Detective Comics #1048 Review

Writer: Mariko Tamaki

Artist: Ivan Reis

Colors: Danny Miki

Letters: Ariana Maher

Cover Price: $4.99

Release Date: January 11th, 2022

In the last issue all heck broke loose in Arkham Tower without context, going from its grand opening to weeks later where the patients had taken over. Finally, in Detective Comics #1048, we see what happened, but not all of it yet.

I'm not sure what to say about this issue, as it's mostly a tour of Arkham Tower and flashbacks to Tobias Wear's childhood. Batwoman is on a fake interview with Wear, and she shows him around. She sees that villains such as Freeze are doing well. Meanwhile, in the flashbacks, we learn that Wear's mother would have been one of its most dangerous occupants if she had lived.

When things are brought up or introduced to somebody, Kate sees scenes in her head. What Freeze looked like while super-villaining, Batman holding the hand of a dying man during A-Day, how she found Ana Vulsion when they first met. I liked that.

But really, that's it. It ends with the Bat-family meeting in their new headquarters and plotting their next move, so we're not yet up to what happened in the last issue yet. Oh, but it ends with Wear cursing the criminally insane as a kid.

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Bits and Pieces

Detective Comics #1048 has lots of talk and lots of words while nothing much else is happening, but I didn't get bored at all. Instead, it held my interest and made me want to keep reading to see what the heck was going down at this tower. So it's an okay issue that I didn't love and didn't hate. The art is fantastic.

6.5/10