakeup from the other Batman titles on the shelf.
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