The Owls Are Not What They Seem: Batman #2 Review

EDITOR’S NOTE: This review contains spoilers about Batman #2. Spoilers I wouldn’t have to reveal if the creative team had been a little more specific in Batman #1. You’ve been warned.

So there’s one theory down the shitter.

With one throwing knife from a dude in an owl costume, it appears we can bid a fond farewell to mayoral candidate Lincoln March and my prediction that he would become a supervillain named The March Hare. Which, I suppose, makes sense considering that DC has revealed that the villain in The Dark Knight #3 is going to be a chick called The White Rabbit (pictured here).

And while a crazed villain with the power of the mayor’s office behind him would normally seem somewhat more threatening than a top-heavy babe spilling out of a corset with two convenient handles on her head, considering since the New 52 started we’ve seen – literally, SEEN – Batman bone two different chicks with the same body type, I’m guessing we’ll see The White Rabbit be far more effective at making Batman go down. Er, taking Batman down. Whatever. I’m digressing again.

Batman #2, by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, simultaneously continues the fine form shown in Batman #1 while showing the inherent weaknesses in writing comics for the trade, particulaly when that comic is a detective story.

We’ll start with what I consider to be the weak point of the story: in Batman #1, there was a subtle exchange between Batman and Detective Harvey Bullock regarding the owl sigil on the throwing knives found in a murder victim; Bullock asked if it had something to do with an old nursery rhyme and Batman discarded the idea out of hand.

I spent an HOUR on Google, looking for nursery rhymes about owls that might have something to do with the story and came up emptyhanded. However, I was able to find enough information on The March Hare to be able to gin up what turned out to be a bullshit theory about Lincoln March, so that’s what I went with, because it is worse to be silent and thought a fool than to loudly act like yer smart ‘n shit. Or something like that. But that’s not the point.

The point is that the reason I couldn’t find any children’s stories that fit is because Snyder made it the fuck up. He just didn’t reveal the rhyme until this issue. Which is fine, but one of the rule of good detective fiction is that it needs to be fair. All the clues needed to solve the story need to be in the story so that it’s possible for the reader to figure it out if they pay enough attention. It’s okay if the butler did it… provided you introduce the fucking butler. Think the Kevin Kline flick The January Man, where they don’t introduce the killer literally until they catch him, immediately turning a fun detective flick into a steaming pile of shit fit only as a delivery system for Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio’s tits.

So to hint at a clue in Batman #1 that you can’t find out about until you read the second feels like a Goddamned cheat… until you stop and realize that Snyder is writing for the trade. If you can read the story all in one shot, you are getting all the information you need. If you’re reading serialized the way I read most of my comics, it leads you to a fruitless waste of time on Google trying to figure out what’s going on. It bothered me, and it reduced my enjoyment of the issue overall… until it occurred to me that Snyder might have been forward thinking enough to realize that people would Google for clues, so he provided an easy theory in Lincoln March, which I walked into like a sucker. If that’s the case, kudos Scott. You have made a powerless enemy this day.

But putting that complaint aside and taking this issue as the second part of a longer story, this is still a very good book. Snyder is doing an excellent job making Gotham City a character in the story, with its own history and mythology, and playing effectively with the idea that as well as Batman knows Gotham, it may harbor secrets of which he is not aware.

The book opens with a solid Batman action sequence, ends with one hell of a fight scene between Bruce Wayne and the Owl assassin (Including a hint that the Court of Owls’ reach into Batman’s life extends back years), with exposition in the middle that slows things down but advances the mystery… none of which comes any closer to telling us who the Court actually is. Arrrgh.

Capullo’s art continues to impress me. There’s not much to add beyond what I said about the first issue – anything that references Norm Breyfogle art in a Batman book is going to work for me – but it’s solid storytelling with only one major misstep: he combines two panels in a visually clever way (Making the wheels of a train in a lower panel also act at the pillars of a bridge in a panel above) that made me have to stop and go back to figure out that the Batcycle had jumped onto the top of the train. Clever? Yes. Will it make the original art desirable on the collector’s market? Sure. But any art that drags you out of a story should be thrown out, Greg.

I will still continue to buy and recommend this book, but I am one issue away from recommending that you wait for the trade on it. Reading an honest-to-Christ detective story in a Batman comic is refreshing, but it makes me understand why so many writers after 1990 went the urban avenger route: it’s hard to write a detective story for a trade when periodical readers expect enough clues on a monthly basis to make them feel like they’re solving the crime with Batman. And to be denied information to make sure there’s enough to reveal in the next issue just makes me frustrated, particualrly when the clues that are there are misleading and make a chump out of an honest comic book reviewer on the Internet when he makes predictions. Make no mistake: I’ve learned my lesson…

…no, I haven’t. In both issues, Snyder’s made a subtle point of saying how Alfred is Batman’s most trusted confidant. Keep an eye on that limey prick.