Batman: Private Casebook (2008)

Next thing you know she'll be trading in her top hat and fishnets for a cape and cowl. "Bat-anna". It has a ring to it.

This book collects Detective Comics 840 - 845 and a short tale from DC Infinite Halloween Special 1 that features Scarecrow and Zatanna. The book was written by Paul Dini (with one of the chapters written by Peter Milligan). The excellent art was by Dustin Nguyen with inks by Derek Fridolfs - both of whom have worked together on various Batman titles.

As the title would suggest, this is a collection of stories rather than a story arc itself. The stories feature some of Batman's long time foes and colleagues such as Ra's al Ghul, the Mad Hatter, Scarface (with a new ventriloquist), Zatanna and the Riddler. If the book has a theme then it probably one of manipulation and deceit - the Mad Hatter finds himself at the mercy of his own mind controlling technology; the new Ventriloquist is used by Scarface as a means of revenge against a small time criminal; Riddler's eagerness to solve a series of crimes is used as a lure for the killer to exact revenge on him for past misdemeanours.

Although the individual stories were fine, I was slightly disappointed in this collection. The blurb on the back promises that "old secrets are revealed as the Dark Knight becomes haunted by his past" which would have been great but I got no sense of Batman feeling haunted or of any secrets being revealed. My favourite stories were probably the Riddler story and the two part Scarface story that also featured one of my favourite superheroines, Zatanna. I have not really been keeping up with all that has happened in the recent Batman continuity but one of the greatest surprises is the fact that the Riddler has given up a life of crime to become a private investigator - as also seen when I read the first volume of Gotham City Sirens recently. This story also reveals that Batman occasionally uses online crime forums to discuss cases and perhaps pick up new leads when he is feeling at a dead end.

Even though I enjoyed the stories I would probably recommend that this is a book to borrow from your library rather than buy. Unless they are complimentary to some other storyline within one of the Batman titles they don't really hang together enough as a book for me.

First published on RevolutionSF on Sunday May 08, 2011