Book Review: Detective Comics vol. #1 (New 52)

Book: Detective Comics volume #1: Faces of Death (issues #1-7) written and illustrated by Tony S. Daniel

Rating: 1 star

Review:

I read the single issues and not the trade edition shown.

I feel like Tony Daniel is better as an artist than a writer because in these seven issues the writing was rather bland and there was no real story. It's not to say he's a bad writer because I loved "Batman: Battle for the Cowl", "Batman: Life After Death" and "Batman: Eye of the Beholder" but this story wasn't good. For some reason it didn't really have a feel of Batman, the characterization just felt off while the story felt stale and generic.

This was not Batman at his best, his detective skills seem to be lacking and only knows how to use force instead of using his brain. Batman's not known for being the World's Greatest Detective for nothing. So, it would have been nice to actually see him using his detective skills because most of the clues he finds he just somehow lucked upon instead of actually doing any work to find them.

The first issue had Batman dealing with the Joker and issues #2-4 found Batman trying to find the Joker after he escaped Arkham but ended up stumbling into an ambush by Dollmaker and his group of crazies. This also includes a new character Olivia who may or may not end up becoming one of the monsters that prey on Gotham in the future. She was probably one of the only new interesting characters or interesting characters period in this volume. The last three issues had Batman in the middle of a plot that involved the Penguin. It also wasn't that interesting.

Nothing could improve these stories not even the Joker and Penguin because neither high profile villain could add anything at all. The newly introduced villains such as Dollmaker, Snakeskin and Jill Hampton (one of the crooked Mayor's daughters) were not any better.

There was even a new love interest love (yet still allusions to Batman's continued involvement with Catwoman). His new love interest is a reporter named Charlotte Rivers (who has ties to one of the new criminals) but to me she just felt like a Lois Lane rip-off, and she was not interesting to the story at all. 

Overall, this was truly disappointing. Reading this felt like something was missing from the story. It just wasn't good at all. Sad to say there was absolutely nothing worth reading from this volume except for the artwork, which was quite amazing.