Detective Comics # 1018.

[K. Jones]

Hello, all, and happy new year!

Detective 1018 is out. I'm excited about Tomasi's Tec run so far based on my digging his work historically and the potential for it (once it doesn't have to be as beholden to whatever else is happening in other books) but it's been a while since he kicked off and nothing has reached high highs of any sort. The Mythology bit was just "nightmares" during "Knightmares" and treaded water. The Joker short just felt beholden to Justice League stuff. It was cute but brief and not impactful. The Mr. & Mrs. Freeze concept was cute but not exactly a strong central story. In that regard, so far it's been the sort of short stories and one-shots that have been my favorites (in particular the Reaper bit, actually).

But this Christmas issue felt like a return to form and perhaps one of the best Batman Christmas stories I've read in a long time.

Tomasi's post-Alfred Bruce is actually fantastic. He's balancing trying to do better as his own Bruce Wayne, since he doesn't have Alfred supplying the agency for Bruce to continue doing Bruce things. His bothering Bullock during overtime, then remaining stoic when Bullock cracks a really funny joke, only to laugh after he hangs up the bat-phone had me laugh out loud hard. Wishing cops a merry christmas was a lovely touch. The self-awareness of "another cult ritual villain" and mentioning other ones was really nice. And I'm curious as all hell if this Yule christmas killer is a modern reinvention of "THOR" ... the Golden Age Detective Comics Thor.

I just really like that Tomasi reaches back into the "ancient maybe immortal occult killer in Gotham" well yet again but this time cheekily brings up how this keeps happening by mentioning some of the bigger more recent ones. Like, yes, apparently Gotham is full of these still alive bloody historical killers! HOW IS JASON BLOOD NOT GETTING MORE WORK?

I think the big sell was frankly Bruce playing fetch with the dogs.

You don't necessarily think about these things, but Bruce actually feels really "right" as a guy with two dogs. You see him playing fetch with Ace and Titus and you're like ... yeah ... of course he would have like, a german shepherd and a great dane. It's also a fantastic reflection for him to be playing fetch and look at Ace and remember that Alfred just got him that dog for like, "last Christmas" or whatever. So feeling some sadness there. First Christmas without Alfred.

King's run might not have done any actual exploration of this story beat but this one feels like it does a nice job with the hand it's dealt.

[SixSpeedSamurai]

I enjoyed it overall, but the art was subpar, hopefully it's just a fill in. I think Walker is the regular artist with Mahnke moving to Justice League.

[CPSparkles]

I like that Tomasi remembered that Bruce has two dogs most writers forget. details like that make a difference to me.