The Culture

This book collects Batman Confidential #22-25 and 29-30. It is written by Andrew Kreisberg with pencils by long-time Batman artist Scott McDaniel. The writer is new to me but I enjoyed this story so I might look out for more books that he has written – as well as working on Batman Confidential he has written for the Green Arrow and Black Canary comic.

The book contains two related stories – Do You Understand These Rights? and Good Cop, Bad Cop. The first features Batman’s delivery of the Joker to GCPD for the first time. The Joker uses his right to a phone call to induce the wife of one of the detectives to commit suicide which leads to the breakdown of that character. Meanwhile Batman and the police slowly come to realise the nature of the new kind of criminal that they are faced with in the Joker as he continues his killing spree while in custody – killing a judge and an expert witness, on separate occasions, while sitting in the courtroom. In the second story, the former detective Shancoe breaks out of Arkham and attacks the police academy and threatens Jim Gordon’s life in an attempt to die in a blaze of glory than be remembered for his crimes when the Joker destroyed his life.

I really liked this book – especially the first story – it was a nice look into the start of the demented relationship the Joker has with Batman. The Joker was well portrayed as the totally psychotic killer who the police have trouble understanding and containing. The second story also had its nice moments with a cameo from Montoya as a recruit at the academy and a young Barbara Gordon acting coolly as her father was held hostage at the climax of the story.