Batman: The Dark Knight #0 – Review

By: Gregg Hurwitz (story), Mico Suayan & Juan Jose Ryp (pencils), Vicente Cifuentes (inks), Sonia Oback (colors)

The Story: Kids, if you’re going to investigate your own parents’ murders, wait till you’re 18.

The Review: Reading my last couple reviews on this series, I realize I’ve been rather hard on Hurwitz since he took over the title.  But weird and creepy as it sounds for me to say this, I do it only because I care.  During my teaching days, I tended to be most critical on my smartest, most ambitious students.  I figured if you were smart and talented enough to know better, why should I have to tolerate sloppy, uneven work?

Clearly, Hurwitz doesn’t want to tell your run-of-the-mill Batman story, where a villain does something horrible and Batman cleans it up with prejudice.  You can always tell from the script that Hurwitz wants to find the bigger meaning out of the plot, to establish some kind of theme he can work around.  Therein lies a part of the problem.  As anyone who’s done some writing can tell you, theme can’t be generated; it can only be developed, often without intention.