Batman: Private Casebook [Paperback]

Paul Dini (Author), Dustin Nguyen (Illustrator)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 17, 2009

The Dark Knight faces off some of his greatest adversaries in this thrilling new collection written by Paul Dini, acclaimed writer / producer of BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES and COUNTDOWN TO FINAL CRISIS and illustrated by fan-favorite artist Dustin Nguyen. Batman must use all of his skills to take on villains new and old including Ra's Al Ghul, The Globe, Scarface and the new Ventriloquist.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Dini and Nguyen's Batman stories from Detective Comics collected here are largely brief, self-contained mysteries, focusing on the colorful, bizarre characters of Batman's world. They're something of a throwback in tone to the superhero comics of the '60s and '70s: in one episode, the wicked Tweedledee and Tweedledum steal the Mad Hatter's mind-control technology to assemble the Wonderland Gang, which Batman busts up by the end of the issue. It's breezy stuff as contemporary Batman comics go, even making room for a little romance (a subplot concerns the Dark Knight's flirtations with the magician Zatanna and the sultry burglar Catwoman). Still, Dini gets a lot of juice out of the way his characters interact and comes up with clever ways to whisk each story toward its conclusion—The Riddle Unanswered, for instance, pivots around Batman hanging out in an online chat room of amateur detectives (and a few superheroes) to trade ideas about a case. Nguyen and Fridolfs's artwork complements these stories' mood with a loose, flowing style, built around jagged chunks of black, which owes something to contemporary animation. (Dec.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

About the Author

Paul Dini is the award-winning writer of many scripts for Batman: The Animated Series and has also written for the Superman and Justice League animated series. Peter Milligan has written a dazzling variety of comics, including Shade, The Changing Man, Enigma, Human Target, Skreemer and X-Force. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Product Details

• Paperback: 160 pages
• Publisher: DC Comics (November 17, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1401220150
• ISBN-13: 978-1401220150
• Product Dimensions: 6.6 x 0.2 x 10.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.5 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (10 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #321,405 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Steady as she goes, December 23, 2008

By 

Jon Repesh (Los Angeles, CA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Batman: Private Casebook (Batman (DC Comics Hardcover)) (Hardcover)

To anyone familiar with Paul Dini and Co's steady run on Detective Comics, there isn't anything major to report. This latest collection starts out propitiously with an epilogue to the recently completed Ra's al Ghul crossover, and then continues with an encounter with the Mad Hatter, a Peter Milligan tale recounting the suit of sorrows, a two part origin on the new Ventriloquist guest starring Zatanna, and concludes with a murder mystery highlighted by an internet interlude involving Batman perusing an online chat room. Dini has developed his own core cast of characters during his tenure, many of which are again featured here, specifically the aforementioned Zatanna, Scarface, and the Riddler to name a few. As usual some individual issues are stronger than others, but fortunately there isn't a blemish in the bunch. This compilation once again makes a convincing case, despite this age of the arc that we live in, for the continued use of single issue stories. Indeed they are so well executed with sufficient depth and detail that the one two-parter reads lengthy by contrast. The one chief change was the replacement of Don Kramer on pencils by Dustin Nguyen, a transition made smoothly and skillfully. For all fans of this series, enjoy it while you can. With the recent announcement of Detective going on hiatus, one has to wonder what format will be employed upon its return, and whether or not Dini himself will even be back as the main writer. Time will tell.

7 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars ChatMan!, December 28, 2008

By 

Kauffinbauchser (Tacoma, WA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Batman: Private Casebook (Batman (DC Comics Hardcover)) (Hardcover)

An absolutely great read.

If you've been following Paul Dini's Detective run then you'll recognize this as being even better than the wonderful story telling you've come to expect. If you haven't read Batman: Detective, Batman: Death and the City, or Batman: The Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul this is as good a place to start as ever.

In the 15 or so years that I've read Detective Comics on and off, this is the best. There is a scene in this book where Batman sitting in the Batcave chat's with other sleuths in a chatroom named for Edgar Allen Poe's "the heirs of dupin". Brilliant. I read the scene twice in a row just to better absorb it's coolness.

This beautiful hardcover edition features 6 stories plus a bonus short story from DC Infinite Halloween Special, Issue #1 a great value at Amazon's $13.59 price, and obviously better if you can find it cheaper.

Thanks Paul!

4 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Top notch team produces top notch work., March 22, 2009

By 

Parker (At Large) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Batman: Private Casebook (Batman (DC Comics Hardcover)) (Hardcover)

Paul Dini's work on Detective Comics finally comes to life. For his first year as regular writer on Detective Comics, collected as "Batman:Detective" and "Batman:Death and the City", many of Dini's stories were illustrated by Don Kramer, who's weak pencil work really watered down the impact of Dini's straight forward storytelling. In this volume, Dustin Nguyen begins his tenure as regular artist on Detective Comics and the results are impressive. Nguyen easily places himself as the top Batman artist to emerge over the last decade, and elevates Dini's one issue stories to the level of modern classics. His renderings of Batman, Catwoman, Zatanna, the Riddler, Batmobile and Gotham are all defintive, and make me wish DC would do more to maintain this caliber of art in their Batman books.

Dini, who executive produced the outstanding Batman: The Animated Series from the 1990's, as well as wrote many of the show's best episodes, understands Batman and his world. He has a nack for telling a Batman tale that gets to the heart of any character he showcases. His run has made the Riddler an interesting character again; reforming him and recasting him as a detective rival to batman; rather than portray him as a loser as writers with less imagination have done over the last few years. His Zatanna tales have highlighted that character's depth and long history with Batman, even going back to Bruce Wayne's childhood (and creating some romantic tension along the way). There is also the reinvention of the Ventriliquest and Scareface; for which he has done an amazing Job. I was sad to see the original Ventriloquest die during the "Face the Face storyline", but creating a new Ventriliquest, who happens to be a woman, has brought more menace to a character who can come off as quite silly sometimes. The opening tale, an epilogue the dreary "Ressurection of Ra's al Ghul" storyline, has more drama, action, and tension in it's 22 pages than the entire 200 page crossover it completes.

Although these stories are hardly profound or earth shatteringly original, they do embody a simplicity that mark the best Batman tales published over the last 70 years in the pages of Detective Comics; simple whodunnit stories where Batman must employ his detective skills to solve the case. What more appropriate type of story to tell for a magazine called Detective Comics, which has alway surpassed it's sister magazine when it stays true to this formula, and always seems to wane when it tries to be just the back up Batman book, which it should never be.