“To my surprise and my delight; I saw a sunrise, I saw a sunlight”
DC, in its infinite wisdom, decided to let Loeb and Lee continue with Batman the regular series, but of course they got way behind, so DC simply started over, tasking Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez to launch a “new” series, with Tomeu Morey coloring it and Clayton Cowles (and Jiménez, but I don’t know what parts he does — I assume they’re counting some of the fun effects he does) lettering it. 
It’s edited by Rob Levin, costs $19.99, and it’s 132 pages long.
I’ve been a fan of Fraction for a long time, but he does come up with some not-great comics every once in a while, and when he does do good things, they seem to fall by the wayside for some reason (I’m hoping the recent compendium of Casanova means that there’s movement for new issues, and I guess I’m just giving up on Adventureman, too?), so it’s kind of neat that DC gave him Batman. He reins in his oddness quite a bit (which is a bit unfortunate, but c’est la vie), focusing instead on straight-forward Batman stories, but he’s a good writer, so we get good Batman stories. It’s nice that DC seems to have given the Batman writers — Fraction and Tom Taylor — a bit of a mandate about doing old-school Batman stories, without the true gruesomeness we’ve been getting for most of the past several decades. As I often note, I don’t mind the gruesomeness, but when it becomes overwhelming and standard, it becomes a slog to read, and it’s nice that it seems DC is either telling Fraction and Taylor to write a nicer Batman or if they allowed them to do it. People still get killed in this trade, and we get a gangster called the Minotaur who wears a bull-head mask, and Gotham is still mostly a shithole (I’ll get back to that), and VANDAL FUCKING SAVAGE is still the GODDAMNED COMMISSIONER OF POLICE (I still don’t know how that works and how Savage even became or wanted to be commissioner, but he’s obviously still, you know, a fucking supervillain … and yes, I know it has something to do with the Court of Owls, but still), but it’s still not as bleak as so many Batman comics we’ve seen in the past. I noted that I didn’t love the first issue, because it feels like a breather issue after a big to-do, not a #1, and I still feel that way — the rest of the trade actually has some cool stories, but the first issue still just sits there limply, and Fraction never does get back to the weird gang in the park that feels transphobic, so I wonder when he will. Vandal Fucking Savage bringing in private mercenaries to augment the police force is probably the biggest plot point of issue #1 (along with the introduction of Hot Lady Doctor, I suppose), and that becomes the focus of issue #2, in which Tim Drake is chucked into a police truck with a bunch of other felons because the actual cops want to crack down on crime even harder to show the commish that they can stamp on civil liberties, too, and won’t he please give them a cookie? 
When Robin manages to survive being thrown in with all the bad guys, Vandal Fucking Savage plants evidence to show that the Bat-folk murdered a cop, and that pushes the narrative forward. Hot Lady Doctor is working on something that will help the insane, but some of the insane, apparently, aren’t happy about that, so they come after her when she’s out on a date with Bruce Wayne, a date that ends with Damian calling him “father” in the presence of Hot Lady Doctor (yes, her name is Annika Zeller, but Hot Lady Doctor is more fun), and for some reason, she doesn’t make the connection that Bruce Wayne, a man who just drove a car safely off a bridge and into the Gotham streets and managed to keep a ninja assassin who can turn into ravens from killing them both, is, in fact, Batman — she just thinks that Bruce Wayne allows Damian to hang out with Batman. Come on, Hot Lady Doctor! The Minotaur, who has managed to bring all crime in Gotham under his (or maybe her, I guess — don’t want to be sexist!) aegis, is a pretty cool villain and is working in conjunction with Vandal Fucking Savage, because of course they are (the Minotaur also has six fingers on their right hand, and I wonder what that’s all about — is it a clue that they don’t actually exist and they’re just AI?), but, of course, the trope of a secret villain controlling everything in Gotham is a bit played out. I mean, I hope Fraction does something with it, but it has been done a lot. What’s nice about the book so far is the relatively low stakes — I mean, it’s crime and clearly Savage and the Minotaur are working toward something, but so far, it’s lower stakes — and the focus on Bruce and his connections to people. Issue #5, which I’m sure people loved, is the date night with Bruce and Hot Lady Doctor, and it has to be the first Bat-issue in a long time in which the title character appears but is never in costume, so that’s pretty keen. Batman/Bruce has nice moments with Gordon and Bullock, with Damian, and with Tim (who quits the gig because he doesn’t like lying to his boyfriend), and even with Lonnie Machin, whose costume gets a redesign which, while I get it (he’s trying to be more invisible, and dressing like a cross between V and Soloman Kane doesn’t really work), is still kind of bummer. His date with Hot Lady Doctor is fun, too, as despite his dreamy looks and rock-hard abs, it’s clear that Bruce simply doesn’t do normal dates very often (his dates usually consist of trying to beat up Catwoman and then fucking her on a rainy rooftop or something). 
I also do like that Fraction and Jiménez actually do try to show that Gotham could actually be a livable city. There’s still too much crime, but we do get some nice scenes of neighborhoods that seem like normal urban neighborhoods, and there’s a good sense of Gotham as a city. This ties back into the lower stakes — because some supervillain isn’t trying to destroy the entire place, Fraction and Jiménez can breathe a bit and show places that are, you know, relatively normal. It’s kind of nice.
Some things bug me, though, but only one really bothers me. I mean, I’ll never love Vandal Fucking Savage as commish, but whatever. The paramilitary shit is fine, even if it’s clear Fraction is equating it to the Orange-Faced Baboon’s ‘Murica and I don’t need to be reminded of what a shithole our country is right now (would you rather live in Shithole Fake Gotham or Shithole Real ‘Murica — what a conundrum!!!). As I noted, the idea of a secret criminal controlling stuff is lame and has been done a lot, but we’ll see what Fraction does with it, I guess. The biggest problem I have is with Hot Lady Doctor, who comes up with a device to treat insane people. Hugo Strange, of all people, debates her on a television show about the ethics of it, and I don’t really want to live in a DC world where Hugo Strange is right, but he kind of is. Even if you agree with Hot Lady Doctor and you want to put a machine on insane people to “calm” them, about halfway through the book, Bats learns that she’s testing it on the patients at Arkham, and he does … nothing. The big revelation comes halfway through the book — at the end of issue #3 — and we never really hear of it again until the very end of the book, when Fraction reveals that it’s more sinister than even we might think, but my point is that neither Batman nor Bruce Wayne seems to think this is a bad idea. Bruce takes her out on a date after finding this out, and when Strange is debating ethics with Hot Lady Doctor, it’s implied that Bats approves of her viewpoint. I get that Fraction is in this for the long haul (which is why I’m not quite ready to condemn the transphobia quite yet), and the end of the volume makes it clear that this thing is Not Good At All, but why does Bruce seem so cool with it? Over in ‘Tec, Taylor introduced some chemical that keeps people young, and Bruce thought it was groovy, and now this — I would love it if the Bat-writers got together and said, “Let’s write Bruce as a kind-of friendly and not-necessarily-sinister version of some douchebro tech guy,” and DC was fine with it. 
That would be strange. I’ll reserve judgment on Bruce’s reaction to Hot Lady Doctor’s Mind-Changing Device for a bit, but it is odd.
Jiménez is terrific, which isn’t surprising. His art looks a bit looser than on earlier issues of Batman (what I’ve seen, which isn’t a lot), and I don’t know if he’s trying something new or trying to make sure he can do a bunch in a row (he does manage to draw all six of these issues!), but it’s keen. As I noted, he does a nice job making Gotham look like a real city, not a crazy funhouse that some artists do or an absolute shithole that other artists do, and it fits well with the more laid-back aesthetic Fraction is going for. This is especially notable in “Date Night,” when Bruce and Hot Lady Doctor navigate the city as bad guys are chasing them. Jiménez does a marvelous job turning the city into a labyrinth for them to run through, but it all makes sense as a city. The action scenes are wonderfully frenetic throughout the book, and his design for Lady Death Man (that’s what Damian calls her, but DC is calling her “The Ojo,” which is fine, but “Lady Death Man” not only connects to DC history, it’s just fun and goofy) is amazing, as is the way he draws her breaking into ravens and re-forming. There’s a lot of subtle things in the art, too, showing these people going through their lives without fanfare, and Jiménez does a nice job with it — the art does really make it feel like Gotham is a real place to live, where people are just trying to get by and have no time for the craziness that too often invades their lives. I am, I should say, very mystified by this:
That’s from issue #1, as Bats glides over the city to look for Killer Croc. What the heck is that thing? Why would someone build such a terrifying statue (?) on top of a building in downtown Gotham? Why isn’t there a citizens’ petition to get it taken down? What the crap, man?!?
I still think it’s ridiculous that this Bat-book exists simply because Jim Lee wanted to do “Hush 2: Electric Boogaloo” in the “real” Batman comic instead of as a separate mini-series, but what the heck do I know? Whatever — it’s neat that Fraction is getting to do Batman, and while I do kind of wish he was more “Casanova Fraction” and less “Fear Itself Fraction,” this is pretty good. I’m looking forward to more!
Rating: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ ½ ☆ ☆
