The Next Batman has been an immediate winner for DC prompting a path for the character post-Future State. With strong backup stories this is another solid performance for this take on Batmans world. Read Full Review

The Next Batman #2 is a mixed bag, but in this case variety is the spice of life. There's a little something for everyone here, whether you like high action, personal drama or light entertainment. This is easily the best of the Future State offerings so far. Read Full Review

The story by John Ridley is great. It feels completely new and a complete breath of fresh air to be honest. I love what he is doing here. Laura Braga turns out to be the perfect artist for this book as well. She does a great job of making the look feel new and interesting. Read Full Review

John Ridley's much-anticipated Batman tale comes into focus as Tim Fox considers what it takes to be a hero in dystopian Gotham. Read Full Review

Gothan City Sirens was fine, but Batgirls may have been the best story of the three " that includes Future State: The Next Batman #2. Great action, surprises and there may be a point where your jaw drops. Read Full Review

Future State: The Next Batman #2 continues to flesh out Gotham City's future, presenting a Batman who operates much more differently than Bruce Wayne. Tim Fox is probably the most interesting character to hold the Batman mantle since Terry McGinnis, and I can't wait to see more of his adventures Read Full Review

The ending is completely tacked on for the sake of a cliffhanger. It comes completely out of left field, and is tonally inconsistent with the rest of the whimsical story. Outside of the art, this segment is completely passable. Read Full Review

Future State: The Next Batman #2 gives us a fascinating look into the Gotham City of this particular future timeline. However, while the main attraction is quite interesting on its own, I find myself more intrigued by the backup stories that flesh out the world of the Next Batman. But all three stories are winners, and well worth the cover price. Read Full Review

Another excellent Next Batman adventure, paired with two intriguing backup stories. The character, motivations and methods of the man behind the cowl continues to evolve and reveal itself. Read Full Review

Overall, this one is a bit predictable"as is the ending, which is set up early on in the story"but it has a lighter touch than most of the Future State stories. I'm still hoping that before this event is over, Harley manages to reunite with her best friend and girlfriend to deal out some punishment to the Magistrate. Read Full Review

The Next Batman is good and enjoyable Batman comics, but I don't think it's doing anything particularly interesting with the new protagonist or the Future State situation. Read Full Review

Color artwork detailed for a lively night time adventure fits in perfectly with the story. Read Full Review

All in all, I would pick up this issue SOLELY for the first two stories. You can totally skip Gotham Sirens. Maybe the Sirens will be better in issue three. Read Full Review

This new issue in the Future State series picks up where we left off and does a great job of it. I like watching this new Batman tackle new challenges all while holding true to the vision of Batman that we all know. I still question whether a book like this needs to extend the amount of content in the main book to justify an 8 dollar price tag, but for now, I'm still enjoying it. Read Full Review

After a pretty strong first issue, The Next Batman takes a step back, primarily due to the quality of the back up stories. It suffers greatly from a lack of build, like most of Future State. The main story, however, improves from its slow start from the first issue. Let's hope this trend continues and flows over to the back-up stories. Read Full Review

There's plenty to like in Future State: The Next Batman #2, though it must be said upfront that the first issue's distinctive cyberpunk vibe is lacking " a result of Nick Derington and Tamra Bonvillain not handling the art of this issue's Tim Fox story. Read Full Review

This book is particularly irritating in that it was a triple threat of stories I didn't love, hitting me one after another with content that left me wishing it was more. Read Full Review

I didn't read the backups. ❤️

Ridley's Batman is still great. The backups kind of suck.

always cool to teach readers about the inner workings of criminal law

I kept this week's The Next Batman as the last Future State comic to review. Truth be told, I was somewhat nervous about reading it, thinking it may ruin my mood for the day by tearing apart everything I liked about #1. And... I was wrong to doubt, well, go figure.
The story is a faster read than the debut, but more action packed. There's some small time investigative work on Batman's part, there's some family and police drama in the background, there's of course some fighting involved, as well as a mystery. Pretty much everything you'd look for in a Bat comic. Now, of course to some this issue may feel like a more conventional Bat comic - one that ultimately doesn't take risks, just follows what's proven to work, with the exception of the titular character not being prepared for everything and making little mistakes Bruce would never do. I honestly don't mind Ridley playing a bit safe, and I certainly welcome a Batman who would not be a Mary Sue.
Overall worth picking up if you've enjoyed #1. It's still a solid read.

What's not solid is the additional Batgirls story, which I can summarize in one word: exposition. It offers us some background story, but with no real engaging foreground, it falls flat very quickly. Yes, I've been complaining about Future State's lack of depth since week 1, stating we don't know much about the state of Gotham City, Magistrate's fascistic rule and effects on characters we know. But all of that could, and should have been explained organically, with each comic adding something more, showing us extra puzzle pieces we could connect. Instead Batgirls is pretty hollow despite also being overtalked. Kinda like your typical Brian Michael Bendis comic.

And finally, there's the Gotham City Sirens short, which... I'm genuinely surprised got printed here. It's not bad, just so tonally different compared to the previous two dystopian tales, it doesn't really fit in. It's like you bought a heavy metal album and one of the songs on it was techno.
I for once welcome a more light hearted story coming from Future State, which so far has been pretty hopeless, both literally and figuratively, but who thought it's a good idea to squeeze it into The Next Batman? It should have been released in Harley's book, since both are colorful and designed to appeal to more mainstream audiences.
That said, I somewhat enjoyed this comic for what it was. It's okay, just out of place, I feel. Other than that, it's good to see someone having fun in this fascist failed state. More of that, please. Give me tonal diversity, DC, just figure out where to put it in order to make it work. more

Even without Nick Derrington doing the full art this issue, The Next Batman still features some nice superhero action. This issue delivers on the promise of the "analog Batman" that John Ridley has mentioned. The scale of the Batman story feels a bit smaller than I'd like for a special event like this.

The Batgirls story is also good, and not at all what I expected it to be. It took a minute for me to get my bearings, but once I understood where the story was going, I really liked it.

Gotham City Sirens is the worst of the bunch, going for a lighthearted romp that doesn't mesh with the tone of the rest of the book or Future State event.

Again, I like what I see but there isn't enough of anything. The ideas this one explores are interesting. But there are so many stories here but I feel like there aren't enough issues to make these stories as interesting as they could be.

Didn't enjoy this one as much as the first one, and I found the backups worse as well.

Pedophiles are bad, so it's ok to murder them. The magistrate is bad because they want to not let people murder pedophiles. That was the message, right?

I'm disappointed that Nick Derrington isn't doing the art for The Next Batman all the way through. His replacement is good too, but I really liked how his art looked last issue. The Batman story is still really, really good. I think it's one of the best written stories in all of Future State. I enjoyed it here.

The Batgirls backup is too exposition heavy and boring. It was definitely a slog.

The Gotham City Sirens story feels soooo amateurish. Maybe it's the tone not hitting properly, or the messiness of the story, or the pacing, or the unfinished looking art. Or maybe it's all of that! It's probably all of that.

Story is boring, art is worse than the first issue by far. Time to hop off this series.

I really cant it was the worst thing I ever read but the batman story was so bland and I could care less about the other stories. Not worth the price

This was a slog to get through.

It is ridiculous this Batman who just for putting on his hood without training only with resources that I imagine he stole from somewhere snaps his fingers and is a fighter and detective at the height of Bruce Wayne.
The only thing that raises this story is the part of Cass and Step, the art is very good but the things they take for granted spoil, there is a desperate need to make this Batman like, whoever likes them well, sorry I am not convinced by a Batman who is only good for his economic resources.

The mixed bag that DC’s new publishing initiative of adding two back-up stories and raising the cover price hits hard on this issue. If these back-up stories had been included in the initial issue, I would have never given the series another chance. I still feel that the “feature” story is somewhat lacking, but the back-up stories at downright terrible. $7.99 for a comic book is a tough sell for retailers in today’s market, but in no way is this issue worth it.

Writer John Ridley still hasn’t given us any reason to see Tim Fox as a new Batman. Whereas Bruce Wayne dedicated his entire life to avenging the death of his parents, Tim became Batman because… his sister did drugs, or something? It’s still not entirely clear why he became Batman or even how he’s able to do the things that Bruce did without Bruce’s lifetime of training a dedication. It’s because of technology, I guess? It’s just so unsatisfying to see a fill-in character without any justification for it.

The story this issue follows Tim as he investigates the murder of man found in a dark alley. His assailants kept their faces covered well enough to defeat the rampant facial recognition technology in Gotham City, and while he’s concerned with finding the murderers and their motivation, The Magistrate is hunting him down and attempting to kill him. We’re also shown a little more of Tim’s mother who is working with the mayor to fix the “kill all masked vigilantes on sight laws” because it’s unconstitutional, though she supports the idea because “…Batman… my daughter… something… something…” I can’t tell if Ridley is just putting a placeholder idea in here because he has no idea how to flesh out the story, or if he thinks it makes it feel more like a real story from another timeline by not having them rehash the details, but as a reader, I need something more to keep me invested in these characters.

Art chores have changed hands, which is odd because they’ve been working on these stories for months and should’ve had plenty of time to work in advance, but we find Laura Braga, Nick Derington, and Arif Prianto taking over this issue and I feel like it’s a better overall fit than last issue. Together they bring more of a traditional superhero style that at least helps to make the story fell more that a traditional Batman comic book, even if the story still feels like it needs a little more of anything to tie it into the Batman mythos.
If the issue ended here for $3.99, I’d probably still be unsatisfied, but more likely to give it a pass. However, the following two stories are downright terrible. I can’t fathom who gave these scripts and artwork a pass but considering how many people have been fired and shuffled in the editorial offices at DC Comics in the past two years, perhaps I shouldn’t be surprised that these made it through the process, but I certainly feel like the idea of sticking extra stories on a “headliner” title and charging extra came about because they realized what stinkers they had to deal with.

The first story, simply titled “Batgirls,” finds former Batgirl Cassandra Cain being tossed into a Magistrate prison facility where both heroes and villains are interred until they can be processed for long-term holding. Her cellmate is Spoiler, former Batgirl (maybe, depending on what continuity this is) Stephanie Brown, who turned against the heroes at some point in the past. Stephanie waxes on and on about the prison: the hierarchy, the technology, the guards, the friends she’s made, the way to get ahead… and you can’t help but wonder why she’s explaining all of this. I know that complained in the Next Batman story that we weren’t getting enough details, but these details are so poorly presented within the narrative that you wonder if writer Vita Ayala even knows how to structure a basic story.

Eventually Spoiler and Batgirl spar leading them to time in solitary confinement where they each come clean and reveal their secrets. Spoiler went undercover as a villain but was caught before she could make a move against the bad guys and had to maintain her cover. Batgirl has been getting secret messages from within the prison that “The Bat Lives” and has discovered a secret chamber underneath the holding cells. Batgirl believes Batman may still be alive down below and asks Spoiler to help free him. Unfortunately for us readers, Ayala gives away the fact that it’s actually Barbara Gordon (former Batgirl and daughter of Commissioner Gordon) being held below, not Bruce Wayne. I can’t fathom why this important plot point would be revealed here, again except for the ineptitude of the writer. Spoiler agrees and when released from solitary, she calls in every favor to start a prison wide riot.

Despite the structural problems with this story, there are plenty of other problems with it as well. All of the heroes and villains are allowed to intermingle freely during the day like a normal prison with no signs to any steps taken to dampen super-powers or stop archenemies from confronting each other. Also, during Spoiler’s informational monologue, she discusses how the prison is wired for sound and there’s no safe space to talk freely unless you have a “nullifier” which gives you a safe radius of a yard. She says this openly without fear of being overheard, so I’m guessing she has a nullifier, but Batgirl is far enough away that anything she says would not be covered by it, so there’s a pretty big problem with the way it’s being handled here.

On top of all of these story problems, the art is barely serviceable. The linework by artist Aneke is stiff and unexciting. There’s very little fluidity to the layouts and the character designs are just enough to claim their existence. I had no idea that Batgirl’s cellmate was supposed to be Spoiler until Batgirl called her by that name 11 pages into the story. I had just gone forward with the assumption that this was a new character who had risen and fallen in the future. The bland art alone wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the flat and lifeless colors by Trish Mulvihill. Almost nothing has shading or any sense of form. Spaces have no sense of depth, and even when presented with a blank background space (which is certainly more than most colorists probably would be by today’s artists) she takes no opportunity to fill in the area with texture or shading. It feels very much like she knows the basics of a computer coloring program, and nothing more.

I wish this was the end of the issue, but there’s still one more story to slog through and while I will admit that I am not the target demographic for this story, it’s still being forced upon me by being included in the $7.99 cover price. This entry into the Gotham City Sirens world of stories of obviously tailored for female readers with Sex and the City references and a female android who feels betrayed when her creator gets engaged to be married. It’s certainly not as bad as the last story, but Paula Sevenbergen’s tale is still not very well structured with a by-the-numbers flashback that does little other than fill space before oddly warping back to the present with no proper transition.

The artwork isn’t great, but it is certainly better in this story than in the last. It just took four people to make it happen this time with Rob Haynes providing breakdowns, Emanuela Lupacchino on pencils, Wade Von Grawbadger doing the inking, and John Kalisz as colorist. The look is lighthearted and cartoony which fits the simplistic tone of the story, but at least there’s more action when there needs to be, and the colors add to the feel of each scene instead of just filling the spaces between the lines. However, the final product is still a story that doesn’t feel like it belongs in a Batman comic book, much less a flagship title like this one.
Future State: The Next Batman #2 feels like the proverbial switch after issue #1’s bait of not being so bad.

In no way does this collection of stories justify the $7.99 price tag. If these back-up stories had been published in the first issue, there’s no way it would’ve returned for a second printing and I now question if I’m going to even bother buying the fourth issue in this series that continues these awful chapters. Can the main story in the third issue be good enough to bring me back for the finale?

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64 pages and all of them badly written. The artwork isn't terrible but it isn't great either. Save your money.