Detective Comics #14

Does Poison Ivy want a wing of the Children's Hospital named after her mom too?

My favorite part of the cover of Detecitve Comics is the part that's not there: Tony S. Daniel's name. If October is anything to go by, I'd have to say The New 52 is improving. Tony S. Daniel wrote zero issues. Rob Liefeld was gone although his plots were still infecting a number of already shitty titles. J.T. Krul was missing from every comic book. Sure, Scott Lobdell, Tom DeFalco, and Ann Nocenti were still writing multiple comics. It would be nice to see their names drop to just a single title each. Perhaps their writing would improve if they were meeting deadlines on two or three issues each month. Never mind that! I was supposed to be feeling good about October and now I just remember why The New 52 has a long way to go.

Meanwhile in Detective Comics, Bruce Wayne has been set upon by some Dragon Warriors. Then Penguin paid them to kill Bruce Wayne and by their ancestor's ghosts, that's just what they're going to do. Even if The Penguin suddenly doesn't want Bruce dead. Crime bosses in the world of comic books really should be more careful who they hire. At this point, I would think that refusing to stop a job when the guy that requested the job asks you to call it off would be worse for your reputation than always making sure a job gets done no matter what. When hiring mercenaries, I think I'd like a 7 out of 10 in the tenacity department.

While Bruce is trying to figure out a way to defeat the assassin without exposing his skills that could link him to Batman, somebody else steps up to save his ass.

Now demand a 5 billion dollar reward!

Back at the Batcave, Bruce and Damian are discussing how they're going to get revenge on The Penguin. How dare he save Bruce from the assassination attempt that Oswald Cobblepot was no doubt behind in the first place and become a local hero. And worse yet, he dishonored Bruce's mom! That can't go unpunished! This is the worst disaster to ever befall Bruce Wayne. The Penguin stole his mother's Children's Wing! This can't go unpunished. Batman must put on his detective shoes and put The Penguin behind bars!

Later that night, Batman ends up making out with a corpse.

At least the double splash pages give this comic book a sense of continuity between Fabok's art and Tony Daniel's.

The last time Poison Ivy was seen (not counting the fake Rotworld alternate timeline), Katana had just killed her. That was back in August. Since then, no mention has been made of what happened to Poison Ivy. I'm guessing she pulled through. Her kiss hypnotizes Batman and she takes him on a tour before the comic returns to earlier that morning.

The right thing to do if your main concern is maintaining corporate interests and the status quo, Bruce Wayne! Fucking The Batman is just The Man's Bat.

The more Batman comics I read, the more I'm convinced Batman is simply a tool to make Bruce Wayne richer and richer. He pretends he's interested in social justice and cleaning up the city but what he's really interested in is higher property values and less criminals on the street breaking into his businesses.

Batman continues to follow Poison Ivy as she leads him around Cobblepot's pharmaceutical plant. He's only partially under her control but enough that he's hallucinating and nearly blowing his secret identity. Again!

Batman really needs to shut up when he's been drugged.

The Penguin was expecting Poison Ivy since she'd just recently hit two of his other pollutant plants. The place is rigged with a bunch of traps that take down Batman and Poison Ivy. Ogilvy arrives and shows he's just not too smart enough to survive in Gotham.

See? I would be too smart and decide to kill Batman here. Which would probably get me maimed because Batman would probably gain consciousness right as I'm trying to slice his throat open! But Ogilvy isn't smart enough to kill Batman when he has the chance which makes him just dumb enough to be smart enough to survive in Gotham!

Batman wakes up with the entire place on fire. So what the fuck was Ogilvy talking about? I guess he knew he was going to torch the place but Batman would survive because Ogilvy chose not to start the fire on Batman's face. Batman wakes up to find Ivy gone and replaced by Clayface.

A lot sure has happened since Poison Ivy was killed by Katana!

The back-up story involves Poison Ivy breaking into Arkham Asylum to release Clayface. She might as well stay inside though since she's busy spouting crazy nonsense.

If this were true, Batman wouldn't need to headline four comics every month.

While Ivy is breaking Clayface out of Arkham and proposing to him, she mentions that things went badly with The Birds of Prey. Yeah, they killed you! But here you are alive and well. Is anybody ever going to explain what happened?

Detective Comics #14 Rating: No change. This issue wasn't crap like it was the first year but it had enough problems with the story, dialogue, and characterizations that I can't say it was good either. Just another mediocre Batman story.