LogFAQs > #909396967

Lopen posted...

's just when you line up all 8, it becomes tougher and tougher to juggle the idea that only Detective 7 out of 8 could have got this clue, and only Detective 5 out of 8 could have got this clue, and that all 8 clues were necessary to solve the puzzle. It may not literally be Criminal Minds if written well, but if not written exceptionally well it can easily become the actions not words version of it, if you're not careful.

John Constantine isn't a great detective because of his mind. He's a great detective because he will in fact do ANYTHING to solve the problem in front of him. He will damn a family to save the son.

Jessica Jones isn't a great detective because of her mind. She's a great detective because she looks at the intimate problems and follows the trail of those things a Batman not only wouldn't consider but wouldn't follow. There's a different kind of detective work involved here. There's an emotional component most everyone else lacks.

Rorschach will see conspiracy in everything and then follow it, damn everyone around him. Damn the rest of the team if they can't see it. He'll prove his narrative.

Elongated Man is tilting at windmills and searching for a romantic notion of detectives. He's in the group as the soul of the team. He wants to believe Sherlock Holmes is an ideal and he is nurturing more than anything else. His value is to encourage a failing investigation by suggesting that not all is lost. In the single-minded approach of Batman, there's a toll that can be taken. When Batman is in the Justice League, he still needs J'onn to be there. Ralph is that J'onn.

The Question is a moral check because the Question himself spent so long wrestling with morality. If Ralph is a temper on the soul, the Question is a temper on the mind. He questions your actions. Not at any cost, he says. Some of these detectives are here to serve a story purpose. Batman and the Question are totally different as well. Batman doesn't have contacts in the way the Question does. The Question is a softer touch, and therefore where Batman is forced to try and reconnoiter an answer out of someone, the Question can just ask and maybe learn more than Batman ever would.

Detective Chimp is your comic relief but also your common sense (which helps reinforce the comic relief). You need the drunken dwarf to speak truths sometimes. Batman is so in it. He has tunnel vision. He doesn't see White Martians invading Earth, he sees J'onn's cousins attempting to conquer the planet Darkseid attempted to steal out from under Superman and his mom and dad are dead and and and.... Detective Chimp is the voice saying, "These are alien super-cops and they said a New God died, Batman." You have no real POV in this title, so bursts of clarity have to come from a sobering source, and nothing is more sobering than the drunk who spouts truths.

And that brings us to Bigby who has the super-vision and the super-hearing and the super-smell. Logistically, top that. He's also the story of redemption. He can't clean his hands. An opportunity for each team member to save someone. Because when you see a kicked puppy, that's what you do.

I look at this cast and I see a group of people vastly different from one another, tied together like the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Drawn from across the world by common purpose, a fraternal order of sleuths that can only relate to each other because they are the great investigators of a generation trying to, like archaeologists, make sense of the hidden mysteries of the 21st century.

This isn't stories told over campfire. This is the support group that doesn't exist in comics. They're colleagues, they're veterans, they're philosophers. It's the noble and romantic notion of the West Wing - smart people, coming together because the world's problems are solved by brave, smart people in darker times.
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"It is too easy being monsters. Let us try to be human." ~Victor Frankenstein, Penny Dreadful