With Grant Morrison at the helm, RIP is in full force in the Batman books.  As such, this month’s Detective Comics by Dini and Nguyen tie into the event in some way with the start of “First Families of Gotham.”  Admittantly, so far, the story seems to only have a passing connection to the events of Morrison’s book, but given how much of a vague mish-mash last issue was, perhaps Dini doing his own thing isn’t so bad.

Dini’s wrinting in this issue is solid to be sure.  The issue mostly covers the return of Hush to the pages of the Batman mythos and a brand spanking new origin courtesy of Mr. BTAS himself.  Like with Mr. Freeze in Heart of Ice, Dini manages to give Thomas Elliot a certain reasoning behind his villainy even if Hush still holds a good deal of psychosis to himself and also manages to make a even stronger connection for Hush as the reverse of Batman.  After the fiasco of “Hush Returns,” it’d be real nice to see a good writer really to do Hush up right.

The other part of the story focuses on a Batman/Catwoman team-up against “Dr. Aesop” a villain who commits his crimes according to fables.  The banter is good and reminiscent of a good BTAS episode, which is obviously appropriate.  The affinity of animals from Catwoman and Batman’s use of a criminal alias over than “Matches Malone”… it’s all good.

The art by Dustin Nguyen is kind of a double-edged sword for me.  On one hand, his people don’t do it for me.  On the other, his layouts and designs of scenes are very dynamic and well-done.  With all things considering, I can dig the layouts and forgive the faces.  The inking was very good though, very contrasting.

I liked this issue a lot, perhaps more than what I’ve seen of Grant Morrison’s side of RIP.  Dini tells a good story while Nguyen does a good job on the art.  You can count me in for the story so far.