A killer that seemingly knows Batman inside-and-out, mimicking his past trauma by preparing murder victims to look like his parents, dressing up as Zorro, and targeting those nearest and dearest to him - but who is this killer so intimately familiar with Batman’s mythology? The game is afoot for the world’s greatest detective!
Peter J. Tomasi is an inconsistent writer, particularly when he writes Batman, but he’s written some undeniably great Batman books over the years and, while not up there with his best, Mythology was surprisingly decent.
Detective Comics is traditionally where Batman does less superhero-y things and focuses on his criminology skills and Mythology is a storyline that does just that. It’s appropriately mysterious and intriguing for the most part. I couldn’t predict where things were going but more importantly I wanted to know what would happen next.
As much as it is about Batman’s mythology, the story’s also about Tomasi’s own Batman mythology with references dotted throughout to Tomasi’s generally quite good New 52 Batman & Robin run, like Volume 1: Born to Kill and Volume 7: Robin Rises (both highly recommended if you’ve not read them).
Given the reveal in the first chapter of what Batman was up against, I kinda expected the villain to not live up to the mystery so I was somewhat prepared for the ending. And I can totally see why some readers might feel let down by that ending - seeing it as a cop-out or anticlimactic to the preceding high-stakes drama - but I didn’t mind it so much. It’s the sort of thing Batman would do and it felt original and different, which is difficult to do for such a storied character. And, if the narrative up to then hasn’t been that bad then no ending is going to make me dislike a book entirely.
As fast-paced and beguiling as the mystery is, the story is somewhat repetitive: Batman shows up to meet someone from his past, so does the villain, they fight, etc. The villain itself was too amorphously contrived - it was whatever it needed to be to challenge Batman, which ties into the ending, but still. And the characters in the second half weren’t as interesting to read about - Thaddeus, his escape artist sensei, was obscure and Etrigan is a character I’ve never liked much.
Tomasi’s frequent artist collaborator Doug Mahnke produces reliably good work once more though it looks a bit more pencilly than usual. If you’re a Jim Lee fan, you’ll probably appreciate Mahnke’s art. And I really liked the shark sequence - what story referencing Batman’s history couldn’t include sharks, eh?
It’s not a masterpiece but Batman: Detective Comics, Volume 1: Mythology is a pretty good Batman book - I can see its flaws but it’s still enjoyable enough. Definitely worth a look if you’re a Batman fan.
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