Status Updates From Tales of the Batman: Tim Sale

The two short stories that end this collection are pretty great. The visual storytelling of the Date Night is especially good. The dialogue is mostly just set up for visual puns as Catwoman and Batman dance through the glass of a museum down into a restaurant.

Comics have that procedural problem where they introduce a character and because of their prominence in the story (in the case of procedurals, their fame) you can tell they are the bad guy. They introduce this thief character and you aren't wondering for very long who it may be. I have to stop myself from thinking that about the murderer Batman is obsessed with in this arc. It'd be ludicrous if he was also him.

Tim Sale is a really great artist, I love seeing how different this looks from his previous issue in this collection. I also actually like the stories in this collection so far. Seem more novel to me than The Long Halloween and Batman Detective.

First comic is the type of novel plot I had been hoping to find in these books. Something that didn't feel confined to the very run of the mill beats of a comic for a series that runs weekly/monthly for decades w/ dozens of authors. It did feature aspects that I find ridiculous such as prison inmates looking to intimidate Arkham criminals known for their illogical murder. Why would they antagonize these people?

The story about Arkham patients playing baseball was just fun as hell.