Detective Comics #0 (HERE BE SPOILERS!)

[Sigh.]  I normally write that word in exhaustion, trying to find a way to express my disappointment in an issue.  But, here, I mean it as a sign of relief.  Gregg Hurwitz is a breath of fresh air after years of getting saddled with Tony Daniel.

The plot of this story is pretty straight-forward with no mid-issue surprise, the type of device that Daniel frequently used, managing to interrupt the flow of the story that he was trying to tell just as you were getting into the rhythm of it.  Instead, Hurwitz sets up the dramatic tension of this issue almost right from the start, as Bruce tries to embody the lessons taught to him by Zen master Shihan Matsuda but at the same time fights against his feelings for a village girl.  In the middle of this conflict is Matsuda's wife, who tells Bruce not to listen to Matsuda's instructions that he cut off his connections to everyone around him.  Hurwitz does a good job showing her sorrow here, since it's clear that a man that advocates so strongly for Bruce to bury his feelings isn't exactly the best husband.  As the issue progresses, it's clear that Bruce is going to choose the girl, because he's young and hasn't learned the lessons that will one day turn him into Batman.  It's also pretty clear that this decision is going to spell trouble, as it does, when the village girl steals into the monastery through a window that Bruce left open for her.  Instead of going to see Bruce, she stabs Shihan Matsuda.  The surprise, however, is the revelation that it was Matsuda's wife who hired the village girl in the first place, making it clear that she had been manipulating Bruce from the start, desiring the fortune that Shihan had amassed and wanting to be free from living in "this tomb" with him.  Daniel would have rushed this part, trying (and usually failing) to bring together the multiple threads that he was trying to weave through the issue.  Hurwitz, however, has just this one thread and shows us one of those lessons that Bruce had yet to learn, another lesson that eats at his soul and does, in the end, separate him from other people.

Although Hurwitz won't be the regular writer on "Detective Comics," I have to thank him for at least drawing a bright shining line between the past and the present on this title.  I'm actually excited about the tales that it has left to tell.