Detective Comics #797
War Games: Act One Part 1
Writer: Andersen Gabrych
Pencils: Pete Woods
Inks: Nathan Massengill
Publisher: DC Comics
Price: $2.95

This review contains spoilers.

After the aftermath of the Gotham-style Mexican standoff, Batman sweeps in to take a look at the fallen pieces to find out the surviving players. As he starts to count the dead, Batman quickly determines that Scarface, Orpheus, Penguin, Mr. Fun, Onyx, Deadshot, Zeiss and the Escabedo Cartel’s bodyguard make it out alive. As Batman leaves the crime scene, the Escabedo bodyguard stumbles his way to Leslie Thompkins’ Crime Alley Clinic for some serious medical help.

Batman gets to Oracle’s Watch Tower and they start to come up with a battle plan to combat the obvious chaos that has started to engulf Gotham. As they take a brief roll call, they come to the depressing realization that until Nightwing makes to Gotham from Atlantic City, Batman has only Batgirl and Orpheus to rely on in the field. Then, Oracle tries to pick Batman’s brain to find out who he thinks masterminded the meeting that turned into a massacre. Batman dismissed any thought of finding the person responsible at the moment and heads out to join Batgirl in the battle to save Gotham.

In Chinatown, Batgirl quells a coup de tat but still has to deal with a whole lotta pissed off Triad grunts with guns. While on the North End, Batman goes to the Escabedo cartel for the location of the bodyguard. Before he can get an answer, the Russian Odessa Mob pays a visit with a Rocket-Propelled Grenade to the Cartel mansion. And at the Iceberg Lounge, Orpheus and Onyx grill the Penguin and Deadshot for info about the meeting.

Meanwhile, The Hill is ablaze as the Latin Unifieds and The Hill Gang start going at it. Orpheus and Onyx drop the interrogation of Cobblepot and make their way there. Batman is still battling the Russians while trying to keep the neighborhood surrounding the Cartel in one piece. After one last grenade into a group of innocents, both the Odessa Mob and Escabedo Cartel escape the scene when the police sirens come into earshot while Batman scrambles to save lives.

Once Batman gets the victims to safety, he gets word from Oracle that Chinatown is back under attack as the local Yakuza chapter is trying to steal the Triad?s turf right out from under their respective noses. Since Batgirl was already on her way to help out on The Hill, Batman decides to change his tactics and asks Orpheus to go up to Chinatown while Batgirl takes over the fight for The Hill.

This issue basically serves as advancing the War Games storyline without revealing too much about the reasons behind the gang wars. Gabrych is a good caretaker with this issue by keeping everything moving at a decent pace which hopefully the other books will follow. The art by Woods is very good. It?s not too flashy or overly posed. His art has seemed to progress to a more defined/realistic look from a somewhat ?cartoony? appearance in terms of facial expressions and body language while he was previously working on ?Robin?. The inks by Massengill seemed to help tighten the already sharp pencils. The cover by Jock (of The Losers fame) doesn?t look like anything he drew for that title. It almost has a certain Aparo style with a few modern twists to it.

Overall, Detective Comics #797 is a good continuation of the initial War Games crossover. The next two books up are Legends of the Dark Knight #182 and Nightwing #96. We?ll see how they turn out next week.

(Ed. Note - Even though this issue of Detective Comics is part of the Batman: War Games crossover, it also contains a non-related backup story. Therefore, it will not be included as part of this review.)

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