Book Alert: Detective #27

I have in my hands a beautifully-made book. It is hardbound, published by DC Comics and will cost you US$19.95 wherever good books are sold. The book is called Detective #27 and is probably one of the best Batman stories never told.

It is also probably going to be lost on anyone who hasn't been a long-time Batman aficionado. Too many in-jokes. The story weaves them in elegantly, but in a sort of shaggy-dog story for the fans. Which is sad, because it is, in its own way, a ripping yarn. The entire Batman story, with his parents slain, his faithful butler his only friend, his romance with Selina Kyle, and several ways in which I might have got his name - it's all here. Freud as well.

Beneath the tale and its conceits, however, is a masterpiece of mythopoeia. The archetypes are all here - hero, mentor, the goddess who is maiden and mother and crone all three (or at least two, for now). Bruce Wayne makes his long odyssey in a way not quite ever seen before, and comes at last to his manhood after several near-misses. It is a touching read.

And at the end, he hears the words, "Carpe nox." Seize the night, he is told. That brief line spoke to me. I too am a creature of the night, that time when others leave the stage and allow you to work in peace, to think uninterrupted and in silent solitude. Perhaps that's why I have always favoured Batman over Superman, as night over day.