At this point I have an idea on the mind of Scott Snyder. He’s full of twisted, sick, but impossibly amazing stories. His run on American Vampires and now Detective Comics have been filled with horribly disturbing and twisted moments. A few reviews ago I said he might be one of the best horror writers working today. Looking at this absolutely gorgeous cover by Jock I was expecting more of the same. But no, Scott Snyder actually surprised me with this one…

This issue was not disturbing at all. It didn’t have any of the usual sights of dead animals or people getting killed in horrible ways. This was as normal of an book I’ve seen Snyder write ever since I first read his work. That is not a bad thing by any stretch of the imagination. It’s just that when I opened this book I expected like, another dead whale, or maybe someone getting tortured in a horrible manner. Not seeing Dick quip like an action movie star and seeing a bizarre romance starting to blossum. Snyder made me laugh a couple of times, especially with that the Bat-Family already have 5G technology at their disposal, of course. I mean don’t make me think this is like a Paul Dini issue or anything (not like that is a problem either) it does have the same old Snyder tropes as usual. But I was so surprised to see such a light-hearted issue it made me happy that Snyder can do so much more then disturbing stories. Although we don’t know what Tiger Shark looks like so this could be all a set up to give us the most disturbing issue ever in the history of comics next week…..I wouldn’t hold Snyder against that.

As a man who isn’t a big fan of his work I gotta say I was blown about by Jock this week. (That’s probably hilarious out of context) You still got the same old weird faces and anatomy but it’s really hard to fault him when you got so much fucking amazing pages in this issue. We start off with an amazing sequence of Dick getting out of the trash compactor, then you have him brilliantly pacing the chase/joke of it all with Bixby Rhodes. Then you have the sequence in the rain with a gorgeous two page spread in the middle of the conversation with Dick and Sonia, and then the stuff with the ocean….It’s just so much amazing stuff! Why can’t we get this type of Jock all the time? (Again, funny out of context I imagine) It really was just a gorgeous issue from beginning to end and it definitely contends to the amazing work Francesco Francavilla did in his fill-ins a couple of months ago.

I really think Scott Snyder is going to become ‘the’ writer for DC soon. Because if he can balance disturbing issues with light-hearted issues like this then I imagine he can do almost anything as a writer. Ever since Snyder has taken over Detective it has brought a breath of fresh air to not only Dick Grayson but to the whole Bat-family (what with not being bogged down with Morrison’s INC stuff). Add in that Jock did some of his best work in this particular issue and you got one very happy Batman fan. Now I am worried about one thing though….again if this issue was so light-hearted then what sort of fuck, twisted thing does Snyder have up his sleeve next month?