I knew when I saw the cover for Detective Comics #880 online, that I needed to have it. When I saw that Scott Snyder was scribing, I had no choice!
Jock's cover is one of the finest that I have seen in a long, long time. It is a beautiful combination of lines and computer overlays. The cover image depicts a bust portrait of the Joker. The top portion of his head deteriorating into thousands of tiny bats. The palette is simple (red, black, white and grey), but is very effective in portraying the maniacal Clown Prince himself. Beautiful, beautiful work!
The story follows Commissioner Gordon as he tries to track down the newly escaped Joker. Gordon; for obvious reasons, understands the immediate danger his family is in and tries to reach all of them as quickly as possible. OF course, he is too late to reach one, and the consequences are dire. Batman tracks Joker down into an underground layer in the sewers, only find that it was not the Joker who was responsible for the attack....
My favourite section of this entire issue has to be the dialogue between Batman and the Joker. The Joker refuses to have anything to do with Batman, claiming that he is not the real Batman. The deranged analogies used by the Joker are close to poetic in nature. Wonderful, wonderful writing. Snyder really excels at the "noir" subject matter.
Despite my well documented hate for DC, I have to say that this was a decent read. Not only decent, but I intend to buy the next issue as well so I can see how things turn out.
Great story Snyder and Jock, you make one heck of a creative team!