Scott Snyder has certainly become the new big man of DC. His run on Detective Comics and his American Vampire book has made him a force to be reckon with in the industry. Now we have yet another story by Snyder but in a weird way it isn’t told by him. I’ve never really understood the notion of having a ‘plotter’ and ‘storyteller’ in comics. (Also in Film and TV) I mean if the plotter is the one who came up with the story, then why doesn’t he fully write it? It’s nothing against Snyder or any writer that does it, it just confuses me is all. So we do have Scott Snyder writing a new history of Gotham, but we have Kyle Higgins giving us his words.

You can certainly tell this is a Snyder idea. I mean who else is going to give us a turn of the century history lesson of Gotham City? The story itself is very interesting although Snyder and Higgins are going about it in a slow way. I can’t knock them for this mainly being exposition because they are essentially creating new history here. Even with the exposition though, it is a lot of fun to read. We get a lot of good interactions with Dick and the rest of the Bat-family. Hell we even have the return of a certain, seemingly forgotten, member of the family which is always nice. In the end I like where this story is going, I just hope there is a slightly faster pace next issue.

The art is certainly something you have to get used to. Trevor McCarthy has a weird style that blends some Dustin Nguyen elaborate designs and Scott Wegener’s sketchiness (Atomic Robo fame). At first I didn’t like the style too much, because some of the characters are a bit too stiff. Faces are a bit weird as well, sometimes they don’t emote the way you expect. Overtime though I got used to his style and it really started to gel with me. I especially loved the segment where Dick is on the bridge because McCarthy puts a lot of detail with the action and I loved the page where Dick is in the shadows. Hopefully when the next issue hits I get fully invested with the art and McCarthy’s interesting approach.

This is a pretty good start of an interesting look back at Gotham’s history. We have Scott Snyder giving us some fascinating, and also grim, moments and Higgins certainly does a good job setting it all up. Trevor McCarthy’s style is a little tough to get used to but once the book starts rolling I was liking what he was doing. In the end I think this could be a soild mini for the summer. I just wish Scott Snyder could’ve done full writing credit for this.