Wednesday, July 6, 2022

Comic Book Lucky Dip - Detective Comics #1051

Today’s randomly selected comic is Detective Comics #1051. This is the most recent of the comics I’ve reviewed for this but time is meaningless here, this was the 5th part of the Shadows of the Bat Storyline going on at the time, written by Mariko Tomaki, with art by Max Raynor and with a backup story written by Matthew Rosenberg with Fernando Blanco on art.

We open at Keystone County Airport, months earlier as the current Mayor of Gotham City, named Nakono is seen with Private Security Mogol Simon Saint… not especially relevant to today’s proceeds more a context clue as to when this took place. A plane lands at the airport and inside a suitcase is the Psycho-Pirate, using his medusa mask to stop people from seeing him.

As soon as he lands he makes a run for it to an old friend, a guy named Tobias Wear. He can still use his Medusa Mask to command people whatever he wants, including making Tobias’ wife giddy with happiness. This gives Tobias an idea, if they could do it on a lot of people for like a month, the two could walk away very rich and Psycho-Pirate can stay hidden from the people he say are after him.

We cut to an underground base called the cave, a temporary place for the bat-family to operate but not for much longer as construction will intrude upon the place soon. There’s been an uptake in a drug known as Numb being distributed by a group called the Party Crashers. They believe the source of drugs is from the new Arkham Tower, and have identified 3 members of the staff that are also parts of the Party Crashers

Speaking of the Party Crashers, they’re none too happy with Tobias Wear who has supplied only half their shipment, they know he’s also supplying for the Penguin and suspect he’s double-dealing. They demand double their usual shipment in 24 hours. A phone-call from the Penguin reveals he’s been doing much the same, and the Penguin is not someone you want to piss off.

Inside Arkham Tower, Doctor Chase Meridian is interviewing one of the patients, who’s talking about a memory of a movie, he can see himself watching but seemingly from the third person. Doctor Meridian calls Doctor Wear, with questions about the drugs the patients are on, they’re supposedly calculated by a Doctor Ocean who Chase wants to meet before submitting a vital report for them to secure funding from the Mayor. Of course, that’s not possible and Wear is growing all the more frustrated.

He has a new plan of action, convince Nakano to come on a tour and get Psycho pirate to manipulate him to providing the funds, not that Nakano needs the help as his wife suffers from a mental illness and he’s desperately hoping this place will provide what she needs. Dick Grayson is inside Arkham Tower and hacking their files

It seems wear didn’t run this all by Psycho-Pirate and he’s especially worried about filtering everyone’s emotions all at once, and adding another to that balance. He asks wear to drug the patients but that’s a non-starter if the mayor wanted to see them. Nakano arrives and Psycho-Pirate reveals does his work but with all these people he’s overwhelmed and passes out.

With Psycho-Pirate no longer in control the inmates revert to type and begin attacking the guards, causing a lockdown. Nightwing rejects a request for backup from Oracle whilst he assess the situation but he soon takes a chair to the back of the head. Helena Bertinelli had also been in Arkham Tower and was being interviewed by Chase at the time of this incident, she goes out and ends up fighting a guy named Nero Xix. She knocks him out easily and runs off, chanting to herself that she has to remember.

Wear finds Psycho Pirate barely recovering, forces the medusa mask onto him to get him to fix the situation, getting them all to sleep and forget what happened.

The backup story, House of Gotham tells the story of a young ginger-haired boy who’s name is not mentioned in this issue so I’ll just him Boy for the sake of following the rules of this format. Boy has been given a clean bill of health at Arkham Asylum, and has grounds for release contingent on finding a suitable home environment. Luckily for him they have him one with a Mr Gentoo, it just happens this guy works for the Penguin, who had interest in him thanks to a friend of his named Elliot.

He's taken to the Iceberg Lounge, given pretty crummy-looking accommodations. He’s gonna be a kitchen porter for the club, largely just doing the dishes. He’ll have to sort out his own food, and to help with that, Oswald gives him an advance on his first pay-check, giving him freedom to do what he wants before the club opens. The basic rules are don’t steal from customers, don’t steal from him and obey every order he gives as if he were god himself.

Boy enjoys his day out, but as he heads back he’s accosted by a mugger, the mugger soon finds himself on the sharp end of the Penguin’s umbrella. Penguin leaves it up to Boy how he should be punished, Boy doesn’t want to punish him at all but Penguin decides to kill him anyway, teaching an important lesson that we don’t always get what we want.

So that was Detective Comics #1051, the main story is an interesting character study of the Psycho Pirate and what he’s like when the usual multiversal crossover avenues are closed to him. It’s a far better use of him and his abilities than what they did with him in the Tom King run, which was ultimately next to nothing.

We’re given a decent amount of context as to where we are in the story organically so it’s unlikely you’d be lost if you just picked up and red this issue without the full context of the first 4 parts but the converse of that is that very little actually happens here. We get a bit of history for Psycho Pirate, a bit of catchup with the bat-family, time pressures for Doctor Wear force him to make a rash plan that backfires in a brief action scene and that’s the whole issue.

The backup is weird, it’s not uncompelling I just wonder what the point of it all is, it’s not much of a showcase for the Penguin, nor is the kid especially interesting. The artwork for both the main and backup stories are pretty good, with the backup a bit more stylised, which really worked for the Penguin if less so for the kids.

Rating 3/5 Stars

No comments:

Post a Comment