Tom Taylor writes a shockingly familiar Batman story in Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 1: Mercy of the Father. I adore the tone of Taylor’s Batman — the gadgets, the interactions with his family, the general Bat-philosophy that Taylor espouses — but I am amazed that this story made it through all the levels and no one looked askance. Perhaps this is meant as an homage, but if that’s hinted in the text, I didn’t catch it.

Onward and upward; hopefully the good base here portends Taylor doing something equally enjoyable but more original next time.

[Review contains spoilers]

I will say that this Batman trope is one of my favorites: Bruce falls in love, considers giving up the mantle of Batman for a normal life, but then his paramour or one of their relatives turns out to be a vengeful vigilante and Bruce must retake the cowl. We’ve seen this most famously in Mike W. Barr’s Batman: Year Two and then the Batman: Mask of the Phantasm movie that adapted it, but that’s far from the only time. Notably, Year Two also contains a major role for Joe Chill, Thomas and Martha Wayne’s some-continuities killer.

I like this trope because it fits a tight three-act structure, it lends itself to a meta-interpretation of the Batman concept (Bruce himself wondering, “Must there be a Batman?”), and there’s room as we’ve seen for an arch-nemesis — Chill and then the Joker in Phantasm. There’s superheroics, there’s pathos, there’s romance. But it can be a one-trick pony; the only real opportunity the writer has to do something different than before is in the revelation of the masked villain — Judson Caspian versus Andrea Beaumont, for instance — and otherwise the reader mostly knows what’s coming from the start.

The die seems cast, then, at the point in which we’re introduced to Bruce’s old friend Scarlett Martha Scott, who either is, or her company Theromise has some connection to, the vigilante Asema who’s been murdering young criminals; Scarlett is also Joe Chill’s daughter. If we are not exactly on the same path as Year Two, we are awful close, and Taylor does nothing to move us off of it when ultimately, indeed, Scarlett’s mother Evelyn turns out to be Asema.

Late in Mercy, Taylor offers a complicating factor; it would seem a shadowy organization called Elixir is peddling a youth-granting drug in Gotham and that Asema is a part. With Asema deliberately evoking Martha Wayne (who helped Evelyn escape the abusive Chill), I wondered if Asema would turn out to be a relative of Martha Wayne, nee Kane, as a couple stories in recent years teased Bruce having conflict with the Kanes — if Elixir might be the Kane family — but it’s not to be. I venture Elixir will be the larger foe of Taylor’s Detective run, though ancient organizations in Gotham are nothing original either, from the Court of Owls to Gotham Nocture’s Orghams just a volume ago.

There’s a lot that comes to naught here. Chill, we eventually learn, never knew that Evelyn gave birth to his daughter Scarlett, so no, Chill did not kill the Waynes out of vengeance for hiding his daughter. Neither did Scarlett ever know Chill was her father, so then we understand she’s not Asema to compensate for her father’s actions. There are bunches here that takes a while to untangle — though Bruce asks after Evelyn, knows about her connection to his mother, and therefore seems close to the Scotts, only at the end did I understand that Bruce didn’t already know Scarlett was Chill’s daughter. Equally, when Bruce describes Scarlett as “the youngest-ever chief geneticist at Waynetech,” I took that to suggest she was significantly (criminally) younger than him, but that assumption also has to be reassessed when they sleep together.

All of that said, I’d still offer that Taylor does a nice job with a story that unfolds exactly like you might expect. There are fine action sequences throughout, fun conversations between Batman and Superman, and particularly affecting sequence midway through when Damian Wayne goes undercover in a juvenile detention and is supposed to keep a low profile, and then immediately muddies things by starting a revolt. Charmingly, because Damian was protecting innocents, Batman isn’t even mad! I am well behind on reading the new Batman and Robin series, but here Taylor writes Damian fighting alongside Batman and following his directions such that Damian embodies the “Robin” role more than I’ve seen in a while.

Artist Mikel Janin is near flawless as always; I maintain that even as Taylor’s star is on the rise (if not risen), Janin is still a “get” to have on Batman’s sister title. I would give particular props to Janin’s Harvey Bullock, who feels a “definitive” depiction of the character to me. If you’re interested in how an inker affects a penciller’s art, clock sequences in the sixth chapter where Janin’s work resembles Dan Jurgens; that’s the influence of Norm Rapmund, bringing what he contributes to Jurgens here to Janin.

There was a social justice bent to Taylor’s Nightwing that I appreciated, and we see something similar in Detective. No small part of “Mercy” involves Batman considering and reconsidering how he uses violence, and at the end Bruce promises to develop a new system for juvenile justice in Gotham, focused on “rehabilitation and reintegration”; if Nightwing is any indication, Taylor will actually show us Bruce working on this (just don’t call it a “Robin factory”). Too, on the heels of Ram V’s “benevolent shadow” Batman in Gotham Nocturne, Taylor’s Batman describes himself as doling out compassion, not vengeance, offering another answer to the question of why Batman doesn’t kill villains like the Joker even if they themselves might murder again.

Way back, I liked Scott Snyder’s new New 52 take on Batman in that his Batman seemed futuristic — computerized contact lenses and holographic disguises. In contrast, Tom Taylor’s “approach” for Batman in Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 1: Mercy of the Father seems more along the lines of “practical effects” — thumb drives slipped in laptops, choreographing a slip-and-fall to knock out a suspect, a utility belt that can automatically inject Batman with antidotes and a convertible med bay in the Batmobile.

It’s a gears and gadgets Batman, which feels more of the moment than a Batman of the fantastical future, and as well there’s Taylor’s trademark lack of angst. Again, that’s a good place to start; hopefully things only get better from here.

[Includes original and variant covers]