Bat-Quest Part Five: "Battle for the Cowl"

In this installment of the Bat-Quest series, I'll be reviewing Tony Daniel's Battle  for the Cowl  miniseries that chronicles (SPOILER ALERT) Dick Grayson taking over as Batman. It also chronicles the return of organized crime, and crime in general to Gotham City after Batman's "death" in Final Crisis. I suppose I enjoyed this series. The art was once again good, by Tony Daniel, and the story was as well. It developed Damian's character, and the more I read stuff he's featured in, the less I hate him.

The action packed plot is filled with blink and you'll miss it cameos of various Bat-heroes and villains, and makes for a fun game of "Spot the Side Character". Commissioner Gordon is stoically heroic as usual, and keeps the plot grounded, while the psychotic turn from Jason Todd is predictable. He speaks in catchphrases, and spends too much time soliloquizing on crime-fighting techniques to be more than just a sanctimonious windbag. He's a little like Polonius, in that he refuses to even abbreviate his pompous jeremiads.

There's a second story in here too, called "Gotham Gazette" that looks at Gotham sans-Batman from the perspective of several tertiary Bat-allies. Each character's story has a different penciller, so the artwork ranges from good to bad, Dustin Nguyen being a standout. Overall, a good appetizer that had me pumped for Morrison's Batman and Robin.

Grade: B