Review: Batman: Secret Files trade paperback (DC Comics)

If ever there was an example of collected comics being a complicated world often without clear answers, it’s Batman: Secret Files.

This is not a book we needed, but a book we couldn’t do without. In the Infinite Frontier era, DC’s been publishing a lot of anthologies and padding their core titles with backup stories, which seems to be a comics trend. It’s lead to uncertainty how a variety of material will be collected, if at all. Of the six issues collected here, four are also collected elsewhere; buying a trade for just two issues isn’t ideal, but neither is having those two issues go uncollected.

An better situation for Secret Files might go something like this: the Peacekeeper-01 and Huntress issues, taking place between issues of Batman and Detective Comics respectively (and also collected, respectively, in Batman: Fear State Saga and Batman: Detective Comics Vol. 2: Fear State), might just be issues of or backups for those titles. Collect those only with those books, and replace with something else here. The Miracle Molly and Gardner issues, collected somewhat arbitrarily in Batman: Fear State Saga, might just be collected here, with Fear State Saga instead populated with more relevant Bat-family issues.

And then the Signal and Clownhunter issues, collected only here, would have four other issues also collected only here, making Secret Files the true site of some “secret files” that couldn’t be found anywhere else. Instead, if Secret Files doesn’t feel at least a bit like a money grab, then at best it’s a poor way to read these stories, largely lacking as it is in context. Not to mention, the irony being that even when these specials were published originally, Batman and Detective writers James Tynion and Mariko Tamaki were each on their way out, and many of the characters featured here were soon to be remanded to limbo anyway.

About the best reason I can offer to pick up Secret Files — and this is not a particularly convincing reason to get a trade that’s two-thirds reprints — is that it leads off with that Signal story by Batman and the Signal’s Tony Patrick. I’m a sucker for creators getting a second chance with a character they made their mark on, and I’d like to see Patrick write more of Duke Thomas. Picking up a trade of six stories probably doesn’t directly indicate to DC that fans want more Signal, but that’s what would clinch it for me.

[Review contains spoilers]

And even that said, Patrick’s Signal story is problematic. I like Signal Duke Thomas, I like his costume, I like the implications of a Gotham daytime superhero, I like his friendship with Batgirl Cassandra Cain (it would be nice if other writers might reflect the same). But first, Signal suggests other We Are Robin characters gone bad; I get Patrick’s idea that they think Duke “sold out,” but it seems out of character for Lee Bermejo’s nuanced creations.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Second, Patrick populates the story with an excessive amount of slang, especially on the part of the villain, which I recognize is supposed to identify the villain as a villain, but reads like an older person’s imagining of teen speech. I’m interested both in the actual origins and functions of Duke’s powers, and also the cliffhanger mystery of what happened to his mother — who has ties to DC’s Immortal Men — but Patrick didn’t thrill me with the A plot of this story on the page.

Tamaki’s Huntress story is a good Huntress story, and as I alluded in my review of Detective Comics: Fear State, Tamaki does a successful amount of heavy lifting to convince the audience that “Huntress with alien powers,” what should be a ludicrious notion, is workable and fits the character. It is only that Huntress is so tied to the events of Detective that I’m unsure what someone just picking up Secret Files, if there is such a person, would think of it.

In Clownhunter, I like Ed Brisson pitting Bao Pham against Punchline, being two new and “extreme” Bat-family characters. And Brisson will be writing Clownhunter over in Batman, Inc., so this is a good, if perhaps misplaced, lead-in. But considering again all the short stories DC is producing right now, I’m reminded that there’s a three-part Clownhunter backup by Brandon Thomas from Batman #112–114 that takes place after this story, and there’s no indication DC ever plans to collect that.

Among the stories offering the most “secrets” of the secret files are Peacekeeper-01 (by Tynion and Brisson) and Miracle Molly (by Tynion). Each has great art — Joshua Hixon’s gritty year one Gotham and DaNi’s broad, grim, fractured lines. Peacekeeper-01 details Sean Mahoney’s previously unknown deep roots in Gotham, but also adds some nefarious deeds between the panels of Mahoney’s first appearance in Infinite Frontier #0. Miracle Molly proceeds to reveal Molly’s true identity — I think the mystery added to the character, but Tynion conveys well the stifling horror of Molly’s former life.

As mentioned, both Miracle Molly and Gardner are included with Peacekeeper-01 in Batman: Fear State Saga; the Peacekeeper story fits between issues, but Molly and Gardner seem to be there only because their characters appear in that story. With the abrupt end of Tynion’s Batman run, I’m not sure he ever got where he was going with Bella Garten, but the story believably slots the Gardner into Poison Ivy’s classic origin, at the same time reestablishing Ivy’s origin for the Infinite Frontier era.

2.25

Rating

So ultimately good stories among Batman: Secret Files, and certainly I don’t mind DC reusing the “Secret Files” moniker for dedicated one-shots rather than the Who’s Who-type magazines of the 1990s and 2000s. But again, some of Secret Files is not what it should have been for this collection, and some of what's here should only have been collected here and not where it otherwise didn’t belong. I can’t see many picking this up given the opportunities to read most of the same content elsewhere.

[Includes original and variant covers]