I just loved #705-707 because the stories were great and the Riddler's molls Query and Echo were dynamite and the whole story arc is explosive and exciting it's can be.

My library system doesn't have a trade for Cataclysm but they seem to have most of the TPBs for No Man's Land. So I'll read those and maybe Detective Comics in the late 1990s won't be such a wasteland for me.

I'm up to Detective Comics #737. The Joker is holding an election in the section of No Man's Land that he controls, but it's a Joker type of election. Harley Quinn is his campaign manager.

I had never realized this: Harley Quinn wasn't introduced into the "regular" DC Universe (as opposed to the Batman Animated Universe) until No Man's Land. So Detective Comics #737 is a very early appearance of Harley in the regular DC Universe.

At this point, No Man's Land is a series of four- or five-issue story arcs and they are running through all the various Bat-Books, and as I didn't really like the idea of No Man's Land, I was only buying the chapters in Detective Comics. (I was very devoted to buying every issue of Detective Comics at the time. I knew No Man's Land would end and it would all get back to normal eventually.) So there's quite a few storylines where I only have one chapter.

To be honest, these stories don't look bad at all. Some of them are actually pretty intriguing. I think I was only buying Detective Comics at this time, and no other comics. I had gone back to college and didn't have time (or money) to hunt down all these cross-over comics. So I just kept buying Detective Comics issue after issue.

The library has No Man's Land Part One in the TPB and I have put in a request, but they don't have any of the rest of it. Maybe I can track it all down eventually.

And just like that, No Man's Land was over.

Well, that's how it seemed to me. Back in 1999 and 2000, I was picking up Detective Comics every month at the newsstand and flipping through it and not really reading it that closely because I wasn't much into No Man's Land. (Re-reading these issues over the last week or so, they are actually pretty good, and I need to find the trades somewhere so I can read all the non-Detective Comics chapters that I missed. I could do without the death of Sarah Essen, though. Boooo!)

And then the government decided to help Gotham get back on its feet and the city got funding and all of a sudden Gotham City was pretty much back to normal and Bruce Wayne was attending the opening of the new public library that Wayne Enterprises had paid for.

They didn't ignore No Man's Land. There's an ongoing storyline about how many of the people who stayed in Gotham during No Man's Land (OGs (for Original Gothamites)) are hostile and violent towards the people who left (DZs (and I forget what this stands for)).

But mostly, we're back to Batman fighting bad guys and No Man's Land and its subplots are in the background.

They start this new era with a new logo and a new cover design and a new major storyline with a new villain - Whisper a'Daire! She's great. She's part snake. And she serves Ras al Ghul! This is how you do a Ras al Ghul story! Nothing in comics makes me roll my eyes quite as hard as when I begin to suspect that Ras al Ghul will be showing up soon. (He is used way too much.) But I like this one quite a bit.

I read Detective Comics #750 last night. Since I've been reading every issue beginning with #390, this is 360 issues in a row!

One of the neat things about this project is watching the subtle change in format, year by year. This issue looks so much like a modern comic, with the slick pages and the advertising. But it also has a letters page!

("Modern" nostalgia alert! There's a full-page ad for Dark Angel, which I watched religiously for a while.)

It's the conclusion to a Ras al Ghul storyline that's been going on since #743. I was really liking this particular Ras storyline, but this one ends rather abruptly and I felt very unsatisfied with the ending. Ras has failed again! Some mastermind! If he ever did gain mastery of the world, he'd just fail at that too.

At this point in the series (2000), there was a back-up series called "The Jacobian," which I haven't thought about since it first came out. Well, I re-read the run from Detective Comics #660 to #800 in 2012, and I probably thought about "The Jacobian" then. I'm sure I put just enough thought into it that I decided not to read it. I'm not at all sure that I read more than a chapter or two when I first got these issues back in 2000. Because I vaguely remember the basic set-up, but I don't remember any of this stuff about a mysterious super-hero called "The Moment," which is a major plot point.

This is Chapter Five and it goes on for seven more chapters. I'm reading it this time, and after I got to Chapter Three or Four, it feels completely new. It's not that bad. I don't know why I was so harsh when it first came out.

Up next is a two-part Poison Ivy tale that is a top candidate for My Favorite Poison Ivy Story.

I'm up to Detective comics #760.

In the last few issues, we've had a cross-over issue (#754) where the only chapter I've read is the chapter in Detective Comics. It's called "Officer Down" and somebody has shot Commissioner Gordon. It looks like a pretty good cross-over, and I am going to see if the library has the trade.

I had gone back to school full-time at this point, and I was very busy and not going to the comic-book shop regularly. So I was getting my comics at the newsstand. I think I was down to just Detective Comics and Cerebus at this point. I had to got to the comic-book shop every so often to pick up Cerebus (usually two or three issues at a time; I'm missing about 15 issues from around #230 to the end) and I also had to get Detective at the comic-book shop if I missed it at the newsstand.

So I'm not at all surprised that I didn't get the rest of "Officer Down."

#755 is a very good Two-Face one-shot. (I remember buying this one a few months late.)

#756 is the second part of a Superman cross-over where Batman and Lois Lane invade the Lex Luthor White House to steal Luthor's kryptonite ring. I never read the first part. As a matter of fact, I somehow missed this issue entirely for a long time. When I was reading what I thought was my complete run from Knightfall to Detective Comics #800, I was missing two issues from No Man's Land and also #756. So I didn't get #756 until 2012.

I don't like it much.

#757 is a pretty good one-shot where Batman saves a family after their car is run off a cliff road by generic Gotham thugs and they fall into Gotham Harbor and their car is slowly filling with water.

#758 to #760 is a three-part Mad Hatter storyline that is one of my favorite Mad Hatter stories. But don't think about Mad Hatter's plan too hard because I'm not sure it makes a whole lot of sense.

One of the highlights of this run is Sasha Bordeaux, Bruce Wayne's bodyguard, hired by the Wayne Foundation because of a perceived threat to Wayne's life. Bruce has to ditch her every night so he can become Batman. And instead of being a comic-book ninny like Vicki Vale, they treat Sasha like a real person who figures out that which is obvious. Bruce Wayne is Batman.

I have always loved this storyline.

Robin and Alfred have both disappeared in the wake of No Man's Land. There has been no explanation in the pages of Detective and I probably missed the reasons because I was only buying Detective at the time.

The back-ups: The Jacobian ended (It was OK but it got seriously dumb at the end) and then there was a nice one-shot with Barbara Gordon having dinner with Renee Montoya. And a very nice Slam Bradley storyline started in #759. This I definitely remember thinking was pretty good!