The Private Eye is an experiment.

From a creative standpoint, the setting is daring, a strange new future in which all technologies have advanced except for communication and images.

From a distribution standpoint, it’s unprecedented. Writer Brian K. Vaughan and artist Marcos Martin placed the 32-page Issue 1 of The Private Eye up at their site, Panel Syndicate, where it can be downloaded on a “name your price” payment system. The 27-page Issue 2 was released May 7, 2013. The plan is for a 10-issue “old-school maxiseries.”

[Try it and buy it...]

A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate by Susanna Calkins is a historical mystery set in London during the Restoration (available April 23, 2013).

I’m the type of reader who loves a thrill ride, especially set in somewhere unfamiliar and fascinating. Which makes me not quite the right reader for this beautifully written book.

A Murder at Rosamund’s Gate is set in the time after Charles II’s Restoration in London, and revolves around a servant trying to solve the murder of her friend. I was eager to read a mystery set in the time period, as it’s one not normally covered in mysteries.

[Timing is everything...]

Cassandra Cain is the forgotten Batgirl. She’s the least known among the general public and is currently gone from DC Comics stories. Worse, she’s unlikely to make a re-appearance, as requests to use her by several of DC comics writers, including Grant Morrison, have been turned down.

Yet Cassandra is important. She was the first Batgirl to headline her own series, a book that lasted for six years and seventy-three issues, one of the longest runs ever for a non-white character in mainstream comics.

Cassandra shares an origin unique among the Bat-Family. Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Barbara Gordon, Kate Kane...all of them are trying to live up to their parents’ legacy in some form. Only Stephanie Brown, who succeeded Cassandra as Batgirl, shares one similarity: their fathers were super villains.

[Luckily in their case the apple falls far from the tree...sort of...]

Sometimes it seems like this police drama is all but forgotten. Later shows such as Homicide: Life on the Street and NYPD Blue seem to have all the acclaim. And the show lasted just six seasons, a fraction of the staying power of the Law & Order and CSI franchises.

But it’s still the best and here is why:

1. The many and varied characters.
While many cop shows focus on one detective or a pair of detectives, Hill Street Blues threw a truckload of characters at us. On the police side, there were patrol officers, detectives, precinct commanders and even the police commissioner. Lawyers, judges, gang members, drug addicts, witnesses and crime victims ensured the focus wasn’t just on the police. This was a show about a city, the people who protect it, and everyone caught in the middle.

[But that's not all]

I wanted to hate the new Batwoman.

She was a replacement for a character I liked very much, circus owner Kathy Kane. Kathy Kane was a silly Silver Age Batwoman who showed up in Batman comics in the 1970s as older, wiser, and tougher than in her previous stories. She was then abruptly killed off by someone brainwashed by the League of Assassins, kicking off a Batman story.

In other words, Kathy Kane was fridged and she’s never come back.

Then there was the publicity surrounding the arrival of the new Batwoman, now named Kate Kane. She was heralded in news stories as a “lipstick lesbian” in a way that seemed determined to play to the fantasies of the sometimes adolescent male readers of weekly comics. Kate Kane being a lesbian made no difference to me. What I wanted to know was who she was and what she was about.

[So do we! So do we!]

I cannot stand to watch Sherlock Holmes on Elementary.

He’s a humorless snot with no redeeming value and I’m amazed that this show has found an audience.

Maybe they’re tuning in for Lucy Liu’s Jane Watson, who is the best part of the show. I certainly hope so. I’ve read or watched just about every incarnation of Sherlock Holmes in books and movies and this show’s version of Holmes is the only one I actively dislike.

It’s not that Jonny Lee Miller’s Holmes is arrogant. Arrogance is an essential part of Holmes’ personality, as is a certain disregard for other people’s thoughts or feelings. But what Miller’s Holmes is missing is that essential charm, some elemental curiosity mixed with mischief that makes Holmes fascinating to watch.

Holmes isn’t interesting because he’s got a nice body, as the Elementary pilot unnecessarily showed us that Miller does.

[Yes, right, we love Holmes for his mind...]

No fewer than four Batgirls, two Batwomen, two Huntresses, and a female Question have called Gotham home in the DC Universe.

Barbara (Batgirl/Oracle) Gordon, daughter of Gotham’s police commissioner, is easily the most well-known. A one-time U.S. congresswoman; one of the smartest people in the DC Universe; and, in her identity as Oracle, an inspiration to disabled readers, and now a post-traumatic stress disorder survivor, Babs Gordon is one of DC’s most recognizable female characters, up there with Wonder Woman and Lois Lane.

Barbara’s superhero career began not in comics but with the 1960s Batman TV show. That’s where I first saw her, complete with her own motorcycle and theme song. I was hooked and went looking for any comics featuring her.

[With an awesome bike like that, who wouldn’t be addicted!]

The fun of reading mysteries laced with romance is the double plot: 1) solve the crime; and 2) watch the characters banter while solving the crime. Romance is often about how they compromise and learn to trust. There’s no better way learn that than if you’re working together to stay alive.

Note: I left Nick and Nora Charles off this list, even though they originated in Dashiell Hammett’s books, because their movie counterparts are so well known.

1. Eve Dallas and Roarke

Eve and Roarke are not only one of my favorite couples but Eve is simply one of my favorite fictional characters ever.

The “In Death” series by J.D. Robb (aka Nora Roberts) is set in the latter half of the 21^st century in a New York City that’s still recovering from the scars of urban warfare. Holding the line is Homicide Lieutenant Eve Dallas: fiercely dedicated, intelligent, and disdainful of rank and privilege. Roarke is her opposite number, a charming, handsome former criminal who has turned straight to run his (mostly) legitimate business empire. Their romance is not an easy road, especially as Roarke becomes a suspect in the murder that begins the series.

Favorite: Glory in Death. Excellent mystery wrapped around a sometimes heartbreaking courtship.

[It takes two to solve a mystery...]

Two heads are better than one, they say, but in the comics we’re often talking about the four fists that go along with those two heads. What would Batman be without Robin, after all? But sometimes there’s more to a partnership than just fighting crime. Here are the top five crime-fighting couples of comics and graphic novels.

1. Wesley Dodds and Dian Belmont, Sandman Mystery Theatre.
Set in New York in the 1930s, SMT owes a great deal to the pulp novels of days gone by. Wesley is haunted by precognitive dreams that show people in trouble, and investigates dressed in a suit and gas mask and armed with sleep pellets. Dian, the daughter of a prominent district attorney, falls for Wesley and eventually becomes his partner in crime solving. The series is rated mature not just for sexual subject matter but because of graphic violence. Despite the bleakness, there’s real joy in watching how Wes and Dian’s relationship grows and changes over the course of time.

[Even the darkest hero needs a heroine]

In contrast to the first three Robins, who were created specifically to fill the role of Batman’s sidekick, no one ever expected these last two Robins to wear the red and green.

Stephanie Brown was supposed to be a one-off character created for a Batman story arc. She was the teenage daughter of the obscure supervillain Cluemaster and donned a purple costume to spoil her father’s crimes, hence the code name “Spoiler.” She quickly became popular as Robin III’s (Tim Drake) on-again, off-again girlfriend and then it was decided to make her Robin when Tim and Batman became estranged.

This is where her story gets strange. Her time as Robin was preordained to end in tragedy as editorial decided she should be killed off as part of a big Batman crossover story. On one cover, she could be seen in the Robin costume sprawled and bloody. She was tortured and then she died.

And Steph might have vanished save for a vast reader outrage at the gory manner of her death and how it was done only to cause angst for the male characters in her life. That DC even released an action figure of the villain Black Mask complete with the power tools used to torture and kill Steph was adding insult to injury.

[Not cool, DC. Not. Cool.]

In previous posts, I talked about a Batman story featuring the history of Gotham and a great caper story featuring Catwoman.

Now it’s time to talk Robin. Well, Robins. Plural.

Because in the last ten years, there have been five different Robins running around the DC Universe.

They come in all flavors. There’s sexy acrobat, resurrected rebel, brainy hacker, bubbly optimist, and smug brat. To use their proper names: Dick Grayson, Jason Todd, Tim Drake, Stephanie Brown, and Damian Wayne.

The four male Robins, in various guises, are still in current monthly DC Comics. The lone girl, Stephanie, is a bit of a special case right now, as the mere mention of her seems to trigger some sort of angry reflex from the DC powers-that-be. Even the suggestion of her blonde hair has been censored. But she was dead once, so she may be back again.

I could go into a long explanation of the complicated history of the Robins, complete with their current origins and identities. But that’s confusing to write and difficult to understand. For example, Jason Todd has had three different origin stories.

[How many origin stories should he have?]

The best part of The Dark Knight Rises?

Selina Kyle, Catwoman.

Intelligent, perceptive, armed with a total disregard for the law but not quite without morals altogether.

That’s the Selina Kyle I know from the comics. So good was Anne Hathaway as Catwoman that I even forgave The Dark Knight Rises for the huge number of plot holes, including the fact that Bruce’s broken back is cured by someone using their knee to make a spinal adjustment.

If you loved this Selina as much as I did, the very best place to start your comic reading is Catwoman: Selina’s Big Score by Darwyn Cooke.

This story, and her new series in 2001, brought Selina back to her roots as a thief and explored her connection to Gotham. Before that, Catwoman had fallen on hard times. Her previous series book was canceled after a run that lasted nearly 100 issues. Worse, the cancellation was deserved as the once-interesting story lines had fallen into chaos, not least because writer/artist Jim Balent began drawing Selina Kyle’s breasts as bigger than her head. In her last issue, Selina “died.” (Which is comic book speak for “taking a break.”)

[She’ll be back...]

Just as Middle Earth is essential in J.R.R. Tolkien’s stories, Gotham City is an important element of the Batman mythos.

Somewhere out there, Gotham is a real place where citizens struggle to hold onto hope, and where its heroes, past and present, provide protection.

Tim Burton understood this when he recreated the Batman myth for the movies. As much as the Joker, Gotham was the star of the original Batman movie. Christopher Nolan followed suit, using the city and its denizens as an important element of his Batman trilogy. The city needed a hero, a symbol, and they received one. But Gotham had to stand up for itself as well.

[The characters make the story]