Just in time for the Dark Knight's 80th birthday, the comic in which he first appeared - Detective Comics - hits issue number 1000 - so it's time for a party!
And that's the approach, as they reeled in a small army of top creative talent and gave them each eight (or so) pages to tell a short Batman story.
And it's a killer's row of talent here - on the writer side, it includes Scott Snyder, Brian Michael Bendis, Denny O'Neil, Kevin Smith, Paul Dini, Warren Ellis, Tom King, Christopher Priest, Geoff Johns, James Tynion IV and Peter J. Tomasi.
On the artist side, we have Greg Capullo, Jim Lee, Dustin Nguyen, Becky Cloonan, Steve Epting, Neal Adams, Alex Maleev, Kelley Jones, Alvaro Martinez-Bueno, Tony S. Daniel and Doug Mahnke (among others), plus assorted pin-ups and oh so many alternate covers (I chose the one by Jim Steranko as my favorite of the bunch).
So is it a great issue? Well, it's a lot of fun, but I wouldn't quite go that far - it's hard to manage something truly memorable in short bites like that. My favorite is probably Paul Dini's little gem of a tale about the ultimate henchman, mixing humor and a rogue's gallery of cameos nicely.
With that lineup of talent - and even at these prices ($9.99 for this massive comic) - this really is an outstanding issue, worth the cost of admission. Happy birthday, Bats!
Grade: A-
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