[COLUMN] Ram V's Detective Comics Offers a Legendary Batman Run | by Darren Mooney

Ram V’s run on Detective Comics – an epic titled “Gotham Nocturne” – wrapped up recently. Only a few months after its conclusion, it feels like the most consequential run on the secondary Batman title in well over a decade, since the compressed period in time when the title jumped from Paul Dini to Greg Rucka and J.H. Williams III to Scott Snyder, Jock and Francesco Francavilla. “Gotham Nocturne” is a major work on the Caped Crusader, a bold exploration of what Batman is and what he should be.

“Gotham Nocturne” is a very deliberate and mannered epic. It is very meticulously structured and very conscious in its storytelling. As the title implies, Ram V structures the adventure like an opera. It consists of five clear movements, each of which neatly corresponds to the collected editions: Overture, Act I, Act II, Intermezzo and Act III. This sort of structure is relatively rare in mainstream American superhero comics, and it speaks to the sense of “Gotham Nocturne” as a major and ambitious work.

Ram V has spoken about how his run on Detective Comics is less a traditional Batman serial than it is a grand operatic saga. The writer recalls that this was baked into his original vision for the run. “How is it that [Batman] comics have never had this… kind of slightly elevated, operatic, melodramatic theatre-play written as a TV show?” Ram V asked. “Like Hannibal, or like most things Bryan Fuller does? Or, why isn’t there like a Robert Eggers version?”

Detective Comics (2016-) #1062. Art by Rafael Albuquerque.

Hannibal is an illustrative comparison. While “Gotham Nocturne” is in mainstream DC continuity, picking up from the destruction of Arkham Asylum in the opening issue of Infinite Frontier, a then-recent gigantic crossover, it is in conversation with the idea of Batman as a myth and legend that transcends the specifics of whatever is currently happening within the shared universe. This is a Batman comic about the place of Batman in culture, not just in this moment.

The book is heavily influenced, for example, by Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy. The opening pages of “Gotham Nocturne” unfold at an opera, which both establishes the tone of the story that will follow and references Bruce Wayne’s (Christian Bale) revised origin story in Batman Begins. At one point, recalling a prior attempt to take control of the city, the villain Gael observes that “Gotham has limped on ever since”, quoting directly from Ra’s Al Ghul (Liam Neeson) in Batman Begins.

“Gotham Nocturne” quotes most heavily from The Dark Knight Rises. Given how much The Batman, Joker and The Penguin owe to The Dark Knight Rises, there is an argument for Nolan’s threequel as one of the most quietly influential Batman stories ever. “Gotham Nocturne” lifts both images and sequences from The Dark Knight Rises. This begins early on, when Bruce uses a trip to the hospital as an excuse to visit another patient as Batman. Two-Face ominously warns, “Storm’s coming.”

Detective Comics (2016-) #1084. Art by Javier Fernandez.

Key plot beats are lifted from The Dark Knight Rises: Batman is abducted from Gotham as an occupying force takes control of the city using an army of the city’s “downtrodden… and its demonized” rising up in revolution. Gordon monologues about the utility of Batman as a way to “keep [his] hands clean.” After Bruce returns to Gotham, he announces his presence with a burning bat sign while Selena Kyle wonders why Bruce would risk everything for a city that abandoned him.

To be fair, Ram V is citing The Dark Knight Rises very deliberately. Due to its medium, The Dark Knight Rises is notable as one of the relatively few Batman stories that offers a definitive ending for the Caped Crusader. That is something that is impossible within the medium of comic books, where the character’s story must continue indefinitely, trapped in a perpetual second act. This is not incidental. “Gotham Nocturne” is very consciously in conversation with this idea.

The comic opens with the idea that Bruce is perhaps closer to the end of his career than to the beginning. The run’s first action scene finds Bruce literally getting slower, taking longer than he should to disarm a few hired goons. “You’ve been at this for too long, Batman,” his old lover Talia warns him. When Bruce confesses to experiencing a strange panic attack, Nightwing suggests, “Bruce, you ever consider the fact that you might just be getting too old for—” Bruce cuts him off.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1075. Art by Francesco Francavilla.

This gets at the second obvious touchstone for “Gotham Nocturne”, the out-of-continuity classic The Dark Knight Returns, by Frank Miller. That comic casts a long shadow over Batman lore, imagining a retired Bruce Wayne who returns to the cowl as his body betrays him. “Gotham Nocturne” even visually quotes the iconic cover of the first issue. Returning to Gotham after his absence, Bruce quips, “I’m known for my dramatic returns.”

If The Dark Knight Rises is about giving Batman a definitive ending, then The Dark Knight Returns is a more ambivalent story about confronting the possibility of an ending. It is designed as a coda to the Batman mythos, but it also ends with Bruce raising an army. It has spawned multiple (highly contested) sequels that continue the adventure. It is in its own way, a demonstration of the tension in comics between the desire for and the impossibility of resolution.

“Gotham Nocturne” is in conversation with a third major Batman work, Grant Morrison’s extended run on the book. Much of “Gotham Nocturne” is built around the conflict between Bruce and the demon Barbatos, a monstrous bat creature created by Peter Milligan but central to Morrison’s run. Ram V also brings back characters from Morrison’s run, like the mysterious Doctor Simon Hurt and the face-eating Flamingo, along with another reimaginingthe Ten-Eyed Man.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1086. Art by Stefano Raffaele.

If The Dark Knight Rises is about the value of giving Batman an ending and The Dark Knight Returns is about the desire to give Batman an ending, then Morrison’s Batman run is about the impossibility of that idea. It is built around a simple premise: “Batman and Robin will never die!” Comics will never end. Batman will never die. It initially is framed as something positive and hopeful. However, as Morrison’s run progresses it curdles into something monstrous and unsettling: “It never ends.”

Indeed, “Gotham Nocturne” uses one of Morrison’s oft-recycled gimmicks. Morrison tends to build their comic book plots around the idea of sound and music, demonstrating the limits of the comic book form. Comics are images and text. They can never produce sound. However, Morrison builds the climax of stories like Final Crisis around the power of sound in this silent universe. Ram V does something similar, building “Gotham Nocturne” around a medium defined by sound.

“Gotham Nocturne” isn’t just structured like an opera and doesn’t just begin at an opera. Music is crucial to the story. Ram V brings back forgotten Silver Age Batman villain Payne Cardine, the Maestro. Like Bruce, Cardine is now an old man, his “hearing failing with age.” However, he helps Batman discover Gotham is being manipulated by “black noise”, with “the harmonics well below audible frequencies.” At the climax, Cardine reverse-engineers the noise to give Batman a weapon to harness against the Orghams.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1084. Art by Javier Fernandez.

This isn’t just a stylistic choice. It is an illustration of what “Gotham Nocturne” is about. At one point, the narration observes that Bruce wanders the desert “like Calvino’s traveler”, an allusion to famed postmodern novel If on a winter's night a traveler, a book about the act of reading. “Gotham Nocturne” is something very similar. It is a comic that invites the reader to think about how they read comics, particularly monthly mainstream American superhero comics. It’s a bold piece of work.

“Gotham Nocturne” is explicitly about the idea that Batman can never have an ending, and what that means for these stories that are told within the framework of a monthly superhero comic book. The plot of the book is standard Batman stuff. A new enemy comes to Gotham, defeats Batman, Gotham succumbs to their influence, only for Batman to return and triumph. It’s any number of Batman stories: Knightfall, “Zero Year”, “Superheavy”, even shades of No Man’s Land.

The characters in the book acknowledge that this sort of story is business as usual for Batman. “How many times have we watched?” asks a newspaper editorial early in the run. How many times has this city been witness to strife and conflict that have cost its citizens their lives, livelihoods and more?” The villainous Shavhod asks the citizenry, “How many times have you found yourself here? How many disasters laid at his feet? How many villains made in his shadow? What a morbid thought, that this could be a part of Gotham’s design. What city desires to be designed in such a way?”

Detective Comics (2016-) #1063. Art by Rafael Albuquerque.

Bruce himself ponders the inherent absurdity of this cycle as he tends to his parents’ graves. “Every time, I pull out of the encroaching weeds and sweep aside the tumbled stone and dust,” he narrates. “Then comes another storm, and in its wake, a familiar ruin. Never once have I asked myself how long I can keep doing this.” Gordon himself articulates this argument to Batman, “You know you can’t keep doing this, right?”

The characters around Bruce seem more exhausted by the repetition than frustrated by it. When Selina discovers that Gotham has once again decided to cast Batman out, she observes, “It happens… every now and then, they turn on him. You can set your watch by it if you pay attention.” Smuggling Bruce out of the city, Talia seems resigned to the pattern, “So many times he has been broken. So many times he has returned. Each time, a construct of someone else’s design. We must let him put himself back together. We must let him become what he will be.”

“Gotham Nocturne” suggests that this cycle goes back centuries, if not millennia. In the Detective Comics annual that serves as a companion to the run, Ram V journeys back to the founding of Gotham, exploring the Orgham family’s first attempt to impose order on the city, thwarted by a host of characters eerily evocative of the city’s later heroes and rogues, “setting the patterns of Gathome’s underlying destiny to be retreaded ad infinitum for all time.”

Detective Comics (2016-) #1067. Art by Ivan Reis.

If one thinks about this narrative structure logically, the perpetual second act of comics consigns Bruce to an eternity of failure. “Even in an illusion you cannot envision for yourself a victory,” Hurt goads Bruce, tempting him in the desert. Bruce replies, “Not if it’s a lie.” Hurt responds, “All victories are lies. They are – every one of them – only doom delayed.” He adds, “Bruce Wayne need not ever win, my boy. But surely, Batman must – otherwise everything you’ve done was in vain.”

The opening acts of “Gotham Nocturne” build this idea into a criticism of Batman. Does Batman’s presence trap Gotham in a perpetual cycle of death and destruction. “Have you considered that, like Nora, Gotham might not need you once it has broken its chrysalis?” Mister Freeze challenges Batman. “Have you given thought to what you must do then? Who you must become?” Early in the run, Harvey Dent regresses once again into Two-Face, resetting his character development. Freeze seeks to trap the city in ice.

As a writer, Ram V is fascinated by the idea of place. His comics often dabble in what is known as “psychogeography”, assigning locations and cities a sense of character. Gotham itself is a major character in his Detective Comics run, and much of the book is given over to the idea of the relationship between Batman and Gotham. The villains of the piece, the Orgham family, aim to remove Batman from Gotham like a tumor, to watch what the city becomes without the hero.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1080. Art by Mike Perkins.

If the Gotham of Batman comics is still rooted in that created by writer Frank Miller, then it is squarely anchored in the urban decay of the 1980s. Miller has talked about how The Dark Knight Returns was inspired by “[his] ­­real-life experiences in New York, particularly [his] experiences with crime, [his] awareness of the horrible pressure that crime exerted on [his] life and the fury of the fact that crime is so much taken for granted that people live in fortresses and walk around looking and acting like victims, carrying money to bribe muggers.”

That version of New York is long gone, and there is a debate about whether superhero comics are still rooted in a version of the city that has slipped into memory. After the Orghams help the city to forget about the Caped Crusader, Gotham gentrifies. “Narrow alleys that were once full of shadows and stories… are now full of light.” Bruce returns to “an image of a happy Gotham. Crime must be down. The living must be high. Spikes on the pavement next to storefront displays.”

This is, in a certain sense, an ending. It is that thing that superhero comics can never have. Gotham moves past Batman. It becomes just another modern urban environment. Indeed, the sections of “Gotham Nocturne” that unfold in this post-Batman version of Gotham employ a rigid nine-panel grid,a layout inseparable for Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ iconic Watchmen. They also feature the Question,a character who inspired Watchmen’s Rorschach.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1081. Art by Stefano Raffaele.

Within the narrative of Watchmen, superheroes are outlawed. When the Orghams take control of the city in “Gotham Nocturne”, its freaks are rendered redundant. “Look around, Joker… Gotham’s changed,” Selina teases Batman’s arch enemy. “Cameras and lights in dark corners. Spikes on the pavement. Overpriced coffee and overpaid cops. The trains all run on time, and they’ve scrubbed all the dirty jokes off the toilet walls. Who needs a clown in a happy place, Pagliacci?” This is not only a thesis statement for the turn, but a direct allusion to one of the most famous lines from Watchmen.

Watchmen was published in 1986, the same year as The Dark Knight Returns. To this day, it is considered the last word on superheroes as a genre. It is debatable whether the genre has even managed to surpass it. “I joked to Alan once that he did the autopsy [on the idea of superheroes] and I did the brass-band funeral,” Miller has stated of that one-two punch of classic superhero stories. In “Gotham Nocturne”, the end of superheroes looks a lot like Watchmen.

However, the beauty of “Gotham Nocturne” is that it is not a deconstruction of the limitations of the classic monthly superhero form, the perpetual second act in which victory or progress are next-to-impossible. It is, instead, a thoughtful consideration of how these limitations are essential to what these stories are, how they define the character and philosophy of the Batman mythos specifically and the superhero genre in general.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1064. Art by Rafael Albuquerque.

Adopting the language of opera, “Gotham Nocturne” argues that these superheroes are effectively modern myths. Throughout the run, there is a recurring emphasis on how certain stories and myths repeat themselves. Talia tells her son Damian the story of Farhad I Parethes, framing it as an example of “stories of a world long past.” However, Bruce lives his own version of that story towards the end of the run, even encountering Farhad in the desert. The friendship and betrayal of Zehdan Orgham by his best friend Ra’s Al Ghul is mirrored in Bruce Wayne’s betrayal by Arzen Orgham.

Smuggled out of Gotham, Bruce confronts Doctor Hurt in the desert to reclaim his identity. Given Morrison’s characterization of Hurt as “the devil” and the bleeding wound in Bruce’s side, this evokes Christ’s temptation in the desert. “Not some desert, not just any desert… the desert!” Hurt boasts. “A place of many names over its eternal existence – Gigunnga, Serhat, Daxtahrann, Sirzura… Aras. It is the place between places. Neither her nor there. The slipped sand of all time.”

Hurt presents Bruce with two alternative visions of his beloved city - “The Gotham That The Batman Saved” and “The Gotham That The Batman Doomed.” These are endings. These are conclusions to Bruce’s crusade. They represent some form of victory. In doing so, Hurt demonstrates the fallacy of the pursuit of victory within the framework of a superhero narrative. “The only way to always win is to exert absolute control,” Hurt explains to Bruce. In other words, to embrace a sort of fascism.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1082. Art by Stefano Raffaele.

The superhero genre has long been criticized for the fascistic tendencies that can creep in around the margins of the unguarded power fantasy. “Gotham Nocturne” explores this idea, returning repeatedly to the idea that the purified and gentrified Gotham is a city where the Orghams “get all the trains running on time.” It’s a paradise that is built on the imposition of will from above, one that does not tolerate dissent or criticism.

“Behold a prosperous city,” Dariah Orgham offers the remnants of Gotham’s criminal fraternity. “Safe, welcoming. Not devoid of its injustices, but its people – the right people – sheltered from its ugliness, encased in beauty. And in this unspoken contract lies true power. Power that will flow to us. Why put on a mask and fight over it when people will gladly bequeath it to you, in return for the appearance of safety?”

“Gotham Nocturne” makes a clever argument in favor of Batman as a character and the constraints of comic books as a medium: Batman can never win, but that’s a good thing. “What’s the point in playing if you can’t lose?” Selina asks at one point. “You’re right… I’ve always needed my darkness,” Bruce explains to Barbatos. “But the one thing I’ve never needed is to win.” He elaborates, “All I have ever needed… was the struggle. All I have ever needed was to try.”

Detective Comics (2016-) Annual (2022). Art by Christopher Mitten.

This is a noble sentiment on its own terms. “You cannot win,” Harvey warns Bruce as they head into the final confrontation with the Orghams. “That would be like a fool with a flashlight claiming victory against the dark.” Bruce replies, “The whole point is to struggle against it – with it, forever.” This is what a myth is. It is a story that is told forever. “The Batman is dead,” Farhad tells Bruce in the desert. “But myths may never die as long as there is reason yet to persist.”

Not just persist, but resist. “Gotham Nocturne” contends that Batman is defined by failure. He doesn’t reinforce the existing power structures, he fights against the broken systems. Speaking to Bruce before that final battle, Gordon offers his own argument for Batman, “You asked what you stand for, old friend. Maybe sometimes… it’s more important to stand opposed.” Ram V’s Detective Comics repeatedly frames Batman as a character defined by his resistance.

In some ways, this serves to tie Batman back to the origins of the superhero genre. Superman, the character who codified the superhero archetype, was initially positioned as a character who defended the disenfranchised against those in positions of power - reckless automobile manufacturers, war profiteers, corrupt lobbyists. That has gotten lost over time, as “saving the world” became synonymous with buttressing the structures and institutions. “Gotham Nocturne” essentially takes Batman back to those early days of the superhero as a concept.

Detective Comics (2016-) #1089. Art by Guillem March.

The myth of the Batman becomes a challenge to the status quo, not a defense of it. In Batman’s absence, Gotham is haunted by the Question. What is a Question but a challenge? It’s an open-ended interrogation. “You can impose a lie upon a place and call it reality, but the truth – the foul, stinking, unpalatable truth – is always flowing beneath,” the Question observes. “That if you rid yourself of the symbol of all your failures, then it would be as if you never failed at all. Everyone knows the lie. Everyone wants to believe it. Soon there’s no one left to question it.”

In the closing chapters of “Gotham Nocturne”, Bruce and Selina share a couple of small moments. Both conversations involve the same exchange. One of the pair begins, “When this is all over…” The other replies, “… That would be nice, wouldn’t it?” The implication is that it will never be over. The beauty of the run is that this feels reassuring. There will always be a Batman, and he will always fail. But, through his failure, he will challenge the broken institutions of the world around him.

Ram V’s “Gotham Nocturne” is an epic saga about the limitations of contemporary superhero comics, the perpetual cycles and repetitive stories that drive so much of the industry. However, it never feels like a bleak or tragic deconstruction of the form, a bitter story about how Batman can never truly be happy. Instead, it argues that these stories serve a grander point and purpose, that they can be refreshed and redefined, that they will also be relevant. It’s a masterpiece of a run.