One of the things I liked about this issue was that it wasted no time getting the regular Batman back into action. It also gets this story off to an interesting start. Kelly Jones' work had it's own dark style compared to most Batman art in the '90s. He also introduced his own mysterious character, the shady puppetman. Whatever it was to him was, unfortunately never revealed. He'd just pop up once in several issues of Jones' run from '95 to '98.
Troika was a good story and you could tell by the end of it that the real Batman was back for good. A welcome thing after all we'd been through over the last year and a half.