Summary: In 1961, a baby is stolen from the Wayne family and PI Slam Bradley gets stuck right in the middle of the mystery.
Plot: Now, before I go any further, I'll say that Tom King is a good writer and more than capable of spinning an entertaining yarn; for instance I loved his take on Dick Grayson as a master spy in Grayson, and his Batman/Elmer Fudd one shot was seriously one of the best Batman stories I've ever read...but like that rhyme about the little girl with a curl down the middle of her head, while Tom King can be good, when he's bad he's rotten(I'm looking at you Supergirl and Human Target).But this was a book with Slam Bradley as the lead and I love Slam so I took the chance. Now, this issue isn't rotten by any stretch of the word but it does play heavily into what dragged down some of his previous missteps in that much of the plot is blatantly stolen from elsewhere(and with out attribution) with only the thinnest of veneers plastered over it to make it look original. In this case, rather than stealing the plot from a well known movie he copies the events of the notorious Lindbergh abduction down to a tee, including every specific element from who discovered the missing child and the cobbled together ladder straight down to the exact text of the ransom letter...only changing the odd circular symbol to a crudely drawn bat-symbol. On top of that, King throws in Slam getting bagged for the death of his partner which is taken right from the Maltese Falcon right down to the body being found at the bottom of a muddy hill. It's a fun setting, and he really does have a good handle on the techniques of telling a proper crime noir story...but it kills me just how much is "borrowed" from other sources. Other than inserting Slam Bradley, setting in Gotham and involving the Wayne family everything else of note is wholly unoriginal. It's slam though, so unlike Human Target where I dropped it when I saw how bad it ripped D.O.A. I'm going to try and stick it out a little bit longer.
Art:  Phil Hester is one of my all time favorite artists and I have never understood why he doesn't get more work. In this issue in particular, Hester's art does an utterly amazing job of making the story feel like a real deal pulp detective story. The bold lines and dark shadows are perfect for capturing that city lights through a pair of blinds look that is typical of a proper noir film...and unlike King, although Hester captures that aesthetic none of his images are actually traced directly from a film scene which makes it all the better. 
Grade:6.5/10