At the halfway mark of Ram V’s run with Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 3: Gotham Nocturne: Act II and my estimation remains essentially the same. We’re about to enter a point where Detective goes biweekly, similar to when Mariko Tamaki’s Detective run went weekly with Batman: The Tower, and I think the comparisons are instructive. A cohesive, encompassing Batman run, self-contained (Ram V’s even more so than Tamaki’s), which is also to say — for better or worse — outside the mainstream (also the presence of artist Ivan Reis in both runs). I’m enjoying myself, even as it seems more a tangent with every page.

Gotham Nocturne: Act I was about sons of Gotham Bruce Wayne and Arzen Orgham coming to know one another, and Bruce’s arc of trust to mistrust of the Orghams. In Act II, not that much happens in terms of physical movement of the characters, but the Orghams bring the war to Batman and ultimately Arzen learns that Bruce is Batman (a fact I might have thought was already known but indeed, I realize, not). So in Act I we had Bruce’s positive to negative view of Arzen; in Act II, Arzen’s antagonism of Batman to something now more conflicted.

[Review contains spoilers]

Again, in Act II’s five issues, there’s not altogether that much happening — Batman goes into the sewers, he fights Arzen, he’s possessed by an Azmer demon, he escapes and has a couple visions, he’s recaptured by Arzen. The meat of it is largely in those visions; with Act II, building on the previous, we seem to have reached a tipping point where Batman’s conflict is more psychological than it is physical.

As a hedge against what is perhaps a bit more esoteric, Ram V populates the final two issues with his Detective Henry Fielding, last seen in his Batman Secret Files story from 2018. Though I was interested for Ram V to keep using Eric Wells from John Ridley’s GCPD: The Blue Wall, Fielding keeps continuity with the writer’s creations. It’s impressive how empathy, essentially, leads Fielding to realize Batman’s identity, and I wouldn’t mind if Fielding is not as deceased as the end of this book makes it seem.

“Gotham Nocture” remains kicky, with an expansive supporting cast and occasional deviations into the ancient past. I’ve seen this run called “decompressed,” but I rather approach it as “thorough” — the difference between a 1,000-page novel and a 200-page one. The mythological is not usually my thing, but I’ve yet to be bored; Arzen’s origins, as written by Dan Watters, are full enough with palace intrigue to feel suitably modern.

It is where Ram V’s run feels reductive, fairly or not, that I’m somewhat impatient. There are strong intimations of young Bruce Wayne giving himself over to the demon Barbatos to begin his Bat-journey, something Ram V seems to insist is actual though it feels more effective metaphorically. We might grant here that Bruce has all along been semi-possessed by a demon to whom he’ll have to give himself fully to defeat Arzen, but that’s a complicated thing for any other writer to pick up (and more easily ignored). Rather this idea of Bruce embracing his psychological “dark side,” in contrast to Alfred Pennyworth’s loving-kindness, seems easier to grasp.

But that’s altogether a place we’ve found Batman before. Ram V can’t necessarily be blamed for emotional beats similar to that of Chip Zdarsky’s parallel Batman run (though maybe the editors can), but Batman at the graves of Alfred and his parents, a “weary man” thinking that “nothing’s changed” in Gotham on account of Batman, is precisely the dilemma Batman readers just saw. The idea that Batman, the consummate loner, will “never be alone” is another trope so often repeated that it fails now to be very interesting.

The backup stories in “Gotham Nocturne” remain a sticking point. I will say the quality has increased measurably with Simon Spurrier replaced by Watters. Spurrier’s final story has Sorrow recounting events for the reader while Dr. Mead thinks, “Jeez. Doesn’t this kid ever shut up?” — a self-criticism that doesn’t bode well for the story — and then the characters wholly disappear from Ram V’s narrative. I’m happy to see Watters on Ten-Eyed Man again after Arkham City: The Order of the World, plus his aforementioned Arzen Orgham origin, but in all the backups feel like they slow and impede the main story rather than contributing to the action.

The book also lacks for the “To be continued …” lines that were in the original issues, marking the break from Ram V’s main story to the backups. Not that the art change doesn’t also signal this, but it makes for very plain closing panels — a closeup of a face, a line of dialogue — that just hang there, lacking that contextual narration. I get it, even appreciate that we want this to feel more like a book than a collection of single issues, but in some respect the ending of each issue isn’t “written for the trade.”

Among Detective Comics: Gotham Nocturne: Act II’s variant cover gallery are some nice “pin-ups” by Kelley Jones. Though, so many of the others are so clearly on the theme of “Batman and his inner demons” that Jones' covers stand out for being off topic. In the same way the backup stories might have benefitted from some reorganization and re-placement, organizing the variant covers by theme might have made them “read” better.

[Includes original and variant covers]