Frightening On Several Levels
You know, it's pretty simplistic in design, but the more I look at this cover, the more I think JESUS F*** THAT S*** IS F***ING CREEPY. The idea's actually really clever, not 100% original, but so perfectly executed that I can't help but say 'it totally works.'
YES! YES! Good sign early on. The issue title is GENIUSLY meshed into the artwork. I actually had to look around for a minute to find out. PHENOMENAL. BRAVO.
David Finch's art is more.... scraggly. It's less puffy muscles and more twisted shapes and rough edges. It looks cooler, it looks more stylized, and it suits the story perfectly.
I was a little confused about the beginning. The girl was being tortured by The Bogeyman, then she or another girl is being followed by the police, then a drunk drive crashes by as the girl is kidnapped, Batman stops the driver.... and then he's talking to the girl because 'she escaped' or something? There's a few vital pieces of information that feel like they were glossed over.
OH MY GOD BATMAN QUESTIONING THE GIRL WAS ADORABLE. Batman understands child psychology. And actually it leads to a nice subtle deeper meaning. The very next scene has Batman stuck in his focus, barely attentive as Damian gets dangerously close to pouring his heart out to his father. Promising to try his very hardest to be nicer to everyone else. Batman is amazing at dealing with the various people of Gotham City, but he's not nearly as good at dealing with those close to him. He's too distracted by the plight of the city to focus on the emotions of his own son.
Like the cover, Bogeyman is CREEPY AS F***. Or no, wait, he's The Hollow Man. Oh no wait.... is he... Scarecrow? Ok, it's like, I LIKE this guy in this issue, but much like Batman Annual #1, I don't feel like it's 'SCARECROW.' It feels like it's trying a bit too hard to make him more 'dark' and 'edgy.' Half the problem is that most of the issue feels like a new villain trying to rip off Scarecrow's m.o., though pulling it off extremely well. Was Scarecrow at the end, there to take down this pathetic pale imitation? Or was he him all along? Sewing his own lips together was fantastically disturbing for the mood, but it just doesn't feel like a 'Scarecrow' thing to do.
In Conclusion: 3.5/5
It's still FAR better than any of the Finch written issues, but it has a few pitfalls of its own. The beginning is incredibly moody, but a bit confusing. The end has the same problems, but with the added feature of questioning the villain. I'm confident that I'd give this a higher score if it was definitely NOT Scarecrow, but if it is.... it just feels weird for him.
But the bottom line is that The Dark Knight seems to be worth reading. Maybe we could still cancel this and put Hurwitz on Detective Comics? That would keep the 'solely Batman focused' titles down to 2. Batman and Robin is essentially a stand-in for a solo Robin series, and Batman Incorporated is more broad. We only really need two solo Batman books. I would say 'unless the other is Streets of Gotham,' but actually that series was honestly more about the whole cast of Gotham as opposed to Batman.