Batman: The Secret City

Batman Post-Crisis #148

by Dylan Horrocks, J. Torres, Ramón F. Bachs (Illustrator)

Batman and Oracle must solve a string of murders in a part of Gotham City no one knew existed, leading Oracle into a world of her greatest dreams – and nightmares.
Plus: Batman tangles with Mr. Freeze!
From LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT # 180-181 and 190-191.

Genres: Dc Comics, Comics

100 pages, Paperback

First published December 14, 2011

About the author

Horrocks has been involved in the New Zealand comic scene since the mid 1980s, when he co-founded Razor with Cornelius Stone and had his work published in the University of Auckland student magazine Craccum. Later in the decade he began to get international recognition, having work published by Australia's Fox Comics and the American Fantagraphics Books. He then moved to the United Kingdom where he self-published several mini-comics and co-founded Le Roquet, a comics annual. Upon returning to New Zealand in the mid 1990s, Horrocks had a half-page strip called 'Milo's Week' in the current affairs magazine New Zealand Listener from 1995 to 1997. He also produced Pickle, published by Black Eye Comics, in which the 'Hicksville' story originally appeared. Hicksville was published in book form in 1998, achieving considerable critical success. French, Spanish and Italian editions have since been published. In the last decade Horrocks has written and drawn a wide range of projects including scripts for Vertigo's Hunter: The Age of Magic and the Batgirl series, and Atlas, published by Drawn and Quarterly.
Horrocks' work has been displayed at the Auckland Art Gallery and Wellington's City Gallery. In 2002 Hicksville won an Eisner Award for Talent Deserving of Wider Recognition, and the same year Atlas was nominated for the Harvey Award for Best Single Issue or Story in 2002. In 2006 he was appointed University of Auckland/Creative New Zealand Literary Fellow.[1]
In an interview with Comics Bulletin, Horrocks claimed that his first words were 'Donald Duck'.

Reviews

[Boo · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️ I miss Babs as Oracle.

[Max Z · Rating 2 out of 5]

As far as I can tell, this iteration of DC Comics Presents was like a sampler of then-current work. The idea was (my guess) to pick recent stories from larger ongoing series and "present" them to new readers who are not keen to buy Legends of the Dark Knight #180. As for the two stories they've picked up... The first one is about hackers. I am of a firm belief that comic book authors should not write about hackers. They see hackers as something of a cross between Neuromancer and Kevin Mitnick autobiography, powerful wizards that can simultaneously hack the Gibson and program the magic VR worlds using their Cyberdecks. And usually there are megacorporations lurking somewhere in the background. It looks cool to a layman, I guess, but has nothing to do with reality. It had nothing to do with reality in 1984, when Neuromancer came out, it had nothing to do with it in 2004, when this book came out and now, in 2020, I bet they still write this stuff seriously. I like Neuromancer as much as the next geek but this notion of a VR world secretly built by so-called "hackers" needs to die.

The second story is fine, though. It focuses on Freeze doing something that would be very much like him, something equally personally tragic and simultaneously murderous.

[drown_like_its_1999 · Rating 1 out of 5]

A man is murdered by an improvised explosive device hidden within his mail. Through investigating a potential motive, Oracle discovers the victim was a hacker and soon stumbles upon a portal to a secretive virtual metaverse that serves as a haven to cyber criminals. While Batman investigates the murder within Gotham, Oracle delves deeper into this newly found virtual world for answers.

This has to be one of the most embarrassing, technobabble ridden contrivances I've read in a long while. The story has little of the charm present in Batman futurist schlock like "Digital Justice" or "Abort, Retry, Fail", which not only deliver more creative nonsensical computer talk but also provide hilariously dated yet endearing CG visuals. Instead "The Secret City" is a distillation of pure cringe, the Batman equivalent of the NCIS meme where two agents prevent a hack using a single keyboard. The art present is actually quite competent though which is oddly a detraction from the overall experience. That being said, if you like schlock I'm sure you'll get more than a few laughs reading this disaster.