Detective Comics #1088 Comic Book Review

In Detective Comics #1088, the two-issue finale begins, with all of the Orgham henchmen falling to Batman’s rogues gallery, while Batman takes on the Orgham Queen.

Title: “Gotham Nocturne: Act III – Finale, Part 1” [of 2]
Writer: Ram V
Artist: Guillem March
Colors: Luis Guerrero
Main Cover: Evan Cagle
Variant Covers: Mike Perkins (colored by Mike Spicer), Stevan Subic, Chris Samne (colored by Mateus Lopes), and Sebastian Fiumara
Release Date: August 28th, 2024

This comic book review contains spoilers.

Joker’s Daughter, having slaughtered the newest Orgham leader on TV, addresses the city. She’s hidden bombs in the poor and middle class districts, and tells those people to rush into the wealthy districts, where Batman, Nightwing, Cassandra Cain Batgirl, and others are fighting the Orghams. Queen Orgham watches the broadcast and stamps her foot at the insanity of Gotham.

The mind-controller Shavod is defeated easily by the Ten Eyed Man, while Batman breaks into the Orgham headquarters and heads to find the Reality Engine.

Mr. Freeze fights Neang, and Freeze uses blood thinners to work against Neang’s powers to control his temperature and mold his own flesh, breaking his blood vessels and causing him to bleed to death internally. Two-Face fights the werewolf, letting himself be grabbed from behind to shoot through his own side with silver bullets. While Two-Face takes down the old Orgham monster, he spares the beast’s life because of a coin flip.

Queen Orgham, dressed in battle armor, faces Batman in front of the Reality Engine room. He defeats her despite taking a sword to the side, and declares his monsters are worse than her azmer demon. She laughs that he can’t open the Reality Engine. The engine is using Dr. Crane’s abilities to cause the city to tear itself apart.

The first part of the two-issue “Finale” appears! Ram V begins tying up all the threads he’s woven into his tapestry, and as with many endings, the execution is varied. Each of the Orgham henchmen faces a brutal fate, mostly at the hands of Batman’s villains. Each one is very nicely thematically tied to their opponent. Shavod, the woman who controls others through her eyes, is undone and her eyes stolen by Ten Eyed Man. The new “angelic” Orgham battle leader, almost literally only a mask, is killed by the pathetic but vicious Joker’s Daughter, known best for wearing Joker’s face as a mask rather than having any personality or motivation of her own. The Orgham who prides himself on his control of his body is bested by Mr. Freeze’s control of his mind. And lastly, the werewolf, who has human and wolf nature, is shot by Two-Face, who obviously has two natures as well. There’s a cleverness there, and all of these confrontations work well on an emotional and thematic level. However, when it comes to the more practical level, several of them fall flat. It doesn’t matter how flagrantly you draw attention to it, the angelic Orgham leader’s absolutely nothingness of a character does not justify his inclusion – a waste of time that would have been much better spent telling us the actual motivations, histories, powers, etc. of the other Orgham henchmen. Joker’s Daughter, who kills him, though she gestures at Twitter-level class warfare, still doesn’t need to be in this story, and it boggles the mind why she was introduced a scant two or three issues ago. Ten Eyed Man defeating Shavod is very trippy and absolutely thrums with psychedelic imagery, masterfully rendered by Guillem March, but…how, exactly did that work? Is he simply immune to her mind control because his mind is so twisted and confused? Once again, there’s a simple refusal to actually have an idea beyond “the vibes” as the kids say of what happens behind the fancy symbolism and themes that robs the story of any real weight. It feels like a symbol hitting another symbol in a vast cacophony of paper rustling to the ground.

Even though some of the battles fail to convince in the end, Ram V’s use of these villains once again show just how well he writes the established characters. There are really great touches like Two-Faces’s talking about his coin and Batman that simply shine. If V had simply chosen to write a Batman vs. these villains, or even if he’d chosen to introduce one or two of these Orghams, I think this story might have been akin to Hush, a great use of the classic rogues and Batman in an incredibly atmospheric story. But instead, over half of the pages of this “epic” are devoted to completely vague and nonsensical villains with no discernable motivations and “spiritual” battles that leave you wondering why so much time was devoted to nothing. Additionally, it’s really frustrating to see Batman turning to his villains against the “worse” villains of the Orghams, instead of featuring the Bat-family as the people Batman can rely upon. You could easily use Dick Grayson, with his slipping from Robin to Nightwing to Batman and back, to parallel the werewolf’s multiple natures, and Stephanie Brown’s stubborn refusal to be controlled by her father and “spoil” his plans would function quite well against mind-controlling Shavod. There’s some unfortunate implications that Batman is more in tune with his villains than his family that could be played with, though V’s really strong writing of those villains does make it at least somewhat enjoyable to read.

Lastly, despite Guillem March’s brilliant art (it’s funny seeing him go from the Batman title to Joker, both with James Tynion, and now doing Detective Comics, with a brief interlude of his wonderful Brave and the Bold storyline), there’s a sense of thudding unoriginality in the overall confrontation between Batman and Queen Orgham. Using Scarecrow as part of a larger villain scheme to destroy Gotham has been done better in Batman Begins, and done just a handful of years ago in ‘Fear State.’ Doing it once again feels like such a rehash. Scarecrow doesn’t even get Ram V’s excellent writing of the established villains – just a prop in the fuzzy Orgham Queen’s master villain monologue.

Title: “Golden Child”
Writer: Dan Watters
Artist: Christopher Mitten
Colors: Patricio Delpeche

Talia al Ghul harnesses the technology of the Lazarus Pit to raise Prince Arzen Orgham from the poison death his mother made for him. She remembers her father’s resurrections and thinks she has surpassed his revivals into full resurrection. Arzen remembers his mother murdering him, and Talia convinces him to come to Gotham with her for vengeance and to pay Ra’s al Ghul’s debt to Arzen’s father.

Though I still find what Ram V did to Ra’s al Ghul’s backstory, making him subservient to an even more powerful and mysterious ancient superpowered family, incredibly disrespectful to the creations of Denny O’Neil, this is an excellent utilization of that new backstory by Dan Watters. The parallels between Talia and Arzen, the “golden children” of greedy, ruthless, pitiless parents who use and discard their daughter and son, is nicely handled. Though perhaps a bit overly cartoony for the darker, emotional subject matter, Christopher Mitten’s artwork is well suited to conveying the emotions, and Patricio Delpeche’s colors highlight the story well. It’s quite nice to see Talia’s new all-white semi-armored look continue – hopefully it will last to be part of better stories than these.

Evan Cagle’s main cover focuses on Mr. Freeze – though he’s not the biggest part of the narrative, it’s definitely appropriate that he gets a cover highlight, and his image looking above Gotham in a snowglobe is as poetic as the rest of Cagle’s oeuvre of covers for this run. Mike Perkins provides a rain-washed, yellow-neon cityscape across which flies a tiny blue Batman – definitely a nice image, if a tad generic in the background and concept.

Stevan Subic’s variant features Batman walking away from the reader into a frozen wasteland of rocks and snow, perhaps on the moon with the Earth in the starry sky above – a beautiful, though puzzling image. Chris Samnee’s 85th Anniversary of Batman variant redoes the gorgeous cover of Detective Comics #583 by the master Mike Mignola – combining Mignola’s stellar composition and pose with Samnee’s brilliant sense of appeal and smoother linework. Lastly, the 1 in 25 incentive variant by Sebastian Fiumara presents another Mr. Freeze, this one hovering in mists and tubes, with bats in the shadows behind him – extremely atmospheric!

Editor’s Note: You can find this comic and help support TBU in the process by purchasing this issue digitally on Amazon or a physical copy of the title through Things From Another World.

Ian Miller

A latecomer to comics - I started reading Bruce Wayne: Murderer, Birds of Prey, Hush, and War Games in college. Over a decade and a half later, I'm still inspired by Batman, and especially the Bat-Family (Stephanie Brown!) I started out listening to BTO, then Stella drew me to TBUCP, I volunteered to write reviews, and the rest is history! Love recording the podcast, especially with my amazing cohosts. Also a huge fan of Jane Austen, C. S. Lewis, Tolkien, and many more books!