Last Days of Gotham, part 1 of 2!
Concluded in BATMAN #684.
As for the link to the recently concluded RIP, O'Neil fluidly includes shout-outs to a number of different stories currently taking place in the Bat-books, and he does it with the ease of a career editor who oversaw a number of different convoluted Bat crossovers in his time. What he doesn't do is clue us in on why all this matters to Millicent Mayne's predicament, and we're left wondering whether or not the veteran scribe might be using this RIP post-mortem to tell one last Batman story that's been lingering in his imagination. Seeing as I have full faith in O'Neil, I don't think this will be the case, and I fully expect the second issue to deliver more in terms of exploring the idea of a Gotham without Batman. As it stands now, though, all we really have is a relatively compelling story starring a mysterious new character, Nightwing and Two-Face. Read Full Review
The nice thing about this issue is even though Batman is missing, it doesn't feel like a Batman-is-dead-and-we-don't-know-what-to-do-about-it issue. Batman is simply away, and the supporting cast are there to do what they do best. Had it not been for the RIP event in Batman, this issue feels like a natural transition from Batman and Catwoman running away at the end of Dini's last arc, or a story that had been in the DC filing cabinet for a couple of years that has been dusted off and polished to fill in the gap between the end of RIP and the time when Final Crisis ends and the Battle for the Cowl begins. I liked the pacing of the story, and the way in which new characters are introduced. While I prefer to have Batman in Detective Comics, a detective story is still a detective story, and Detective Comics #851 earns 3.5 out of 5 Stars in this outing. Read Full Review
This story feels like a situation where O'Neil and March were called in to produce some filler before the really "important" stuff starts coming out in 2009. "Last Days of Gotham" may lay important groundwork for future stories, or it may be a way to give O'Neil a victory lap after a long and storied career with the character, but it doesn't feel like it. It feels inessential and unimpressive, and that's too bad. Read Full Review
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