I'm amazed at how Snyder seems to be taking a lot from the Grant Morrison approach while totally doing his own thing.

One of Morrison's strongest abilities as a writer is for him to take this fundamental internal struggle and externalize it in a myriad of ways. You saw it all throughout his Batman and Robin run, and Snyder is playing with those same themes, and twisting them, right here.

The whole story is centered around the way that Gotham might twist Dick Grayson, might turn him into a darker version of himself. And we see that directly as he talks about the way the city can become 'a stranger', can turn even the bright and beautiful things into dark and ugly things. And we see that further as he sees the dark side of the people of gotham, so enamored with evil, almost worshipping it, 'monsters'. And we see the dark side of his job as Robin, his history, brought up with the Crowbar. We see the way Gotham turned so many into animals during the earthquake. And maybe most impressively, we see Dick Grayson literally take the face of what he might have become -- wearing the face of an outwardly laudable member of the gotham glitterati, who in reality led a dark double life. That is basically Dick (and Bruce) but for a small twist.

So much subtext is working there, and it works further in the backup, as undoubtedly we'll find that James Gordon WAS in fact twisted by Gotham City, was turned into something dark and predatory and monstrous.

Love it. Love this book. I'm not a fan of Batman or Batman stories. A 'good' Batman tale, a straightforward Batman tale, wouldn't be enough to do it for me. MOrrison injected so much more than just standard Batman tropes into his work, and combined with his general excellence he won me over with the book. But the deep, layered character work Snyder is doing here transcends 'good' and becomes 'great', maybe even 'spectacular', and I he's won me over.

I hope he turns his 16 issue run into something much, much longer, and I agree with those who have said that the Bat-office has a VERY strong contender for franchise-navigator. My only fear is I don' tknow who will be able to take over the Dick book if Snyder takes on Bruce!