I've gotta be honest, this one didn't have much of a chance with me, because the high concept ("Gotham gets its lights turned on") and format (another overly long Batman mini-series) put me off. But I was unprepared to dislike it quite as much as I did, as Paniccia and the Pander Brothers turn in a script that is full of cheesy overblown narration, a predictable "mystery" villain and a mis-characterized Batman and Batgirl. I thought at the very least that I'd be engaged by the Pander Brothers' art, but their unusual style is graced with heavy inks by Lopez and overly bright colors by Baumann and really doesn't look right on the shiny, slick paper, losing the edgy style that the Pander Brothers usually bring to the page.
City of Light has a story that seems potentially interesting, as Batman suffers a crisis of faith, Batgirl steps up to cover for him and a mysterious industrialist brings a new innovation that could radically change Gotham City. All interesting notions on the face of it, but the specifics are where the story starts to break down. The notion of a glowing Gotham is patently ridiculous, and the pseudoscience of light based on the industrialist's DNA is goofy and laughable even in the context of comic-book science, moreso because it's not really explained but is instead thrown out there with little to back it up. The notion that Batman would abandon his fanatical devotion to protecting Gotham from criminals because of one boy that he failed to protect is almost as ludicrous in the larger context of Batman stories.
The larger failures, however, come in the dialogue and narration, which makes these hard-to-swallow notions even harder to believe. Granted, I haven't read Batgirl for several months, but the loquacious girl who we see in this issue bears little resemblance to the girl who began life as a mute and who didn't really seem to have developed full social skills yet. Batgirl is a relatively small part of the issue, however. Bruce Wayne/Batman's over-the-top narration and thoughts cross the border between brooding and determined vigilante into actual crazy person, and the "Gotham as a living body" metaphor that Wayne pontificates about at length is pretty strained, coming off as silly dialogue, the kind of thing that gives comic book dialogue it's bad reputation amongst the mainstream.
Actually, pretty much all of the characters talk like characters in a script, rather than people. It's wordy, which isn't a problem when the dialogue rings true but which looks awkward and stilted when it doesn't. Some of the dialogue, such as the bidding between Wayne and Slate, is readable enough, but in a lot of the work, you can see the creators pulling the strings. The newspaper headlines, in particular, look like they came from the Exposition Daily rather than any real paper.
My biggest disappointment, however, is in the Pander Brothers' artwork. Their work usually has an angular, edgy quality that I really like, but the shiny paper and bright colors have dulled that edge, and instead this looks like capable, solid but basically boring artwork. The exception is the action sequence at the end, which is poorly choreographed, using small panels to show action happening but never giving the reader a sense of the whole picture.
