Batman Confidential #1
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Andy Diggle
Penciller: Whilce Portacio
Inker: Richard Friend
Colorist: David Baron
Letterer: Travis Lanham
Assoc. Editor: Tom Palmer, Jr.
Editor: Mike Carlin
Batman Created by Bob Kane

22 pages

Rating: 4 out of 5

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Premise: Batman’s been doing the vigilante thing for a little more than a year. He realizes that he’s more of a reactionary force than a preemptive one.

Synopsis:

Batman arrives too late to another crime scene. The woman is already dead. He battles the assailant, who is eliminated by some super energy weapon before Bats can get any information. In the Batcave, Bruce has a mild personal crisis. He laments always having to react and be too late to the scene.

Bruce shows up at Wayne Aerospace to pick Lucius’s mind on energy weapons. Together, they then go to make the case for Waynetech being awarded a lucrative defense contract. The other company in the running is Lexcorp, leading to Wayne’s first encounter with Lex Luthor. After the meeting, they begin to talk, but are interrupted by a giant robot destroying downtown Gotham.

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Review:

The Batman attributes that I enjoy seeing most are the detective aspect, and the off-his-rocker nut job vigilante aspect. You would think that the two would be mutually exclusive, but Andy Diggle may have found a way to have them both together. I have no time for the calm, collected, level-headed Bruce Wayne, and I don’t think we’ll be seeing that version here. Diggle introduces us to a Batman who is clearly still wrestling with the horrors of his past. This is a Batman who broke into the Gotham City Police Department to steal the gun that was used to kill his parents.

But this is also the detective. He is able to quickly pick out clues at the crime scene and intuit that the criminal is still on the premisis. In fact, page four is essentiall a backstage pass to Batman’s eyes as he surveys the apartment. It is brilliantly executed in both the script, and on the page.

The art in here in also well-done. At first, I was put off a little by Portacio’s pencils, but I quickly grew accustomed to them. He did choose some strange angles to use on Bruce and Alfred in the Batcave scene, but elsewhere, everything else seems to make more sense.

There is a definite difference in how certain characters are drawn. Bruce definitely looks crazier than everyone else. He’s got crazy in his eyes, and his hair is often awry to accentuate his wild mind. Likewise, Lex Luthor almost always - except in incredible surprise - has his eyes in deep shadow, suggesting a more sinister persona behind his public facade.

The coloring is also done well. Each scene has a different underlying hue based on the environment - inside an aerospace hangar, inside a conference room, outside in the daytime, in the Batcave, outside at night (Gotham apparently has a blood-red sky at night) - that contributes the mood of each scene.

This is a well-done book. You could certainly do worse at you LCS. I’ll stick around for all six issues of the arc and report back when it’s all wrapped up.