The Batman in Nine Lives,

The Batman in Nine Lives, by Dean Motter & Michael Lark, DC Comics

AN ELSEWORLDS tale, meaning we have familiar DC characters in unfamiliar settings, though there characterisations tend to run true to form. Here we have a 1940s film noir setting where we expect the like of Bogart and Cagney to come out of a dark alley, puffing on cigarettes and quoting lines from Chandler or Hammett. It’s close but no cigar.

The set up is this: Selina Kyle is dead, and a number of faces could have put her lights out. Among them a card shark called The Joker, a racketeer never referred to as The Penguin to his face, and a playboy by the handle of Bruce Wayne.

I’ve had my fill of introspective tales questioning the Freudian motivations of Batman and this book starts out heading in that vein. Fortunately it meanders nicely away from that creative cul de sac. Batman pre-exists, albeit only recently in this alternative world story, but he’s rarely on panel, and only used at crucial points.

In fact it’s very much the story of Dick Grayson, "the boy wonder" as he’s sarcastically known by his former pals on the Gotham police force. But then they don’t like private detectives. Fortunately I do, or rather well crafted stories about them, which this is.

Motter’s work always has an underlying design element and having worked with Lark a number of times previously they’ve got their retro look pretty much down pat. The book is also printed in a landscape format more akin to that used for collecting newspaper strips, but with twice the size to play they use the 5 panel format Gil Kane did in Star Hawks and Al Williamson on Star Wars, but they don’t really use the concise cliff hanger pacing of the newspaper format, opting for a more decompressed approach as the story unfolds more slowly across the breadth of two facing pages.

That stated, as a slowburner it’s a good read.

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