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This is a collection of all the Batman stories done by the great, Darwyn Cooke. Cooke is probably best remembered for his Justice League: New Frontier masterpiece and perhaps his work on the new Spirit comics, but he’s also done a few Batman stories. This collects all those stories, the two one-shots he had done as well as the smaller stories contained in Gotham Knights or Black and White. Darwyn pens the introduction, basically giving his history of how he fell in love with Batman and then goes and writes a short little paragraph on each of the titles included in here and how he went about creating the stories. As a note, all these stories are written and drawn by Darywn unless otherwise noted. We start with his first one-shot, called Batman: Ego, published in 2000.
-Batman: Ego- This one-shot starts innocently enough, with Batman following a criminal who swiped money from the Joker. The story takes a big twist when the criminal kills himself and Batman learns he previously killed his family to escape from the threat of the Joker. Batman heads home and soon his demons take over. It is a story of Bruce Wayne literally coming face to face with the persona Batman, and the dueling ideologies of both men. It works great as a psychological study into the mind of Bruce Wayne and Batman and how they are two separate entities bound in one person. It’s a fascinating tale and one of the best looks at the psyche of Batman that’s been created this century.
-Gotham Knights #23- This short story from the January 2002 issue of GK sees Batman battle a woman named Madame X and fighting off her fear gas of sorts. It was really a short, non-descript story.
-Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score- This comes to us from 2004 and is something that Darwyn considers one of the best things he’s written. It is a great little crime story starring Selina (d’uh) as well as a great supporting cast of characters, including Slam Bradley, and is a tremendous four-part story that brings Selina back into the forefront as a premiere thief and a viable character in DC. It’s really Cooke’s version of a noir film and is the cornerstone of this collection. A highly-entertaining read.
-Batman: Gotham Knights #33- This was a story, drawn by Bill Wray that sees a statue being erected for Batman and the chaos is ensues. It has a satisfying ending. The art of Wray here is just classic Frank Miller-esque.
-Date Night- This is a cute story, illustrated by Tim Sale from Solo #1 (Dec, 2004), that shows Catwoman bringing out Batman and having a little, “date.”
-Deja Vu- This is from Solo #5 (June, 2005) and was a story that Darywn had in the back of his mind for a long time. It is Cooke’s reinterpretation of, “Night of the Stalker,” which was presented in Detective Comics #439. It shows a silent Batman reliving the death of his parents when another young child suffers the same fate.
-The Bottom Line-What I really like about this collection is how not only is every story printed chronologically, but every Batman cover is here, too, in the order they appeared. So in between The Gotham Knights and Catwoman stories we have the covers to Gotham Adventures #’s 45 and 50 (Feb 2002 and July 2002) and his pin-up from Solo #5. The stories here are all great, and if you can find any of these comics for cheap by all means pick them up. The one thing I didn’t like about this collection was the price. It is a hardcover book, priced at $24.99, but only contained 200 pages of content. That comes out to over 12-cents a page and for such a small amount of pages for that high a price is a big off-setting. Still, despite my minor gripe with the price this is a must-read. I love the art of Cooke, it really harkens to Batman: TAS, and the storytelling and pacing of these stories makes this an awesome graphic novel to own
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