The best story of his Detective run was Slay Ride. A story where Joker kidnapped Tim Drake and took him in a car ride hitting pedestrians during Christmas. Great story that has off Tim's intelligence and mental fortitude
The best story of his Detective run was Slay Ride. A story where Joker kidnapped Tim Drake and took him in a car ride hitting pedestrians during Christmas. Great story that has off Tim's intelligence and mental fortitude
All of Dini's work on Detective & Streets of Gotham are collected in the upcoming omnibus coming out next week.
As for Dini's entire Detective run, the time when Dini was on Detective and Morrison was on Batman was the best era of Batman's publishing history, in my opinion......As a few others mentioned, Dini did some solid one-and-done issues, and Heart Of Hush was far better than Loeb's original, and overrated, Hush storyline. The two addendum issues for Heart Of Hush (Detective 852 & Batman 685) were solid.
I disagree with jb681131 about Hush Money & House of Hush being better than Heart of Hush.....I thought Dini's Streets of Gotham run was mediocre, nowhere near the caliber of his Detective run.
Regardless, all of those Dini issues are going to be in the omnibus, along with a few of his other Batman-related works.
Best single issue? Surely.
It's overall a fun run with lots of great moments. I don't think it has any landmark classics (potentially Heart of Hush being the biggest long-form arc it told with any weight), but it was just solid Batman work each month. Think of Batman the Animated Series. It never went full Heart of Ice, but it was BTAS, so to speak.
I'm so glad it's getting collected in an omnibus. Can't wait to pour over it again in a large collection. He also introduced some new characters. Some silly (The Carpenter) and some notsomuch (the new Ventriloquist).
He also never dipped into Batgod that I remember. I recall enjoying his run for being solid, straightforward Batman stories. He's up there on my Batman writer Mount Rushmore for sure.
A thing to note is that Dini's run goes :
- Batman: Detective - Detective Comics #821-826
- Batman: Death and the City - Detective Comics #827-834
- Batman: Private Casebook - Detective Comics #840-845
- Batman: Heart of Hush - Detective Comics #846-850
- Batman: Streets of Gotham, Vol. 1 – Hush Money - Batman: Streets of Gotham #1-4 + Detective Comics #852 + Batman #685
- Batman: Streets of Gotham, Vol. 2 – Leviathan - Batman: Streets of Gotham #5-11
- Batman: Streets of Gotham, Vol. 3 – The House of Hush - Batman: Streets of Gotham #12-14 & #16-21
So as you can see, he didn't write:
- Detective Comics #835-836 - Absolute Terror - by John Rozum
- Detective Comics #851 - Part of Batman: Last Rite - by Denis O'Neil
- Streets of Gotham #15 - Two-Face part 2 - by Ivan Brandon
Also not in these collections
- Detective Comics #837 - Countdown tie-in - by Paul Dini
- Detective Comics #838, 839 - part 3 and 7 of 7 from The Resurection of Ra's Al Ghul
To note also, he didn't write - not in the upcoming omnibus:
- Batman: Streets of Gotham #5-6
- Batman: Streets of Gotham #8-9
- Detective Comics #825
- Detective Comics #829-830
- Detective Comics #832
- Detective Comics #835-836
- Detective Comics #842
Paul Dini also wrote:
- The Not So Silent Night of the Harley Quinn - Batman vol.3 Annual #1
- ??? - Batman: Black & White vol.3 #3
- ??? - Batman: Gotham Knights #14
- Good King Wenceslas - DCU Holiday Special #1
- The Legend of Knute Brody - Detective Comics #1000
- The Batman: Adventures (co-writter but not mentionned) #1-36 - not in the upcoming omnibus
- The Batman Adventures: Mad Love - not in the upcoming omnibus
- Batman: Arkham City (comic book) - not in the upcoming omnibus
- Batman: Adventures continue #1-3 - not in the upcoming omnibus
- Gotham City Sirens #1-2, 4-7, 9-11 - not in the upcoming omnibus
- Harley & Ivy Meet Betty & Veronica - not in the upcoming omnibus
Last edited by jb681131; 08-25-2020 at 02:28 AM.
It was great. Solid one -in-done stories. Strong character work. At the same time there were connective threads that ran from Detective Comics to Streets of Gotham.
Dustin Nguyen and Don Kramer were a good match for him as artists. Simone Bianachi's covers for this era were also underrated.