You put Neil Gaiman and Batman together and there’s no chance I’m not buying it in a second.  2008 was the year discovered Neil Gaiman was one of my top favorite writers.  After buying Mr. Punch (underrated classic, folks) for the McKean art, I devoured up much of his catalog as I could find.  I even bought The Day I Swapped My Dad For Two Goldfish, which is a kid’s book, because he and McKean were on it.  So, naturally, from when I heard he would be doing the post-RIP Batman tale, I was psyched.   That being said, Gaiman’s superhero work seems to, when I read it, a step or two behind his non-superhero work with the exception of Black Orchid.  That’s not to say it’s bad, but it often lacks that certain magic (no pun intended) that makes his other stuff so memmorable.  In a fashion, “Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader” is just a little bit like that, though it has some of those elements of wonderful thought that you’ll see in his other work.

Now, it should be noted that this is more two stories involving “a” Batman in two different Gothams than a straightforward in-continuity tale.  They’re more a duo of “What If” Batman tales told by characters in a fluid realm where the Joker Car and Oracle somehow coexist.  That might be considered a flaw to this issue.  I don’t quite think so, but I could very well understand why someone would.  To his credit, Gaiman does a fairly decent job in letting you know that as quickly as possible.  The other big problem is that there’s too much story in these two tales to truly do them justice.  Things happen exceptionally quickly, particularly in the latter tale, much quicker than they should.  The primary crux of the second story is relegated to about three or four pages and it’s an idea too large and fantastic to be confined by such restrictions.  I’m hoping Gaiman will fix up this flaw in Detective Comics.

Nevertheless, the stories here are still quite good in spite of the length.  Both stories are great homages to the Batman mythos spanning the character’s 70+ year existence.  They do read a bit like a one-off issue of Sandman where time skips a lot and the humanity of the characters are right in the foreground of the story with slight metaphysical undertones just under the surface.  The concepts are really interesting and bold even if they do get little room to breathe.  Gaiman does an interesting job with intermixing the tone of the Golden and Silver Ages while still maintain an air of Modern Age sophisitication.  The mystery of the “other” voice talking with Batman has me piqued to be sure and the nature of this collection of Batman canons is something I’m looking forward to be explained.  Andy Kubert’s art is a right amount of detail with cartoony wonder to fit the tone of this issue.  The book wasn’t exactly what I was expected (though I should have, in retrospect), but it still remains a good, if somewhat imperfect issue that properly gives homage to a character loved the world over for nearly three-quarters of a decade.