Batman: Private Casebook SC

by Peter Milligan and Paul Dini

Book Overview

The Dark Knight faces off some of his greatest adversaries in this thrilling new collection written by Paul Dini, acclaimed writer / producer of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and COUNTDOWN TO FINAL... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1401220150
• ISBN13: 9781401220150
• Release Date: November 2009
• Publisher: DC Comics
• Length: 160 Pages
• Weight: 0.55 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.2" x 6.7" x 10.2"

Customer Reviews

Good stories

I'm glad I got this book. It contained good individual stories in the Batman mythos while continuing certain underlying stories and progressing towards Batman RIP. I recommend this book to Batman fans.

Top notch team produces top notch work.

Paul Dini's work on Detective Comics finally comes to life. For his first year as regular writer on Detective Comics, collected as "Batman:Detective" and "Batman:Death and the City", many of Dini's stories were illustrated by Don Kramer, who's weak pencil work really watered down the impact of Dini's straight forward storytelling. In this volume, Dustin Nguyen begins his tenure as regular artist on Detective Comics and the results are impressive. Nguyen easily places himself as the top Batman artist to emerge over the last decade, and elevates Dini's one issue stories to the level of modern classics. His renderings of Batman, Catwoman, Zatanna, the Riddler, Batmobile and Gotham are all defintive, and make me wish DC would do more to maintain this caliber of art in their Batman books. Dini, who executive produced the outstanding Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990's, as well as wrote many of the show's best episodes, understands Batman and his world. He has a nack for telling a Batman tale that gets to the heart of any character he showcases. His run has made the Riddler an interesting character again; reforming him and recasting him as a detective rival to batman; rather than portray him as a loser as writers with less imagination have done over the last few years. His Zatanna tales have highlighted that character's depth and long history with Batman, even going back to Bruce Wayne's childhood (and creating some romantic tension along the way). There is also the reinvention of the Ventriliquest and Scareface; for which he has done an amazing Job. I was sad to see the original Ventriloquest die during the "Face the Face storyline", but creating a new Ventriliquest, who happens to be a woman, has brought more menace to a character who can come off as quite silly sometimes. The opening tale, an epilogue the dreary "Ressurection of Ra's al Ghul" storyline, has more drama, action, and tension in it's 22 pages than the entire 200 page crossover it completes. Although these stories are hardly profound or earth shatteringly original, they do embody a simplicity that mark the best Batman tales published over the last 70 years in the pages of Detective Comics; simple whodunnit stories where Batman must employ his detective skills to solve the case. What more appropriate type of story to tell for a magazine called Detective Comics, which has alway surpassed it's sister magazine when it stays true to this formula, and always seems to wane when it tries to be just the back up Batman book, which it should never be.

Steady as she goes

To anyone already familiar with Paul Dini and Co's steady run on Detective Comics, there isn't anything major to report. This latest collection starts out propitiously with a surprising epilogue to the recently completed Ra's al Ghul crossover, and then continues on with an encounter with the Mad Hatter, a Peter Milligan tale recounting the suit of sorrows, a two part origin on the new Ventriloquist guest starring Zatanna, and concludes with a murder mystery highlighted by an internet interlude involving Batman perusing an online chat room. Dini appears to have developed his own core cast of characters during his tenure, many of which are again featured here, specifically the aforementioned Zatanna, Scarface, and the Riddler to name a few. As usual, some individual issues are stronger than others, but fortunately there isn't a blemish in the entire bunch. This compilation once again makes a convincing case, despite this age of the arc that we live in, for the continued use of single issue stories. In fact, they are so well executed with sufficient depth and detail that the one two-parter reads lengthy by contrast. The one chief change was the replacement of Don Kramer on pencils by Dustin Nguyen, a transition made smoothly and skillfully. For all fans of this series, enjoy it while you can. With the recent announcement of Detective going on temporary hiatus, one has to wonder what format will be employed upon its return, and whether or not Dini himself will even be back as the main writer. Time will tell.