The guy that wrote Preacher takes on Batman with Liam Sharp channeling Bill Sienkiewicz and Dave McKean and I almost trade waited this one? What was I thinking? Great creators, not great characters, make great comic books and this was no exception. It was the best thing I read this week and one of my favorite takes on Batman in forever. Not in spite of Bruce seeming different but because he did. DKR couldn’t be more different than Batman ‘66 but they are both unquestionably Batman. This issue’s Batman is too. But thank goodness he’s also being portrayed in a way he hasn’t been in the past. That’s a thing writers, especially of such established characters, should aspire to, not shy away from.

To those that feel Batman is being written “out of character,” first it’s not the DCU, it’s Black Label, a place to be bold and to experiment. More importantly, since that out of character stuff is a cloyingly constant complaint around here, that’s how characters evolve, they are written differently than in the past. And some of that sticks or none of it does but either way it’s a lot more interesting than a story you’ve already read.

And if Batman had always been written “in character” he’d still be carrying a gun and killing people. Superman wouldn’t be able to fly. Wonder Woman would be a dominatrix. And a Justice League with those three “in character” characters would have been unimaginable, which reminds me why this drives me up a wall—because it comes, more than anything else, from a failure of imagination.

I would hate to live in a world where comics characters never changed. Or rather, I wouldn’t care because I would have stopped reading comics when I was a child. Because they wouldn’t have remained interesting to me because they’d never changed. Or, to put it a bit differently, nobody would have had the imagination or guts to have written them “out of character.”

If that’s what really matters, might I recommend Peanuts? You won’t ever have to worry about somebody experimenting with Charlie Brown.