Dark Victory

Just finished reading Dark Victory last night and liked it a lot. It's sort of an unofficial sequel to The Long Halloween, another excellent Batman miniseries by the same creators. Like its predecessor, Dark Victory follows Batman on the trail of a serial killer, in this case targeting former acquaintences of Harvey Dent. I've always found Batamn more interesting when he's confined to Gotham City as a detective. As cool as it is seeing him fighting alongside a crapload of Justice League members in stuff like Infinite Crisis, he always seems a little out of place. It's hard to imagine Batman as anything except a lone wolf type of character.

Like Long Halloween, the mafia syndicate in Gotham is again involved and there are a lot of references taken directly out of The Godfather films. This combined with the noir sort of feel that Sale's art has gives the series a great atmosphere. The plot of Dark Victory is less convoluted than Long Halloween. There is one definite identity of the killer, and the payoff at the end when all has been revealed comes together pretty well.

Dark Victory sets itself in the year after Long Halloween, "Year Two" you could say, and thus Robin shows up towards the end of the book. His presence feels a little tacked on. The circumstances in which his parents are killed vaguely ties into the larger plot of the story, but it doesn't really feel necessary, and when he and Batman finally team up and the end of the book it doesn't really seem to have much emotion behind it. This is a very minor complaint though, and Dark Victory as a whole is every bit as enjoyable as its predecessor.

P.S.: Tim Sale's Catwoman is hot.