Detective Comics #879 Review

DC Comics
Detective Comics #879 Review
By Dan Horn
July 13, 2011 - 20:42

DC Comics
Writer(s): Scott Snyder
Penciller(s): Francesco Francavilla
Inker(s): Francesco Francavilla
Colourist(s): Francesco Francavilla
Letterer(s): Jared K. Fletcher
Cover Artist(s): Francesco Francavilla
$2.99 US

There's nothing quite so horrifying as being unable to trust your own blood, and Scott Snyder plays out the Gordons' familial melodrama to its most satisfyingly malevolent conclusion with this new story arc. It seems the less Batman the better when it comes to Snyder's Detective Comics. Tec #879 showcases two terrifying villains, the stone-cold sociopath James Jr. and the blathering psychotic Joker, who is at his most sinister and deranged, Barbara and her father doing some of that eponymous detective work, and of course the breath-taking, neon-bar-sign noir panel work of Francesco Francavilla.

Francavilla and Snyder make a restrained, and subsequently effective, choice to keep the Joker's ghastly mien tucked away in this issue, employing a rather Hitchcockian (I always seem to come back to Alfred Hitchcock when talking about Snyder's Detective) technique: What you don't see, in this case the Joker's signature grin, is truly more frightening than that which is readily apparent. It's difficult to do something different with a character as familiar as the Clown Prince of Crime, but here the creative team seems to succeed, making the infamous rogue both alarmingly brilliant and vile, resourceful and cunning. The Joker sequences are interspersed and juxtaposed perfectly with the brunt of the story where Commissioner Gordon and Barbara uncover James Jr's diabolical scheme.

This chapter is lousy with allusions to boilerplates past, promising to tie all loose ends, or at least address them, just in time for September's soft reboot, and "The Skeleton Key" is all the better for it. This is THE comprehensive Dark Knight epic, and though it's stumbled here and there, every turn has been painstakingly mapped to lead the reader to this very point. I just hope Snyder can pull off an appropriate coup de grace to all of this.

Rating: 9.5/10