Detective Comics #27 is a holy grail of comic book collection, but with the exact opposite effect, because it brought us Batman. (Batman breaks the faces of people who try to steal ancient relic chalices instead of restoring them to their youthful vigor.) While the classic volume 1 issue still sells for spectacular sums (and our sister site Sparkle City Comics is honored to have taken part), the new 52 finally reached issue 27 in their rebooted title.
This new Detective Comics #27 decided to honor the incredible legacy of that first brilliant bat-issue, bringing together bat-creators past and present to honor his bat-legacy, and using the word “bat” even more obviously and repeatedly than this sentence. With over seventy years of skilled rendering under their bat-belts, and the advantage of knowing they were dealing with a classic, how did they cover this incredible anniversary?
With an unrelated, Escher-spined Catwoman who seems to have accidentally sat on her tail instead of attaching it to her costume. Catwoman, you might remember, didn’t appear in the original DC 27. Or until three years after that. But that’s okay because, this art was created years distant as well. For a different comic series. And, and we cannot stress this enough, is not Batman.
There are those who say that DC have forgotten what made them great in the first place. Forgetting to put Batman on the cover of the Batman anniversary comic, replacing him with a half-naked pinup drawn by a big Hollywood name instead of creating something original and glorious for comics, is not a great counter.