Detective Comics Annual #11

Another break from the SPACE reviews, this time for a comic I picked up at a going-out-of-business Borders recently.

Title: Detective Comics Annual
Issue: #11
Date: 2009
Publisher: DC Comics
Writer: Fabian Nicieza, Derek Fridolfs, Dustin Nguyen, Mandy McMurray
Art: Tom Mandrake, Dustin Nguyen, Kelley Jones
Colorist: Nathan Eyring, Michelle Madsen
Letterer: John J. Hill
Editor: Mike Marts, Janelle Siegel, Harvey Richards, Michael Siglain

This is the second part of a fairly convoluted two-part story involving a cult of Seven-Deadly-Sins-based metahuman baddies who are kidnapping a bunch of boys for what appears to be a fairly generic ritual sacrifice gimmick.

We start out with The Question (Montoya, not Sage) trying to fight her way through a horde of zombies (actually mind-controlled bystanders, but zombies for all intents and purposes). The numbers nearly win out, but the Batman (Grayson, not Wayne) arrives to make the save.

Rather blunt recapping and infodump follows. We learn that Robin (Damian, not Tim or Jason or Dick; are you feeling like you need a scorecard with these characters?) has gone undercover as one of the kidnap victims.

He's in the lair of the bad guys, drugged up, but still managing to do a pretty classic "Ransom of Red Chief" routine.

Since there are plenty of bad guys to go round, the party gets split up. Azrael (Michael Lane, not Jean-Paul Valley; okay, now this is getting ridiculous) goes to help out Robin. These two actually have the makings of a great team of villains. Heroes, not so much.

Question and Batman fail to stop another kidnapping. Well, actually, they stop it just a bit after the actual kidnapping occurs. This then leads to the one really great scene in this story, a reunion between Detective Bullock and Renee Montoya with both characters handled really well.

The bad guys are trounced pretty thoroughly when all is said and done, which is fine because in spite of having some powers they're basically nobodies and they're up against some fairly formidable heroes. Well, okay, they're up against Dick Grayson. And some at-least-competent heroes. That is still pretty formidable.

Speaking of the end, we're not done. There are backup stories. Lil Gotham: Question & Answer is a cute rhyming bit with the Riddler. Fun riddle, but the final punch line didn't amount to much.

This is followed by an Oracle team-up with Looker. A vampire called the Stygian is doing the creepy stalker routine on Barbara Gordon, and Looker gets called in because (I guess) if you want to catch a vampire, you call in Buffy! But when she's not available, another vampire is an acceptable option.

Writer Mandy McMurray tries to throw in some bits to make Looker and Oracle seem competent, but neither of them is able to accomplish much of anything against Stygian, who is a pretty generic villain. This seems to be trying to set the Stygian up as a recurring villain for Gordon, I wasn't left with much interest in seeing further chapters of this conflict.

While there were some good moments (Bullock/Montoya, some of Damian's dialogue, the riddle), this annual mostly served to remind me of just how silly DC continuity is these days, even in the Bat-books, which can usually be counted on for at lease some level of quality.

Rating: 5.5/10