I love how interesting dialogue can make characters so much more enticing. It’s like the way Snyder writes Grayson’s narrative gives me a really good feeling of what kind of mood the character is in, which helps me get a better feel of their immediate environment also. Which in this case would be the setting otherwise known as the great Gotham. The way Snyder has Grayson look back upon his early days as classic American circus folk helps the reader get a good feel of the character’s traditional roots which many other writers just can’t authenticate like Snyder has been doing since he first stepped up to this run. A lot of other writers don’t even bother to dig this deep, and they are the lesser storyteller for it.

But Snyder isn’t only a magician with one trick. He is a good dialogue writer for most of the characters in his stuff, if not all. Some people would say that Snyder drags things out a bit. Like other writers would squeeze what takes Snyder three issues to complete into one, but I don’t feel that way. I enjoy a little characterization along with my action. It makes the bad guys just feel so much more evil. If you can put the right kind of comparisons to other interesting things, and appropriate analogies in the right place, not only can you pull of telling off a little bit of a new villian’s origin in there, but it also helps the reader interpret the villian, and/or other character”s, motives better. Scott Snyder sucks you right into Gotham City just as good as Morrison or Paul Dini. He’s just that good, so far anyway…

I keep hearing a few others complain here and there but not me, I love Jock’s artwork!! Whoever is doing the inks, and whoever is doing the noirish coloring is kicking ass too. You just get the best of everything in Detective right now. I know Capullo is great for his work at Image, I was just reading Spawn book six yesterday, and his pencils and inks are great, but I’m gonna miss Jock with Snyder!! The Francessco guy is just as good too!! The art people on this book are terrific and I hope they stay doing Batman stuff so I can continue to check out their stuff. I just hate it when they put great artists on books that I don’t give two shits about because of the writer who is on it or you’re just not into that title. I hope that doesn’t happen to these guys after shit gets all shuffled around at DC. These guys belong in Gotham!!

The people who work on this book do such a good job that if Gotham City were a real existing place, I would find it hard to believe that they didn’t actually live there themselves. That’s how deep it gets with Tec right now. I’m pretty sure #879 is coming out in like two weeks too. YES!!!!