Death Note Volume 3: Hard Run by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

This is the weakest volume so far, but the slow points cover necessary territory, and the high points are very good. Some of this volume would work better as pure text rather than manga.

L is observing Light to see if he is Kira. Kira is trying to figure out who L is. It is a game of deduction and reverse psychology until Kira takes the fight to the airwaves.

These reviews are going to become increasingly vague if I am to avoid spoilers. One is unavoidable if I am to mention the middle third of this volume, and discussing the next volume will demand spoiling the big reveal on this one. But hey, at least I am going so far as to mention that it is a big reveal, not having wanted to spoil that much about the last volume.

We start with L and Light jousting remotely. I know that he suspects, but does he suspect that I know that he suspects? Am I acting too much like I don't know that he suspects, thus making him more suspicious? And so on. These issues are interesting but not terribly exciting.

L's next move is small but epic. The best moments in this series are. Look forward to it.

Skipping the spoiler, let's say that it leaves L and Light talking to one another, with L unsure if Light is Kira, Light unsure if L is L, and Light with no idea what L's real name is. If you like the psychological games and seeing how they play out in conversation, great. Personally, I think their discussions would work better without images that spread everything out. There are only a few frames of images that add anything to the restaurant issue.

The images do allow for nice contrasts as you put L and Light next to each other, although it may be too thick at points, especially as it carries on. L looks even creepier in this volume, mixed with an increasingly childlike visage. He is serene and detached. Light can range from bishounen to normal to serial killer. If he had That Look in the first volume, he has a much stronger, violently insane version of it at times here. Hey, look, it's the villain!

Did I miss the box where L mentioned the Kitamuras to Light? It seemed like Light brought that up on his own, kind of a big giveaway. Maybe I'm flaking, maybe it was "off-panel," or maybe it was lost in translation.

I cannot comment on the quality of translation, not having the original (or the language skills), but I notice that the lettering is problematic. The printing is frequently off-center and/or unnecessarily small, leading to word bubbles that are mostly empty with the English crammed against one edge. It does not bespeak great care, and given that half the action in this volume is conversation or thinking, the words are critically important.

In part, that conversation feels slow because it covers territory we already know and that the characters already know, with the point being that not all the characters know what all the other characters know. The levels of "does he know that I know" are interesting the first couple of times, but they can become tiresome. The characters are aware of it, noting that mutually exclusive courses of action could both be suspicious once you start the second-guessing, so it eventually becomes pointless.

Another amusing lampshade hanging comes from the tennis club president. "Is this a sick joke? On top of entering [Tokyo University] with hundred percent scores, they're both great athletes?" No, this series has no hints of Marty Stu at all.

And that ending? Worth the price of admission. It is twice as nice if you flip back to the beginning of issue 20, compare faces, and project forward. Interesting times lie ahead.

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It seems that I passed by the famous potato chip scene without even noticing it. I realized in retrospect that that must have been it. I found that anime clip and, yes, that's it. As I have mentioned previously, the anime takes greater pains to be awesome.

Three Men on the Bummel by Jerome K. Jerome

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

This could be a "buy it" as bathroom reading. It has short, light, loosely connected anecdotes, with no loss incurred if you open it at random or read a few pages sporadically.

J., George, and Harris are back, this time on a bicycle tour of Germany. They struggle with geography, mechanics, the perversity of human nature, and German police.

As in the previous volume, this is a light Victorian comedy comprising a series of humorous instances and observations. It does not have the lulls of Three Men in a Boat while the best scenes are at least as good, so I hereby rule this a better book. Let it henceforth be the more famous of the two.

I don't get to declare things like that, do I? I also cannot levitate. Life is harsh.

While the beginning of Three Men in a Boat (hereafter "Boat") has the most consistently high quality chapters, I was less fond of Bummel's opening. That may be simple personal preference, or maybe that relationship humor was not stale 110 years ago, but I think we have all seen many versions of the standard marriage conflict and hypocrisy comedy. The opening also includes a bit that is a very minor variation on a scene from Boat. It does, however, include a rather good bit about overhauling a bicycle that reads like upgrading a modern computer.

The turning point where things start getting really good is when the narrator explains that he will be avoiding the problems I cited in Boat: scenery, useful information, and a tour guide narrative. There is to be no waxing poetic about the effects of nature on human goodness, nor on which king toured the area centuries ago, nor on the passage by various towns and hamlets. Which is not to say that it does not happen, just that it is tied to a funny bit rather than being a three-page "lull."

It instead focuses on the previous book's strengths: humorous anecdotes, comic scenes, tangential digressions, and wry observations on people, places, and history. Explaining that there will be no useful information leads to a lengthy digression on the narrator's past work in journalism, where truth was the minor party in a partnership with entertainment.

The three do not have a dog along with them this time, so they are forced to encounter other dogs for the animal comedy scenes. People love a bit with a dog. If anything, the dogs are more prominent here, because they take center stage for their scenes rather than being a running joke about a misbehaving mutt.

I find the physical humor in this one more effective. Perhaps it is greater experience with road trips than boat trips. Struggles with a sail do not hit close to home. Jerome K. Jerome's quality of description has also improved over time; compare the hose scene in Bummel with any Thames water issues in Boat, or Bummel's dog-precipitated restaurant brawl with any Montmorency scene in Boat.

Having said this much, I have difficulty summarizing the book or even usefully pointing out sights along the way. The vignettes have a unifying theme but not a narrative, so it is just a series of funny scenes. If one does not work for you, no problem, it will be over in a page or three and the next one might be more to your taste.

I may find more personal appeal in the mockery of Germans because of German ancestors and local towns with German history. Again, it is more familiar humor, although perhaps not for you. The last chapter is really something in retrospect. It treats upon the character of the German people: orderly, deferential to authority, guided in all things by The State. People will do anything the police tell them to, and they make excellent soldiers if you put uniforms on them and march them into some other country. They seem happy and virtuous without any desire to defy regulations or step outside the prescribed order; this should go well, the narrator explains, so long as they have good governors.

There are also some paragraphs about how German feminism and femininity are growing simultaneously, and how this seems the likely driver for change and improvement in German society. My grasp of history suggests that patriarchy was very soon to eclipse that, but it is a nice view from 1900 of how liberating women from the confines of the kitchen and letting them use their minds makes everyone happier. And it manages to toss that it while remaining a light comedy.

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Death Note Volume 2: Confluence by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

The pacing slows down a bit, and I believe the Crowning Moments of Awesome I was promised are in a later volume, but the high points are still great highs. Worth reading just to see a few plans executed with great precision.

The search for Kira stumbles as Light strikes at the police investigating him. L sheds his seclusion to re-organize his remaining footsoldiers. L and Light both look for Kira clues and loose ends, one to unravel them and the other to cut them off.

Light is coming into his own as a villainous magnificent bastard. His manipulations are delicate and devastating. He starts making good on his promises to kill anyone in his way. While he occasionally works on the omelet, Light is spending more of his time enjoying breaking eggs. Because if you want to be a dark god of justice, reveling in your own brilliance and the fall of your enemies is half the fun.

I will not spoil the more brilliant and subtle plot points, nor even gesture towards them (nor to others that are less successful) to avoid tipping you off on where to look.

I was disappointed that Naomi's arc had so much build-up for so little payoff, although its significance could grow in future volumes. Its pacing at center stage is problematic for the manga, combining with the below to make much of this volume a lull. I hope that the anime used it for a tension-packed episode rather than an arc sub-plot. And as I said, future use of the points made here could redeem any problems.

L also gets to take center stage. His time is a mix of very slow action and very quick thought. He is Sherlock Holmes, with keen observation and intuitive leaps. He has an entire team of Watsons to explain things to. Putting him in a more central role lets him develop as a character and have a weight closer to Light's. His big reveal, however, happens parallel to Naomi's arc, so it shares the slow feeling; half this volume takes place on the same day, which means that conversations span multiple issues, and it must have been torture to read that on the original release schedule.

The art on L is creepy. This is a series where a death god hovers behind the protagonist, and he plays as comic relief. The heroic antagonist is the one who looks alien and haunted. The darkness and lines around his eyes are very effective. The way he sits could be insectoid or childish with just a tiny variation, suggesting both. While Light conveys meaning (and dispenses death) with his hands, L's toes are suggestive; if you have seen Firefly, you can imagine why Summer Glau comes to mind when he is being unsettlingly otherworldly. His body language is different in the light than it was as a shadowy specter. He contrasts brilliantly against Light's classic anime bishounen, and all these dark bits create a better contrast when he has a single frame of unalloyed hope and idealism.

Naomi's art is good, a solid female figure that looks good without being unnecessarily sexual or exploitative. The absence of fan service is notable. Light is starting to look more like a serial killer with a few art adjustments. His eyes have less of the megalomania, more of the hunter or the hunted.

He will surely get back around to the megalomania, as we see him setting up future plots and continuing to manipulate a god to his benefit. Notably, one of L's insights is spot on in more ways than he knows: as Kira, Light has a need to show off, to win and to be seen winning. You can see it working against him at points and how it might go badly at others, but you also see him using his childish mistakes to his later advantage.

Does the dramatic need to show him laid low for his pride outweigh his ability as a popular series protagonist to escape problems? Okay, that question was probably a lot more compelling in the original publication, which could have been cut off at any time, when you did not know how many volumes were left, and when you did not have sequels in which the publicized presence or lack of characters would be spoilers. On the other hand, the series has a built-in method of keeping things rolling even if it kills off the entire cast, so the author has at least the option of throwing everything in a new direction at short notice. Personally, I am sticking around for the convoluted schemes, and knowing who wins does not make stories about the strategy and tactics involved any less fascinating. Indeed, individual issues anticipate this by showing you the outcome and then going back to show how they pulled it off.

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If I might ask a question of you, Light? A critical part of your plan (not a spoiler, this continues from the previous book) involves depending on a high school girl to keep secret that she went on a date with a cute boy who is also the #1 student in the entire country. You're gambling your life on that, genius? If he neither kills her nor suffers for that, the author is too kind to his protagonist.

Three Men in a Boat by Jerome K. Jerome

Rating - 2.5: parts of it are worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

To Say Nothing of the Dog by Connie Willis is definitely a 3.

Three men take a holiday along the Thames. With their careful planning and manly spirit, what could possibly go wrong?

This is a good bit of writing that has the misfortune of being stuck in a story. The tone is excellent, and the little comic scenes are mostly effective. The characters tell charming vignettes that digress heartily. Then the frame story of going down the river re-inserts itself to bore you for a few pages.

If the genre of which this is a sometimes-farce had survived, the plot might have some value to a modern audience. The narrator gives useful (and even possibly true) bits of English history as he goes along the river, along with poetic ruminations upon virtue and the happy life. This, I am told, was a common sort of travel guide of the time, pointing out bits of historical interest along the river. Here, it is not particularly funny, educational, or even good.

The strength of the book is in digression and in the tone. It is a light Victorian comedy in which fools are too full and sure of themselves. The narrative voice makes excellent work of showing the characters for fools while letting them never see themselves that way, although they certainly see it in each other. And then there are some good bits with a troublesome dog. People love a bit with a dog.

You know roughly how this must go from every vacation or road trip film/book you have seen/read. The great preparations are obviously inadequate or actively harmful; they will cause problems in ways foreseeable and surprising. Their resolutions to do X, Y, and Z will be slept through at best, destructively pursued at worst. They will fight, and bet on how many times someone will fall out of the boat. And through all the squabbling and silliness, it will remain light and funny.

I wrote that paragraph before they even got in the boat. Editing before posting, I have not needed to change a single letter.

The digressions are the best part, in which someone will take a paragraph or page to tell a story that might wander away from the point and never look back. There is a four-page tale about a smelly cheese of the narrator's past acquaintance. The comic scenes are less entertaining, unless you are a fan of slapstick and physical humor (in text).

The tone is what sells it all. It develops in a way that is difficult to excerpt briefly. The best bits will mix high speech that goes on for just the right amount of "too long" before crashing on the pithy shoals of its own idiocy. The narrator engages in eloquence about the joys of sleeping on the banks of a river under the moonlight until reminded of the existence of rain; he grumbles about his companion's lack of poetry until everyone agrees that, yes, that would suck. The characters express base motives with the most high-minded language. They rationalize brilliantly. They speak of their love of hard work, how they love to supervise someone doing it and tell him how to do it properly.

It begins strongly, with little interference from the plot. As they spend more time on the river, the author feels it necessary to talk about the river and history and the sights and other stuff you're not here for. In a film version, you would pan the scenery for ten to fifteen seconds and then get on with it; here, we might have six pages about King John blocking us from the next entertaining bit.

I recommend reading the opening then, once they are in the boat, skimming over the weak history and philosophy in favor of the digressions and incidents. Supposedly, they all more or less happened to Jerome K. Jerome and his two companions. The anecdotes remain charming to the end, perhaps enough to rate a 3 despite the travel guide bits that drag down the average.

I am told that the sequel, Three Men on the Bummel, has better comic scenes but was not received as well, in part due to the lack of a narrative thread holding them together. That sounds like exactly what this book needed, and I will pursue it.

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Death Note Volume 1: Boredom by Tsugumi Ohba and Takeshi Obata

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

I am not necessarily in the best position to judge this book, because I started watching the anime before realizing that animation adds little to a series where the major action is writing in a notebook.

A bored death god tosses his notebook into the human world. If you write someone's name in it, he dies. Light Yagami finds it and decides to rid the world of criminals. He puts himself in a cat-and-mouse game with L, who is leading the investigation into the mysterious mass murderer.

The series works because Light is a megalomaniacal genius. He is a compelling villain protagonist whose idea is not so horrible in its outlines. We just came off a book with the Joker, the walking embodiment of the repeated, continual, inconceivable vast failure of non-capital punishment. Is it so horrible to think that deterrence is possible and desirable? Of course, Light also mentions early on that he also plans to kill off the immoral and those who engage in harassment, and then quickly moves into willingness to kill anyone who stands in his way. The slope is, in fact, pretty slippery.

You can see the ending from here, yes? The other bit that foreshadows nicely is in the art, Light's eyes when he is in Kira mode. He has an enraptured look. He has his vision, and he shall make it so, Hell take anything in his way.

Balancing that, slightly, he is in other ways a good guy. He wants to make the world a better place, he is a serious student, and he helps his little sister with her math homework. He is just the kind of guy you would want around, assuming he is not planning to kill you as part of a scheme.

This book is mostly world-building. We have the characters, their relations, and the basic rules of the game. As it builds, we are starting to see the complex schemes for which the series is well known. There is a plot within a plot which is part of a greater scheme, and presumably the characters already have some form of late-game in mind that they are building towards. I am looking forward to some absurdly layered scheming, and I am told that the next volume hits several high notes in a row.

Because much of the fun is watching the schemes play out, I will not spoil anything. Death Note was originally published in small increments, so you get pay-off quickly in each segment.

The art is a mostly realistic manga style. I do not really have much to say about it -- it is "standard good." The plot is the main driver, so it is in Light's expressions and body language that the art carries weight, primarily in his hands and eyes. And Light is a pretty boy that presumably spawned a thousand fanfics that I don't want to think about just now.

The arrangement differences between the manga and anime are interesting. Some of the events shift around. The anime tries to make it a bit more visual with bodies hitting the ground and writing that strives to be totally awesome. There is nothing huge that I have noticed so far, although a few lines are noticeably missing from the anime. Perhaps the anime is trying to make Light more sympathetic, less obviously dangerously insane. The translations are also different, which is mostly notable with key phrases, such as around the end of the first issue/episode. I am curious about the original Japanese, but not yet motivated enough to pursue, translate on my own, and compare.

I do not think I have sold it strongly enough. If you like cerebral action where the consequences are life and death, sort of an Isaac Asimov story only supernatural and set in a Japanese high school, this is good stuff. If this sounds interesting, you should know that the entire series is made of it.

And kids, don't make your own Death Note at home. Beyond the fact that it will not work, you should find a more original way to be an annoyance. Don't make your middle school administrators look up how the rules apply to your carrying a hit list.

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Gotham Central Book Two: Jokers and Madmen by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark et. al.

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Probably higher average quality than the first book, but the outlier is a poor arc rather than a really great one, so it feels worse.

This is second of three hardcover volumes collecting the comic book series Gotham Central. (See also: Book One: In the Line of Duty) Gotham Central is a police procedural in Batman's town. The Major Crimes Unit (MCU) gets all the big cases, from murder to supervillains.

We open on a rather good breather issue from the perspective of Stacy, MCU's secretary. It is a break after the "Half a Life" arc, it re-establishes characters and relationships, and you just know horrible things are going to happen during or after the moment of light. It is small and personal in the way that this series is at its best.

The featured arc has the Joker being a sniper around Christmas. That feels like a spoiler to me, since the story leaves uses it as a reveal, but there is no way you could reach that point unspoiled. You have the title of the book, the cover art (Joker with a sniper rifle), text everywhere advertising this as the Joker book, etc.

I frequently recite that this is a series about people who are good and truly #%@&ed, and this is the point where it becomes most apparent. The Joker is as bad as Batman's rogues gallery gets. The movie version of him as up-close with knives is solid, but you get a whole other set of problems when you give him a sniper rifle. Death is instant; nothing to be done. You cannot see it coming. It just happens, and maybe it is about to happen to someone else. Then again, it is the Joker, so he may be doing something else entirely. How characters react to the news that it is the Joker is illustrative. Some panic. Some leap to immediate action. Most quietly realize that they are good and truly #%@&ed.

This is also a good arc for playing up the MCU-Batman tension. Det. Driver got to embody that in the first arcs, the difficulty of wanting to solve problems on their own versus needing the Bat to deal with the freaks. Now we have the villain who, more than anyone else, sees it as a game between himself and Batman, with the main cast as audience or pawns.

The third arc mixes personal lives with a villain-free arc. There is a superhero cameo, but it is entirely irrelevant to the story; they must have had a "1 per arc" quota to meet, or perhaps needed someone for the cover. Anyway, the arc is standard police procedural, and it spends too much time unsuccessfully trying to get us to care about yet another set of detectives. The series has a large cast, and I just cannot get emotionally attached to every detective on every shift, no matter how much I may love character development. I get the sense that Vincent has a history from previous comics, and good for (fictional) him that he gets a moment in the spotlight, but I have no reason to believe this guy will ever be important again, so his shadowy history is just a waste of pages to me. The arc is titled "Life is Full of Disappointments," and it does indeed disappoint. As I will get to later, it also features the worst art of the series.

The final arc of the book, "Unresolved," competes well with the Joker's "Soft Targets." It will come down to personal preference, but since I keep citing how much I love the personal, detailed work in the series, I will take this arc over the Joker's terrorist antics. This one obviously has links to the past (fully explained within), and it cashes out the Harvey Bullock comments from the first half of the series. It does everything you want from the series: it has detective work, it deals with their private lives without losing the story thread, it brings in supervillains, it has more mundane human evil and error, and it stands alone while filling a place in a larger mythology. It is just a good piece of work.

Let's talk art. Brian Hurtt does the breather issue in a cartoony but not particularly good style. Sarge is particularly poor. Nate as a blocky football-player type works very nicely. The Stacy artwork is the best, presumably as a result of focusing effort on that character. It reminds me of some early Sam Keith art. Brian Hurtt does, however, do a much better Batman than Michael Lark.

Mr. Lark remains excellent. It is unfortunate that he shares the second arc with another artist, because his strong attention to detail on faces makes it rather jarring when someone else does the faces slightly differently. It is like having two actors play the same part in a single episode. Or maybe Lark did them all and I'm just hallucinating small differences; the pencils switch each arc. All the last book's notes apply, particularly the great faces. I cannot say that I like the color work on the "Soft Targets" arc, with the tendency to do entire pages in a single color scheme; it suggests lighting but often feels washed out, an experiment that did not quite work. If there were slightly more consistency in how rooms were lit, and there is quite a bit, it would be a great effect. As it is, I am not clear if having the political offices look like criminal sites has the obvious potential meaning or is just random.

Also, I liked Stacy better with short hair than with pig-tails. Personal preference. Stacy does not consult me on these things.

Greg Scott's art in "Life Is Full of Disappointments" is unfortunate. It has a blotchy look, demanding that the colorist pick up most of the weight. Next to Lark's finely detailed work, it looks messy, amateurish. It has cartoonish open space without the clear definition that makes the DC Animated Universe style look, and it is not meshing with the noir. The face-work is where the contrast in styles is most apparent; many scenes will have faces that are just a line or two, an indistinct blob. Vincent's face, however, is done well. One bit I particularly like is the gratuitous Huntress cameo. Her mask really looks like a mask that a human being is wearing. Superhero costumes normally look painted on, as if the outfit were a part of the hero. She looks human and slightly ridiculous. It keeps everything grounded.

The last arc is Michael Lark again, this time with Duane Swierczynski. Mr. Swierczynski's art meshes very well with Mr. Lark's. This arc has a better version of the "Soft Targets" use of single tones to light a scene. Given the oranges, I presume that quite a bit of the story happens around dusk, which is an apt metaphorical choice in the art.

Book One: In the Line of Duty

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The Murder of Roger Ackroyd by Agatha Christie

Rating - 3: worth reading once (borrow it from a library)

Strictly, worth reading multiple times (in part) because you might want to go back and re-read some scenes knowing the final reveal. You can finish that before the book is due, so I am keeping it a 3. How often can you re-read a mystery?

Last night, the widow down the lane committed suicide. Just now, Roger Ackroyd received a letter from her saying who was blackmailing her. Tonight, Roger Ackryod dies. Tomorrow, Hercule Poirot will be on the case.

If you have read anything from Agatha Christie, you should have read something with Poirot in it, so you know roughly how this goes. If you have not, welcome to the world of mysteries, and you might also want to check out that Doyle fellow.

I am loathe to mention much for fear of spoiling anything by accident or implication. It is not an entirely fair mystery, in that the reader does not learn everything he needs to know until immediately before the reveal, and you could argue about at which point in the "Poirot explains everything" chapters you are no longer guessing the answer before the book tells you.

There are many things to explain. One principle of the book is that everyone is hiding something, and everyone really is, to the point of farcically stacked events. How many secret goings-on can happen in one house in one hour? All of them.

You may see that as a brilliant bit of storytelling or as far-fetched. If you have read any Agatha Christie, you know that she is good at what she does, and this is one of her good novels. If you have not, you might want to start with something slightly less innovative but still with Poirot. The ABC Murders perhaps?

Innovative? Yes, to the point where I cannot tell you what I cannot tell you without a potential spoiler. And do not look the book up, because apparently this is one of those endings that people feel free to spoil because the book is old/well-known enough. Just go pick up a copy if you enjoy convoluted murder mysteries.

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Gotham Central Book One: In the Line of Duty by Ed Brubaker, Greg Rucka, and Michael Lark

Rating - 3.5: worth reading, parts worth re-reading (borrow or buy it)

I know I have not been following comics closely this past decade, but how did I not hear about this until last month? I hang out with nerds. It is probably the lack of spectacle, but this is at its best when it is not dealing with superheroic comic book fare.

This is first of three hardcover volumes collecting the comic book series Gotham Central. (There is also five-colume paperback version that has a slightly different collection.) Gotham Central is a police procedural in Batman's town. The Major Crimes Unit (MCU) deals with supervillains in addition to murder, rape, and arson.

In an immediately obvious sense, this is a series about people who are good and truly screwed. Batman has one of the best rogues galleries in comics, and some of them regularly give him a run for his money. These are the poor souls who get to deal with them on the day shift, who do all the investigation that Batman taps into when he checks his contacts, who are the redshirts when the villain of the month needs to appear and show what a monster he is. And the Joker has yet to appear.

These are heroes. Gotham has the second most corrupt police force in its setting, and MCU is the home of honest cops, hand-picked by the Commissioner, who deal with the big problems. They have the real world heroics of protecting and serving amidst violent criminals. In the real world, you never know which guy on a traffic stop is going to pull a gun on you; in comic books, the guy might pull a freeze ray, turn into a monster, or decide to kill everyone you know for the lulz. Everyone in the MCU demonstrates a strength of character that superheroes frequently fail to. It is a strength of the writing that you can see them all as good people without making them copies, cliches, or boring white hats. Superheroes need flaws to overcome to keep the story interesting and dynamic; doing your best and doing a good job as a normal human in this setting is sufficiently remarkable.

The stories borrow from Batman's rogues gallery, but it does its best without them. Entire issues pass without them, and you don't miss them, although an extended focus on a personal story made me wonder where the police procedural went for that issue. The villains are there, in the background or waiting in the wings, so you have your comic book spectacle ready. Along the way, the stories can be personal in the way that tights and energy blasts often fail to be, and police work itself is an interesting story. The characters have problems in the (largely corrupt) department, conflicts with each other, a list of cases that need solving, a masked vigilante who shows them up without even trying, and a constant threat of psychopaths that make them need him.

There is honor, there is struggle, and there is loss. I am led to expect much more loss in the future as Things Get Worse. It's Gotham. The big guns have yet to arrive, and there needs to be an arc about how normal people can be just as bad as the worst comic book villain.

There are three arcs in this volume. The first, "In the Line of Duty," has an excellent introduction. The opening scene balances the halves of the story concept (police procedural meets Batman) while setting the tone for the series. While there are many continuity tie-ins, I don't know how many I'm missing, and you can follow everything completely well knowing nothing about Batman. The arc as a whole does not use the Batman elements terribly well; they seem almost grafted on, although Batman himself is used well (exceedingly sparingly). It opens strongly and works well with characters. The rest of the arc does not live up to the promise of the opening pages, but it is a fair start for the series.

The second, "Motive," is the weakest part of the volume. It follows "In the Line of Duty" nicely, and it is a good detective story, but it is nothing particularly special. On its own, it would be fine, but it is overshadowed by its companions.

"Half a Life" is one of the best comic book stories I have read. As I said, it wanders away from the police procedural to focus on a character arc, and it does it very well. The story is about Renee Montoya, framed for murder while her personal life is under attack. Things Get Worse. While playing well with murder and large-ticket villainy, it again excels by focusing on character and making it all very personal. You feel for them, and you can see them feeling for each other. It ends exceedingly strongly, in the same vein, making a powerful moment from two people talking in a car where most comic books would end on a dramatic pose and implicit swelling music in the background.

Volume two of the paperback edition is "Half a Life." I am going to go buy that, since it is clearly a 4. The first half here is worth reading but not something you are required to own.

I have been told that my enthusiasm for this story arc is too great. Oh well. I like Renee Montoya as a character, and she interacts very well with the MCU characters and in her personal life. Her partner gets to shine in her absence, and the new kid at the MCU adds light in a dark story. It drops the superhero genre a bit to cross-over with a different story type; once you have read it, you must admit, you have not seen a (spoiler avoided) story done quite that way.

Don't read the back cover of the book. Whoever wrote the inside jacket copy did it right, but the back cover spoils what I just avoided. Maybe they thought the keyword would help sell more copies.

The drawing style is not one that I usually favor, but Michael Lark has sold me. It is excellent throughout. I like clear lines of the DC Animated Universe, even at the risk of leaking into the heavily manga-influenced style popular these days. Michael Lark instead does great things with lots of short, clipped lines. I worry about the style because I am used to seeing faces just sketched in, without a lot of attention to features. Michael Lark complements the story's attention to detail brilliantly, carrying characterization weight with precise faces and expressions. You are used to actors doing that in police procedural television shows with their body language and reactions; Michael Lark is carrying that entire burden. His characters are subtle and expressive.

As an example of subtlety, note the frame where Renee Montoya realizes what is going on in "Half a Life." You probably did not notice it on the first read-through. Flip back after she announces it out of nowhere. The dialogue on an earlier page gives her the inspiration, and you can see it on her face when she gets it.

The lighting is dark. You should expect that in a Batman-related series. There are many shadows with careful framing. It is on the darker side of realistic, without garish costumes. I expect garish costumes in future volumes, when more superheroes/villains arrive, and they should stand out nicely. Juxtapose the Joker in a purple suit with an otherwise completely realistic setting; he's a loon.

The Batman art itself is rather weak. Mr. Lark was not recruited for his ability to draw the hero iconically, although perhaps that improves over time. It works well when Batman is a shadowy figure, a boot or a cape silhouetted. It works less well when Batman's shadows follow him to center stage, giving a bit of dark blobishness. Some of that might be the color work. The Mr. Freeze art, however, is excellent, combining Mr. Lark's small lines with open spaces for color. It brings in the bold, cartoonish look while keeping him concrete.

I am very much looking forward to the rest of the series, and I am sorry that it ended in less than 1000 pages.

Amazon link