Lying Cat is back! And yes, he/she/it made me grin loudly again!

When great series return to the fold, they're more often then not somewhat disenchanting... but no, not Saga! After the shock ending in #54, I was very afraid B.K.V. had written himself into a corner (after all, most of us LIKED Marko!) But instead, three years later, life had positively carried on as life often does, with Hazel having loads of fun with her new si--- (oops, almost spoilered something here!), and the little shocks we've grown used to might have been a tiny bit toned down, but after an hiatus that's really not a bad thing... they still were unexpected as ever, and the tiny dose of muting actually made them better and ...shockier? (is that a word?)

Hey, it was SO good, it even made me do this little review! (Um... did I mention yet that Lying Cat is back? And I still want one more than ever! :D :P )

Conclusion: Great goin' guys & gals! It shone brightly again, and as well as we all hoped for! more

What a great return! I was captured from page 1, and it seems the break did not change a thing for Staples or Vaughan.

So much going on but it all makes sense. The time jump worked well with real time in our world.

I feel like the art has even improved. So excited to pick up issue #56!

This issue was really bad.

Too many characters, plotlines and none of them work well, Tynion is a great writer, but his Batman is just mediocre and lacks soul. Bengal's is not great and has no impact.

Batgirls was fine, Jorge Corona is a great artist and the writing was okay, but not great

They have a new artist and the style is a bit jarring from what came in the past. I don't blame the artist. I always feel this way when one artist does eight issues for an arc and they then bring in another for the nineth. It's sort of a me thing, but it does affect how I enjoy the story. Sorry.

Now to the meat of the issue. There's no meat. It's all healthy vegetables that explain what's going on. All tell and now show. We get, by my count, Simon Says, Batman and Ecstasy Girl, Poison Ivy and Scarecrow, all saying what the next step of their plans are. What little action is Batman and Club Drug taking down a 400 pound brute but not actually accomplishing anything.

We also learn what brain machine does. It erases memories. The third Tynion action group would then erase trauma memories to heal Gotham. The machine also apparently stores said memories. A couple of problems. How do you erase the trauma of a couple million people? Even if people stood in line and it took one minute to do the voodoo and ran 24 hours a day, that would be 1,440 per day. That is 525,600 per year. So it would take about 4 years to erase all the trauma. Not a good plan.

What the machine really is is a deus ex machina. Too many people know the bat-family secrets. I predict the machine will be used to erase some memories to protect some secrets. I also suspect it is one of those you can't unring the bell devices. In the old days, when Wonder Woman had her purple ray, it was used for like one story and forgotten. Now the purple ray has become one of the foundations of the Wonder Woman universe and wars have been fought over it. The Black Mercy flower is another. It was a plot device for one Alan Moore story in like 1986, but now pops up all over the place. A machine that forgets for people might only be written for this story, but I predict it will be something popular in years to come. Think Lazurus Pit. Ra's was a villain who exposed himself to Batman and purposely kept the locations of pits secret. Now they are used to empower miniature corpses from Kandor in a Superman book. Everyone knows about them and where they are.

It's another issue with all set up. There are other books, Nightwing, Catwoman, that are also setting up their role in the plot. I won't comment on those, except to say that they are also all set up.

This big event has so much set up that no climax can compensate for the waiting period. (Make your own porn joke here). We have so many people with so many agendas that Batman is almost forgotten in his own book. Just keeping track of everyone slows down the action to a crawl and just makes the story drag on so slowly. Now it's expanding and dragging other books down as well. I am so done with this. AARRGGHH.

Or I could be wrong. more

This book should honestly be called "Miracle Molly" since Batman is just a sideshow for Tynion's pet character. Not even the art could save this because the art was also shitty. As was the backup. As is this whole event, Tynion can't go away to Substack faster.

This was a completely riveting issue. Each page uncovered more layers to the mystery. There has been 3 or 4 issues in this run that have completely captivated me. So excited to see where all of this will lead. Just love when King is at the top of his game.

I think this is one of the best comics in the industry right now. It's to big.

One jaw dropping issue of this series. Both this issue, and the previous, really start to cook. It's like if True Detective had a season in the Watchmen world. Particularly the first season of TD.