Detective Comics #875 Lost Boys

First off I’m not the biggest Batman fan out there.  I read Batman a lot as a kid and I still appreciate the character.  Dick Grayson was my favorite Robin and I like Nightwing because of this.  I used to get the Nightwing book until they cancelled it.  So I was excited when Dick took over for Batman while Bruce was “Dead” or lost in time.  That’s a long story all together and I’m not going to get into it.  Well after Dick took over from Battle for the Cowl, I started reading all the Batman books.  They were good  and I have the luxury of reading them off the wall J.  Then Bruce came back a couple months ago and decided to start Batman Incorporated.  This let Dick still have the mantle of Batman in Gotham.  This made me actually sign up for Detective Comics in my box at the comic shop.

Scott Snyder has been writing the book for the past couple months and Jock was doing the artwork and Jock’s work was amazing on it.  Then this months issue came out and the artist is Francesco Francavilla, I have never heard of him but his art style fit’s the book to a tee.  He has a gritty, noir feel to his art and it sets the mood perfectly for a Batman book.  Like I said I have been reading this book for quite awhile now and this issue is down right amazing.  You know how you read and issue and put it down and just have that feeling of reading something really profound.  Well I got that feeling from this issue and I even reread it the following day.  I rarely reread my weekly comics, but I was compelled to with this issue. 

This issue focuses on Jim Gordon and his son, that has come back to Gotham to prove to Gordon that he is not crazy anymore and on meds to calm him.  They gave a preview of this story a couple months ago as a little back story in an issue of Detective.  This issue starts off with a very nice monologue by Harvey Bullock and it sets the tone of issue very well.  The issue focus’s on Gordon’s search for a killer in an old case from when he was just a detective.  The case is called the Peter Pan Killer because the killer is leaving the window open and kidnapping little kids from their beds at night.  The killer took and killed 8 kids but was never caught and the murders stopped for many years.  Well it is 15 years later and the unsolved case still bugs Gordon.  He thinks he has figured it and is following the suspect that just got our of jail for other crimes. The whole time this is going on in the issue, they are giving flashbacks to when Gordon was first on the case and it shows him taking his family on vacation.  It shows Gordon with his new wife and his daughter Barbara going to mountains for their vacation.  They introduce Barbara’s friend and give you a weird vibe that Gordon’s son is going to do something to her.  Basically the book is giving parallels between the Peter Pan Killer and Gordon’s son.

I don’t want to give any more of the issue away because the book had me guessing up to the end.  It has a very nice conclusion and will leave you with questions in your mind.  Like I said, I have read this issue twice and each time I got more out of it.  I feel this shows that the issue is a stand out issue and I congratulate Snyder for his excellent writing.  I highly recommend you check this issue out and you don’t have had to read any other issues leading up to this one.  I can’t wait to see where Snyder takes the book next.