Go Ask Alice: Batman #1 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: The following review may contain spoilers. It definitely contains rank amateurish speculation. Tread lightly.

I never read Alice in Wonderland because I was born in the early 1970’s and therefore had Star Wars. I didn’t see the recent Johnny Depp Alice in Wonderland flick because it was a Tim Burton movie that didn’t have Batman in it. So I know next to nothing about Lewis Carroll’s story beyond the character names… but I know enough about Batman to know that the odds that a new character named Lincoln March who is running for mayor will eventually unmask himself as a new supervillain named The March Hare are approximately one in one.

I was – and remain – so sure that this is how this new character was going to turn out that I reread Batman #1 about four times, inspecting the art and rereading every word looking for clues. Meaning that Batman #1 is detective story worth reading repeatedly. It’s about fucking time.

In just 20-something pages, writer Scott Snyder hits every character beat that matters in a Batman story. He kicks us off with a fight against the inmates of Arkham Asylum, which, in one shot, lets us see Batman battle with almost every major member of his rogue’s gallery. It’s exciting and well-drawn, with only one misstep:

Didja see it?

Who the fuck did the character design for the rebooted Riddler? What fucking haircut is that? It looks like The Joker broke out the straight razor and his personal hair dye to give Riddler a glory hole landing strip he could aim for. I’d call it reprehensible, except it’s still a more subdued and tasteful Riddler than we got from Jim Carrey.

From there Snyder shows us Bruce Wayne throwing a charity gala where he unveils his dream of building a new mass transit system for Gotham, as though he never saw how well that worked out for his Dad in Batman Begins, and as if the biggest problem Gothamites face is the quality of their commute as opposed to the high probability of being eaten by Killer Croc. I’m guessing the average Gothamite would skip the hassles of massive infrastructure work and inevitable traffic in favor of a simple airlift to safety. But I digress.

Then Snyder drops us into a stone whodunit murder scene with a dead John Doe, some throwing knives, and a hidden message about future crimes. It gives enough clues that it makes it feel like you’re investigating along with Batman, which is exactly what a good detective story should do. Batman as World’s Greatest Detective feels like a character point that falls by the wayside far too often in Batman books… particularly this week, where the other portrayal of Batman was as a prematurely ejaculating slashfic porn star.

The only issue I had with the investigation scene was something that’s happened far too often recently in murder mysteries of all ilks: the scene is a grimy tenement where someone was tortured to death in a ritualistic, stylized manner, and a hidden message regarding motive was left for the lead investigator to ponder. Hey, Snyder! Believe it or not, there HAVE been murder mysteries written since Se7en!

Artwise, the book looks as good as anything DC’s put out in the New 52. Greg Capullo’s pencils are as strong as Tony Daniel’s on Detective Comics #1, but where Daniel seems to channel Jim Lee and Frank Miller, Capullo seems influenced by 90’s Batman Artist Norm Breyfogle, only with the stylization displayed by Norm dialed back to about a 6. And while you could argue that anything that reminds you of a 1990’s comic is a BAD FUCKING IDEA, I always liked Breyfogle’s penciling, and better reminiscence of Breyfogle than ACTUAL ROB LIEFELD.

All in all, this is a damn solid book worth checking out. Sure, there are some visual and plotting choices that aren’t quite genius, but it’s firing on every cylinder that historically has made for a good Batman story… including naming the villain after what he is. Seriously, Scott? Lincoln March the mayoral candidate? Why not just name him Johnny McMachineGunFace?