Detective Comics – The Neighborhood collects Detective Comics #1034-1039 including some of the related stories in the appendix. It’s about the first cycle of stories of the historic batman headboard signed by Mariko Tamaki assisted by Dan Mora And Viktor Bogdanovich to the drawings. Taking advantage of the aegis Infinite Frontier, as happened in the USA, Panini DC Italia also restarts the numbering of the volume collection from 1, furthermore it is good to remember that these episodes have already been proposed in the fortnightly stapled Batman. Chronologically, the events in this volume are placed immediately after the Joker War (in turn subsequent to the events of the volume Batman – Dark Projects: get our review HERE) and they see Batman deprived of his almost inexhaustible funds and technological gadgets while Bruce Wayne is forced to leave Wayne Manor and move to the residential neighborhood of Fort Graye.
Detective Comics – The Neighborhood: who targeted Gotham well?
The face of Gotham City has changed. A anti-vigilante sentiment led to the election of the ex-police officer Christopher Nakano as Mayor while the Joker War has private Batman of his main “financier” or that Bruce Wayne who suddenly lost control of his assets. One status quo insidious that compels its own Bruce Wayne looking back on his crusade and above all to move to a brownstone in the residential neighborhood of Fort Graye. From there Batman can exploit the system of old sewer tunnels, micro caves, to reach every point of the city without arousing suspicion while Bruce Wayne only has to deal with his neighbors or the new rich of Gotham, young entrepreneurs and startupper who have never been touched closely by the battles of the Dark Knight and who therefore fully support the new mayor Nakano and his politics.
The situation gets complicated quickly. Batman finds the corpse of the young Sarah Worth in the sewers, the girl is one of Bruce Wayne’s new neighbors: both become prime suspects not only of the police but also of Roland Worth, the girl’s father, as well as old-fashioned businessmen who with his intimidating ways seem to have even Mayor Nakano in his grip.
When the murders in Fort Graye begin to multiply, Batman begins an investigation that crosses that of Huntress, on the trail of another murderer, but also that of the Penguin and Worth himself intending to take justice into his own hands. As the circle closes, all the clues seem to point incredibly to the mayor’s office and a crazy wave of violent fits that seems to unite all the victims.
Detective Comics – The Neighborhood: between old and new
Mariko Tamaki interprets the reading the title of the masthead of which he takes the reins and packs in Detective Comics – The Neighborhood a solid history of detection modern with horror veins and full of action also managing to to exploit and give depth to the new status quo both Bruce Wayne and Batman following the events of the aforementioned Joker War. Tamaki’s story puts these two ideas together organically, giving us back a “lonely” and more practical Dark Knight in which at captions are entrusted with the role of leading us into the investigative process but also offer us Bruce Wayne’s unprecedented point of view on a very modern and not very gothic Gotham.
In this sense the writer exploits the theme of one percent and the new, young, punctually rich so as to give a background to the story in which the most classic of contrast between “old” and “new” is seen from one new perspective. There is a disoriented Bruce Wayne on one side and the violence that suddenly breaks into the lives and balances of a “quiet” neighborhood, there is the new mayor and the old intelligentsia of Gotham that bursts in abruptly represented by Roland Worth, there are the classic styles of a story in which a murder is investigated with a lot of misdirection that suggest a classic Batman enemy, then turning abruptly and violently on a new and more subtle and lethal enemy.
In this sense it is evident the influence of a certain Batman from the 90s, or the one signed by authors such as Doug Moench, Kelley Jones and Alan Grant, for the creation of the antagonist of the story that pushes on the more grotesque and, as mentioned, horror character of the Batmanian narrative. Tamaki then manages very well a cast of new characters, well chiseled but who never obscure the protagonist, and old ones using perfectly Huntress first as an apparently parallel and disconnected narrative strand, but in reality a simple inverted point of view on the reflection underlying the story, e then as Batman’s real shoulder in resolving the story revisiting some references, once again, to certain stories released in the 90s.
Dan Mora And Viktor Bogdanovich they divide the duties from the graphic point of view in a surgical, amalgamated way of the impeccable color work of Jordie Bellarie, and backed by a Clayton Henry in great shape making the stories in the appendix starring Huntress. The Costa Rican designer once again demonstrates his talent and the versatility of his style perfect synthesis of the muscularity of the American school that refers to Jim Lee with the dynamism of the manga especially as regards the line art. With the construction of the free table, but always absolutely clear in its storytelling, Dan Mora illustrates the more distinctly investigative part of the story making full use of borders, chiaroscuro and expressiveness of the figures. When the beat picks up, e the component action becomes preponderant, takes over instead Viktor Bogdanovich whose puffy, lumpy pencils (with clear references to Greg Capullo) are well suited to more physical sequences of the story. The Swiss designer organizes the table in a slightly more conventional way using the corporeity of a central figure as a pivot for a series of satellite panels to which to entrust the storytelling. Only note that can be moved to Bogdanovich it is an attempt at a synthesis of the line that is not always very effective in which important details are sacrificed, not only anatomical.
The volume
Panini DC Italia packs a soft touch hardcover volumestandard format 17×26 cm, about 200 pages. The chosen paper is the glossy one with a heavy weight that enhances the stroke of the designers involved and above all the colors of Jordi Bellaire. There binding and trimming of the pages is very good and allows for easy reading also in the many blank pages created by both Dan Mora and Viktor Bogdanovic. The translation is good while being adapted to report only a few less punctual passages but nothing that affects the reading. Beyond the long gallery of variant covers, as far as the extrathere are the preparatory sketches of some of the characters signed by Dan Mora and a note by author Mariko Tamaki, which is added to the punctual introduction of the Italian editor of the volume that contextualizes the story.
