I agree!  The issues in those years held the best *sustained* quality
I've ever seen in Batman stories and art.  Moench spun out and fulfilled
long plot threads.  Supporting cast members would gain new dimension
as Moench revealed new aspects of them that were unexpected but made sense!
Harvey Bullock went from being a one-dimensional foil for Batman
(sort of the Anti-Gordon on the police force) to being a well developed
character with a distinct heroic attitude.  

Moench paced his storytelling well, mixing in some fine little
resolved-in-one-issue stories with longer threads that made real changes
in Bruce and other characters, one experience at a time.

Bruce and Selina were well on their way to resolving sharing *every* side of
their lives, and Moench made that believable.  There was a delightful issue
of a double date they had with Green Arrow and Black Canary.  Too bad a change
of editors nipped those developments and restored the status quo by having
Catwoman brainwashed to be a criminal again.  Feh!

There were several great issues where many facinating story threads unfolded
while Batman sat alone on a rooftop slowly moving pebbles from one pile to
another until his mind straightened out enough to return to action.  

Hmmmmnnnn...  I wonder if that sequence inspired David Sim's handling
of his title character during the Melmoth arc in "Cerebus"?

--James Langdell             jam...@eng.sun.com
  Sun Microsystems           Mountain View, Calif.