Matt Wagner's cover to BATMAN #626.
© DC Comics

Mania Grade: B
Issue: 626
Authors: Judd Winick, Dustin Nguyen, Richard Friend
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $2.25

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BATMAN #626

I probably was doing myself a disservice when I held off on reading the Brian Azzarello-Eduardo Risso run on this title - but being the big Judd Winick fan I am, it was the beginning of this storyline that I was most avidly looking forward to. Perhaps it's that overwhelming feeling of anticipation that leaves me feeling less than satisfied after reading BATMAN #626. It's not bad, mind you - it's in fact quite good. But it's not brilliant, either.

Winick's characteristic brilliance as a writer does shine through a few times, naturally. Having Tim Drake disguise himself as a medical student - a female medical student - to get autopsy results on the first victim of the Scarecrow's drug can only be called "brilliant." It's certainly the best use I've seen Robin put to in this title in a very long time, to say the least. And the opening scene, in which we see everything from that first victim's point of view without knowing immediately what's going on, is one of the best hooks for a new storyline that Winick has ever done. But and I'm not quite sure how to explain this Batman's voice, mainly during those scenes in which we hear his thoughts, sounds a tad bit too...contemporary, I guess would be the best word. While I could easily imagine Kyle Raynor or even Ollie Queen, for example, describing someone to themselves as "way too strong," or saying something like "Yeah[...]The car is a help," it's much harder to square that slightly breezier speaking voice with the Bruce Wayne we've known all these years. It only happens a few times, but when it does, it has the same effect (and maybe it's just on me) that Val Kilmer's line "It's the car, chicks dig the car" did in BATMAN FOREVER. It just feels wrong, dammit.

Unfortunately, Dustin Nguyen and Richard Friend's artwork sometimes strikes me much the same way. There's an extreme roughshod quality to it that makes the nightmare scene at the beginning work just right, but that same quality makes the scene with Robin and Alfred and any other scenes featuring characters who are not Batman look strange and ill-formed. At times, that quality works in the art's favor, giving some of the images a pleasing Kirby-esque look some of the views of Batman himself during the second attack scene have this, and our first view of Cobblepot looks exactly the way we'd expect Uncle Jack to have drawn him. But these moments are outnumbered by the moments in which the art forces you to squint, either from ocular shock or from the need to sort out the visual information you're getting. Even with these slight flaws, the thought of having Winick on this book is a welcome one, and the plot he introduces here should more than justify his presence on the book. Let's hope it goes on for a bit longer than just this one storyline, though my other big worry about the BATMAN title in general is that it's beginning to look a lot like Marvel's CAPTAIN AMERICA book, a revolving door of talent that never quite comes to a halt. In the case of that book, the revolving door has become a liability. The same should not happen to BATMAN - at least, not while Winick's writing it.