Detective Comics #1001 - DC
Written by Peter J. Tomasi
Pencils by Brad Walker
Inks by Andrew Hennessy
Colors by Nathan Fairbairn
Letters by Rob Leigh
What do you do after you make history? That might seem like a heavy handed question, but how many comic books do you know that can say they reached 1000 issues? DC recently had one with Action Comics, and now Detective Comics will have to deal with that same pressure. Action Comics introduced a new threat into the mix, but Batman takes a bit of a different approach. Time so start anew with Peter J. Tomasi and Detective Comics #1001.
This might be a spoiler if you haven't read the final pages of Issue 1000, but this book starts out with the Arkham Knight. It appears very early on that this story will deal with a very different kind of Arkham Knight than you might remember from the video game series, so toss that idea out of your head right now. After a brief introduction, we see that Commissioner Gordon and Batman are both investigating some suspicious deaths. They are somewhat symbolic, as you will see when you read the book. This leads Batman to seek out someone with a very familiar last name to anyone who knows their Batman villains. Let's just say it's not like grabbing a quick cup of coffee with a friend, as things go pretty sideways in a hurry. Just as he catches his bearings, Batman is caught off guard once again and finds himself in trouble in a hurry. We get quite a battle before getting to the stinger at the end of this issue.
I really didn't want to spoil anything, and thus this issue was pretty easy to sum up. I was excited to see that, in the last issue, the Arkham Knight would be in continuity now. The one question I did have was, would the identity reveal be the same. I was worried that this might take a bit of a the intrigue away from the story. I can tell you that we get no such reveal in this issue, but Tomasi actually manages to give me doubt about said identity. It almost feel like a different character, to me anyway. The approach is different, the vibe feels different and I like it. We also get to see Batman put the detective in Detective Comics right away in this issue. I know that's something that can get lost in the shuffle of a story sometimes, but I really hope that we see more of that. Speaking of what we see, the art is simply fantastic. This is especially true with the final battle sequence of the issue. There were a lot of moving parts, and it was flawlessly executed both in detail and in the layout itself. All in all, this really does feel like a fresh start for Detective Comics. It's not just slapping a new logo on the front of the book and continuing with business as usual. There is a bit of an "everything old is new again" piece to this, but largely this issue feels like it's ready to kick the ball off and start a new game. Put me in, coach.
RATING: PULL / BUY