Detective Comics #1081

I've been following Detective Comics on & off for 58 years. That's pretty close to the beginning of my comic book reading / buying start, as I remember an ad for issue #352 in the first comic book I bought (Justice League of America #45), and I still own a copy of  Detective Comics #355. That had a cover date of September, 1966. I had just turned 9.

I never stayed with the book for too long, but I never stayed away for too long, either. My current WITH started with issue #1075 when I saw that Francesco Francavilla was going to be doing the art. Everything Francesco Francavilla does is worth your time. And I had to stick around for the next issue when I saw that the brilliant Jason Shawn Alexander would be handling the art on that one. And he stuck around until #1080, so so did I...even though Mr. Alexander's art here couldn't hold a candle to his work on Spawn. 

I was pretty unhappy with the writing of Ram Venkatesan (aka Ram V), which tends to be a purple shade of florid, and thought that I'd be putting the kibosh on the title at that point, but two simple words: I Forgot. Thus did issue #1081 come into my possession. And you know what? I think I'm going to stick around for another issue or two and see what happens. 

Mostly it was the art. According to the credits, the penciller is Milan-born Stefano Raffaele, and the inker is Roman-born Riccardo Federici. The latter did a lot of work on the Action Comics Warworld saga...and you know what? The art on Detective Comics #1081 looks a lot like that work: it's got a much lighter touch than the usual comic book art...very elegant. Well, here: have a couple thousand words on it:

So I'm guessing that Mr. Federici did a lot more than ink these pages. Furthermore...pages 10-12 and 16-18 have a very different look...and either one (or both) of those Italian boys is a fantastic mimic, or DC snuck in six pages of Francesco Francavilla without telling us what was going on. I've got a pretty good eye for comic book artists, and those pages are VERy Francavilla-ish. 

And the story? Well...it's one of those Batman is near death and thus hallucinating like a motherfucker things that seem very familiar...aka overused. See, Batman is in the desert and he has to fight a bat creature during the daytime and then travel across the desert at night in order to Find Himself. Yeah, I know...ho fucking hum for me, too. 

However...if you look back at the picture posted above and read the caption, you'll see a reference to "Calvino's Traveler." That, of course, is Italo Calvino, and if nothing else an allusion to his novel If on a winter's night a traveler. Well. I will admit that I have not yet read this tome...nor anything else by Mr. Calvino...but I know enough to know that he is a Big Fucking Deal, and not the kind of fellow that a comic book writer is apt to make reference to. In fact, I can confidently say that after 58 years of reading comic books...and we're talking about tens of thousands of books here...I have never before seen a reference to Calvino. So Ram gets points for that. 

Thus yes, looks like I'll be coming back for issue 1082. And now, of course, I'm itching to get at some Italo Calvino as well. Sigh.