Thank god!

That’s all I thought of when this two parter by Dennis O’ Neil finally closed by my hands. Look the man is a great writer for his time and I will always love some of his more memorible stories for Batman. But this will not be, I can guarentee it, remembered when we do a retrospective for O’Neil.

This entire plot idea of this Millicent girl being the voice of Gotham is sound. But when you just introduce her right away and make us just assume she’s always been around, is silly. Why does she have to be the voice of gotham? Technically she is the ‘face’ of gotham cause of her looks….so why is she the voice anyways? Either way with the flimsy narration aside, the overall plot wasnt that compelling. Although it isnt Two-Face technically, it isnt sound to just have a Nightwing/Two-Face epic in a title, and then quickly use them in another for yet another arc. Even if it isnt Two-Face, these criminals were just down right stupid; basically Silver Age level mentality is all they are. Plus O’Neil just doesnt have a great handle on Gordon, or Bollock, or even Nightwing himself. He comes across as a childish kid instead of being a very well respected veteran hero.

Now Guillem March’s pencils and colors made me like Detective Comics from previous. But here, my god how off model some of these characters look. Nightwing doesnt even look like Nightwing in a lot of the panels. Plus some of the facial expressions made little sense, go look at the one where Dick remembers he lost his motorcycle….what expression is that suppose to be? Plus the colors are just too bright and actually hurt my eyes at some points. Sounds silly I know, but coloring/inking is just as important as pencilling and if you dont have that down; you wont win the audience with that sloppiness.

Overall this was a medicore start for a ‘Gotham without Batman’. I believe Neil Gaiman comes up next with his ‘Whatever Happen to the Caped Crusader?’ and hopefully he can do much better then this blah attempt by a Batman legend.