Detecitve Comics #871

Overall: This is the first issue of Scott Snyder's Detective run. We begin with a bullied child at school suddenly developing the abilities of Killer Croc and attacking his tormentors. Commissioner Gordon heads to the laboratory Wayne Enterprises set up for the Gotham City police department, where he meets with Dick Grayson. Dick runs the mutated child's blood through the computers and discovers that the boy was mutated by the same chemicals that mutated Killer Croc. From there, Dick(as Batman)heads to the boy's house where he finds the boy's butler. The butler claims innocence as to how the boy gained the Killer Croc serum, but before Dick can press the issue, the butler is killed by the boy's mother(who is packing a shotgun), who seems to have gone insane. Dick chases after the woman, but she leaps out a window to her death. Upon examining the woman's body Dick finds one of the Mad Hatter's control devices implanted into her skin. Dick meets back up with Gordon to share notes, and Gordon tells Dick that it seems that a disgraced cop had been selling items that he had stolen from the police evidence room, which would explain the Croc serum and the Mad Hatter device being on the street. Dick confronts the crooked cop, who tells Dick that he was working for somebody called the Dealer. Before Dick can get anything more useful out of the cop though, the cop is killed by some plants, Poison Ivy style, ending this issue.

You know, this wasn't a bad comic at all. We have an interesting story here, as well as a new villain, who seems to be using the gimmicks of Gotham's other villains to further his agenda. I actually really like that idea a lot, because it's something that probably should have happened before. I mean with as many gimmick villains you have running around Gotham, you'd think somebody would try to use all of those various gimmicks to their own ends. There was a second feature in this comic with Commissioner Gordon, but I had NO idea what was going on in that, so I'm just going to pretend that it didn't happen...

Score: 7 1/2 out of 10.Okay, I wouldn't want a bat in my house either, but I don't think I'd go THAT crazy over it...