Matt Fraction’s Batman Vol. 1: Daylight is funny and weird and so, so cool. I’m not sure it always held together issue to issue, but then again a lot of the time I wasn’t even looking at Fraction’s writing, but rather Jorge Jiménez’s art. Some five or so years into this title, Jiménez keeps reinventing himself to increasingly impressive results. If ever I thought, “Oh, not Batman again,” seeing how Jiménez will differentiate this run from the last is always a powerful motivator to read.

[Review contains spoilers]

I should mention colorist Tomeu Morey, too, there with Jiménez constantly (and even on Batman before). Between the two, we’ve gone from the wild graffiti and neon of the James Tynion days to a grittier style on Chip Zdarsky’s (not much less wild) run, to what is now perhaps something of a fusion of the two. Daylight sees Gotham lit up like Times Square and a blue-suited Batman with a pocket full of neon techno-gadgets, but cut through with stark duotone title pages, lo-fi street signs for location-setting, and panels with touches of Dark Knight Returns or Jim Aparo. More so than with Tom King, starting with Tynion I think Gotham’s been increasingly a breathing character in this book, and no doubt Jiménez and Morey have something to do with that.

But also we’ve been in a string of Batman runs where the writers have very specific takes on Batman. Tynion’s books, including Jiménez, set a distinct tone for Batman in the post-pandemic era, both in a variety of new characters (now mostly gone) and in a Bruce Wayne coming into his own personally without Alfred. Zdarsky’s was superheroics-forward, starting with robot doppelgängers and ending with multiversal doppelgängers and clones(!). So I was enthused to read Daylight, actually, to see how Fraction might “out-cool” the ones who came before.

Fraction gets there almost immediately, between what I’ve seen more than a few sources call the best Bat-suit ever and a first chapter that sees a Batman set for war soften at the travails of Killer Croc. But it’s the second and third chapters that really sell it, when the GCPD, mad at being sidelined by police commissioner Vandal Savage, take their frustrations out on Batman; two officers end up shooting one another, Savage frames Batman for it, and a little kid filming on his phone has the only evidence to show the truth. It’s a complex, multi-front conflict with some ripped-from-the-headlines elements, plus all of Batman’s wonderful new toys, and I couldn’t look away.

Unfortunately, as mentioned, that might be about the time Jiménez’s art starts outshining the storytelling. For a book that’s purportedly episodic, there’s an awkward interstitial chapter that’s mostly exposition, with an odd Riddler bit in the final pages. Batman’s tipped off that Arkham’s Dr. Zeller is experimenting on her patients, but rather than “Batman it” to investigate, Bruce Wayne takes her out on a date.

Quite a few pages are taken up with Bruce fighting a stereotypical anime ninja girl who wants to kill Zeller, which confusingly isn’t related to those issues' other big show piece, a Gotham crime collective led by “The Minotaur.” There’s a bit where someone stole or tried to steal a truck and the Minotaur is mad and Anarky is involved, all of which I thought needed to be parsed out clearer in the artwork for it to make sense.

Still, Fraction’s Batman is hilarious, from “Some guys just hate seeing the doctor, I guess” when assassins are trying to kill Zeller, to the Batmobile having a thirteenth “secret gear,” to that Batman’s super-high-tech body armor is also “moisture wicking.” Damian kicks Bruce in the Wayne family jewels, and Bruce asks his ghostly Alfred (whole other story) whether Bruce ever did that to him. “Physically, sir?” Alfred replies, “No. Spiritually? Many, many times.” Also Bruce with his head in his hand when he realizes Zellner thinks he’s Robin Damian Wayne’s father but not that he’s Batman after Damian accidentally reveals their relationship.

But taking into account Batman’s lesson in empathy in the first chapter, his drubbing of Damian after the kid makes that mistake is uncharacteristically harsh; I didn’t feel Fraction was connecting all the dots in his story, versus what made sense in the moment. There’s also a strange bit of time compression in flashback where Bruce seems to be teaching Tim Drake to drive manual transmission in the time after Damian is already around — conceivable, though it disregards a lot of Bruce and Tim’s shared history before Damian.

And so we’re off again. Matt Fraction, Jorge Jiménez, a new Batman Vol. 1, a Bat-crossover looming and, surely, a big DC event on the horizon. As was the case with James Tynion and Chip Zdarsky before, so here too. But with Batman Vol. 1: Daylight, we get a cool new costume, too; it looks a bit silly out in the sunshine over in Wonder Woman Vol. 4: The Island of Mice and Men, but it’s super-cool here.

[Includes original covers and 30-some pages of variant covers]