Batman: Officer Down
Written by Greg Rucka et al. Drawn by Rick Burchett et al.
I’ll preface this by saying that I haven’t been reading much Batman other than the newest series by Frank Miller and Jim Lee (which, regardless of what comic sales say, has been an utter disappointment). After hearing such buzz about Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker’s work on Batman, I thought I would go ahead and try some of it out. Unfortunately, this outing was a major disappointment. Maybe I should have started with the No Man’s Land story-arc, but after this, I doubt that I’m going to even try that out.
This story-arc starts with Commissioner Gordon’s birthday, which ends with him lying in an alleyway with three bullets in his back and Catwoman standing over his body. In many ways, the story is a weak attempt at a mystery tale in the same vein as Identity Crisis. Batman and the rest of Gotham City’s masked must now come together and figure out what happened.
What really irks me about this is the effort put in giving Batman a deeper emotional core, but everything ends up feeling rushed and underdeveloped. Batman standing over Commissioner Gordon’s hospital bed and barking orders wasn’t enough for me to see how deep a friendship the two men had. If it wasn’t for my familiarity with the Batman mythos, I would likely have no understanding of what was happening, with the result being I would likely never had finished reading the story. I’m certainly glad I did not buy the issues individually and purchased the graphic novel with a heavy discount. In many ways, this looked like a way of starting a new era of Batman in that the writers really change some of the familiar character dynamics we have all come to love. There are many reasons why the newest Batman movies have turned to the older material rather than the new stuff – the new stuff is awful.
Skip this. I wish I had.
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