Batman has followed Mr. Toxic’s trail to Dr. Marden’s lab in Wayne Tower, but that’s only the beginning of the mystery. Improving on last month’s enjoyable installment of Detective Comics, Tony Daniel has penned one of the best issues of the series to date in issue #11.
I find it frustrating when a good payoff is given a weak lead-in, but that’s just the case with this book. With the exception of last issue, Mr. Toxic has been a totally forgettable footnote in a disappointing series. This story, however, shows that the character has something to him after all. The mystery seems to end early in the book, following Bruce’s rumble with Mr. Toxic in a science lab; however, things move in an interesting new direction after a short bout of detective work.
My biggest complaint for Daniel’s script is how inaccurate his references to science are. It’s always a risky to write outside of your area of expertise, and Bruce’s explanation, likening a gadget to the Large Hadron Collider is so off-base, the genius-level detective may as well have said the machine probably worked by magic.
The art team of Julio Ferreira and Eduardo Pansica create an effective milieu through which we can experience the pleasant uptick in scripting quality. The first two pages capture the reader’s attention well, and the action is explained well until the main story’s close. Depictions of Bruce without his cowl had too much cross-hatching for my tastes, but that’s a relatively minor concern.
The backup story by Tony Daniel and Szymon Kudranski concludes their Two-Face tale, and I have to say that I’m pretty relieved. Kudranski’s artwork is an improvement over last month’s episode, but Daniel’s script is toothless. It’s a real bummer that we have to pay an extra dollar for the backup when the main story would have seemed a much better deal at $2.99.
On the heels of the announcement that Tony Daniel is leaving Detective Comics, we are gifted with one of his best efforts on the relaunched series. The story is interesting, and it gives life to a previously wooden, two-dimensional villain. While the main story is worth reading, its importance may be diminished for some readers in light of Daniel’s impending departure.
Poet is a freelance writer, mid-core gamer, and frequent IGN contributor. Follow Poet on Twitter, or post a message on his IGN profile.
Source : ign[dot]com
