I don’t want to be that guy, but duty calls. The bottom line is that DC rips off an old Daredevil plot where the children of Killgrave erased memories. So Lex uses Manchester Black to erase everyone’s memories of the Kent’s as Supes. If anyone finds out they have strokes. Media won’t be able to be read,etc. That’s nice, but all the media hasn’t been erased, so children who grew up after the spell and thus not under the spell will eventually learn to read or how to YouTube, so they will get strokes, I guess. Lex uses his latest battle suit to zap Supes into another star system, but thanks to Warworld Supes is more powerful than powerful than than ever, and he can now cross vast distances in the blink of an eye. My thoughts. They are basically “give me a break.” An overpowered hero that should win every fight without breaking a sweat is EVEN MORE POWERFUL. That means every time Supes fights someone, it actually becomes difficult to build in any suspense. DC will be forced to have aliens and magicians all the way down to build any tension. Magicians in a sci-fi book about aliens. What really hurts is that DC just rebooted their universe for the 633,976,031 time in the past decade. They could have easily fixed everything in the reboot. Points for having Bats point out that by revealing his identity to the world he reduced Lois Lane to Mrs. Superman and that’s not cool. Good point. Overall, they fixed problems by creating other problems. Or I could be wrong.

This is a difficult review to write. I really wanted to like this issue, but I had issues. I have been a huge fan of Stephanie Brown for years. I never really got Cassandra Cain, but I enjoyed the Cain/Brown friendship and a book built around that has huge potential to be great. But this first issue didn't do what a first issue is supposed to do - set up the world and characters so that we know what the book's mission statement is. Let me break it down using the classic "Who, what, where when, why and sometimes how" paradigm of explaining a story. Who and what- Steph and Cass plus Babs all move in together. Where - in a semi-seedy Gotham neighborhood. When- after yet another tedious Gotham crossover event that "changes" everything. Why - that's the killer question. This book doesn't tell me why. It may have been explained in other previous Bat books, but I haven't read them. DC has to assume that others haven't either, which is why it's important to set that all up in the first issue. We are left without an explanation as to why a grown woman would bunk with two teenagers. Is she their guardian, their mentor, their friend? What is the group's common goal? Fight crime? Teach the kids the tricks of the trade? Save on rent? Hide out together? We, or at least I, don't know. Who is the main antagonist? It's Seer, but again, I don't know anything about her from previous issues. What's her deal? How is she a threat? Don't know. The art. Now we're getting more into the realm of personal tastes. I have always been a fan of the more realistic Neal Adams type of art, especially for the Bat family. This issue features an artist that's more, let's say cartoony, in style. You may like that, and fair enough, that's why they make chocolate and vanilla. But it's not to my taste, so that affects my score. I will say that the artist does things like write in an actual panel "sad trombone" music plays. No, that doesn't work. I also don't like how the faces are drawn. When Babs shows off her Bat scooters to Steph and Cass, her face is demented. She looks like a 40 year old mom trying to be hip with her 15 year old daughters. Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't Babs only a few years older than these girls. How long was it that she was young enough to be called "Batgirl." She is not some soccer mom trying to connect with the younger generation. She'd know that the scooters are, while well-intentioned, lame to teenagers. Plot. Hard to say. I'll give this one a pass. Characterization. This is where the issue really falls down. This plot is only moving forward because the characters act stupid. The girls are told to stay put because they group is in hiding and Seer might track them down. What do the girls do? They immediately disobey Babs' orders. Steph and Cass have experience. They know the value of keeping a low profile. understand the dangers of hidden villains. They aren't reckless teens is what I am saying. Whatever continuity counts for now, they've both been around the block. Stop writing them like 13-year-olds. It's tougher for the writer to write them as young and a little reckless while remembering they're experienced too, but that's why the writer gets the big bucks. Then there is Babs. She is written like the parent that doesn't listen while the kids explain that old man Smith is behind the haunting of the abandoned amusement park. When two experienced heroes say that someone is putting construction workers in a trance, Babs is the kind of person who listens because she knows these aren't 8-year-olds with too-vivid imaginations. They're experienced fighters, albeit young, who have trained under Batman. And don't get me started on the whole "Rear Window" scenario. (Rear Window is a classic Alfred Hitchcock film from the 1950s. It's worth a watch). Back to art. The villain Seer is shown, but the way the artist draws her, I can't tell if her face is covered with crumbs or acne or whatever. I also don't get that great a sense of her age. I know she's supposed to be young. But how young? 15? 20? 25? These are important details. I bought three copies of the book. The standard cover and two rare covers. So they've got my money. But I just have problems with the book. I want this to succeed, but now I really have my doubts. Of course, when DC next reboots continuity, this might not matter. (They are going to bring back Alfred. I don't know that for a fact, but come on, we all know it's true. So a continuity reboot isn't always a bad thing.) So I give the book a 5. More for its potential than for its actual merits. Or I could be wrong.

I am conflicted about this issue. It had a great premise set up in the annual - Steph and Cass switch bodies due to a magic coin coin and their parents kidnap them. But I feel the idea was wasted. On the one hand Lady Shiva figured out the switch, so points for not dragging out the idea. That is so old. But we really don’t see a satisfying payoff with the idea either. I really don’t get anymore idea of how Shiva feels about Cass. Cluemaster only reveals he’s been dead for three days but somehow revived. We also see he has a Kurgan scar on his throat. (See movie Highlander for that reference. Any story that makes me think of Highlander has its pluses.) is Cluemaster a Zombie or a Highlander? We also see Babs and Bruce figure out Madame Zanadu pulled the switch. Babs uses the latest Gotham Yellow Pages to track her down. Do they still print Yellow Pages anymore? I’m serious, do they? Since the spell was only for 24 hours, the detective work was something that could have been lifted and had no effect on the story. Wasted space that could have been used to strengthen the switch story better. Ultimately I feel they didn’t use the premise to its advantage, resulting in a waste of a good setup. There is a new artist, while I like it more, it ultimately doesn’t work for me. Your mileage may vary and I won’t fight you on that. Just a preference on my part. This wasn’t so much a terrible story as it was a disappointment after a pretty strong annual. Or I could be wrong. In the end,

This was a pretty good issue. Cass has never been what you would call verbal, so showing her investigate without talking works. More importantly, we are shown the work, and we see that she is smart. Non-verbal doesn’t mean dumb. (See what I did there.) I also liked that we read the notes. Normally dialogue-less issues are a quick read, but reading coroner reports and the like to give us exposition is a nice work-around, so you get value for the money. I did think that Cass guessing Steph’s location was a little too easy, but it’s. 22 page book, so there is a limit in terms of space, so this is a real nitpick. This issue is much stronger than the Steph as Cass issue. The work flows we see real characterization and we are shown, not told. There is forward progress in the story and we learn how Cluemaster died and was revived. But not all questions have been answered, so there is something to look forward to in the next issue. I liked the art, but found the Miami Vice colors a poor choice for the Bat-noir vibe of the story. Overall a really solid issue and a better continuation of the annual than the previous issue. I don’t think I’m wrong.

A really solid issue. Character drove action, and for the first time in a long time we actually see the relationship between Steph and her father defined. Cluemaster has Steph tied up and goes back to his game show origins. For those s who don’t know, Cluemaster was an obscure 1960s villain who hosted a game show and became a criminal. Largely forgotten until Chuck Dixon revived him in the 1990s, his compulsion to leave clues was cured and he became a “straight” criminal. End of history lesson. Anyway, Arthur tries to get Steph to admit her best qualities came from him and that Batman sucks. Cass shows up and Steph gets shot, but that Lazarus juice found last issue saves Steph. We also learn the stuff was a prototype stolen by Mad Hatter and tested on Arthur. He is arrested and Cass and Steph reaffirm their friendship. We also get, or at least I, get the sense that Mad Hatter and Lazarus juice is on the menu for the future. This was a tight, well-plotted issue that was driven by character and characters’ history. It built on what came last issue. So well done, all said and done. What I didn’t like? The colors. Still too neon for my tastes. But I could be wrong. Still a strong issue. And I’m not wrong.

This whole arc has been a real mixed bag. Some issues were good, others were not. This was a not. We finally meet the Mad Hatter and I get that the writer was going for creepy mad man, but the result was huh, this plan makes no sense. That’s the problem with much of Batman’s Rogue’s Gallery. It madness all the way down, but to be an effective story telling device there has to be method and motive to the madness, otherwise it is just a gimmick. Hatter just collects serums and then invites people to his trap. Why? BTAS was great in giving villains motives for their madness. This issue not so much. The trap is sprung and the Batgirls fight life-sized puppets of the Bat family. They are easily defeated but Steph is exposed To Manbat serum and converts. This is one of the serums Hatter collects. I guess his eBay-fu is strong. Cass goes after Steph and uses the power of friendship to calm her down. Babs shoots cure and it’s happiness all around. I get the point of this, to show Iove and trust and family, but I found it obvious and on the nose. A better example of this is Tombstone. Doc Holliday says he joins Wyatt Earp because Wyatt is his friend. The other guy says”I have lots of friends.” Doc says “I don’t.” That is the whole explanation of one character’s motive. It is to the point and taken care of in four sentences. It says a lot in very few words, and is not obvious. Since the whole point of the book is the friendship between Cass and Steph, and to a certain point Babs, do more show and not tell. Subtext is not your enemy. So overall, a mixed bag. Also, I hate it when one villain’s gimmick become public domain. Just a personal peeve. Or I could be wrong.

This issue surprised me. I haven’t been a big fan of the book. I don’t like the art. Too cartoony for my preference, but I concede that is pure taste and the art isn’t bad the way bad comic art can be. I also thought the stories were not good and the characters were not done right by. But this annual handles a lot of my concerns. Through a freaky Friday coin, Steph and Cass trade bodies and they are kidnapped by their parents for different reasons. Lady Shiva grabs Steph in Cass’ body and Cluemaster grabs Cass in Steph’s body. Sets up issue 13, and we get actual sense of who these characters are. I am looking forward to see what happens next. We also see Babs move back to the Clocktower. I never bought the three girls slumber party setup. Babs is older and deserves her own space. Now there is a college dorm vibe. Girls away from home but close enough to mom. Works better for characterization and opens up possibilities for all. I liked this issue and feel it sets up a good story and does worldbuilding better than the first story arc did. I could be wrong, but I hope not.

Wow, I am not going to sugar coat this one. This issue just plain sucks. Bruce's entire explanation that Freeze is innocent is that Batmanis human and humans make mistakes. Bruce talks to a juror about God and how Bruce's father wanted Bruce to believe in God, but when Bruce's parents were killed he stopped believing in God and was lost until he found Batman. But Batman is human and Freeze said something was off about Batman and Bruce was hurt and Batman was hurt and the whole world was hurt etc. We are told this stuff and we see images of Bruce, but we don't actually see Batman make a mistake in the investigation. We don't actually see the investigation or all the other people involved - cops, DAs, medical experts, forensic experts. You know the people that exist to actually put together a homicide case. So huge problems. First Bruce introduced not a bit of evidence to disprove or cast doubt on the theory of the crime. To make things worse in my mind, the entire case is a big MacGuffin. The death of three women amount to nothing in terms of story telling. I am getting older and have lost my appreciation of random death and violence, even in fiction. Body counts don't strike as deep and dark and grown up. They just depress me. King has killed three women and their deaths don't count. As I said, I know this is fiction, but in the old days when kids would stay off my lawn, life counted, even fictional comic book life. If three women were killed, by God the killer would be found, because life matters and the nice thing about fiction is that the dead can find justice. Bruce's sad story convinces the jury to vote not guilty, but then who killed the women? Are we going to see that? Also, idiot plot time. We do learn that Bruce got on the jury because of a bribe. Who did he bribe? The judge? Not cool, dealing with corrupt judges. Did he bribe the potential juror pool selector guy, the defense attorney? Saying he bribed someone doesn't cut it. Too many people are involved on the selection of jury for that to fly. Again, unless the defense attorney was bribed, and who want's a defense attorney who can be bribed, no way Bruce is on the jury. Idiot plot point 2. Instead of this three issue "tell, don't show-athon" Batman could have gotten Freeze off by saying in public that he now has doubts about Freeze's guilt. Avoid all the kerfuffle of a trial and let the police look for the real killer. Three issues to "show" that Selina leaving hurt Bruce. Wow, profound King. You're the man. And don't get me started on the whole religion thing. I hate when comic writers try to give us their view on religion. Usually is ham-fisted and shows their prejudices. Very rarely, if ever, meets my high standards of good story telling. Or I could be wrong.

I'll keep this short. This is not a terrible issue and has all the strengths and weaknesses of King's writing. First the strengths. I am hard on the man and it's only right that I give him credit where credit is due. Richard Grayson sticking around to cheer Bruce up after filling in as Batman is a right and proper plot. Showing how Bruce worked with young Richard after the Flying Graysons had their lethal dispute with gravity is not terrible. (Though I've seen this in Batman The Animated Series and Robin Year One, so not a lot of new ground plowed here). Showing Richard has a cheerful person, also nice. Contrasting the two personalities makes sense. But that takes us to King's weaknesses as a writer. A lot of his stuff is conceptual. In interview he talks about theme and such. But a theme is not a full story. There are things like dialog, show don't tell and structure that help make a story great. Slavish devotion to any one of these literary conceits can result in an off-kilter story. In this issue we get parallel story lines. We see Richard recreating the circumstances of Bruce helping him when he first came to Wayne Manor. But this time it's Richard cheering Bruce up. Short aside. I am not calling Richard Grayson Dick. The reason is not because Dick is slang for the penis. It's because no one under the age of 65 is called Dick anymore. Maybe the penis thing killed it, but if Richard is, say, 25, no way he's called Dick. Get with the times DC. Back to critique. So we see King write a highly structured story, but without better dialog and without better exploration of character what we get is basically "Richard cheers Bruce up by recreating past." What we don't see is Bruce actually break down and say thanks for being there my son. We don't see Richard say you were there for me, I'll be there for you. It's all allusion. For example, we learn when Richard first came to Wayne Manor, he didn't like cucumber sandwiches. But Bruce said stick with them, you'll learn to love them, that's what my dad taught me. Get it? Work hard and you'll overcome your awful past as illustrated with cucumber sandwiches. Get it? Get it? Of course Bruce's lesson could just as easily be the stalker's creed. Wear someone down and they'll love you. What we don't get is Bruce actually having any sort of epiphany. Richard gets him to laugh because he bets a penny that he bounce his billy club 36 times. (Physics doesn't work that way). Richard then says he wants the giant penny in the Batcave. Bruce laughs. This refers to an earlier flashback where Richard wants to bet a penny that he can stand on one hand longer than Bruce. Bruce said he doesn't bet. Richard said that his parents would make penny bets and a penny is a small thing. Bruce says not all pennies are small. We don't see Bruce acknowledge that he is down. He doesn't realize he's not alone. We get almost zero sense of forward emotional growth. What I didn't like. Again, King really likes killing people. We see Nightwing and Batman tackle Crazy Quilt and Condiment King. Nightwing mocks them for being losers. Batman points out that Condiment King has killed three people in seven robberies in a week. Again, told, not shown. Why is this bad. Well as I've said in the past, death for the sake of death in a story depresses me. This is supposed to be a light-hearted issue and the Condiment King was absolutely created to be a joke. Making him a mass murderer isn't a joke. It harshes the buzz of the story as the kids who won't stop playing on my lawn say. King loves his obscure joke villains. Fine. Just don't make them killers. Because being a killer is no joke, despite what you've seen in "A Fish Called Wanda." Also, I found Nightwing's banter to be lame, but I will concede that is more a matter of opinion. (Though a review by its very nature is all opinion. I get confused). So not a terrible issue. The art by Wagner was great. I guess the real problem is that reconciling the boy's adventure Batman of 1940 with the mass murder Batman of 2018 is difficult. It needs a light touch, and say what you will about King, you must concede he is not a subtle writer. That's why I think it's best if Batman stories from different eras remain separate. Trying to reconcile different styles under one roof, as it were, hardly ever works. But it was nice seeing Nightwing and Batman together, especially showing they didn't hate each other. (F*ck Teen Titans TV's F*ck Batman. That's what I say). Or I could be wrong.

What to say? I get what King is trying to do. I just don't think he did it well. We see Batman and Nightwing fight some mummy monsters. All during this Nightwing talks and talks and talks. He said Batman never liked his puns and then comes up with more puns. Again, I get why. King is trying to show us that Richard is trying to cheer Bruce up. Good idea. The problem is with the execution. It's all surface and cute. We don't actually get a serious conversation. Your mileage may vary, but Richard came off as a dick. (See what I did there?) Basically, it was just clumsy. The second part of the story is KGBeast entering Gotham, buying a sniper rifle and setting up a sniper's blind. The book end with KGBeast shooting Nightwing in the head when Batman and he respond to a call from the Batsignal. What I liked. The art. Looks like Jim Lee, and was nice stuff. Really liked the art. I tend to like my Batman drawn this way - crisp and fairly realistic. I tend not to like the more abstract versions by people like Kelly Jones. But that's me. I concede that others may prefer more abstract. What I didn't like. As I said, Richard trying to cheer Bruce up. It comes off as superficial, and I didn't find it funny. When something that is supposed to be fun and funny, and I don't find it that way, it can be annoying. But again, humor is subjective. This just didn't work for me. Second objection. King has talked about his days in the CIA. I suspect the way KGBeast enters the country with a false passport, cover story and with contacts needed to buy a sniper rifle reflect King's real world experience. The problem is he needs to find a way to make talking to customs agents exciting. The tradecraft stuff was boring, but took up a lot of space. (An evil I suspect comes from having to write two Batman books a month. Decompression is the obvious result). Third point. A sniper setting up a blind at the Batsignal makes perfect sense. Which is why in this day and age of burner phones makes the Batsignal really stupid. I know it's cool and his the weight of history behind it, but there's a reason they invented the Batphone for the 1960s TV show. So Batman and Nightwing meeting in a public place at a predicted time when that public place has clear lines of sight for snipers to use is just dumb. And Batman isn't supposed to be dumb. One would think he'd do a recon of the area before exposing himself. More realistically, which is a funny thing to say about a man who dresses as a bat and puts youths in danger by dressing them in red and yellow, one meets in a secluded area. That means when the Batsignal is lit, Commissioner Gordon and Batman go to the secret place only they know about that is nowhere near the Batsignal. These days the Batsignal could be activated with a Bat-app on the special Batsmart-phone Batman would give the commissioner. Fourth point. I get it King. No doubt Bane is behind the KGBeeast's actions. It's all a part of Bane's plan to break the Bat. Eliminate his support system. Make him alone, so the big fight (another big fight - these guys must have had like 1,009,034 showdowns already) when it comes will have Batman alone. So when Batman wins, it's a great victory. (I predict he will win either by being awesome and beating everyone up, or two, Batman was never alone and all his Bat friends help him beat Bane and company. Either way is really predictable). So overall I give this a 4 or 5. The idea makes sense. Friend helps friend. But the execution just doesn't work for me. It's full of holes and the humor doesn't work. The art was great and that makes up for a lot, but still doesn't save the issue. Or I could be wrong.

The art saves, well not save so much as make this issue not be a total waste of time. King kills more time by not showing us anything we don't already know. Batman beats up a gun dealer who IDs the picture of the KGBeast. Batman says a witness saw a one-armed man near the scene of the crime. Richard Kimble no doubt is looking over his shoulder. We next see Batman and Bronze Tiger beating up Ninjas. BT says he doesn't know where KGBeast is, but he might know someone who does. It's Kanto. We see Kanto threatening to torture a tied-up, upside down Batman. Bats says I know you're wanted, tell me what I want to know and I won't snitch. Kanto caves in, says KGBeast is only close to his father, who is hidden somewhere in Russia. We next see Batman walking in the snow to the hidden cabin where KBDad is. Over the long walk we have a lot of text telling us that Batman has a contact, a former intelligence agent in Russia who is corrupt and gives the address. That's Batman's story. All we see of KGBeast is him visiting his father and saying I am not weak and killing his dad. What is to like. The art. Very good. What not to like. Everything else. Like I said, this is just filling space. We don't actually see anything. We don't see Batman find the witness who saw the one-armed man. We don't how Batman picked that gun seller to threaten. Did he go to all the illicit dealers? Did he know this guy fronted for Russian mobsters? We don't know. Why did Batman go to Bronze Tiger? Having them fight Ninjas should be exciting, but it isn't. I get the impression that it would have been just as exciting to have BT and Batman talk in a dark room. How did Kanto capture Batman? We don't see. The whole upside down thing amounted to nothing. We don't see Batman do anything clever to escape, so his getting caught is a dead end. We are told about how Batman gets KGDad's address. That's not exciting. The talk between Beast and his dad takes up a number of pages but amounts to "you raised me to be strong, so I will kill you to cover my tracks." Again, not exciting. Oh, by visiting his father KGBeeast exposes himself and I strongly suspect that's how Batman will catch him. So if Beast just stayed away from his father, Batman has nowhere to go, because it's obvious Dad and Son didn't keep in touch, they weren't even Facebook friends. So this whole issue is a waste of time and money. We don't learn anything new. No exciting fight between Batman and Beast. Also, with continuity rebooted 47 times in the last 31 years, I don't know what's canon and what's not. So I don't know the backstory between Beast and Bats. Just a lot of treading water. Oh, we do know Beast was hired to Shoot Nightwing. Man, I wonder who could have done that, who could have been the Bane of Batman's existence? Not a great issue. Or I could be wrong.

The art in the story is nice. King is a man of few words. Too bad words aren't a bad thing in a comic book. The story picks up right where it left off. Batman goes to the cabin where KGBeast killed dad. Instead of doing something smart like throwing a flashbang stun grenade in the cabin to get an advantage over a villain that can go toe to toe with him, Batman says "Beast" outside the door of the cabin. Beast immediately shoots through the door, tags Batman with a bullet and comes out fighting. They trade blows and the Beast has Batman on the ground and Batman takes out a grapple and fires it at Beast's head, breaking his neck. Beast is paralyzed and says help me and I will tell you who hired me. Batman says no, I'm the World Greatest Detective (copyright pending) and leaves Beast in the snow, presumably to die until some other writer wants to use the character. Interspersed in the story is a Russian folktale about animals trapped in a hole who eat each other one by one until the last one starves to death. We see Beast's dad read it to Beast and it ends with Bruce being read the story by his father. Were their mothers both named Martha? What to like. The art really good. But the fight scenes have no flow. They are just individual shots of big men hitting each other. Also, the use of "Bang" and "Pow" word effects is kind of in poor taste. Those graphics are associated with the 1966 Batman TV show, King's dark, cynical violent storytelling doesn't mesh with Adam West's Bright Knight stories. What's not to like. The writing. Nothing really happens. Batman doesn't defeat Beast in a clever way. His giving Beast a sporting heads-up is really dumb. Having both dads read a real Russian fold tale to their sons really doesn't add up to anything. Oh, having Batman say he has to walk 300 clicks, presumably that means 300 kilometers, to get to his transport is dumb. That's over 160 miles. He walked in the snow 160 miles to get to Beast's cabin? Dude Uber is a real thing. You have Batplanes. Also leaving Beast to die? Really? I know that mimics what Starlin did 31 years ago, but it was controversial then, and Beast was proven to be an unstoppable killing machine. Here, he's just a big guy who can punch one handed. Either kill the guy outright, with none of this coy "I won't kill you, but I don't have to save you" crap, or bring him in. Character is not illuminated, and plot is not so clever that that doesn't matter. All in all, just a time filler until King gets his 100 issues plot line done. Or I could be wrong.

Nice art. But King uses a whole issue to tell us that Bane has ordered Penguin to kill or maybe hurt Alfred. The issue ends with Alfred at the Manor and we see a red dot on his forehead, telling us that a sniper has him in his sights. (By the way, as an ex-CIA agent, King should know that real snipers never use laser sights because they do tip off the intended target. It's just Hollywood nonsense.) That's it. Also, another woman is killed by the "freeze" technique. The hit of Alfred was ordered to punish Bruce Wayne for interfering with the Freeze trial. Boy, I hope King has something clever up his sleeve with Freeze, because right now framing him makes no sense, except maybe to get Batman crazy for sending an innocent man to prison. But Freeze has killed so many people, he hardly qualifies as innocent. Again, an issue where the pace crawls at a snail's pace. The action is hardly compelling and the dialog consists of poems. So King is letting other writers do the hard work. Just get on with it.

King makes the biggest mistake a Batman writer can make - he writes Batman as stupid. Bats learns Bane is responsible for his troubles, bullies his way into Arkham, scaring SWAT and finds Bane pretending to be “crazy.” He beats Bane and when Gordon objects, he hits Gordon. That scene reminded of the time Yellowjacket hit Wasp. That is the whole issue. Batman ones no detecting, no checking out Arkham, no investigating staff, no looking for the Bane cave. Bats used dumb brute force. I remember when Batman would put on disguises as the janitor and check things out. I get what King is trying to do, but that is the same plot Bane did 25 years ago. The writing is terrible. But the art was nice. Or I could be wrong.

More of the same. Batman using violence instead of brains. Beating ex-Arkham prisoners, who back up Bane’s story. Penguin is being guarded by Alfred. They fill up space talking poems. Commissioner Gordon is through with Batman and we learn KGBeast is alive because he was under watch by Russian officials. Story ends with Alternate Batman (Thomas Wayne, I think) clocking Bruce in the Batcave. That last page is the only page that matters. The whole issue is just a slight variance of last issue. Nothing happens. Decompressed storytelling at its worst. Mixed artists, so the look isn’t even consistent. Just bleh issue. Or I could be wrong.

A big pile of who cares. King has brought back his rip-off of Tommy King - little evil "Bruce Wayne." The whole story is basically Little Bruce's dream of the real death of the Waynes and how Batman solves the crime. Like I said who cares. It seems that today's writers have their pet characters that they love, but no one else does. These characters take up time and space in stories that don't work because the characters suck. Little Evil Bruce is one such character. The sooner he's dropped in a wood chipper, the sooner King can get on with his life and we can stop reading these awful stories. Or I could be wrong. (I'm not. Little Evil Bruce is just another variation of the doppleganger concept, and not an interesting one). The art was fine.

I get it. Bruce feels bad about himself. We know that. Telling us the same point over and over again, doesn't make the story more intersting. And the twist ending really doesn't have the impact that King probably meant it to have. The whole issue until the last couple of panels is him trying to escape from Mr. Pyg, a villain that I truly hate, not love to hate, but just hate. In his attempts - Bats is slung upside down in a slaughter house like a slab of beef - Bats cuts himself to the bone with a hidden batarang to escape. He fights Pyg and only really does damage when he throws Pyg's knife at him. He notes that he really only hurt Pyg by using Pyg's weapon. Pyg easily catches the thrown batarang. There's almost no dialogue. It's all Bats in text boxes talking in present tense. While Bruce wonders how he got into his current troubles (again King is all tell, not show) he thinks the the tale of Pygmalion - a sculptor who fell in love with his own creation, but when that creation gained life, she rejected him. Then when Pyg is unmasked, it's Damian reciting a line from the three pigs - hair of chinny, chin chin. IT WAS ALL A DREAM. PSYCH. More like Yawn. The art is incredibly bloody. So while well-done, I found it off-putting. But that's me. If you like a comic literally dripping in blood in every panel and full of self-mutilation and horrific violence, then this is the book for you. Psycho. I hate dream language. No doubt things like only using the enemy's weapon works and falling too much in love with your own creation are supposed to tell us about Bruce's mental health. But that's all King has been doing - driving home the same point over and over again. It's boring. I am so tired of psycho Batman. I miss the days when he was smart, self-aware and a true force for good. Now it's all just "you make things worse" and "you're a driven psycho that damages everything you touch" and blood, blood, blood, bodies, bodies and more bodies. Enough. But that's me. I am a bit of delicate flower. Or I could be wrong.

Bats is kissing Cats in pretty or sexy environment. Constantine is there to harsh the buzz. Rinse, lather, repeat. On the final time Constantine tells Bats that he is caught and hooked up to a machine that makes him dream, with the final scenario having Cats die. That is the whole issue. This story is so decompressed, if it were a set of tires, you wouldn’t be able to drive 10 feet. Also, this is the second story this week wheres King’s protagonist is dreaming that his significant other is constantly getting killed. (See internet uproar over Walmart Superman book). Get help dude. The art was nice, but the story was slow. Three issues to tell us Bruce is mindtrapped. I feel so jerked around. Or I could be wrong.

I found this issue . . . confusing. In that it does not take up from last issue and all it says is that Flash and Batman are considering the notion that there are too many mysteries. For that, we get some Justice League action and Flash and Batman talking about said action and how it seems to lead them to some thoughts about too many mysteries. I felt no emotional connection to characters or story. Rather I felt disconnected from everything going on. The art is nice, but Batman needs a shave. He's not a damned hippie. Razors aren't expensive and how Alfred lets him go out of the manor groomed like that is beyond me. There's not a lot of "there" there. So I give it a 5 - neither good or bad, just there. But seriously, trying to fit in King's 100 issue plot with DC's NEXT BIG THING (something the Big Two do too often) really cuts out momentum from an arc that is already decompressed. Or I could be wrong.

Nice art with a confusing story that features characters acting out of character. Also a lot of "on the nose" dialog. The issue starts with Gotham Girl imaging that she had a cool origin and killed the mugger that attacked her family (don't worry, Batman saved the day). We cut to Flash and Batman fighting a lot of people who have taken the magic juice, but are now burning out, literally, from using their powers too much. Flash runs away with Batman, while in the background we see the other "heroes" burning up. Flash yells at Batman, runs to Central City to see Iris and deal with the death of Wally. (I am not familiar with this story). Then Gotham Girl shows up and chastises Flash for abandoning Batman. She says it's not heroic. Then some sort of clone or double or doppleganger of her brother shows up. He says he and his sister just didn't study Batman, they studied the Flash and liked his powers, but really liked his optimism. Then he uses he powers for . . . reasons and burns out. GG gets mad and gets ready to kill the Flash when Batman shows up. Apparently the distance between Gotham and Central City is such that a really fast jet can go from one city to another in like five minutes. Bats says he's sorry, and that he knows he's hurt her (why, I don't know. It seems like that his mere existence causes pain). This is where we get the "on the nose" dialog. GG says, and I quote "There you go again, making it all about you. Don't you get it, this is my story Batman, not yours. You need to learn you can't control everything. Not everything is about you." Bats says "Doing what we do, living this life is hard. Wanting to be a hero is very different than the reality of living the life. I should have showed you that." Aside from Bats using the word everything two sentences in a row, this dialog is so on the nose. It completely lacks subtly. Also when did Bats really ever show GG anything. I seem to recall that she realized that she had to stop and did. She then takes extra GG juice and starts glowing. End of issue. I found this issue confusing, in part, because I haven't been following the larger Watchmen are coming plot in DC Comics. Also we have no idea who is manipulating GG (its Bane) and how the juice got to so many people. She said that her bro burned out again because he was dead when he got more super juice. That seems to be beyond Bane's skill set. As to the message of being a hero is hard. Well duh. It would be nice if King did more than show that being Bats is hard and the mere presence of heroes causes more trouble. He has even weaponized optimism and shown how optimism can inspire people to acts of self destruction. I've said it before and I'll say it again. King has serious issues. But the art was nice, even if Bats needed a shave. Or I could be wrong.

Um, more of Batman trapped in his dreams. In this scenario, Selina is being questioned by The Question. It's all film noir, and Selina asks for a cigarette. That's a red flag, and she goes over their relationship and The Question keeps asking why Selina left and she says she left a note. That's pretty much the issue, but it ends with Selina saying that Bats always has an escape plan, but The Question says this is one time he doesn't, he's trapped in his dreams and that he believes he's not strong, Selina says he's strong, blah, blah, blah. Basically, we're stalled. Selina isn't a character with agency, she's a projection of Bruce's mind. But the funny thing is, she's still exactly like King has written her. The art was nice, but the so-called insights into Bruce and Selina are more of the same from King. It feels like he's padding to get to issue 100. Frankly, I find this "trapped in dream" arc boring. Nothing is happening and the psychology is rather banal. I give it a 4 for the art. Or I could be wrong.

I would really rather rate this issue an "?" because maybe I am just too dumb to get it. Basically there's no dialog (King's favorite "Elmer Fudd" tells Batman where the person Bats was chasing went, that's all the dialog). This is one big chase that starts at the top of a skyscraper and descends into the sewers. Bats is chasing someone who looks like the Question, only with eyes and mouth drawn on the mask. Bats finally catches the guy he is chasing in the sewer, under water, and it's the Joker. We then get some dialog boxes. They read "William Ernest Coyote. That was the name of the dead man on the roof. I asked him why. He smiled and said 'beep, beep." (Joker is holding a little horn that you squeeze and it goes beep.) That's the whole issue. Like I said, I don't get it. Is King saying the Batman/Joker dynamic is a futile riff of the Road Runner Coyote dynamic? That makes no sense because the Coyote is obsessed with catching the Road Runner. The Road Runner is just running down the road because that's what road runners do. The Road Runner is no threat to anyone. But by having the Joker go beep, beep, King is saying the Joker is the Road Runner. And the Joker is a threat to everyone. Batman's desire to chase the Joker is based on the proven fact that the Joker kills a lot of people. Not chasing the Joker means more people die. Like I said, I don't get this. I say this issue is convoluted, a lot less clever than King thinksit is, and is filler that merely pads King's Batman run without adding anything to the character of Batman. Plus it takes like 30 seconds to read, so we're talking about actually getting much story for the money. This issue leaves me more sad and disappointed than anything. The art was OK. Not terrible, but it didn't do much for me, but that's more of opinion. If others liked it, I won't disagree with them. Or I could be wrong.

This is a weird issue. It's all a dream, but it plays like it's a memory of one night. Basically, Lois and Selina go to the Fortress of Solitude to have a girl's night out/bachelorette party. The art is fun and nice. The hi-jinks are meant to be fun, and I can't say they're terrible, but they are sort of a 1980s thing. The jokey vibe doesn't fit with King's dour Batman. Also, the drinking booze from 10,000 planets just drags on too long. The hot tub thing is kind of cute, but kind of lame. Again, not terrible but . . . not as cute and charming as King wants it to be. While Lois and Selina frolic in a way that would be totally unacceptable if they were men, Clark and Bruce have an awkward night at Wayne Manor. King writes Clark as if he really were a slightly socially awkward farm boy who is intimidated by the wealth of the Bruce. And Bruce is written as a total workaholic who can't relax for one second. He is unable to function in any way that might be considered normal. It's Batman or nothing for Bruce, which I find to be a boring and not terribly interesting way to write the character. But that's me. It ends with Batman being on a table being pumped full of drugs to keep him docile. Problems: This is Bruce's dream, so how does he know what goes on with Lois and Selina. And the dynamic of Selina and Lois having fun, while Bruce is a grump is a rehash from the issue where the couples go to the county fair. Nothing new is shown. It would have been nice to see Lois and Selina interact in a new way - maybe Selina helping Lois track down a story or something. Finally, this dream arc is just dragging. As least this one is fun, but just get on with it. What's good. Like I said, the art is fun in a way that I like. The idea that Lois and Selina might be friends away from Bruce and Clark. Their having their own thing is actually a pretty good idea. I will say that Lois complaining that she deserves her own night out because tomorrow she'll be a wife, mother and reporter (I guess King hasn't been reading Bendis' Superman) and then the day after that I have to be a wife, mother, reporter. It's called being a grown-up Lois. There was enough Charm to not make me hate this issue, but there are problems. Or I could be wrong.

All these dream issues lead up to Bruce telling dream Selina, who keeps changing form into the various Catwoman depictions made over the years, that his greatest fear is that he does not love Selina. The other part is Old Thomas Wayne scrapping with NAKED Bane. (For the record, fighting with your testicles and penis hanging out to flap around is really a had idea. That's how sopranos are created). Old Thomas beats Bane and walks away only to be grabbed and thrown down. Old Thomas, when at Bane's mercy answers the age-old question of "is that a gun in your pocket or are you glad to see me?" It was a gun. Funny how a regular-sized hanggun in the pocket of a sweat pants showed no outline or evidence of existence until Old Thomas pulled it out of his pocket. (Pockets where you can hide a gun are another reason why you wear some damn pants when scrapping). Bane accuses Old Thomas of CHEATING - NO FAIR!!!. Old Thomas says he doesn't cheat, he wins. Bruce also speaks a lot of exposition of how he beat the fear gas. By being more afraid, the body produces more adrenaline and self-protects. It would have been easier to say, when I realized I was in a dream, I woke myself up BECAUSE I'M BATMAN. (See How It Should Have Ended for more on this). So I guess, these dreams are meant to show Bruce's greatest fears. But I really didn't get that impression. I just saw them as wheel-spinning that really didn't offer me any insight. And I guess Selina in these dreams is Bruce's unconscious mind telling him truths he wouldn't face otherwise? I don't know, it just seems King being really self-indulgent without having the talent to really make these issues count. I am really tired of this. Just get on with it. Also, Old Thomas doesn't want Bruce to be Batman, but works with psycho killers? What kind of sense does that make? He doesn't sit down and explain how being Batman is a waste of one's life and maybe by using the Wayne fortune to help people, he will do more to fight crime? Old Thomas just teams up with killers? How does that help Bruce, Gotham? Innocent people? To quote another billionaire Super Hero - "Not a Great Plan." All in all a very frustrating issue built on a set of frustrating issues. Or I could be wrong. At least the art was good. Or I could be wrong.

More King tropes in play. Bats wakes up, meanwhile the text box quotes Rintrah Roars, a poem by William Blake representing the just wrath of the prophet. Bats beats up everyone in his path to escape Arkham. This is a callback to when Bane beat everyone up to get into Arkham. Bats does things like punch out Solomon Grundy off panel. He talks to Freeze about how Bats always wins and punches him out, he punches Riddler then solves the Riddle. Basically a lot of punching in the reverse order Bane punched to get in. Two-Face tells Bats to go to Hell. Bats tells Harvey to tell Bane he's coming to Gotham, his city. (This is the 21st century, does no one text?) The story ends with a character I don't recognize quoting Dante's Inferno, abandon hope ye who enter here, as Bats heads to the Door With Blinding Light. I guess Gotham is Hell and there's no hope, certainly not in crime alley. What I liked? The art. It was pretty good. What I didn't like - everything else. It was, like I said, all King tropes. Using quotes from classic literature to do the heavy lifting. Say what you will about Stan Lee, he wrote the dialogue for a lot of stories and it gave the books character and interest. The structure is a reverse of Bane's journey. Get it, Bats is the anti-Bane, get it? GET IT? I AM PROFOUND!!!! I DO NOT ACTUALLY HAVE TO GO TO THE TROUBLE OF WRITING ORIGINAL TEXT BOXES OR DIALOGUE, I CAN PAY HOMAGE TO GREATER WRITERS BY STEALING THEIR STUFF THAT IS IN PUBLIC DOMAIN. I AM THE BAT GOD. The story really doesn't advance from last issue. It starts with Bats waking up, it ends with him walking out a door. He punches a lot of people. There is no wit, no out-thinking anyone, no figuring out a way to get out that doesn't require horrible violence. Also, just as Bane punched above his class and beat guys like Grundy, who can go toe to toe with Superman, Bats does the same. Overall a decompressed issue that does nothing and has no cleverness of character or plot. Just mindless action to get a man out a door. Or I could be wrong.

OH MY GOD. This is just a rehash of the Knightfall story arc from the early 1990s. Bane breaks out the Arkham crew. Batman is stressed out, pushes allies away. Hits Robin the same way Hank Pym hit Wasp back in the early 1980s. (The action, while bad, is not a symptom of being a wife beater, but rather psychological stress). They have two or seven artists, so the look isn't consistent. For some reason Alfred is telling Bruce he lost and is serving Bane and Thomas Wayne/Batman. This is just a whole lot of who cares, and rehashed who cares at that. King recently boasted that he finally got permission from the suits to do something that will shape Batman for a generation. (It's going to actually have him marry Catwoman after he shakes off the psychological damage done in the war with Bane). Here's a thought. How about writing Batman as a smart, dedicated crime fighter who is not a dark psycho. That would be refreshing. How about writing smart villains and not rely on CRAZY as a character definition. Or I could be wrong. No, I'm not.

This is basically an issue-long "previously on Batman". Nothing happens and it ends with Thomas Wayne Batman saying he wants to help Bane's plan to Detroit Bruce Batman. It's so decompressed that if it were a basketball, the only sound it would make is splat when it hits the floor. It would be so flat it couldn't even roll away. Or I could be wrong.

King’s war on words continue. There entire pages without dialog, and some pages is is just public domain songs. The entire plot is Thomas wayne dragging a coffin with Martha’s body to a Lazerous Pit. He has Bruce coming too, and explains the whole Bane arc, literally. He explains the whole trope of you are broke down and rise from the ashes. Bruce does nothing. He doesn’t question anything, certainly not the fact that lazerous pits were originally written so that they had to be used shortly after death. King is stealing another plot - this time it is Death and the Maidens. That story also has the Wayne’s bodies being used for revival. Just a terrible issue that goes nowhere and reveals nothing. Or I could be wrong.

What to say. Basically “oh brother” covers it. The two bats get to the pit. While walking they do some talking. Dad says Bruce was a whiner who always cried when dad would read him Russian folk tales from issue 57. He said he wanted Bruce to be his own man, and once mom is restored that will happen for reasons. Bruce says he always wanted to hear the stories because he hoped they would change so he was stubborn like mom, oh he buried her body in the desert so putting it in the extra special pit won’t work. They fight. Dad is wearing heavy gear and a duster while Bruce is just wearin his cowl from the waist up. I guess he is not afraid of severe sun burn and sun poisoning. They fight in the pit. Cut to top, and we see a gloved hand. Is it dad’s, is it Bruce’s? (It will be bruce’s). Once again we get a writer adding backstory to a very old character. This back story explains all. I do not like this because instead of forging ahead, it just reworking the same old past. And the results are always dismissing returns. Again, story unfolds so slowly. The art does not provide compelling action that tells its own story. Just single shots of men throwing punches. Dad’s statement of now that you are broken down you can rise is so on the nose, That I guess King really hates subtext. This run isn’t exciting. It’s just long and drawn out. It seems like the trek through the desert - never ending and dreary. Or I could be wrong.

Oh brother. King's Gotham is just silly. It's up is down wrong is right, evil is good. And that's just silly. We learn that Thomas Wayne is Batman and uses Gotham Girl to enforce things. Hugo Strange is the commissioner and Joker and Riddler are cops. Psycho Pirate "cures" the insane and we see him do that with Two-Face. Meanwhile we see a traveler walk in the snowy mountains being getting narration RIPPED OFF from the Tom Hanks movie "Charlie Wilson's War." It's a mess. We still get King's pet love of Batman insisting He and Selina met on a boat, and Selina saying they met on the streets. Does Thomas Wayne have the ability to separate Gotham from the rest of the Justice League. In the old days when kids would stay off my lawn, team-ups were a thing, but each DC title was really its own little world. And that worked because of the social contract between writers and readers. Sure Superman or Flash could solve all of Batman's problems by helping capture villain of the week. But the book is a Batman one, so we assume Superman or the Flash are off in their books doing their thing and don't thing too hard about how it really would be logical for Batman to call for Super help all the time. But in this new much more interconnected world of comics, all the other DC heroes are going to ignore the fact that Gotham is being run by villains who have multiple murders on their rap sheets. I don't care if Psycho Pirate made them sane, that's just a bridge too far. Also having the Joker be "curable" by Psycho Pirate really diminishes the Joker. He is mysterious and unknowable. Having him have an actual mental illness is just . . . degrading to the character. And stop having Bane boast about how he broke the Bat and there's no way the Bat will come back, yep the Bat is broken and I am putting my fingers in my ears and shouting LAH, LAH, LAH I can't hear yo. The breaking of the Bat with Bane has already been done. You can buy the trades in your local book store. It's not like this arc has been forgotten. King you are just walking on ground that's been well tread on. What bothers me is that King really does think this is original great stuff. He's ripping off previous arcs and Charlie Wilson's War and he thinks he's the greatest thing since Stan Lee. Meanwhile things like actual plot, actual pacing and actual characterization suffer. The villains are cardboard, the secondary players are ignored and the romance between Bruce and Selina is told and not shown. AARRGGHH. Or I could be wrong.

Well we see Selina stealing paintings to pay for Bruce's coma care in Paris. Gotham Girl beats up Captain Atom. You're caught up. Nothing else really happens. We see a little more of how Gotham works, but nothing really that informative. The Robins are frustrated, but that's it. Just more decompressed story-telling. The art is nice. But it's also more told, not seen. We don't know who Selina got Bruce from the snowy mountains of wherever there were snowy mountains last issue. (I forget and don't feel like looking it up.) More Kiteman. To paraphrase Indigo Montoya - "you keep thinking Kiteman is interesting. I don't that word means what you think it means." We also see Dad Batman using a gun. So what? How does this affect the villains, the cops, the publuc? Again, not show or even told. We do get some shallow villain characterization. The Scarecrow gets off on Kiteman's fear. Wow, deep King. This is a dull, slow, decompressed issue that moves the story ahead about one inch. It lacks forward momentum, excitement and the feeling that I have to tune next bat-time, next-bat channel to learn what happened. And that's a problem for serialized story telling. Or I could be wrong.

Let me catch you up. Damian ignores dire warnings and gets his ass handed to him by Old Batman. Bane Kills Alfred as a warning to all other Bat family members. They have Damian and they'll do the same to him if they come to Gotham. I really hope they storm Gotham and Damian gets his head crushed. Meanwhile, in Paris, Selina is with Bruce. Bruce says he's going back to Gotham to die a good death like Mom and Dad. Selina says not without me. Gotham's my city too. She says "You don't see me". Now you're caught up. What I liked. The art was good. Kudos. What I didn't like. The decompression. It took me two paragraphs to describe this story. I guess we're supposed to get a sense of like father, like son. The Wayne boys are stubborn and won't quit, whether for good or evil, I guess. King is still not writing Selina like an actual character - someone with her own voice, her own view, her own spark of divine fire. King has said he's writing the Bruce-Selina romance to honor his wife. But now I really wonder about their marriage. It's not Bruce who doesn't see Selina, it's King. He has almost always written her as a prize to be won and not as an actual person. He also writes Bruce like a weird child with overwhelming mommy and daddy issues, someone who is really an incredibly damaged person who is incomplete and destructive to himself and his city. I know this is the way writers write Bruce now, but I prefer the person who is the smartest guy in the room who dresses up as a bat for strategic purposes and who is motivated to make Gotham a better place because he actually wants to help people, and not just work out parent issues as obvious as the ones Mike Meyers made fun of in the third Austin Powers movie. But that's me. I could be wrong. But overall, an issue that stretches out three pages of stuff into an entire issue. I'm not impressed.

The art is great, that is why I rate it this highly. The whole issue is Bruce and Selina talking at each other, not to each other. Basically, Selina says she gave up the relationship to be a hero, but she is not a hero, she is a thief. Bruce said he thought Batman had to be alone to work. But that doesn’t explain Robins 1-4, Multiple Batgirls, Batwomen, justice leagues, commissioners, Outsiders. Remember kids, Batman debuted in 1939, Robin in 1940. That partnership lasted until 1969. Basically, Batman as a loner is a myth. Anyway, Bruce and selina’s Dialog could have been thoughts to themselves. I get little sense of actual two way communication. Also Bruce disguises himself as old school Magnum PI. NICE! They train in and out of costume and are looking for the one thing that can beat Bane. Very decompressed. The whole issue could have been done in one panel both say I missed you and I was wrong, let’s get the macguffin. Again great art. Or I could be wrong.

Great art, no doubt about that. But King has actually made me think Bane should be in charge of Gotham, and that's not good. How I could I say that? Easy. Bruce and Bane are offering two different options for Gotham. Option A is having a violent vigilante who breaks the law to stop crime, but actually can't stop crime. Street crime is still terrible. The Joker and friends are still mass murderers. Then there's option B, where there's a violent vigilante who uses illegal means to fight crime, but can control street crime and can stop mass murderers like the Joker and friends from being mass murderers. I know who I pick. And King, that's probably not what you were going for, making me think Bane might be the solution. Let's face it, to quote Batfleck "Alfred we're criminals, we always have been." At least Bane is a criminal who gets things done. King has actually made Bruce look ineffectual, weak and lame. Not a good look. Also Selina tells Bruce she met him as hooker girl (something I will always hate - screw you Miller) before Bruce became Batman and before she became Catwoman. Batman and Catwoman met on the boat. So King has made both origins canon. Yawn. Also, stop working Kiteman into your stories. He's lame and always will be. We learn, between fan service shots of both Bruce and Selina, that they're going to steal Venom from Magpie. Is their whole plan to stop having Venom go to Bane? It better be better than that. Also, apparently both Bruce and Selina carry their costumers around so they can quick change if they stumble across and armed robbery. We also learn why last issue and this issue don't have any reaction to Alfred's "death." The scense take place before Bruce sends in Damian, but apparently after Gotham Girl defeats Captain Atom, who is now under arrest. All this is so lame. GAARRGH. Or I could be wrong.

This story could have literally been told in like 10 panels. Panels 1-5 Bats and Cat take down villains. Panels 6-8 Thomas Wayne visits Gotham Girl to tell her to rest because she's overextended herself. Panels 9-10 Thomas Wayne Batman Goes to Batcave and points gun at Damian. End of story. Now that's decompressed story-telling. King spent issues setting up how no one could get into Gotham because of Gotham Girl. But he doesn't write a clever solution developed by the Cat-Bat team. He just takes her off the table. That's lazy writing. He has about a third of an issue dedicated to Bruce in disguise taking out a couple of villains with the reveal of the Bat-emblem underneath the shirt (Bats is also wearing body armor, so getting shot in the chest doesn't kill him.) Basically the whole issue is Bruce and Selina are in Gotham, Thomas has to decide whether to shoot Damian.(I hope he shoots Damian). The art is nice on a panel level. The individual drawings are pretty. But there's not flow, no kinetic excitement and action, just a bunch of still set pieces. Also Kiteman. How is this guy not in prison? Do they forget to lock the door? Stop with the Kiteman. Overall, just another slow issue where plot happens, but that's it. No humor, no characterization, no fun. Or I could be wrong.

This is how King has Batman characters win. They get beat on and beat on, and once the attackers get all tuckered out from pummeling the victim, the victim then turns around, all bloody and beaten, and hits them once and they drop like a sack of potatoes. Apparently, in King's world, there's not such thing as broken noses, concussions, internal bleeding , damaged backs, knees and hands. You just take a huge beating, walk it off and then hit someone once. That's basically played out again in Batman 81. It turns out the Bat Family joins with Damian (may he rot in Hell) and beat and beat and beat Thomas Batman. He utters "because I'm Batman" and hits them once and they drop. King seems to have forgotten, or perhaps never knew, that Thomas Batman used guns because he wasn't in the super condition of Bruce. Didn't have the training and was an older man. Also, is Alfred dead? Still dead? That part of the plot is ignored and I'm bored with it. But no matter, because King often ignores continuity or flat out repeats things other writers wrote beat for beat (Think Wonder Woman and Batman trapped in eternity. The same story was done in the 2000s for Superman and Wonder Woman.) Bruce's plan was to steal the super Venom powering Gotham Girl. Joker was actually Clayface. (Yawn). And again we get a lot of text boxes explaining the text in an on the nose manner. Did subtext do something to King when he was a child? And the issues ends with Bane, Bats and Cats getting ready to square off. The actual defeat of Bats' rogues was very rote. We, as I've written before, didn't see any Bats outthinking enemies or setting up traps, etc. We just get static shots of Bats and Cats hitting guys and they go down. Just one problem. This has been done before 25 years ago. And the problem with Bane knowing Bruce's secret identity is never played to the logical conclusion. We know the bad guy is going to lose, so why doesn't he expose Bruce? Because if they did, the comic series would be over. That's ALWAYS a terrible thing, having a character act stupid because plot demands it. Stan Lee having the Green Goblin know but forget Peter's secret identity was genius. The threat was always there, but not really, but really. Great for building up suspense. Gerry Conway's Spider-Man 121-122 was the logical conclusion of that. King's explaining Bruce's plan after the fact strikes me as a cheat. We sort of go, oh that's why he was in Hawaii. I prefer it when writers play fair and we see the heroes follow the clues the writers left and we say, wow I wish I thought of that. Well played sir. (See Murder on the Orient Express for why that works so well). Overall, a dull issue. Can't say I loved John Romita Jr's art. This story doesn't do justice to the characters and just sort of happens because it has to happen. Can't say I'm a fan. Or I could be wrong.

I liked the art. Unfortunately, the words wrote a check the story couldn't cash. I think I finally figured out what about King's writing bothers me. There's no fear, no struggle. The characters just talk at each other, but at no point do they struggle or show fear or desperation. They just do exposition to pictures, so there's no immediacy to the fight. We always know the hero is going to win in the end, but we never see him or her sweat for it. And that's what happens here. Batman tricks Bane into disconnecting his venom rig by saying face me like a man, Catwoman is staying out of it. They fight shirtless. King really likes it when his male heroes fight with no clothes on. I wonder what that means. Batman pulls a Bruce Willis - John McClane and has two batarangs dipped in super venom that will overload Bane's system. The three fighters talk at each other and just when Bruce is going to snap Bane's back, Thomas Wayne Batman (showing no scars from a fight in the previous issue that should have left him a bloody wreck) wounds Bruce and shoots Bane in the head. He has Ventriloquist with him for reasons I should probably know but don't. We then have Thomas say bring the pirate, we're going to end this. Story over. What I liked. The art. It was solid. What I didn't like. The complete lack of tension in the fight. Like I said, it's all exposition and on-the-nose theme explaining. I really didn't get a sense of wheels within wheels schemes unfolding. I really can't wait for this slog to be over. This isn't great writing, plotting, dialogue or epicness. Or I could be wrong.

More of the same from King. Lots of words in text boxes amounting to nothing happening. Again we are told, not shown. First we see Bats discover Alfred's body while a poem is recited (I don't know which one, sorry). Then we "hear" Alfred tell Bruce how much he loves him by talking about things like Bruce's first steps, etc. Again, we're not shown Alfred participating in Bruce's life via flashback. We only see Bruce bust up Wayne Manor to the sound of Alfred's narration. The issue ends with Bruce entering the Batcave and his "Dad" saying are you through being Batman, I hold all the cards. Bruce says no, end of issue. So to recap. Bruce finds Alfred's body, gets mad and prepares to fight. That's a whole issue. What I liked. The art wasn't bad. What I didn't like. The decompression. Nothing happens. What is bad writing. Told, not shown. We actually don't have to hear Alfred's narration. We're Batman readers. WE KNOW BRUCE LOVES ALFRED AND ALFRED'S DEATH IS VERY UPSETTING. King's writing of Bruce's grief is superficial. I would think Bruce would descend on his "Dad" like a bolt from Zeus. Things would happen fast and brutally. The mourning part would come later. And the way King structures Alfred's death and Bruce finding out. The incident happened months ago our time. We only see Bruce's reaction now. All this makes the death seem, for lack of a better word, fake. And the whole Bat family would be upset. By not, again, showing us, Alfred's death has no impact. Additionally, I know that Alfred is not dead forever. With Bendis declaring he's a genius and writing stories where the world knows Clark is Superman, I know a reset is coming down the pike. So we will see Alfred again. The only thing that made Superman's death 27 years ago affecting at all is that while I knew he was coming back, the characters didn't. We got to see people mourn and say what Supes meant to them. We haven't seen that with Alfred. Bad Writing King. Or I could be wrong.

I don't know what linear story telling did to King as a child, but it must be terrible. Because King just refuses to tell a story in linear order. Apparently Thomas Wayne's whole motivation is that he fell in love with the Selina Kyle of his world and he wants Bruce to, in some sort of weird psycho-sexual transference thing, seal the deal. Apparently Martha Joker killed Selina and Thomas Bats doesn't want Bruce to miss out. Again, we get huge amounts of decompression. The Bruce Thomas confrontation amounts to one punch then we cut to non--linear flashbacks that don't really amount to anything. We see how Thomas came to Bruce's world, but the labored backstory was overly complicated. All it amounts to is "Father Knows Best." I remained unconvinced. Just be over story. It's SOOO SSSLLOOWWW. Everything hits with the impact of week-old bread, stale and moldy. Do things so the story stays fresh. Any baker knows that. Or I could be wrong.

Nice art. Well commenting on what I like is out of the way. Now for the bad stuff. The action consists of a bunch of "I've got you, no, I've got you, no, I've got you." And it's about as clever as that. It seems that Bruce was in control of Ventriloquist all along by miking the dummy and speaking to Arnold Wesker. So he controlled Psycho Pirate, who didn't control Catwoman. So question? Why did Bruce let Bane and Thomas take over Gotham in the first place? No answer from King. We see a well-drawn but boringly written fight. Bruce says Thomas, you're not my father so cut out the Darth Vader crap. My response was "well duh." That's the big epiphany? Oh yeah. Cat and Bat "marry." After defeating Thomas, Cat says let's get married. Bat says sure. We'll have sex and then wake up Judge Wolfman. (A nice nod to Marv Wolfman). We see them in bed declaring their love and Seline has an engagement ring on. They forgot to visit the judge but they consider themselves married anyway. How does that work? Does Selina live in Wayne Manor? How does Bruce Wayne living with an infamous thief work? Does the press comment? How does she fill her time? Does she keep stealing? Get a job? Become a lady who lunches? Decide to work for a charity? Bats gives Gotham Girl platinum kryptonite, so now she has all the powers without any of the side effects. How does this work? Cleaning up crime should be very easy now. Say what you will about Batman's villains, but they aren't designed to fight a heavyweight with Superman powers. In prison, Bane breaks Thomas' back. I have to admit, I liked that. See I can say nice things about King. We also see Bruce walk into a bar and not meet a Rabbi, Priest and Minister. He does meet Chuck Brown a.k.a. Kiteman. (God, I have Kiteman). Bruce wants to catch the last minute of the football game. Chuck says the Knights always blow it. (As a Detroit Lions "fan" I accept that reality.) Bruce says things change and people change and the Knights wins. (As a Lions fan, false hope is terrible.) So Bruce now sees that there is no good death. Life is great. Again, well duh. What I really hate is that Bruce's lessons had such a high body count. I read someone write about King, saying his writing was about trauma, and not heroics. Points for that observation. His run, while it had a couple f fun parts (like the Lois-Selina bachelorette party bit) was not fun. The dialog lacked character. The plots weren't clever and the explanations of what we missed when the plots concluded were hardly Agatha Christie smart. We now have a strange status quo. Alfred is dead. But I predict we'll have another crisis that will restore a more familiar status quo. Maybe they're work-shopping Bat and Car marriage. I have no problem with it. We've had 80 years of bachelor Bruce. Robin came within a year of intro, so loner Batman is something of a myth. It would all depend on how Cat was written, and I have no faith King can actually write a flesh-and-blood has her on spark of divine fire woman partner for Bruce. This run was not the profound insight into Bruce's psyche that King thinks it was. It covered a lot of familiar ground with plots that had been done before and done better. His Bruce was a mess, and didn't see him do the work of making Bruce healthier mentally. His Catwoman was a plot device, not a character. He KILLED ALFRED, so screw him. I am glad this is over. But reading Tynion's plans for Bruce, (He's even angrier) shows that King has not written a definitive Bruce, setting the pace for decades to come. We're still stuck with angry Miller Batman and I'm tired, so tired, of that. Or I could be wrong.

What to say, what to say? The art is good. Tynion definately is taking the book in a new direction, but is it really a new direction? We see Bruce at Bats being ever so dedicated to fighting crime that he neglects his guests at a Wayne Enterprise event. That's not new. We see him fighting an unnamed evil organization with a secret goal. That's not new. We see Selina acting at "Mrs." Wayne at said event and still looking at shiny objects with lust. Could be interesting. She loves Bruce and wants to help Gotham, but she's still, at heart, a thief. Has potential if done right, but it's a tricky road to walk. Some point I bring up that could be exploited, but the writer will probably miss. The mayor says that thanks to Bruce's efforts Gotham is a boom town again, growing faster than any other American city and how did Bruce push his agenda to build a new campus through the city government so quickly? We don't know and that's a good question. Is Bruce actually being as corrupt as the people he fights pushing his agenda? Did he bribe people, make promises that are "iffy"? We don't know and I hope Tynion explores this idea - that in the end Bruce is as corrupt in his own way as others. Democracy must be run democratically and not by an oligarch. Bruce calls Lucius Alfred by mistake, so that shows he misses Alfred. So do I. He'll be back, but I do believe having a black CEO of a billion dollar company act as the servant of a rich white man is just bad optics. Also, running a billion dollar company is time consuming. Lucius has better things to do. But the art was really good. I liked Selina's slightly off-modal haircut. There's a lot of potential here to be good and be bad and just hit notes that have been hit in other stories. Hence the rating of 5. I will wait and see. Or I could be wrong.

Again, a five. I liked the art and I liked the fact that the colors were bright. King's Batman used muted colors, I guess to symbolize depression of the mind. The plot is that the five assasins are locked up in Bruce's supermax holding cells he built for the city. But the cells don't work and they escape. Jinx or Minx or Lynx or whatever her name is, gets hit by a semi-truck so bad that the front is caved in, but she lives. (Is she super, because otherwise she'd be a smear on the road.) Penguin and Riddler are talking via phone while Penguin does some light housekeeping that consists of a lot of bodies. Riddler is talking about how he and Penguin made a deal with someone called the Designer who will collect. Selina relays the fact that last issue's macabre death guy was trying to change blue prints for plans to Bruce's new Gotham. Bruce detects nervousness in her voice. I really hope that this is not a seed of Selina realizing she can't take Bruce's world. First, it's a cliche. Second, her past is filled with her doing dangerous things that got her enemies that want to kill her. She saw a lot of bad stuff, so this should be par for the course and not a wake-up call. My problems with the story. The unseen villain. What's his or her goal? Money? Playing nice with Bruce would get the Designer all kinds of money legally. Power? The same. You own a lot or real estate in a city and you've got power. Is the villain an architect who doesn't want a new modern city? Did the Designer change the plans of Bruce's jail, so all the villains could escape? That would explain how no villain ever seems to stay in prison. I guess I just don't like the hidden villain does things we won't understand for six issues trope. I much prefer the villain monologues about how his evil plan is going ahead, no one will stop me. We don't know all the details so when they unfold we're surprised, but when the hero thwarts the villain we say "of course, I missed that clue." I am old school that way. I really do believe in logical motives for things. Lust for revenge, money, power idealogical purity. I have to get behind the motive to get behind the villain. Evil for the sake of evil doesn't do it for me, which is why I never got behind Morrison's Batman run. I am holding out hope, but these new-fangled writers with their new-fangled ways of story-telling don't do it for me. Or I could be wrong.

No. Just no. I had hoped that King's successor would build on the good stuff that King did. And to be fair, for all my criticisms of King, I must acknowledge he did some good things - especially his relationship with Catwoman. But that's where this issue really falls apart. It turns out that Catwoman, Riddler and Penguin were part of some cabal with a secret agenda. (Apparently they killed and buried the Joker, a Joker?) And the Penguin also bribed guards, builders and that's why he was able to get the assassins out of jail so quickly. You'd think that Batman might anticipate a move like that in a city where corruption is a real thing. You know be on the lookout for bribes and such. Riddler mocks Selina about her not telling Batman about her evil deeds and Lucius has some sort of holographic tech that can turn any car into some sort of "Batmobile" at least from the outside. (No armor, and I think we can all agree that a bullet proof capability is important for the cars of Batman and James Bond). Also, Penguin tries to bribe the assassins he hired to leave Gotham but Deathstroke, when confronted by Batman, slits Penguin's throat and says that Batman can capture the paid killers who will kill again if they get away or he can save Penguin's life - the life of a mobster who has killed and will kill again. He lets the killers who will kill again to save the life of a man who will kill again. (I can't put my finger on it, but it seems like that's not the right choice but that could be me.) It seems that Penguin knows who the real villain of the piece is and that villain hates Bruce Wayne. and Wayne is the real target. Dun, Dun DUNN!!! So what's my problem? Simple. Selina keeping a secret from Bruce. I suspect that her saying she conspired with others to kill the Joker, a Joker (?) would be something she'd want to mention. If she didn't trust Bruce to understand the reasons why she did what she did, then their common-law marriage is built on a lie. Also, if she told Bruce and he freaked out, then he really didn't understand who he was in a relationship with. Frankly, killing the Joker is the only sane thing to do. No matter how many times Batman captures the Joker and locks him up, it doesn't stick. The Joker gets out. Letting him live condemns untold hundreds, if not not thousands, to death. Selina keeping this secret is so 1960s comics trope-y that I can only sigh in disappointment. Keep up with the times fellas. So Tynion is starting his run with a bad portrayal of a relationship I've enjoyed reading about. Also, you'd think that Selina might mention being part of a conspiracy that had Bruce Wayne as the target. She is, afterall, essentially Mrs. Bruce Wayne. She is now in the line of fire. So this plot goes forward only because of the Roger Ebert Idiot Plot trope, which basically says that the story only happens because characters act in an idiotic fashion and not in a logical fashion. I mean it might have been a good story if Selina came clean about his conspiracy befire it went into action. We could see Bruce having to grow the hell up and deal with the messiness of other lives. Have him show growth and say something like we all have a past, but it's the future that matters and as long as you don't pin me in the middle of a conspiracy where people get killed, I think we can manage. So early on the Tynion run, I am disappointed. I did like the art, but can't say I'm crazy about how the Penguin was drawn. Did like how Catwoman was drawn - attractive without being all male-gazy to the point where she looks like a stripper. Or I could be wrong.

Great art, rushed story. We see Harley save Catwoman in the graveyard and Batman track down the various assassins. (He sends a fleet of drones to get Deathstroke). Batman reaches Riddler's lair and there is video with no sound showing DESIGN or whatever his name is confronting Riddler. (Penguin is wounded in this episode and threatening hospital workers). The action is being watched by a "mysterious" woman and Joker has a murder board with Batman's sidekicks showing hero names and real names. Finally Harley and Catwoman catch up with Batman and Catwoman says she's sorry and that we'll have to wait for the next issue to find out the conspiracy. A lot of plot happens but too much of it is told via text boxes of thoughts as opposed to us being shown what is happening. Like I said great art, but I feel that the reveal of the plot is awkward, very mechanical. Can't say the conspiracy is doing it for me. I think Catwoman might have told Batman about this before her hand was forced by circumstances. This kind of ruins the work King put in showing that these two have unburdened their secrets to each other. It's, to put it simply, a bit comic booky. Like the old Superman covers where's he's turning his back on Jimmy and Lois with a thought bubble reading "I have to get away from them, if they knew my true secret they'd flee in terror." Or I could be wrong, though I have to laugh when Catwoman is drawn carrying an unconscious male assassin over her shoulder as the artist draws her as a woman who weighs 105 pounds soaking wet. Or I could be wrong.

Great art. But I don't think the writer realized how his grand plot really makes Batman's traditional enemies look like chumps. Apparently the DESIGNER is some super criminal who fought a previous "World's Greatest Detective" and realized that he had to change. (Think Prof. Moriarity vs. Sherlock kind of vibe) and evolved the way he fought his enemy and offered early Joker, Riddler, Catwoman and Penguin plans that would allow them to pull off their ultimate heists. Joker apparently killed the guy and thus started his dark descent into total depravity. Catwoman's plan was to steal the ultimate forture, which DUN, DUN, DUN, turns out to be the Wayne Fortune(tm). Also, the corpse in the grave was the Designer's? I guess. My problems are that coming up with yet another ultimate villain we've never heard of is, one, a cliche. Two it makes all of Batman's regular villains look second rate. They're not scared of Batman, but they're scared of THE DESIGNER. That means he must be a heavy weight. Total Worf effect. (See TV Tropes). I always have a problem when a writer introduces backstory that we've never heard of to long-standing characters. It usually doesn't work, gums up a simple and elegant back story. (The Waynes were killed by a mugger. No that mugger was hired by a gangster who got amnesia and forgot he hired Joe Chill to kill the Waynes, so Bruce gets to solve his parents' murder again. See what I mean?) Also, King spent time showing Bruce's weaknesses and had him reveal his greatest sin, but now Tynion has Catwoman have to reveal a secret you'd think she would have already revealed, if only to safeguard the fortune she's marrying into. So now the issue ends with Batman rushing to thwart the Designer's plan, which I guess is being carried out by the Joker? He has to save the Wayne fortune. Which shouldn't be hard because a diverse portfolio is created just so a wealthy person doesn't put all his eggs in one basket. Bruce anticipates everything, so I have to believe he has a rainy day fund with hundreds of millions init for just such an occasion. So I am not buying the premise of the story. It doesn't work for me. Or I could be wrong.

Apparently, people liked this issue more than I did. The art, again, is great. And I appreciate the fact that Selina hatches a plan on her own, and is affiliated with Batman, but not a mere soldier. Basically, Harley is helping Selina penetrate Riddler's lair. They talk. In this latest version of the DC universe, Harley doesn't know who Selina is and associates her kitten with a whip act with "naughty" librarians. OK. Batman fights Deathstroke and pleads with him to give up his contract because Batman MUST save Gotham's nine million souls. (Boy, the vanity and ego of that statement bothers me. I know it's supposed to show Bruce's state of mental well being, but it's not a nice look and I want my Batman sane. But that's me.) Selina says she bobby-trapped Riddler lair, but then Riddler appears and says he's still in play. Selina tell Harley she worked out a plan to steal the biggest fortune and will just have to steal it before the Designer does. Nice. This issue twice shows how smart she is. First she reveals when she visited the Riddler, she rigged his gear so she could act, then she is taking the bull by the horn and will steal Bruce's fortune first. Again, nice. But Batman fighting Deathstroke is just filler. Bruce's whole plan is to talk Slade out his contract? That's not how Slade works. So great art and great Catwoman. Tynion is actually giving a sense of character and agency. She goes along with Bruce but does it her way. So much better than King, who basically said Meow and followed Bruce around like a puppy. Most uncat-like. So a 5. Or I could be wrong.

I can't say I was excited about this issue. For one thing, due to the COVID-19 outbreak, it's been so long since the last issue, I've kind of lost my place in the story. No one's fault. Who could have predicted this? But Punchline is not actually an interesting sidekick. She just likes killing people. Harley Quinn started out as a cartoon character, so the voice actress brought real pathos and emotion to the story of her. Punchlike just strikes me as a cynical attempt to catch lightning in a bottle a second time. Her "origin" is in the Joker 80th anniversary issue and she apparently is just some college chick who wants to be a killer and auditioned for the Joker. Whatever. Doesn't work for me. So having Harley and Punchline fight does nothing for me. Having Batman fight the Riddler did nothing for me. I did like how Batman called on Riddler to stick the "rules" of the Riddler's game, but we don't actually see Batman sweat, so there's no tension, no sense of "boy, I better solve these riddles or people will die." Also, Slade knows who Batman is? I don't like that. I don't as a rule like villains knowing heroes' secret identities. If forces all kinds of twists to justify having the villain not do anything with that fact. So we finally get to the main villain on the last page. He is in his dumb costume and has a picture of Alfred and another one of the Waynes with young Bruce on the table next to him. So this shows that another villain knows who Batman is. Hey writers, either get rid of secret identities or due justice to the tropes about them. None of this well everyone knows, but no one does anything about it stuff. All right? So the action wasn't exciting and we still don't know the real villain's ultimate identity or goals. Not great. (Also, again the virus delay also really took steam out, but like I said, no one's fault. But it does have an impact in how I view the story. Just want to put that out there.) So nice art, but all in all, not a great issue. Or I could be wrong.

I really don't get this issue. It's supposed to show Bats is smart, but the plot can only happen if Batman is stupid. The Planner or whatever his name is actually an animated corpse that can actually fence with Batman? The Joker has really seen an upgrade in his skill set. Yes, the Planner or the Archvillain or wahtever his name is was actually killed by the Joker and his corpse is being controlled by the Crown Prince of Crime. Batman figures that out but actually just doesn't destroy the corpse while fighting it. Moron. Oh, Catwoman puts her plan to steal Bruce Wayne's fortune into place to prevent the Archvillain from doing that, but guess what - the Joker is one step ahead and actually needs Catwoman's bank account info to steal Bruce's fortune. Oppsie. So Catwoman trying to save Bruce's fortune causes it to be lost. That's actually the definition of irony. All this happens because people acted dumb. Instead of securing Bruce's bucks, Catwoman steals it? Instead of just destroying a corpse, Batman engages in a fencing match and hero/villain monologue? Also, the villain costumers are ugly. I just don't get this. Also, after King spent years building up Bat and Cat, Tynion has taken a few months to destroy the relationship. I like Bat/Cat and I hate it when new writers destroy all the work of previous writers. It destroys the sense of a story progressing and it makes stories just the playground of one writer and not the work of many over years. Don't like this arc. Can't wait for it all to be undone in the upcoming event when Alfred returns. Or I could be wrong.

Let's sum up the action - nothing happens. Selina was taken to a hospital and survived her gunshot wound and was later kidnapped by the Penguin, who has created a hide-out with all the free Gotham villains. We flasback to when Bruce met the original detective who swore to teach Bruce how to lose. We find out that Bruce is broke and wanted for embezzlement and is all alone - again. This plot device is overused. It was the plot of the Dark Knight Rises, Batman Eternity and a story going back to the 1980s. King used a variation of it for City of Bane, which was just a repeat of Knightfall. Yes, we get it. Break the Bat, the Bat comes back. The story ends with Batman jumping out of the window of the now-empty Catwoman hospital room being shot at by Joker goons. A whole issue that moved the plot ahead by about three inches. The art was inconsistent and Selina's face was odd. And we also see her dressed only in a bra and panties for the entire issue. Lacks class and suggests catering to the lowest common demoninator of male gaze. Not a fan. This whole Joker War is just a riff on City of Bane. One would think the Gotham PD and FBI and National Guard would actually do something and that many Joker goons would get killed in the arc, but I predict that they will do nothing. Tynion has boasted about this run, but it's more of the same. Yawn. Or I could be wrong.

The plot is basically the same as The Dark Knight Rises movie. Enemy claims all of Bruce/Batman's resources and captures Batman. He must now fight back without resources. The Worf effect (TV Tropes) is in full effect. Punchline is so badass, she takes down Batman. We see the Joker buy the theater that the Waynes left to be killed. It's also filled with bodies or corpses or people trapped via joker gas. Don't know, don't care. I truly feel that the Joker is played out. He's used so often that no one's done anything new with him for a long time. Keep him on the shelf until someone comes up with a plot like the Laughing Fish (which only lasted two issues and we're still talking about it more than 40 years later). This whole run is just a rehash of previous stories - The Dark Knight Rises, City of Bane. It seems like writers want to outdo each other in terms of damage to Batman/Bruce and body counts. The net effect is a bland sameness to the stories. No clever plots that keep us guessing, no fun or surprises. Frankly, at this point I am of the opinion that Gotham should just be left to die. I hated the whole Gotham is cut off from the world plot, but it makes sense. Just evacuate the city and call it a day. I read an interview with Tynion on CBR and he said he's writing a story about Bruce and wealth and his contribution to violence and stuff. He said Bruce was always rich, but not SUPER RICH (Not true) and that he is playing with ideas of what happens when this wealth is used for evil instead of good. Yawn. Like I said, this has all been done before in The Dark Knight Rises. I am bored and unimpressed. Or I could be wrong.

Wow, again nothing happens. Batman wakes up after being drugged last issue. Harley was taking care of him, I guess, by watching Batman sleep, and he goes to Monarch Theater where Joker has dug up allt he corpses of the people he has killed. Guess people don't get cremated in Gotham. And there's a guy with a batarang in a baseball bat who is killing clowns. At least someone is doing something. Tynion says lawyers have prevented cops from stopping Joker thugs. Huh? That's not how the law works. Basically, this is one giant issue of treading water. Oh, Harley isn't dead. She stitched up her throat cut. What do you want to bet that after this run is done, no one will mention the cut again and we will never see the scar? Imagine if this was taking place monthly instead of bi-weekly? A lot of issues where nothing happens. Just get on with it? The art isn't bad. Or I could be wrong.

Let's see. Batman escapes Theater and Harely Quinn detoxes him with Poison Ivy stuff. Joker appreciates Clown Killer throwing out rules and give OK for Punchline to Kill Harley. Detox stuff causes Bats to hallucinate Alfred. That's it. Is it just me? Because I don't actually see anything happening here. Back in the day when the kids would stay off my lawn, each comic issue of a multi-issue story would be filled with action and dialog and inner monologues. There would be battles and explanations on why this battle was tough for the hero. My point is that there would be a lot to read even if the plot advanced only a little. Stan Lee was a genius in making the story breathless and making you want to "tune in" the next issue. You wanted to see where the thing was going. Here, I can guess where it's going because it's just another rehash of a story that's been done a lot since Bane Breaks the Bat, which was almost 30 years ago. The art was nice, but today's artists really need to learn how to actually draw action. Also, why do the clowns follow Joker? That's a question worth answering. This "big" story just isn't going anywhere. Or I could be wrong.

Didn't we just see this arc less than a year ago. A villain takes control of Gotham. Bruce is beaten down and has hallucinations. He realizes he's stronger with allies than alone. He yells "I'm Batman" and takes down people. The Alfred dreams are something new, but he'll be back. The funny thing is that the Justice League issue that also came out today also had a Batman is tied up and dreaming, this time due to Black Mercy. It tells pretty much the same story. We get it. Seriously, how many times in the past few years has this same plot gone on. Batman talks about the vow he made to stop crime and prevent what happened to his parents not happen to anyone else? I will give Tynion points when Bruce says he's a failure. Given the Joker's body count alone, he's failed big time, but he keeps getting back up to fail again. DC has to reconfigure Bats' motivation because this one has been worked to death. Also, Harley and Punchline fight. Harley tells Punchy that Joker cares only for Batman, and that Punchline doesn't matter. Punchy takes that badly. I guess denial is more than a river in Egypt. Catwoman wants to leave Penguin's hidden lair and promises to make Pengy a billionaire if she can leave. I guess this is where Tynion's promise that Bruce will no longer be super, super, super rich in the future comes into play. Catwoman gives his bucks away to villains. The problem with that is that lately Bats' villains have all been crazy. They don't care about money, they just want to indulge in their neuroses and kinks. So money is not the motivator. All my past complaints still hold. Nothing really happens. The plot is a rehash of something that just happened. The fact that people just stand by and let Gotham burn because of "reasons" is a bridge too far when it comes to willing suspension of disbelief. The plot to steal Bruce's money is a rehash of several comics plots and "The Dark Knight Rises" and money doesn't work that way. I can't wait for all of this to be retconned away. (Bruce will definately get his money back. It was like when Denny O'Neil took half of Superman's power away in the early 1970s. His power creeped back up because Superman being super powerful and Batman being super rich are foundational aspects of that characters. Just learn to deal with it, writers). Or I could be wrong. At least the art was nice.

Another issue where nothing happens. Batman gathers the Bat Family together and says I will take down the Joker. Harley says she'll kill him and chaos still reigns. We see the Joker take a ride in his Joker limo and go to Ace chemicals and kill all his henchmen. What little happens is of the tell, not show variety. That's bad writing. We see the villains go to the hq of the Planner or the Designer or whatever his name is. There's no clever plan, no strategy. So let me get this straight? Catwoman's plan steals all of Bruce's money despite the fact that there are a thousand laws and regulations in place to stop that kind of thing. That money is used to buy an army of goons despite the fact that there would be a paper trail a mile wide that would give authorities leverage to stop said transfers. Joker is killing goons and they keep on being loyal? All law enforcement authorities just stand by? Money doesn't work that way. Joker is collecting bodies to reanimate and when Bruce gets to Ace Chemicals one of the bodies is Alfred. Bruce just clobbers the body and says this isn't real. It's real all right, but Alfred is just a reanimate corpse. I really am hating this part of the story. To quote Tony Stark. Not a good plan. Even the Clownkiller is just seen and not actually does nothing this issue. Batman once again says yeah, I should have brought you guys in sooner. So his family just stood on the sidelines waiting for the coach to get them off the bench? They have aboslutely no free will? They are essentially bat robots? No not buying it. This whole story arc is just a lot of waiting around until Batman 100, when once again it will end with Batman punching out the Joker and giving a declaration of principles that ends with "I'm Batman." Harley actually makes a very compelling argument that the Joker should die. I like Batman's no kill rule, but authors keep wanting to have the definitive Joker story, so they keep upping the body count, so four or five times a year, the Joker kills dozens and dozens of people. That makes the stories boring and repetitive with no sense of style or wit. And it makes Batman and the authorities look SO LAME. Put the Joker on the shelf and keep him there until someone actually does come up with a definitive Joker story (and it's not the Three Jokers). This is not good story telling folk. Stop deconstructing Batman to the point where he is shown to be counter productive and in the wrong all the time. Or I could be wrong.

Is it just me? I see the "professional" reviews and for the most part, they loved the Joker War. But all I saw was a bunch of nothing. It's another all-out Gotham war. But Tynion's plot makes no sense. He restores the status quo (we don't know how much money Bruce has, but we all know in the end, he'll be or become a billionaire again. We know Alfred is returning). Punchline knows who Batman is. Instead of getting the last word and telling the world that, she plays "victim" to the Joker. Harley ties Joker up with a bomb and Bats walks away, but we're told the Joker escaped, not shown how he did it. The Joker sits around a diner with his hoodie up and no notices him? He jokerizes a sap and tells him that his body will be found and taken as the Joker. Like anyone would buy that. We have fingerprints and DNA and dental x-rays and the ability to search for scars. Tynion, stop moving your plots forward by making everyone so dumb. What we don't see is how the Bat family rallies around Bruce, how they love and respect him and each other, how they support him and his goals and how he has influenced them to make sacrifices with their lives. We haven't seen anyone mourn Alfred, not really. Instead we get another empty spectacle where no one acts human and the logical consequences of the plot are not played out or explored. Just more blather about how Gotham is different and Bats is a Joke from the Joker and "no, I'm not" from Bruce. Hopefully, Fifth-gen or whatever DC has coming next will smooth the edges. Tynion has also introduced the next "Bats is an incompetent vigilante, I'll take over and show him how it's done" guy. Like we haven't seen that before with the Reaper, with Az-Bats. Just more retreads of old plots. The art was nice. Just echh. Or I could be wrong.

Once again we see nothing happen. We are told that Catwoman has to deal with her enemies, that Lucius has Bruce's money and Bruce will have it back if he wants, but eyes will be on him so he can't spend it. Bruce never asks for the money back and says he'll move into a brownstone in the city that he didn't even know he owned. We're told that the city changed and all the Joker goons just took off their masks so no one knows who they are but apparently Clownkiller is tracking them down. Again, that's not how money works. If Joker paid the goons, then there is a money trail. The Board pays off Bruce, but he owns the stock. Stock deals can be nullified when fraud is proven. Lucius says he has tens of billions of dollars in cash, but Bruce didn't have a Scrooge McDuck money bin. His assets were stock, real estate, etc. These aren't liquid assets. Converting them to cash would be impossible even if a whiff of fraud were suspected. So what assets does Bruce have? We don't know. We are told that he can't spend what money he has without receiving attention, so if he breaks the batmobile, he'll have to fix it without using Wayne Enterprises resources. I don't think he ever did that because employees would have had to do the work and why would they keep their mouths shut? Bruce living in the city. Already been done. This whole slimmed down Batman goes back to the VIP concept launched when Robin went to college. There is nothing new under the sun with Tynion. Keeping Catwoman and Batman apart is just annoying. We still really haven't dealt with Alfred's death. All this is a rehash of stuff that's been done before and the fear of actually going forward with the character development that people actually like - Bat/Cat - built on a foundation of unbelievable financial structure. What will happen to all the charities Bruce supports? We don't know. He used his fortune to help a lot of people, is that money gone. The way foundations work doesn't even seem to have a play in this world. I am not impressed, but I could be wrong.

Who did Tynion rip off this time? First there is animated Batman with a fellow student of a mentor. There is himself, with more victims becoming villains themselves. Unfortunately his ne2 villain makes compelling points. Bruce is letting a mass murderer loose. Gotham is incapable of locking up its criminals. Yet another villain who knows who Batman is. Bruce yet again saying stay out of my city. When has that ever worked? I am not impressed. The art was nice. Or I could be wrong.

We learn that everyone in Gotham thinks "Ghost-Maker" is a stupid name. They're not wrong, I'll say that. There is a lot of talk-fighting. That's when people have intricate conversations that require one's full concentration while fighting. A paragraph of dialog can take place in time it takes to throw one punch. Ghost-Maker calls out Batman for sucking at his job. He says that he's, in 12 hours, brought down corrupt judges, arms dealers etc. We also learn that Bats and Ghostie knew each other back in their training days. Meanwhile Clownkiller attacks Harley and she brushes him off easily, saying she looks toward the future, not the past where she has a body count that must be in the hundreds. Ghost-Maker also calls out Bruce for letting a 17-year-old who has killed dozens walk around free. Bruce says he can't send the kid to Blackgate, the guards would help him. I assume that means help him kill criminals. I guess Bruce has never heard of protective custody and maximum security. Here's the thing. Ghost-Maker is right. Bruce let the kid go after giving him a stern warning and the first thing he did was go after Harley. The fact that she will live is based more on the fact that she's agile. If she wasn't, that's another body on Bruce's fail pile. Bats crashes through Harley's window and then says he knows about the corrupt judges, he was giving them line to real in their boss. Now that's not possible. He also says he knows about the arms deal, he sabotaged the weapons so they wouldn't work and he was waiting to see who they were going to be sold to. He mentions he had Cassandra Caine keeping an eye on some crooks. We see her in her Batgirl outfit, so cool. Barb is tracking the fight and Bruce tells her to stay out of Ghostie's network, because it would crush her network. So that's clue. In all shots, past and present, Ghostie's eyes are covered, so if he's blind, you read it here first folks. The art is nice, but the main problem is that Tynion stretches out all the exposition and action at the same time. Instead of having a page of dialog explaining positions, and then the fight. It's all one thing and both detract from each other. Also, has two swords in him by the end of the fight. You know Tynion, Batman wore body armor back in Batman #1 in 1940. So I find the idea of him just wearing tights and not body armor to be weak sauce, especially since the Batman movie came out in 1989 -31 years ago - so armor has two historical precedents. Shrugging off killing or maiming wounds through "I am Batman" will power is just a bridge too far for me. All in all, I just found the plot and the stolen elements from early stories to be uninteresting and wish they would move on. Bruce being "poor" actually doesn't affect this issue at all. So why take away his fortune if the stories aren't going to reflect his diminshed means? Not a great issue. But I could be wrong.

This issue is the very definition of story-telling that treads water. All we learn is what we know - Ghostmaker is a former "schoolmate" of Batman and they had a deal that Ghostmaker is now breaking. The deal? They keep out of each other's way. Oh, and Bruce apparently misses his old friend. Well, politics will do that. Clownkiller still wants to kill Harley, and We now know that Oracle is called Batgirl Prime and Steph and Cassie are "The Batgirls." We do see that Ghostmaker is scaring the crooks into giving themselves up and returned Mr. Pyg to Arkham. He was free for eight months. That really does make him better than Bruce at fighting crime. Pyg is a dangerous mass murderer (and frankly, a boring "gimmick" villain who shocks only because of his body count. I maintain that's not a good character.) Will Bruce say he knew where Pyg was, but needed him free to stop someone from stealing the election or selling nukes to some hostile power? Because letting a monster like that roam is just a bridge too far. If he didn't know where Pyg was, then Ghostie is better. The whole issue ends with Clownkiller about to kill a tied up Harley. We get the sense that she helped kill people he cared about, and that's the problem with Harley. Her body count is problematic when trying to make her a hero for the kids. We are pretty much right where we were last issue, but $4 poorer. That's not good story telling. Not a fan of this issue. Or I could be wrong.

This issue is just dumb. Nothing happens. Bao, I mean Clownhunter tries to kill Harley but can't because of the power of love. Harley says sure I killed a lot of people and destroyed your life, but oppsie and I absolutely deserve to walk free because I'm a victim, and you're a victim and those dozens of people you brutally killed using psychotic methods totally had it coming. Shadowkiller or Ghostslaughter or whatever, maintains caring about people will get Bruce killed. He says it hasn't so far. But caring about people Bruce's way sure has gotten a lot of other people killed. I am talking about thousands. Thanks to DC's love of body counts, letting the Joker live means thousands of innoncent people die every year because of Batman. I don't think that's the message DC wants to give, but that's what they're doing. The action is stupid. I mean just stupid. Clownkiller, who hasn't hestitated to kill nameless victims, has a sword over Harley's neck. He just holds it there giving Bruce time to literally break his bonds, grab a batarang from his belt that Ghoststabber left on his body while tying him up. Bruce is able to throw the batarang to Harley, she catches it and then gets into a defensive position and talks about the healing power of forgiveness. Clownpiethrower breaks down and everybody hugs and it's cake for everyone. All this action has to take time, yet Clownboy just holds the the sword over Harley's neck. Even Ghost boy says he did everything he did to prove a point to Bruce. Which is what the Joker did in The Dark Knight. Bruce says I need help, I am getting older and don't have billions and Alfred is gone and Catwoman left me and my pickup truck has a flat and my dog died. So I could use help just don't kill anyone. Apparently, torture and planting evidence and crippling people is OK, just don't kill. This issue is bad for so many reasons. Pacing is SOOO SSLLOOWW. Characters act out of character. A kid who has KILLED dozens brutally just changes. That's not the way things work. Harley is not nuts. She just shrugs off stuff and is sane. That's not Harley. Ghostkisser really just wants something and agrees to work with Bruce. Bruce really lets mass murderers off the hook with a hug. He says he needs help despite the fact that he's got more allies than ever. What with Spoiler and Cass as Batgirls (an ideal I really like - see I can be positive and enthusiastic), a couple of Robins, Nightwing, Huntress, Oracle and maybe Catwoman and her crew. Why does Bruce need one more ally. He talks about reduced resources, but I don't see it. He says he doesn't have allies in government, but the Commish is still his fried. This issue is saying things that aren't true and I really dislike all these mass murderers getting left off the hook. I am for rehabilitation, but murder is something else. Prison is also for punishment and these killers have been left off the hook. The art was nice, but the action was nothing. Or I could be wrong.

What to say? I get what the author is doing, but I reject the premise of the story. We see Batman and Clownkiller track down thieves using hovermachines to steal stuff and Bats tell Clown not to kill or maim, they're just thieves. We see the latest villain saying Gotham is going to hell and why don't you, new mayor, buy my tech to save the city. It's the beginning of the Magistrate. The founder is a man called Mr. Saint and he grew up in Gotham before the Dark Times, before the (crime) Empire. He pitches that normal cops can't take don't abnormal crooks and that Gotham, once a shining beacon on a hill, is a national joke and no one wants to live there. (He has a point). We see reporters hanging out at Bruce's brownstone and neighbors also speaking about how things used to be better in the old days. We also see the new Batcave, where Bruce is training Clown boy. It doesn't look that bad. Again, I am not buying "he has to do more with less" bit because we really don't see the less. Bruce still has a lifestyle that 99 percent would envy. Finally, we see Damian run home to Mommy. She points that out and says Damian no longer has resources and friends. Then brutes come out and say they're with the League of Lazurus and fight fight fight. A thug has a knife at Talia's throat. Damian hesitates to kill and the last shot in the book is a splash of blood in the air. We are supposed to think that thug slashed Talia's throat and the blood is hers. I bet the blood is the thug's because Talia didn't hesitate to kill. What I liked - The art. Pretty good dudes, but again, my complaint of today's artists being good at individual panels but not great at showing action remains. Think of it as the difference between being a great still photographer and a great action movie director. There is a of parallel action going on. Now Bruce and Damian no longer have "resources." Damian and Clown Boy are now being taught by mentors. Damian is being told to kill, Clown Boy is being told not to kill. Mr. Saint remembers the good old days and even mentions Thomas Wayne being a wealthy guy who served the city as a doctor. His solution is to build a fascist state. Bruce is Thomas' son, and his solution is to catch crooks and bring them back alive. The art thieves used very expensive tech to steal a painting. Bats doesn't have the money to pay for expensive tech. Parallels and paradoxes abound. I also have to say that spending a fortune to steal a painting is not a great business plan. Thieves understand certain cost/benefit ratios. Aside from Tynion pointing out that no one would want to live in a city with Gotham's body count, I don't agree with the premise he's setting up. But he is right, business and people would flee the city for safer ports. It happens in real life. Look at Newark or Cleveland. DC can't just keep playing the same notes. The Dark Knight Returns came out 36 years ago. Back then New York was a hellscape, but the city turned around. Why not try that story and just have Batman go after the freaks, with Gotham being a place where people actually want to live. The whole kid sidekick thing Tynion is doing has been played out before with Jason and Damian. This is just a repeat of what's been done. When you start taking something that is unreal (costumed crime fighters and colorful villains) and try to make it real, it gives people like me - knit-picking know-it-all – permission to knit pick. But when you say this is the world and here are the rules don't question it too much, I'll go along as long as it's fun and entertaining. I will admit that this is quite the needle to thread but when it works it's a lot of fun. But when you make it "real" and comment too much on real issues, it falls apart. At least that's my point of view. Your mileage may vary. I also don't like it when Bruce just reveals his secret identity to just anyone. I am old school, when superheroes didn't even tell their wives they were superheroes. You can say that's unbelieveable, even in a world with flying aliens who look just like us, but that is a foundation I grew up with and like. If you don't, I get it. But if you're going to get real, then you have to play it out all the way. And they don't, except for the original Spider-Man - Green Goblin thing, and that ended in a woman being fridged. No one wants that these days. Or I could be wrong.

Let's see. Everything is a set up of the new status quo. Scarecrow is calling the shots with the guy who will make tomorrow. Harley tries to do good, but because she's nuts, she's hitting cops who surprise her with baseball bats. The Gotham police are actually doing their job, so they don't appreciate Bats contaminating crime scenes, and Barb is setting up mini-Batsignals across Gotham. Why not just text. Seriously. If Bats is on the outs, why be so public with contact protocols? Blind, new-old Friend of Bruce is doing - stuff? I don't know. The overall effect of the issue is just treading water. The new status quo could have been set up in three pages, and we could have had a kick-ass action scene. I can't say I'm a fan of what Tynion is doing, but why does it have to be done in such a slow, non-exciting way? What does it cost for an issue? $4? That's a lot of money for nothing happening. And while the art has its charms, I really don't like the designs of the new characters. But that's me. I also don't get what they are setting up Harley to be. She is now guilty of assault with a deadly weapon on a cop. Her actions were seen by other cops. There's no way she is an anti-hero who is left alone, unless you want to show that "sane" Harley is as dangerous as "insane" Harley. But no matter how you slice it, it's back behind bars for her. That's the only way this works unless you want to have bad story-telling with plot requiring characters to act the way they do to drive plot and there won't be any logical story-telling consequences as a result. Tynion wouldn't do that, he's known for his tight character work and iron-clad plotting. Or I could be wrong.

I think James Tynion got bitten by radioactive exposition when he was a youth. Because that's what his stories boil down to. Tons of exposition where he builds and builds his world. The action is an afterthought that mostly takes place off stage. The result are stories that go nowhere, aren't interesting to read once everything is done and depends on his characters. The problem is that his characters are all different versions of the same thing - people who aren't happy with the job Batman is doing. They create their own worlds with their own rules and then seek to impose this world on the rest of Gotham in the name of peace, harmony whatever. But we don't actually get to know the characters because they are basically plot points. That was the genius of Stan Lee. His characters had personality. It was shown through the way they talked and the way they thought. (Bring back thought balloons. They did so much to flavor actions and plots. Comic book stories aren't complex, but each character having his or her own thoughts goes a long way toward spicing up even the silliest stories.) The plot of having Bruce be "poor" is telling us nothing. Having poorly disguised Bruce debate Miracle Molly (another Tynion character who talks at you and dumps exposition about plot and theme) about merits and sins of the wealthy isn't interesting or deep. It's just a comic book writer critiquing a fictional world that was literally created for Batman. To paraphrase Chris Sims, in real life having a billionaire spend his money on Dracula capes and rocket cars to fight crossword puzzle bank robbers is a bad idea. But this is a fictional world created to serve Batman. If you aren't going to engage the premise on its most basic level then I don't know what to tell you. The art is . . . busy. The costumes of the new Tynion characters look like they were created for video games. This is a comic book. Stay in your lane. The result is more off-putting than engaging. And what's with all the fur collars. This isn't 1910 Prussia. Another issue where the wheels spin. Tynion's work reminds me of the underwear gnomes from South Park. Stage one is steal underwear. Stage two is ???. Stage three is profit. But instead Tynion is stage one create a world that hates Batman, stage two is ???. Stage three is the end of the story. Or I could be wrong.

You know, I used to complain that today's comics were all pictures and no words. Well, Tynion has gotten around that problem by putting in a lot of words without any action. And what action there is, is just hitting without context. We don't see how Bats actually out-think his opponents. He just hits them. And when that doesn't work, he hits them harder -and that works. We don't see him analyze, out-smart, out-think and out-plan his opponents. He just gets told information by Oracle and goes to the place and hits people. The real problem is that we know what's going on, but Bats doesn't. It makes him seem slow, it makes the story slow, what with us going "get on with it. We know the deal. Let's get Batman caught up." I also have a problem with Gotham. The Mayor has given control over to Simon Saint and Simon says he's building his own army. But last time I checked, Gotham is in the United States. There is the Constitution. There are checks and balances. Say what you will about "No Man's Land" (a story line that I hated, hate and will always hate) DC came up with a reason for why no one helped the city. It was a stupid reason, a really stupid reason, a reason that made no sense until you realize that it was in a comic book. But if you are going to have any kind of pretense toward reality and having heroes in a world that resembles ours, you have to acknowledge certain facts. Like the Constitution. That's the problem when you take kids' stuff and make it "real" and grown up. You run up against reality and adult thinking. As to Bruce being poor - doesn't matter. He still has a Batcave, a Batmobile and an Oracle. It's not like he has to shop on bargain night at "Heroes R Us." Plus, being poor and unable to afford the toys is Spider-Man's schtick, and it has been for 60 years. Tynion's whole deal is setting up a world that doesn't fit the Batman paradigm. We also see his "Anti-Batman" character in action. It's a whole case of Penis-Envy. Batman has a dinosaur, so Anti-Batman has to have a bigger one in his "Haunt" cave. Bats has Catwoman as his criminal sidekick, so Harley Quinn is going to be Anti-Bat's criminal sidekick. (That's cool, calm, collected Cat versus nuts, off-the-wall, impulsive Harley). Bats has empathy, Anti-bats doesn't. The thing about comics, is that they need forward momentum. They came about in a time of cliff-hangers and such. The Batman TV show got that. Each issue has to make you want to read the next one. Even in a six or 12 issue story, each issue must have some action that excites the reader and draws him or her to the next issue. Each issue has its own discrete charms, that while part of a larger whole, drive the story forward with its own action. With Tynion, it's just talk, talk, talk. All the important stuff happens off stage and there's no sense of drama. No ticking clock. It's all so dreary. The art is nice, but I am getting tired of the color scheme. But that's me. Overall, I am not impressed. But I could be wrong.

Let's see, who did Tynion rip-off this issue? Well his new armored vigilante is John Walker replacing Captain America all over again, and that plot was done more than 30 years ago. The armor is a nice touch, but it is also just Azrael again. The story starts in media res (that's fancy talk for in the middle of the story). Bats is trying to fight off Scarecrow fear toxin. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but doesn't Batman have an antidote to that? Why not use it? Also, how about showing us how things happen instead of telling us. That's story telling 101. Bats gets chased all over Gotham by Armored Vigilante and Bruce activates a bomb that gives off a morse code signal that Ghost Eater understands. Now the problems with that bit of plotting are many. First I don't think explosions go off in dots and dashes. Two, bombs, by their very nature, are fairly unpredictable in the damage they cause because unless Bruce had a very thorough building inspection done, he doesn't know just how sturdy the building he blew up is. How does he know that no one is in the building, that no on walking outside the building won't get hit by debris. No matter how controlled the explosions, debris will fall off the building and fly off in all kinds of directions at high speeds. Sounds dangerous to anyone near the building.. Also Vigilante Armor Boy calls the Unsanity group hippies. Except for Eric Cartman, no on uses the term hippy anymore. A more up-to-date phrase might be "woke terrorists" or Millenial losers. Something like that. Hippy just shows how out of touch Tynion is. Also, this whole fight between Bats and the Armored Hot Dog shows how poorly Tynion writes a fight. Bruce keeps hitting him. He's armored dude. Use your brain for one second and develop a strategy that takes down armor with electronic components. Do something like create an electrical magnetic pulse. Put the guy in water, where armor will cause him to sink and the water will short out the electronics. These are two things I thought of while typing this. Give me five minutes of alone time and I could probably come up with even more ways to beat the Armored Cliche. We see the Mayor going crazy and Commmisioner Montoya pointing out that he's nuts. I guess state officials, federal officials, the state national guard, these aren't things that exist in Gotham. Mayors have dictatorial powers and no one can do anything. Tynion had the last mayor take bribes from the Joker to let the Joker's men run amuck. So at least Tynion's consistent. Apparently, Batman also has no allies. We see Nightwing talk, but not actually do anything. Oracle does a lot here's some info, but doesn't actually use her hacking skills to interfere with an organization that is technological in nature. No Robins, Batgirls, Red Hoods Night Walkers etc. Help Bruce, so he just keeps getting his ass kicked. Oh, Harley Quinn points out that the guy in the armor was a sadistic guard at Arkham. Again, pure John Walker. Apparently when Simon Saint says do something, people do it. They blow up buildings in a false flap operation to force the mayor to go crazy. Walker, I mean, Armored Guard, blew up a building on Saint's orders. We actually see the Unsane talk but do nothing. Then Armored Boy shows up and says they're resisting, he wants to use lethal force. He gets permission. Wait until next issue to see what happens. The problem with that plot point is that we don't actually care about the Unsane and if they got wiped out, would that be a bad thing? Also, Tynion does a whole of tell not show. He uses tv reporters to explain what's going on. I think Tynion believes he's being cool like Frank Miller in The Dark Knight Returns. But what Tynion forgets is that the media guys in Miller's story were commenting on the action. Giving us a window in what people thought. Tynion is just using them to tell us what happened instead of showing us. Tynion has had Batman lose his fortune. See his city get destroyed by the Joker and by Simon Says Boom. He is getting kicked around by the villains and generally just being ineffective. All of Batman's efforts have been for nought. We know he's going to win in the end, his name is on the title. But to quote T'Chaka in Captain America Civil War, a victory at the expense of the innocent is no victory. Having tv commentator spell out that Gotham keeps getting destroyed by villains trying to outdo each other is too on the nose. It's not the villains who are doing this, it's the writers. How about trying a different approach. This problem goes back to the 1990s. First Bane breaks Bat's back. Then there is a plague, then the whole city is destroyed by Lex Luthor, who uses the event to propel himself to the presidency. Tynion is guilty of the same thing, but instead of Luthor, we get Simple Simon, who uses events he creates to take over Gotham his way. In short, Tynion is writing Batman as a total loser who can't stop the terrible things that have and are happening from happening. It's like he's writing a deconstruction of Batman that shows how lame and unneeded Batman is. Call me crazy, but that strikes me as a very bad way to tell Batman stories. The art was fine. Still don't like the color scheme. Or I could be wrong.

Again, an issue where nothing really happens. It begins with Facist Dum-Dum Dugan lookalike holding a gun on two video characters with clown colors. The evil corporation has gotten the drop on the Tynion anarhcist group. His third such group he's introduced into Batman mythos, if I am not mistaken. (If I am, forgive me). Facist Dum-Dum blathers on and we actually see him shoot one of the prisoners. Well we see a shot of him firing his gun. He is positioned about three feet away from the prisoners, calling her a hippie (No one uses hippy anymore except Eric Cartman). She ducks. Which is fair enough. But while she is crouched down, she pulls out a cable from her belt, Attaches one end to the other girl's necklace, which is some sort of tech that gives her Canary sonic scream powers, and said girl then screams at evil facist hired police. So let me get this straight. In all the time it takes for clown color girl to do all this, evil Dum Dum just stands there. Even if she is super fast it's got to take three or four seconds. He just stands there? He doesn't lower his gun and fire. That only takes half a second. The clown color girls run away, then Batman, Harley and White billowing sheet man show up and rescue the girls. But unfortunately for them, there are drones broadcasting this to the tv stations. So now it looks like Bats and co. are helping criminals get away, says Oracle. Let me break down why this is terrible writing and not just the rantings of someone who is chasing kids of his lawn and is a known "not fond of Tynion's writings" critic. First, see the "why does evil Dum Dum just stand there" analysis. In order for a fantastic world to be believable (and yes, you must make fantastic worlds believable) you have to get the details right. Example, the Six Million Dollar Man and the Bionic Woman. They had the ability to run 60 miles an hour. Problem, how do you show that on a TV budget and make it (wait for it) believable. Solution - slow motion. You have Steve and Jamie run as fast as they can, have the extras move slowly and then film in slow motion. Problem solved. So just having an armed crew stand there while someone is doing something that will take four seconds is not believable. You'd have to have a bright light go off, so while people are rubbing their eyes, said action can take place. These solutions aren't hard folks, but they do require the writer to actually think his action through. Something this generation of writers does very poorly. Second problem. The drones. Why would someone doing an illegal execution record it? That's dumb. Now maybe if it was established that Simon Says "likes to watch" then fine. He's a creep and needs the content to get off. But that hasn't been established. So bad writing. Even if he doesn't broadcast an execution, the system will record and store it. Bad idea to generate your own evidence of a crime. Then we have Batman, who is supposed to be smart, just blindly jumping in to rescue. He doesn't do recon? He doesn't have anti-drone batspray? That's dumb. Drones have been established as a piece of equipment Simon Bar Sinister uses. Batman would have to have some counter when he goes into action, if only to stop the drones from following him to safe zones. Oracle doesn't anticipate this? She's supposed to be smart too. You'd think that someone who offers electronic advice from a distance would anticipate that someone else might do the same, especially someone who uses high tech surveillance equipment too. Again, writing characters as just dumb as a box of rocks. Three. Batman has 46 Robins, 24 Batgirls, a Duke. a Batman or two as well as Huntresses galore, and an Oracle and he's depending on a psycho killer in the form of Harley and a psycho killer in the form of White Sheet man? No, just no. That is a writer just not sticking to the rules of the universe as established. (See making fantastic world believable.) What really hurts is that all this action could have been done in three pages. I am serious. $5 stories should give you $5 worth of story, not three pages of story. So Batman has bee "exposed" to the world via TV. Where have I seen that before? No this is bad because in order for the plot to work, everyone has to be stupid. The villains are uninteresting (an opinion, I'll admit), the plot, such as it is, unfolds SLOWLY, and I frankly am really tired of the color scheme and what the techno clown color villains look like (also an opinion). We also don't know who they are. They have a vague manifesto, but that is not characterization. They are all inter-changable and I still really don't know what they stand for and why that is interesting. Overall, a very poor issue. Or I could be wrong.

More of the same from Tynion, which is just basically a rehash of previous Batman stories done in the past. In this it's Knightfall. Batman is replaced by a more violent version that kills and hears voices. Batman has to, through shear force of will, fight off the attack that was meant to cripple him. In Knightfall, it was his back, here it's Scarecrow's mental games. You may say that's different, but I am declaring variation of theme. Calling in Ghost who wears white bed sheets is just like how Batman called in Azrael. It's not a one to one parallel, but it's pretty close. All the actual action took place in another side book. So this issue is all exposition setting up the new paradigm. St. Simon Says wants to go through with his plan even though he knows it's been hijacked by Scarecrow. I think Tony Stark holding a whiskey glass might have something to say about that. We see Batman with Oracle, the Batgirls and they talk and talk and talk yet do nothing. You can't have a main story where all the action takes place elsewhere. That's just a bridge too far for me. In these multi issue crossovers, the main action takes place in the main story book, and the side issues can be skipped, but do offer a fuller viewing of the main story. That's the way it was done in the past when the kids stayed off my lawn and I see no reason to change that now. We still don't really know a lot about the, what is it - third?, group created by Tynion as a reaction to Batman's war on crime. I can't even remember their name. And what's their goal? What's their manifesto? Their purpose? What holds them together? Damned if I know, but I will admit to only reading the stories once, so maybe nuance has been lost on me. I am SO SICK of the "Batman has to shake off the villain's efforts to break him through his awesome Batwill." That's been done to death in Knightfall, City of Bane, Snyder's Batman run, the Joker Wars, and God knows how many other stories in the past years. Here's a thought, instead of robbing Frank Miller's Batman yet again, why not try something different. A Batman who is smart, treats his fellow heroes well, and can be seen actually helping people. I kind of like Adam West's Batman. Jokes aside, his Bruce is seen as being caring, tolerant and working toward a better world as both Batman and Bruce. He suggests the study of music and math because they can bring people together. Instead of condemning hippies, he notes their flower power stance is meant to bring peace to the world and therefore should be applauded. Now that would be a brave and bold stance, writing a Batman who is actually nice and well-adjusted. That attitude certainly didn't hurt Steve Englehardt's famous Batman run in the 1970s. The art was nice, but the story was, again, just there and just a rehash of Batman stories from the past. These stories can be easily accessed because DC has continued to put them out in books that can be bought at any comics and regular book store. Do something original. Or I could be wrong.

This issue is sound and fury signifying nothing. Again, it's all exposition. The handicaps Batman faces are explained, but we don't actually see how they affect his fighting. We don't see how he overcomes it. The plan by St. Simon Says is a false flag operation. But we knew that. Batman explains it to the commissioner and she says "I need proof, McGonicle." Batman says I'll get right on it. Except that there are things happening on the street that people can see. There's no way the Gotham PD would be blind to that other than the writer says they are. Yet another city goes to hell story. And don't get me started on Simon, Simon, Simple Pieman getting scared that his plot is being exposed. That thought never occurred to him? Now that's something even the Joker would say is crazy and Simon might want to take another look at the plan to work out the bugs. I've pushed this point before, but Gotham is in the U.S. There are governors and presidents and federal agencies and state agencies that don't answer to a corrupt mayor. The thought that they do nothing is just silly. That's why it's hard to write these kinds of stories and probably why DC shouldn't. Keep raising the stakes and you run into the "one death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic" problem. Killing more people is just chasing the dragon. We don't care about the million Gothamites because they are literally paper figures. To make this work, we have to care about the characters. Also Clownkiller is going through some psychic trauma thanks to Scarecrow. So what. He is a flat character that is just plain stupid. And Bruce letting this murderous psychopath go free is stupid. You can't kill dozens of people in a horrible way and be considered normal or "saveable." He has to be locked up. In the real world, he'd get psychological treatment, but thanks to DC not actually understanding mental health issues and its treatments, that would mean putting him Arkham, a facility that would not exist in the real world because mental health facilities are designed not look like gothic nightmares. Also, does Bruce tell everyone who he is like he has escaped from "How This Movie Should Have Ended" from YouTube? Another issue where all the exposition is talk and all the action is over in a second. Not compelling, not interesting and simply not good storytelling. The art is pretty but doesn't help the action flow. Also don't like the colors, but that seems to be me. Not good. Or I could be wrong.

In the old days, all the action of this issue could have been compressed into two pages. Basically all that happens is that Simon the Pieman's other troops fail to take down the mad dog guy controlled by Scarecrow and Molly the Ecstasy girl says she knows Scarecrow's plan. She also declares what her organization's goal is - to allow people to become what they could have become without all the DC Major Action Plots stories. Let me sum up what all means to me - Huh? Apparently Molly and her group have their own brain device or something. Whatever. Basically they are doing the same thing Simple Simon is. Freeing Gotham from the old systems and installing their own. Way to stick it to the Man, man. You guys are so radical and cool. Whatever. The funny thing is that Batman could have sat out this issue and the results could have been the same. The battle was between the forces of Simon Says. Lift the Batman pages out and the action could have stayed the same. His presence did not tip the balance of either fighter. Also, if you are going to fight armored guys, just hitting them with your fists is not a great strategy Bats. Just saying. How about bringing some, I don't know, EMP devices that can cut out electronics. That shows you can actually think and why perhaps depending on technology and not hard training for years that produce smart, tough strategic and tactical fighters is the not-better way to go. Again, Gotham just seems to be happy doing nothing. The police, feds and national guard can't storm Simon, Simon's lair? The governor can't declare a state emergency? Telling people they are helpless via the false Oracle doesn't strike me as something that would actually paralyze the authorities. It might keep people indoors, which is actually good in an emergency, but that's it. This plot does not pass the smell test. Plus, Batman has tons of allies. Where are they? Tynion you have to deal with the Bat books and all their characters if you're going to write some huge magnum opus story. You can't ignore what is inconvenient to your plots. It's called the difference between being a good writer and being a Hack. Good luck on Substack. I honestly can't imagine why any reader would follow you there. At DC, you, at least, have Batman. He is a popular character and people like to read Batman. Notice that I said Batman and not Tynion. Something to think about. At least with you gone, DC can get all petty and make sure not to use any of your lame Batman characters so as to deprive you of residuals. Or I could be wrong.

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.

I only read the story once, so I might be a little shaky on the details. But basically what happens is that Batman and Miracle Club Drug walk around and Scarecrow has to invite him in to his lair. It's not like Batman actually finds it and catches the villain by surprise. A lot of talk. Batman's efforts to actually stop the Scarecrow fail. The only reason that Scarecrow doesn't win outright is that Soldier Two-Face shoots him. There is a scene where Batman throws a Batarang and knocks out the doomsday switch from Scarecrow's hand. So far so good. But this is ruined by what happens next. Scarecrow just runs after the switch and picks it up before Bats can stop him. That's the whole action. Scarecrow just picks up the switch again and Batman is stopped. This is when Soldier Two-Face shoots Scarecrow and that's the action that really stops Scarecrow. Once again, Batman is shown to be an ineffective loser of a hero. Here's a thought, you've knocked the Doomsday switch out of Scarecrow's hand. Why not then knock out Scarecrow. Or at least follow through by throwing a Bat-rope around him so he can't run and pick up the Doomsday switch. Tynion has been consistently showing Batman as being incompetent throughout this set of stories. That's not a good Batman story. Tynion is not doing the hard work of creating a villain's plot that looks unbeatable and then showing how Batman then beats the unbeatable plan by being smart. The stories all depend on things just happening and people actually just giving Batman the solutions. I found the Poison Ivy story to be confusing and the Batgirls story to be just treading water. "What, people don't like us?" If I recall correctly, last issue they were in the Oracle Tower when it got blown up. In this issue we don't see how they survived. If there is an explanation, I don't remember it, and that's on me. But the fact that I found the stories so unmemorable says something about them and it's not something good. The regular artist returned. The art was nice, but I still don't like the coloring or Club Drug's costume. This is a terrible issue. Or I could be wrong.

I rate this one a ? because I really didn't understand what was going on. There was no coherent sense of action. Things just seemed to happen because they had to happen. Bruce once again did a How It Should Have Ended and unveiled his secret identity to an unstable, dangerous person. Someone naming themselves after a club drug is hardly the poster child for stability. Instead of outsmarting his enemies, Batman just kept hitting harder. St. Simon the Pieman yelled at his lackeys to no effect and Soldier Two Face just fought. Batman never actually did anything. People kept having to bring him to the action. The one-eyed mayor just made phone calls to Simple Simon. He apparently didn't understand that he could actually send armed law enforcement officers to central HQ. The story played the sidekicks showing up at the HQ as a huge victory when it was really the first thing that should have been done. Stopping the plot of Scarecrow and Simon Says would have been really easy. Just pull the plug at EVIL CORPORATE HQ. Simon Says kept saying that he spent $40 billion in infrastructure improvements. That is a huge sum of money even in these times of inflation. It takes years to spend it and years to actually build the infrastructure. Where did he get the cash? No one, and I mean no one has $40 billion just lying around. There was the whole two Poison Ivies plot, which (to be fair to me, I never got) that didn't make sense. It had nothing to do with the main story. This whole story was a flop from beginning to end. Things happened because they had to happen. Story points didn't line up. Characters just did things and we never understood their motives. The whole political structure of Gotham makes no sense and that's saying something about a book based on a man dressed like a bat to fight crime. Don't get me started on the cover of the book. The art had its strengths but those strengths were often overshadowed by a color scheme that distracted more than it complemented the art. Bruce revealing his identity yet again. Argh!!! Stop it. About the only thing I really like is that this is Tynion's last issue. But I don't have confidence that they next writer will do any better. Bruce leaving Gotham yet again. I also didn't care for the art in the Batgirls backup story. They also haven't really established the Batgirls environment, so I have little confidence in a book that I should be looking forward to. I am a huge Stephanie Brown fan. Her Batgirl run was fantastic. Me saying I don't have confidence in her upcoming book is saying something. Or I could be wrong.

I rate this a 5, neither good - neither bad. The issue has Gotham celebrating the end of Simon the Pieman, but apparently the mayor who made it all possible and let it happen is still in office. This shows me that the new status quo is still based on a stupid idea. The mayor hates Batman and suffers no consequences for allowing a fascist to take over the city. We see people celebrating the end of fear state and Babs tells Batman to not get all broody. There is a billionaire party and Batman crashes and fights his "villains" in front of a crowd of people. Apparently it's a ruse and people just want to get pictures of Batman. The villains are of no consequence. There is even a little girl dressed as Harley clone girl. The whole thing strikes me as supremely stupid. Babs erases all the cell phone shots before they are posted online. Good thing no one uses film anymore. Then Bruce sees that his Batman Inc. proxies are arrested for murder. I never liked the Batman inc. thing. At best they were insulting stereotypes from a different era - the 1950s, when "things were different in those days." At worst they are racist depictions of stereotypes that Morrison and DC should really have known better not to publish 60 years after they were created in a "different time." Bruce leaves Gotham and investigates in the fake country. It turns out that the Batman Incs did the crime. It's pointed out that Bruce Wayne is broke so who funds them now? Turn out it's Lex Luthor - Dun, dun DUUNN!!!! (Say what you will about Luthor, despite all his losses to the heroes, he's kept his fortune and stayed out of jail. That's more than Bruce can say.) What this issue doesn't do is tell us what all the other Bat allies are doing. Writers keep forgetting that Gotham is filled with Bat kids. That's what makes it so difficult to write Batman stories when continuity is really emphasized. Morrison says it all happened so we get a racist Native American Buffalo Batman brought back from like three issues in the 1950s, but they don't bother to explain what happened to the Batgirls, Robins and Nightwings who have their own books and appeared in the last issue. Very frustrating. Now dealing with the Batman Inc. heroes just seems like going back to a bad idea that makes no sense in our more modern story-telling times. Also Batman is supposed to be broke. How did he have a Batwing to fly overseas? Saying he's broke but showing that being broke does nothing to hinder him in anyway just shows how bankrupt the whole idea is. Either do something with broke or just return his fortune. What they're doing how is the worst of both worlds. It's too early make a fair judgement on Williamson's new story line, but since when have I been fair? Honestly, I suspect DC's next big event will have yet again another reset of the universe and some of the bad ideas that have taken hold in this iteration of DC will be erased, including Batman is broke. It's a guess. I could be wrong. But I am not optimistic about the next arc.

This isn't a bad issue, but it is an issue whose plot tropes push my buttons. I am especially tired of the villain saying "you'll see things my way and we'll be allies" cliche. The issue starts with Batman, the female detective and Lex Luthor talking. Lex explains why he funds Batman Inc. now that Bruce Wayne is broke. Sorry, I mean living in reduced circumstances. This is strike one. We have never really been shown what exactly those circumstances are and how they work. Is he broke. Is he living trust fund check to trust fund check? If Lex can say that the Wayne fortune was lost with the stroke of a clown's actions, how is that money lost. That's the thing about electronic money. It's not real. Deals that are done via unsrupulous means are easily undone. If it is public knowledge that the Joker stole the Wayne fortune, then the Wayne fortune really hasn't been stolen. We also find out that the police force in the city Batman is operating in has a shoot on site order for any Batman. They shoot and Bats escapes. He later meets Lex at restaurant, saying that he got the subtext of Lex's talking about Bruce Wayne. Lex shows off by emptying a $12 million bottle of wine on the floor. I will admit this is an interesting way of dick measuring. Lex also chides Nightwing for giving away his fortune without a plan. Bruce grabs Lex and then disappears. But the gist is that Lex says the world needs a Batman and Lwz will fund a Batman Inc. (I always thought Batman Inc was a stupid idea. The liability issues alone could bankrupt Bruce Wayne, even when he had his fortune. It also gave criminals a convenient target. Have Batman Inc troubles, cut off their funding by hitting Wayne Enterprises offices. Bankrupt the company, end of problem). Bruce then goes to the morgue steals the body from the police and is engulfed in darkness after examining the body. A strange person attacks Batman in the special dark where Batman can see his body, but nothing else. The stranger explains he comes from Batman and hacks Bats up. We are left with the lights on and the detective standing over the battered Bruce body. So this issue ticks a couple of my boxes - the we're the same one and the let's expose Batman Inc one. The whole Luthor saying Bruce will come around to my way of thinking just doesn't hold up. We all know that's not true. I also hate the hero and villain team up angle. It's a cliche and I like superhero stories that are about the hero. The villain is just flavoring. When you concentrate too much on the villain, it makes the hero look lame. Lex has kept his fortune, destroyed Gotham and been elected president. All under the noses of the heroes. It makes them look lame and ineffective. I also don't think the writer knows what preserving a crime scene actually means. Bruce using gas to escape the cops shooting at him automatically contaminates the scene. The various shell casings and debris from firing bullets also contaminates the scene. The cops walking on the carpet contaminates the scene. You get my point. So to sum up, Lex knows Bruce is Bats. Lex rubs Bruce's nose in the fact that Bruce lost the family fortune by emptying a $12 million bottle of wine on the floor. Batman Inc. is under Lex' control and they are wanted for murder, and yet another killer is on the loose because he somehow is created by Batman. We also see that Lex is able to buy whole police departments. He, apparently, knows how to get a proper bang for his bucks. Am I the only one who has a problem with these issues I've brought up? The whole Bruce is living under reduced circumstances seems to have no lasting impact. He can still fly a bat plane around the world. That has got to cost a small fortune, just buying fuel and maintaining the plane with parts and storing the plane. The whole Batman creates villains is one, counterproductive because when he does that, it really shows us that Batman does more harm than good. I don't think that's the message DC wants to present. Two, it's been done to death, starting in the early 1950s, when DC gave the Joker the Red Hood origin. I read that when I was 12 and I didn't like it then and I still hate it now. Given all the people the Joker has killed (it must be in the tens of thousands) that means Batman has vast amounts of blood on his hands. Again, I don't think that's the message DC wants to present. I liked the art. Didn't like the fact that Luthor could push Bruce's buttons and have Bruce grab Lex by the throat. Again, shows that Bruce is out of control and easily manipulated by the villain. Another message that DC probably shouldn't be presenting. So I stuck in the middle. I suspect I am not going to like this story for reasons I've stated. But I could be wrong.

Again, this all setup. Batman escapes from morgue by being transported in a body bag. Police are so stupid that they don’t look for a body sized man in a body bag. That’s bad writing. Batman and the female detective talk about Bat’s weakness and we learn he is aware of some problem with his eyes. That sounds dumb to me, jumping to a conclusion without evidence. It be his brain or some sort of spell. Given all Batman has experienced, jumping to a conclusion without evidence is dumb. We learn Lex believes there must be a Batman and it might as well be him. I guess he got tired of saying there must be Superman and it might as well be him. Bruce does a lot of yelling at Bats Inc. TELL ME!! That strikes me as being like a petulant child and not being the world’s greatest detective, so bad characterization. Turns out Bats Inc. serves Abyss, whoever that is. So two issues in, we don’t know much and the action is dull, the characterization poor and the mystery, well let’s just say, uncompelling. The art was nice, but I am not a fan of Bruce being drawn as shouting and looking like a spoiled child angry who is angry that no one will play with him. This Batman isn’t cool or smart. He is taken by surprise at every turn and will only win because it is his book, not because the writer has created a clever plot and shown us how Batman outwits the enemy and unravels the plan. Not a fan. Or I could be wrong.

Great art, but a story that is all this happens and then this happens. Unfortunately nothing happens organically. Batman wins because it is his book. We don’t see him develop his plan and we don’t get any clues. We are just told, not shown that Batman and his League of Ethnic stereotypes were on the ball and saw through Luthor’s plan. apparently they didn’t work with Batman but Bats and the league still managed to figure things out separately. Luthor’s plan was to create his own league of Batman. But I only read this I issue once, so many of the details may have escaped me. But what does Luthor’s plan get him? Control of bat groups around the world? So? And Luthor’s is told by the league that they never cashed his checks? That is what detectives call an important detail, and Luthor never noticed. I also missed what Abyss was all about. He could blind Bats until Bats pulled out his anti-abyss tech and got his sight back? Again, I am glossing over details, but no bread crumbs were laid out so that what happens in this issue makes sense. We are just told that everyone figured out stuff off page. In the golden and silver age, writers would actually leave clues that paid off. Example in one Batman Superman tale from the 1950s, Batman busts a crook’s alibi based on the shoes the crook is wearing. The crook said he was an electrician doing a job and that was why he was in the area when a jewel heist took place. Bats noticed his shoes had leather soles, not rubber, which is what electricians wear. Bats also figured out where the diamonds were hidden, in the bullets of the suspects’ guns. Superman searched the ship with X-ray vision and could not find the jewels. Bats figured the lead in the bullets made a great shield to hide the jewels. Now that is clever, and that was playing fair. Showed what Bats brought to the table. None of that here. I will say that I liked that Bats learned the importance of teamwork in this issue. It as “after school special” obvious but made for a nice change from “Stay out of my city, I work alone except for my 47 Robins and Batgirls, who I never use in my big events.” So nice ideas but bad execution. The status quo of Lex knowing who Batman is, but not actually doing anything Green Goblin with this info also bothers me. Or I could be wrong.

Don’t care about this issue. Part of some huge plot that I am not following. The art was nice, but the story ends with Bats kissing Talia. Caution old man rant coming. You kids stay off my lawn. My. Problem is that Talia is a terrible character. Terrible in both senses evil and poorly written. At first she. Hangs around her dad and calls Bats beloved and helps Bags escape death traps. She is pretty but immoral. She “loves” Bats but only opposes. Her father’s plans because of her high school rush. She does not oppose them because they are genocidal. I have never seen her protest all the thousands of people she sees Ra’s kill in front of her. It’s Beverly Hills 90210 reasons. Then decades later she is independent.now she has her own agenda. Now she kills people and has her own evil organization to do her bidding. Her plans aren’t moral,yet Bats is supposed to be attracted to her? Don’t say because she beautiful he can’t help himself. That’s a child’s reason, not something a grown man with any emotional awareness would say.that’s the problem wiypth DC, since Miller, they’ve been writing Bats as a psycho. I miss the guy who is smart, responsible and really wants to help.not someone who is just indulging anger issues. Don’t care about this issue. Or I could be wrong.

The rating is just meant to be neutral because I haven’t read the other parts of the story. I will say the art lacks flow, making the action static. They spend 4 pages getting a nook to say there is a clue in Central City. Spade gets jumped, but that leads to nothing. I don’t know who respawn is. I thought for a second that he was a Todd Macfarlane character. He is a Damian clone and is killed, I guess. All I know is that I don’t care. Also, Batman is using his jet to fly wherever he wants to go. So let me get this straight. He is too poor to buy a home that gives Bruce Wayne privacy and has to live in a row house where neighbors can monitor his movements, but he has the cash to keep a private jet fueled and ready to go at anytime. This includes doing the maintenance that private jets require - parts replacement, fuel, a hidden location, maintenance crews, etc. That’s the problem when you try to get “real” in an unreal situation. You end up splitting the difference and that negates both your premises - fantastical situations like a 600 year old villain being killed (Ra’s is not dead forever, we all know that) and brutal reality (how does Batman operate, pay for things). I can’t wait for the status quo to reset and Alfred comes back. Don’t care about this crossover, will glad when it is over. Don’t like this storyline or what I have read of it. Oy. Or I could be wrong.

This issue represents all that bothers me about modern comics. Nothings happens and characters have no voice of their own. They are pawns in a plot. Basically Bats is in fake country where he was fighting Luthor’s Batman Inc. The character Abyss, about whom we have been told nothing, is scaring villains to get info. It turns out that this Abyss is a fake and is the female cop who was helping Batman in previous issues before the story was interrupted by the big crossover. The cop has parents who were killed and she captures some guy to get him to tell her where the bodies are buried. Abyss has such a rep that she gets the info. It appears that she is going to kill someone and asks Bats if he is going to stop her. He says no, if he stops her now, she’ll just kill later, she has to stop herself. She does, joins Batman Inc. there will be a series in September. Problems. They go back to Bats reliving the death of his parents. Again. There is a flashback to Bats staring in the cell of his parents’ killer. Spoiler, he realizes killing is wrong and doesn’t do it. I am so sick of visiting the Waynes’ death. While I am ranting at the kids on my lawn, having the movie they see be Zorro is too on the nose. Zorro is fun and having that be an inspiration for Bruce to be dour Batman doesn’t track. It also reminds us that Batman is basically a Zorro ripoff, in part at least. Also we don’t know this female cop. She has no personality, no sense of self. Why should we care about her? Also Bruce is broke, but has the money to fly private jet to another country? He finances Oracle? It’s like when Denny O’Neil halved Superman’s power. It didn’t stick, powers got ramped up anyway. Same with Bruce’s wealth. Batman is rich. That is a fundamental aspect of the character. (Ripped off from Zorro), deal with it DC. This whole Williamson run shows how DC is writing Batman poorly. Prediction rant. Chip Z’s new villain who he says will be a mental and physical challenge to Batman is just Bane redone. I read an interview and Chip said the same things about his villain that was said about Bane - 30 YEARS AGO, STAY OFF MY LAWN YOU DAMN KIDS. Not a good run. Or I could be wrong.

If you want to push my buttons, have a plot depend on people being stupid. And boy, Bats was stupid in this issue. Penguin is mad at the 1 percent and will kill anyone who inherited more than $5 million. That’s a lot of people. $5 million really isn’t that much money. But there’s going to be some big billionaire ball, and Bruce might not qualify because he doesn’t have the bucks. He might even be worth $5 million and thus be off penguin’s radar. Bruce is working with Tim and Tim only. No Batgirls or other sidekicks. Bruce wrangles an invite. Clay face is faking being Penguin, who is dying of mercury poisoning BECAUSE HE EATS A LOT OF FISH. HE’S A PENGUIN AND HE EATS FISH, GET IT? GET IT? Tim is shot in the neck and an artery is hit. Bruce is forced to take him to a real hospital because Tim will bleed out. He finds Pengyat hosp. And Penny kills himself to frame Batman. Cats is sleeping with some dude and gives Bruce an awkward brush off. The backup is about how some robot hires Selina to track down Pengy’s never mentioned until now kids. Why is this all dumb? They hold a billionaire ball when Pendy announces he is going to kill billionaires? There appears to be no extra security. Billionaires show up instead of hiding in their panic rooms? That’s three deeply stupid plot points in one event. Tim is almost killed and all that merits are a couple of panels? Selina is made to be unlikable on purpose. Man, old editors really don’t get that we like MJ and Selina and said romances with their respective boos. The issue ends with a robot being activated in the bat cave. Let me guess, another bats backup plan backfires. We have never seen that before - execept for brother eye and bat’s take out justice league plan and azreal as his replacement and joker using Bruce’s weapons and fortune to kill thousands. So Bruce is prepared for everything has no plan for getting his fortune back? But the new writer is going to show us he doesn’t need money. He will win in the end despite walking into trap after trap? His money isn’t being used to help people. So no charity or efforts to clean up public corruption. The dialog actually had bats saying Gotham wants to die. Man, talk about being depressing. This issue is more dumb plotting and grim dark writing. We are shown again what a failure Bruce is. Things are worse than ever, and he had nothing. No Alfred, no Selina. He lost huge resources that could help thousands. His enemies do what they want. The artis generic, and is it me or does Tim appear to be more thin and almost feminine? I do not like this and the latest writer is just giving us more of the same. This is not the new, bold plot that he thinks it is. This sucks. Or I could be wrong.

It was nice to actually see the Batfamily in action. Points to the writer for actually remembering them. But nothing really happens. We get a sense that the robot is yet another Batman plan that has backfired, but that’s it. By writing for the trades, where you read everything at one sitting, it kills the suspense for monthly reads. We don’t know the stakes because information is being kept for later issues, so we don’t get the suspense. So all the action is just place holding. Also, I found the art lacking. A couple of times I thought Bat’s body being awkwardly drawn. He appeared to me to be a doll who was posed imperfectly. Sort of an uncanny valley thing. But that could be me. The end result is sort of a lifeless story where we know something is coming down the road, but in the meantime we are spinning our wheels. Not crazy about this. Or I could be wrong.

The art was good, but the story makes one critical mistake. By flashing back to previous stories where Batman’s backup plans go awry, the author is showcasing that he is repeating stories done by other writers. We start with a flashback to the end of Mark Waid’s Babel storyline, where Batman talks with Superman about Supes being the Ultimate Batman backup. We flash forward to the present where Tim and Bruce fight the evil robot, but Bruce is Zuranahr. Again going over old ground. Bruce says Tim is his son, a nice touch. I never bought Frank Miller’s good soldier Robin bit. There was a reason writer for 45 years had Bats call Robin old Chum, and not soldier. They were friends and their relationship was built on genuine affection and respect, not Bruce’s control freak insanity. Then Superman shows up. Which should have happened from the start. But the problem with that is the story would have ended in 5 seconds. I suspect the story ends in October. November will probably be Dark Crisis reboot, or perhaps the return of Alfred in one way or another. Why kill Alfred. We know he’s coming back and they did nothing with the story. There was no great revelation of character. Just a waste. This story is yet another Bruce plan goes off the rails. They left out Brother Eye. But it may make an appearance yet. This story is predictable and doesn’t amounts to spinning of wheels. 4 stars. Or I could be wrong.

This issue is just dumb. It never advances character, and just writes Bats and crew as stupid. Robot has krypton its, so what he do? He doesn’t keep his distance and throw a Boulder at bot. The JLA doesn’t use their powers to advantage. They just get close and get put down. Again, no strategy, just they act stupid so plot can move forward. If Bats has this tech why does he bother putting himself and his loved ones in mortal danger. Lex Luther couldn’t do what this robot does. And he really wants to kill the JLA. AND ONCE AGAIN, DC HAD SHOWN BATMAN TO BE WORSE THAN HIS VILLAINS. Is this really the message they want to send? So repetitive plot, stupid characters and Gotham once again under siege thanks to Bruce’s resources. This just sucks. Or I could be wrong. No, i am not.

I may not be the smartest guy in the world, but I don’t consider myself dumb. And I, for the life of me, can’t rap my head around this story arc. It’s basically Batman failing over and over again. With yet another one of his backup plans backfiring and creating such havoc that in a fair world Bats would be locked up for life. I mean the man doesn’t have a backup plan for in case one of his backup p,and gets out of hand - somethoping that has happened multiple times in the past? I also don’t understand how his plan to beat the batbot failed. He was ripping off Superman 2, by reversing the transporter, so that all the people inside are protected and those outside are transported. It looks like the robot was being demolecuralized then the Watchtowper blows up, stranding Bats in space with no ships. I don’t get and I don’t ’t like the copied plot that is just a repeat of a repeat of a repeat. This might work if DC doesn’t keep reprinting stories like Babel. Or I could be wrong.

This issue is just silly. And I don’t mean in the fun Scooby Doo way. I mean in the makes no sense in terms of creating a fictional reality where there are rules that define what is possible and not possible. Batman in space? No problem, his suit can handle re-entry heat and hitting the ground at great speeds. It took me 1 minute to find this info on “How Stuff Works.” “ Meteoroids enter the atmosphere at extremely high speeds -- 7 to 45 miles per second (11 to 72 kilometers per second). They can travel at this rate very easily in the vacuum of space because there's nothing to stop them. Earth's atmosphere, on the other hand, is full of matter, which creates a great deal of friction on a traveling object. This friction generates enough heat (up to 3,000 degrees Fahrenheit, or 1,649 degrees Celsius) to raise the meteoroid's surface to its boiling point, so the meteoroid is vaporized, layer by layer.” That’s strike one. Urban crime fighter Batman has a suit that can survive re-entry. No, just no. Then he manages to guide his suit to the Fortress of Solitude? To quote Lana Kane from “Archer” Nope. Then the robot beats Superman again, despite the fact that Bats and Supes had time to prepare? Lame heroes again. The robot then beats Batman and Robin even though Bats adds compassion to its programming. What? Also, Bats is shot and disappears and the robot believes it’s done it’s job and flies off. Bats turns up in an alley somewhere. Did I miss something? Seriously, did I, because I don’t know what happened. Gabe Hernandez wrote in his review that the writer painted himself in a corner and got out by walking on the paint. You, sir, win the Internet today. This arc showed that Bats is too dangerous to walk around and that Lex Luther is really lame because Bruce Wayne built the Superman killing robot that Lex Dreams of when his bald head hits the pillow at night. Also shows that Supes and Bats are incredibly lame as well. They have time to develop a plan and still get their heads handed to them. Does DC really hate its heroes? Not a good issue or a good arc. Or I could be wrong.

So the Batbot sent Bruce to a world without Batman. This Gotham is basically the world of Judge Dredd. Harvey Dent isn’t Two-Face, but he is a venom-roided up enforcer of the law. Commissioner Gordon is a skeleton who walks, talks and has a mustache. Selina is some sort of thief with her own crew. Apparently, sending Bruce to a Batless Gotham is the machine’s idea of mercy. Bruce fights the law, who is Dent, and Selina sees him on tv and recognizes Bruce. Bruce now, to quote the Green Goblin, has a new world to conquer. What I liked. Hard to say because I reject the premise of the story. This story takes the main Batman book and reduces it to a elseworlds story. Given that DC prints about 1332 Batman elseworld stories every week, we don’t need another. This reduces the stakes. We know that Bruce will eventually return home, so anything that happens will not matter, it’s just another elseworld story. This story is just spinning wheels. Sound and fury signifying nothing. (You can never go wrong quoting Shakespeare). Or I could be wrong.

This story line just isn’t for me. I don’t buy the premise, so no matter how well it’s done, I remain unmoved. We see Bruce learn a bit about this world, but we don’t see him be smart and do actual deep dive research. He acts on minimal information and tries to contact a guy who is known for resisting this world’s police state. He meets “Selina” and they tussle. He fights more cops. In the other story, we see Tim doing actual work to get Bruce back. It involves Toyman tech. Bruce also sees this world’s Alfred and we learn this world’s Bruce gave away his money and the world wasn’t saved. I get what the writer is doing - answering critics who say “if Bruce gave away his money, Gotham would be saved.” No it wouldn’t., zdarsky replies. Chris Sims has answered that observation well in the past. One, it’s boring to watch a man cut checks for 22 pages. Two, the world is setup to support Batman. Third, fixing problems over a period of years is nice but the Joker is poisoning the reservoir right now. I mean I get the point of this arc, Bruce with no allies, money, equipment or even information. So won’t it be great when he kicks ass and takes names. Batman refined to his most essential core, without all the detritus of years of stuff weighing him down. I get that, but the problem with that story is that we’ve it in the past and it really requires very smart writing to carry out. Plotting is hard, and frankly, most comic writers aren’t up to the challenge. This story isn’t for me, but your mileage may vary. Also I don’t like Selina’s dress. It looks like a 13 year old boy’s idea of “classy and sexy.” Or I could be wrong.

Whatever. Reads like an Elseworld’s story, and if they return Alfred to the book using this off-world Alfred, I will be disappointed.

Did Batman just lose a hand? In a story where Batman is fighting a foe we don’t know, one whose motives are unknown other than to be evil so Bats has someone to fight, Ghostmaker cuts off Bats’ hand. So what the hell, dude. My reaction wasn’t how will he handle a life-altering injury. It was “no way this will stick, so who cares.” But that is just me. Your mileage may vary. But this whole arc just strikes me as none of this matters. We certainly haven’t seen such great world-building that we understand such things as motive, character or theme. We also don’t get any insight into Bruce. What does he think about this world? Does he ponder what this Selina means. Does he think this is my life if I failed? Does he miss his family, and desperately want to get back to them. Nope, he just goes through rote hero stuff with no context or insight. Pure plot. Also, who cares about Ghostduster. Why not have a villain with real history cut off his hand instead of Tynion’s rip-off of a BTAS character. Not a good story. Plus, on the day Sony dropped its latest Spider-verse animated trailer, our next issue caption shows Bat-verse next issue. Be original DC. This is not good. Or I could be wrong.

This issue reiterated points already made. The Omni verse needs a Batman. After defeating the enemy du jour, this earth’s Selina kicks one-handed Bruce through the portal and he meets all the other Bats in all the other earths. Even get shark repellant from Adam West Bats and later uses it against a laughing fish shark. Silly, but I give points for style. In one of the trips, Bruce gets an artificial hand and eventually gets back to “our” Earth. Does he now have an artificial hand? Will we see it in other books? Don’t know but doubt it. So what does it matter? When Peter David gave Aquaman. Hook hand, that stuck until an entire reboot of the universe. I guess I am disappointed. The theme of even without Batman monsters would exist was literally said out loud. No points for being subtle. Meantime, story opportunities were thrown away. We don’t see other characters react to no Bruce. We don’t see Bruce react to losing his family. No reaction to losing his hand. Is he afraid he won’t be as handy? Will he be more (h) armless (see what I did there). Supposedly earthshattering events didn’t matter to the characters, so why should it matter to me? Didn’t like the arc, but I could be wrong.

This issue is supposed to set up the new status quo, but it was more tell than show. We are told that all the sidekicks asked Bruce how he was feeling, but we never see them talk to Bruce, or their reaction to his absence or return. We do see that. Bruce has a magic hand that does everything his real hand did, so no angst there.we see a little Bruce at war with himself, but it is all old hat. We also see Bruce and Selina talk, but for the life of me I can’t say what that scene is supposed to be about or how it serves the story. The art was there, neither bad or great. Your mileage may vary. All I can say is that this issue exists. It really doesn’t set anything in motion, except for maybe more Bruce is scared of losing his found family. But this family has all the makings of props, not characters with their own sparks of divine fire. Not a good issue. Or I could be wrong.

This issue,this whole arc, is stupid for several reasons. First it is just a repeat ofBatman loses everything and rises from the ashes stronger. Rinse lather repeat. Second, the whole premise makes no sense. Crooks willing to be partipants in mass murder decide to become thieves and will be expected to be peaceful because why? Third, the Bat family going along with crime? To quote Lana Kane , “Nnooppe.” Fourth - Zur-an-that was and remains an uninteresting idea. Instead of allowing for character examination, it just acts a a macguffin for tedious stories. When this is over, Bruce will have his fortune back, again. The family will say we’re a family again, let’s not fight again. Bruce will say I will be nice again. I am guessing Cat and Bat will be dead as a couple, just like zMJ and Peter. Editors hate it, public loves it. This really is just a terrible rehash of terrible ideas that have been run into the ground. Or I could be wrong.

No, just no. Batman is pure evil using mind control techniques to control Jason despite the fact that when JLA did that to Catwoman via Zatanna he quite rightly opposed it. The family can’t stop him and the subplot is now immortals gather to turn Gotham immortal or some such nonesense. Any plot that can’t be made into a Batman movie is bad. You want sci-fi or magic with Batman, see him in the Justice League. Meanwhile Catwoman is surprised that Bruce opposes her kinder, gentler crime wave. This arc of stories is well drawn but clearly shows DC doesn’t know what to do with Batman and family. Just keep making nuts and have family in turmoil for good reason. That’s been the problem with Batman. Writers write themselves into a corner, Jason is back but is a murerder edgy! BUt they have to ignore the consequences of their actions. Bruce loses fortune in way that makes no sense. How does it affect his life? It doesn’t. Alfred dead? So what? Lose a hand? Couldn’t tell by his stories. Fill the books with sidekicks, but have nothing for them to do. It’s been almost 40 years since Frank Miller made Bats psycho, and it is sooo tired. Do better DC. Or I could be wrong. I’m not.

The art is good and the plot isn’t so egregious that I get eye strain from rolling them. But I did not follow the Gotham War because I didn’t have the time or money. Well, I had the time, and to be fair Tupperware money. What I didn’t have was the patience for a story built on a false premise. So I am totally unfamiliar with the current status quo. Apparently Bruce has alienated his family so much that they let him live alone on a fake identity. He has a small apartment and turns off the lights and talks to the toaster. He is hunting for the Joker and eventually finds him. They tussle and we see Zur An Rah. Bruce’s psyche battles against itself, again. This recent arc seems like a distillation of 40 years of Miller Batman, and man I am tired of it. The Batman family apparently abandons Bruce. There is no intervention, Clark and et all don’t help. Bruce’s magic hand plays no role in anything. DC keeps writing stories that should have massive consequences for Batman and D C at large, but everything slips back to “normal” again and the cycle repeats. It’s boring and thanks to trades and internet sites with the full history of Batman available, it becomes obvious. DC has decided to skip the hard work of writing original stories in some sort of “dark” homage to the cult of Frank Miller. I am tired of it. But I could be wrong. Batman is their cash cow. His books are their top sellers. Telling them to write to my tastes would be financial suicide in a diminishing comics market. Grr. You kids stay off my lawn.

Batman fights himself. The final version Zurich do dah version of Frank Miller’s Batman, so points for on the nose symbolism. I guess we’re supposed to see that the writer is symbolically putting an end to Miller’s Batman, but it is so heavy handed, he doesn’t stick the landing. Miller Batman can always come back. DC seems to think this stale concept of Batman is the only way to write him. My problem is the issue really does nothing. We don’t see the Bat family. ThenJoker fight is part Bane breaks back symbolism, which is actually a good idea. If Bats won’t kill Joker, he can make him a quadriplegic dependent on a respiration machine. Joker lives, but can’t escape or talk to corrupt his latest shrink. Ultimately we’ve been down this road before. How about DC pick another path. The art was nice. Or I could be wrong.

My main problem with issue is that Batman is written as dumb. He had to fight the Bat Terminator bot he created. And apparently the best way Bruce thinks to do that is to punch metal that can be used to fight Superman with flesh, or flesh and a metal hand. Bruce does not create any equipment or develop a strategy to outwit his latest backup plan that goes out of control and is a bigger danger than the villains Bats fights. No, it’s just try to punch out a killer robot. That’s just lazy writing done by a hack. Not a good issue. Or I could be wrong.

I guess I reject the premise of the story - that theJoker’s origin is important. I totally agree with Christopher Nolan, in that the Joker’s origin doesn’t matter. He just is. He comes from nowhere with an agenda that only makes sense to him. Trying to explain his origin just ruins the mystery. It is like trying to explain the origins of the immortals in Highlander. They did it twice and it was a bad idea both times. By explaining the Joker’s origin, he becomes normal, just another gimmick character. So this whole Joker Year One story just doesn’t work for me. Just a bad idea come to life. Or I could be wrong.

I rate this “whatever.” Despite trying to show how he Joker got so badass, it just shows me the Joker is badass because the writers tell and not show. He can take unlimited punishment and despite the fact everyone in Gotham has a gun and wants to kill him, no one shoots him. There is no, for lack of a better word, logic behind this Joker. Chris Nolan made him an agent of chaos. He had a goal, show everyone will break. Steve Englehart had the Joker say in medieval times even kings envied jesters for their ability to say what they wanted without fear. This Joker was the free man. Now the Joker seems to exist to let writers show how depraved they can write. Forget Batman letting the Joker live, why has no Gotham cop given him a Bin Laden special. Who would care? Hey I am. A hippy lawyer, I protest the shooting of a mass murderer responsible for the deaths of thousands and has escaped every time he has been locked up. Who would listen. It’s been years since anyone had done anything interesting with the Joker. Give him a rest until someone actually comes up with a good idea, a genuine good idea. I don’t see that happening. Or I could be wrong.

I finally figured out what bugs me about this story. It doesn’t matter.Batman Year one mattered because it was a new Batman after Infinite Crisis. This is just a story where the Joker kills a lot. We know where it is going to end. Crazy Joker who kills a lot. We also get another story where Jim Gordon doesn’t kill Joker. Again lather, rinse, repeat. Also not a fan of the art style. But that’s me. I won’t argue if you like it. Not a great story. More of a cynical cash grab that went nowhere. Or I could be wrong.

I rate this “oh, who cares.” We get the killer bat robot. Joker is playing psychological games with Batman as if the Joker being trained by the same as Batman was just some giant mindf#ck., some great plot that Zdarsky thought of that puts all others to shame. It doesn’t. We also have the one-eyed mayor. I honestly forgot he existed. But killer batbot is actually proving the mayor right. Batman is a menace. Once again the story is about how Batman is the problem, not the solution. Not a good look. The art was nice. But this whole run has been deconstructing Batman to the point that is really counts as destruction. All the characters are flat, merely pawns to plot. Just terrible. Or I could be wrong.

What the hell was that? Another issue where the evil at robot goes amuck Batman and Joker still at odds like a million times before but without a smart plot well devised. The writer has clearly shown Joker knows who Batman is but the result is so what? Actions have no consequences and characters spin their wheels doing nothing. The bat robot is still at large after what a year? So far Bats is his and Gotham’s worst enemy. Zdarsky’s not a Joker origin story story just shows Bats creates problems, not solves them. Bat robot another Bruce created villain. I don’t think proving Bat critics, the ones who say if Bruce gave away his money all problems would be solved, are right is a good look or clever writing. Art was nice, but man I can’t wait for the DC reboot in October. Terrible stories. Or I could be wrong

This issue was so meh. Bruce is being saved by the power of love. Flash and Tim tell him he’s not alone, amazing considering the first five decades of Batman had him working with Robin, Superman, Justice League. Now we are told Bruce’s mind has been seeded so he doesn’t have to take responsibility for writers going edgelord. Also Damian realizes robot is not dad. Evil shrink, the 87th we’ve seen in Batman is really ripped and notes robot is making mistakes. Robot also captures Damian and unveils his own robot Bat family. Now everyone will have their own doppelgänger to fight. This story is going around the block to get next door. I am all for Batman being sane, I put you don’t have to have a convoluted years long story to get there, just write him sane. All in all dull. Or I could be wrong.

Well the arc is over. Batman overcomes obstacle and reunites with family again. I would give points for originality except what is this, the 123,887,546 time it’s been done. We have yet another mastermind who, secretly, behind the scenes has manipulated all the players, but this one created both the Joker AND Batman, and DC has again given Bruce an excuse for not being responsible for doing horrible things. The Lazarus Pit again is a get out of jail card that reduces death to being barely an inconvenience. And the family is again reduced to being cardboard cutouts who fulfill roles and don’t reveal character in action. There is a lot of Jason forgiving Bruce for his death, and I guess Bruce forgiving Jason for all the murders Jason committed. Bruce can’t kill but Jason gets a body count. Whatever. And the art was jumbled. Tim’s new costume is a riot of shapes and colors that do not mesh in a pleasant manner. Overall a VERY predictable story that spent YEARS TELLING THE SAME OLD STORY, BUT THIS TIME IT MAKES Bruce look incredibly lame because he again was a pawn of someone else taking away his agency, and gave us yet again another Joker origin that completely removes the mystery of the character. Terrible. Or I could be wrong.

Superstan52 said many of the same things I thought so good for him and bad for me since I want to be original. I will say they’ve set up two future stories. Clone that gave Bruce his hand and was buried in backyard of Wayne Manor 2.0 will be dug up and we will have another Dark reflection of Bruce villain who was dumped into a Lazarus pit for evil reasons. Damian is also right about evil batbot that can take down Justice League being in the hands of the Army is a bad idea. We will see another Bruce creates villain story out of that. Points for Bruce having backup billions. He IS the guy with backup plans with backup plans. It shouldn’t have taken years to discover that. So after several years Bruce has billions, just not his original billions. He has a mansion and batcave, just not the original. What was the point? He and Selina are back to being friends, and probably lovers. Family is family. Makes the last few years feel like another Bruce us down, learns lesson with a body count, but emerges stronger. Lather, rinse, repeat. This is not good. Or I could be wrong. The art was nice, and the Robin suits looked better, but we really have no sense of the roles bat family members will play. They are plot points, not characters.

This issue is fine. Daspidaboy beat me to it when he used that word in his review, so well played, sir. This sort of story has been done several times before. You know, unknown person describes what just happened and how things were going and we see several incidents showing us a point of view from a previously unknown character with the hero coming in at the last minute doing something kind that ties the whole story together, and we see a character moment for the hero. The classic example of this is from the Batman cartoon episode “Old Wounds” where Nightwing explains to new Robin how he and Bruce split. That episode even ends with a Joker henchman Bruce terrorized in front of his son getting a job at Wayne Enterprises and being able to leave the hench life. I was never a fan of Denys Cowan’s art, but that is me. If you like his stuff I won’t argue. I also spent too much time thinking about henchman economics. Real criminal gangs are actually hard to join and getting a job with one isn’t like going to a job center. The fact that police and Batman can’t find Two-Face but unemployed loser dad can isn’t a good look for the forces of law. Also, Dent is an escaped killer. Police don’t have to build a case. What I am saying is that if a small time hench needs to get out of jam dropping a dime on Two-Face or whomever is looking for henches is a good get out of jail card is all I am saying. So points deducted for plot points that have been seen before. Points added for showing Bruce not as a violent psycho, but as someone who wants to help people and not just smash people in the face because he likes the sounds his fist makes when it crushes bone and cartilage. So an issue that was . . .fine. I suspect it is a time killer during DC’s big summer event. We won’t get a sense of what the new status quo will be like until that’s over. Or I could be wrong.

Actually, a pretty decent issue, especially for a crossover tie-in. I am not a fan of publisher wide events. They are usually written by committee, so even the characters are inconsistent from issue to issue despite the fact that they are supposed to be the same person in a single plot. I also find the premise of these events to be eye rolling and the efforts to be shocking and edgy usually result in a story that does no justice to characters. Also, they often kill momentum in books where plots have to be put on hold for the crossover. Your mileage may vary. The Marvel vampire story this summer is a classic example of this. Making Dr. Doom Sorcerer Supreme just doesn't work, at least not for me. But this is Batman. The art was solid, and the Bat and Cat interplay actually worked well. The characters didn't act stupid, and the plot of this issue didn't go forward because the writer deemed it so. There weren't too many characters to follow. A common problem in the Bat books. But this story is part of a larger whole. I have certain problems with the premise of the overall story. Apparently, Amamda Waller is so powerful, she can build secret bases and no one finds out. These bases would require billions of dollars and thousands of workers to construct them. And no one notices. Waller has been portrayed as a villain for so long, you'd think the heroes, the president, and congress would at least keep an eye on her. Also, she depowered heroes and no one does anything. Again, the president, congress, her political enemies just sit and do nothing? The villains all just act according to her wishes. There aren't any supervillain spikes in crime? A bridge too far for me. But it you like it, fair enough. An odd issue. A strong tie-in in a larger story with a premise I can't buy into. Really hard to judge. Or I could be wrong.

The score represents the fact that I was completely lost because I am not following the Absolute Power main story. But for a tie-in, the writer has something to say about Bruce and Selina. He actually writes her as smart, insightful, and mature. She actually seems like a grownup and a partner who can hold her own physically and in the brains department. Bruce isn’t written as a lox. He is relatively self aware, but has room for growth, growth driven by actually having an equal relationship with Selina. So well done. But not caring about the story it is tied into means the majority of the book is about something that does nothing for me. Overall, I give the writer points, which tells me he can actually write Bruce as Batman, which makes the previous year or two even more disappointing. Or I could be wrong.

No, just no. Chip actually did a decent Bat story last issue, but ruins it by bringing up Bruce’s long lost “brother” from Snyder’s court of Owls thing. It was a bad idea a decade ago. It was a bad idea in 1973 when Bob Haney wrote Bat-crap crazy stories in Brave and Bold. The stories had no impact on main continuity and ought to be considered alternate universe. Points for finally killing the mayor. Points taken away for the Riddler being free on a technicality. He has committed so many crime he would have to be free on 123,865 technicalities. And Bruce finally gets his money back only to be sued by “bro.” Thomas Wayne and wife Martha having a kid is front page news. The pregnancy is front page news. There is no way a secret child is possible. If you want people to believe in Lazarus pits and Manbats, you have to keep the real world details real, otherwise you create a world where there is no anchor for the reader to latch onto. This is bad and I am not wrong.

Nice art, continuation of a cynical trend I hate. Mainly taking morally good characters and deconstructing them to make them “human.” By That I mean taking good guys and making them creeps. Thomas Wayne has gone from a good man who became a doctor instead of sitting on his trust fund to a guy who cheats on his wife while ignoring her because he cares too much about his career. Leslie Thompkins tells Bruce dad did cheat and could have fathered a child. Bruce’s advisor says give up half his fortune and have”bro” sign an NDA. Why? To save his dead dad’s reputation? To avoid a scandal? Bruce has been in so many scandals, what is one more? Plan makes no sense. Wouldn’t be surprised if advisor is in on the plot. The mayor is dead, and people ask who would kill him? Given his huge number of failures that have resulted in the deaths of thousands is anybody surprised at this? Also, the public hates Bruce Wayne and Wayne Enterprises? Really? Are writers so cynical that they can’t conceive of good people. In War Games, they made Leslie a killer. I think it’s been retconned, but such a cynical move. This issue has Bats lashing out in anger. So he’s a bottled keg waiting to explode instead of a man in control. There’s a new head of Court of Owls? That group has gone from a legend no knew existed to a group all know are real. Just take them down with a forensic accountant. The Riddler is meeting with people, and Bats knows and confronted them. Gives the usual warning about watching them while actually having no evidence and letting their plan unfold and not actually stopping anything. Not a good story. Or I could be wrong.

What can I say? King's weaknesses as a writer are out in full force in this issue. We are now a third through this story line and we know virtually nothing. Andrea Beaumont, for all intents and purposes, is a new character and we know nothing about her, her relationship with Bruce and her relationship with Selina. There is the movie, but this is her comic's debut and it's been a long time since I saw the movie. King is absolutely wrong in having her back story explained in another medium that came out almost 30 years ago. We have the new Batwoman, who is Selina and Bruce's daughter and we know nothing about her except that she's gay, like the old Batwoman I guess. Maybe that title comes with certain sexual preference requirements. We know that Selina killed the Joker and that in the past she and the Joker had some sort of relationship that she didn't want Bruce to know about. We know the Joker killed Andrea's son (I hope to God that the son isn't a secret son of Bruce. How many of Bruce's sons and daughters does the Joker have to kill or cripple before DC gets it in their heads that they can't keep repeating the same beats over and over again. Especially in an era when they reprint the orginal stories over and over again. Even new fans are aware of the past. It's not like in the old days when it was difficult for fans who were new to the hobby to collect back issues going back 30 or 40 years, so they didn't have an acute awareness of Bats' history.) We see Selina in the future being ruthless. But we saw that already when she killed the Joker. And apparently Selina is kind of angry at Bruce for his mercy to villains. She said that Bruce didn't lock them up, he forgave them. Maybe King is going for some sort of "Selina feels that she shouldn't have been forgiven for her crimes" thing. And what she hates in what Bruce did is because secretly she feels he let her off the hook. I don't know, but it's actually something worth exploring, and should not be just a casual one-off line. King seems to write Selina as inherently evil and only on the side of angels because of Bruce. Once he's gone, it's back to being a Bond villain. That's insulting is so many ways. First Seline was never a killer. She was always a thief. From the beginning, she never went in for blood. I mean she and the Joker premiered in the same issue (Batman #1) and they crossed swords a couple of issues later in Batman #3. We actually see Catwoman willing to give up to Joker the jewels she stole if he spared Robin's life. From the very beginning they establish a difference between her and the Joker. But King has Selina being pals with the Joker. Bad characterization. Second, having a bad woman be good because a man "straightened" her out is just sexist writing in the highest degree. Again, bad writing. Also, King has public domain poetry do the heavy lifting in the story telling. In this case the Christmas carol "Hark the Herald Angels Sing" do the heavy lifting. I maintain the carol is just a variation of theme. Tom, words and dialog are a main component of comic books. Don't be so lazy. Embrace the story-telling tools you have at hand. For God's sake, stop hiding behind the words of other people. It's just cheap. Finally, having a story take place in past, present and future becomes very confusing. I may not be a genius, but I am not stupid. If you can confuse a long time comics fan like me, then I have to say, you're doing something wrong. King might think switching time periods gives the illusion of forward momentum, but he is blowing it. For once he has the chance to tell a story where we don't know here it's going. In the past, we know that Bruce doesn't end up with Andrea, he ends up with Selina. But the future is an undiscovered country, to steal from Chancellor Gorkon. We actually don't know how the story will end, but King kills momentum by constantly switching up time periods. But the art was good. Can't say I love the new Batwoman costume. A little to cheese-cakey for my tastes. DC artists, you can draw women in an attractive way without resorting to Cinemax at night renditions of the female form. Who knows, you might actually attract some women readers. Or I could be wrong.

We are almost halfway through this story and nothing has really happened. Harley is mad that Selina killed the Joker in the future, when that was something Harley wanted to do. Andrea is torturing Joker goons while Selina watched in the past. That's it. King goes back to his bad habit of letting other writers, through their poems or song lyrics, do the heavy lifting. Yet again, there is a page filled with the words of other writers. But the real downfall is characterization. There is none. King has told us nothing about Andrea, or why her son was in Gotham. All we know is what we remember from a cartoon movie that's almost 30 years old. We have Catwoman saying that Batman doesn't believe he's a good man, but that he is. We certainly don't see any proof of either side of the argument. I certainly don't buy the Joker hiding in a retirement trailer park in Florida, talking about having a family like he's some sort of normal man. That's just not the Joker. When the plot of five issues of a comic book can be described in a couple of sentences, there's something wrong. I like Bat/Cat, but this mini-series doesn't show me why I do. It certainly doesn't show us much Catwoman, despite the fact that she has the most screentime. Don't tell me that the explanations and reveals of her character comes later. It's been five issues and something like $20 bucks spent. That entitles me to some basic competent story telling. The art was nice, but man this guy likes his women skinny. Or I could be wrong.

The 3 is for the art. To be fair to King, all his weaknesses are on display. Letting public domanin writing do the heavy lifting? Check. (See use of Christmas carols). Pretty art surrounded by few words, check. Having characters both not talk about emotions while keeping other characters in the dark? Check. Have action be there but not actually contribute to the forward momentum of the story? Check. Have an assumed previous knowledge of characters be pivotal to the understanding of the story? Check. This story is terrible. We are halfway through this 12 issue run and we know nothing. Bats is dead and Cats killed the Joker in the future. In the past Andrea Beaumont wants to kill the Joker because the Joker killed her son. Bats, of course, won't let that happen. In the present, the Joker and Catwoman are talking about stolen Christmas ornaments and Catwoman asks "Am I a good person?" Why anyone would ask the Joker that is beyond understanding. This, of course, is another King trope. Characters just sitting around asking am I a good person. This gets tiring. It's also too on the nose. A story that explores that theme shouldn't be explicitly stating "This is the theme." And in order for King to do what he does, he has to have characters act uncharacteristically. Joker and Catwoman were never friends. The Joker has no friends. The very idea that he would have anything remotely resembling normal social interaction is absurd. It's not the character, and more importantly, it destroys the mystery of the character. It takes the Joker from being an unknowable force of chaos to a mere character with a point of view, a dangerous point of view, but a point of view, nonetheless. And Selena killing the Joker in the future? So what? He apparently was hiding out in a Florida trailer park for retirees and had grandchildren? Huh? Again, not the Joker. I don't even have the time to explain how stupid that is. But let me say that treating the Joker like a normal character totally misses the point of the Joker. And speaking of missing the point of the character. Can anyone tell me about Andrea Beaumont? Of Course not. King has explained nothing about her. All we know comes from a 28-year-old cartoon. If you haven't seen that, you're screwed. Her character is just there, and King again is letting other writers do the heavy lifting. He's done nothing. And his great moral conundrum of do we kill the Joker. It's been done to death. The answer is of course you do. No matter how many times you lock him up, he gets out and kills dozens or thousands more. To keep him alive is to condemn innocents to death. Keeping him alive because it's wrong to kill is vanity. But he sell comics and writers apparently like stories where he kills thousands. I don't, I like the battle of wits side of the story. But that gets lost in the futile "we have to up the stakes and I am too poor of a writer to actually write an intelligent battle of wits, so I will kill thousands and have Bats virtually stumble across the Joker and have a punch out where the Joker taunts Batman before getting clobbered." This writing is terrible. And having future Selena put on an old Catwoman costume that is unflattering to a senior citizen and ask her daughter to fight crime isn't the plot point that King seems to think it is. King gets to write future Helena Wayne and then tells us nothing about her other than she's gay, because of course she is. He's woke. I am going to sound like one of those guys, and if you condemn me, fair enough. But you can't have a character be gay and then do nothing with that. Explain the point of view, show how being gay matters and doesn't matter. How being gay informs the character's world view and how the character handles this fact in a world where being gay is hard because of old goats like me, who say they are enlightened but could probably use a good talking to. If you don't do that, and if you're story doesn't allow you to do that, then it's just woke window dressing. No points from me. One of the big themes of The Falcon and the Winter Soldier MCU show was about being black. The Falcon/Cap is a black character, not a character who is black. These details matter. I could go on. A terrible issue in a terrible mini-series. Or I could be wrong.

Arrgghhh. This miniseries is so frustrating. The three time periods is confusing. The new characters are just there. We really don't know anything about Helena or Andrea. It's all about Catwoman killing the Joker. Frankly, I don't see why anyone would care. With Bruce dead, I could absolutely believe that Helena and Dick would give Selina a pass. This is the Joker. They'd have to be happy he's gone. That would be the interesting thing, not let's arrest Selina. The big "twist" is that the Joker told Andrea something and that stopped her from killing him, in fact she went off with him and Selina doesn't know why. It's obvious that it's because he told her that her son is still alive. If I'm wrong, I am wrong, but I'm not wrong. Nice art. That whole thing of Selina having rough sex with Bruce and locking him up so that she could kill the Joker was just dumb. Again, entire pages of no dialog but pubic domain IP doing the heavy lifting. This is issue 7, and we basically don't know anything. We certainly don't see the personality of the characters in the future. Future Dick Grayson is a cipher. Helena is a cipher, Selina is a cipher. It's all plot with characters being chess pieces, not living breathing characters in which we can identify and emphasize with. GRR. Or I could be wrong.

It's one thing to write a book that I don't like. Happens all the time. No one has to like everything. It's quite another to write a book that offends me on a moral level. In the three time periods we see Helena and Dick blather on without actually doing anything. In the past, we the Joker taking Phantasm (who has never been called that if I recall correctly. If I recall incorrectly, sorry King, that's on me.) Apparently some kid is Andrea's son's brother, or maybe Andrea's son. Andrea drops her guard, takes off her mask and is then strangled from behind by the Joker. Tune in next month, same Bat-time, same Bat-channel to see if she survives being dumber than a box of rocks. In what I think is the present, or perhaps the recent past, we see the same old Bat-Cat dance. Catwoman says to Bats "leave me alone." And then ponders if her totally created by King friendship with the Joker is immoral. The Joker then declares that people think they are good, but by not helping some poor starving waif who might save the world if she didn't starve, are actually killing the future and are evil and What I Do Shows The People Their Hypocrisy. He even blames Bruce Wayne for spending all his money maintaining his mansion. I guess he never heard of the Wayne Foundation, just like the people who say "If Bruce Wayne Spent His Money On Antipoverty Efforts All Gotham's Problems Would Magically Disappear Because That's How The Real World Works." I am offended that King has written a relationship between the Catwoman and the Joker. That's is not history, that is King's Fantasy. As I've mentioned before, all the way back in Batman #3 vol. 1, (about 1940) we see the difference between Cats and Jokes. J has Robin in his grasp and Cats says the loot they were both going after would be the Joker's if he let the boy go. From the very beginning of their mutual history together, we see a huge difference in their morality. The notion that they would hang out together is offensive. Offensive to the rules of story-telling and offensive to Catwoman's character. It's offensive to Bruce's character as well. The idea that he would be in a relationship with a woman who was pals with the Joker is beyond the pale. And the idea Batman would keep following Catwoman around saying "please be good, please be good" is insulting to both characters. This issue is trash, and all of King's faults are writ large. Or I could be wrong.

Let me sum up what happens. Selina wants to get out of town, goes to the Penguin, who then turns her in to her own daughter. The end. An entire issue that can be summed up with one sentence. What King doesn't do is actually explain why Selina had any sort of relationship with the Joker. He certainly doesn't make a compelling argument for why anyone would actually want to bring the killer of this mass murderer to court. With his confusing three time period structure, I get lost. Now I am old and the kids won't get off my lawn, but I am not stupid. I don't appreciate having to try to figure out what is happening when. I don't mind having to concentrate on getting the full subtext, but I draw the line at basic story structure. This issue tells us nothing new and just keeps repeating beats that have already been hit in earlier issues. They've switched artists, and as I have mentioned in the past, when they switch artists in the middle of a story, I don't like it. It's a personal thing. Your mileage may vary and that's fair enough. But for me this has a bad effect on my enjoyment of the story. But it is unfair to blame the fill-in artist. The work was fine, but the rhythm of the overall story has been disrupted in my eyes. The flashbacks that are supposed to illuminate the past relationships of the villains don't do the job, and teasing some secret Joker/Catwoman thing, whatever that thing might be, gets very tedious after eight or nine issues. It certainly doesn't make me want to read more to see what I am being teased with. It's been a year since this book's launch. We have had delays and this absence has not made the heart grow fonder. DC get it together. Also, I am really tired of King's bag of tricks. Hiding information to confuse (not whet the appetite of the reader.) The lack of dialog. The use of public domain poetry and songs to carry the plot forward. The concentration on mental health issues. I know you have PTSD from your role in the fight against terrorism, but these are comics. They're supposed to be enjoyable and fun and have adventure. I don't like tough slogs to read that lecture me on the importance of mental health. But that's me, and to be fair if one person is driven to get help, there is value in that. But at least be subtle about the afterschool special aspects. Not a great issue and not a great run is what I'm saying. Or I could be wrong.

Like other critics, the 3 is for the art. The story is so bad that it lowers what should be a higher art score. The “story” has a whole issue to progress, but the whole of the issipue could be reduced to one page. It spins its wheels and is lost thanks to a confusing multi-timeline format. And King has totally forgotten about Phantasm. To be fair, so had I, but remembered her because I recalled the previous covers. This issipue and series is a mess. What is DC thinking. Seriously, how could professionals put this out and charge money? Also, it’s late. And I am not wrong.

That was it? Call Seinfeld, we finally got a comic about nothing. It took a year and a half to complete. And damned if I can say what it was about. Maybe I am too stupid, but Catwoman kills the Joker in the future? So what? Andrea raised a kid the Joker stole? What was that even about? The art was nice, but King relied on all his tricks - using public domain writing to carry his load, depending on art to fill the space without actually having said art move at a fast pace to make for an exciting story. This whole series was a waste of time and money. Or I could be wrong.

All of King’s usual tropes. Public domain works doing heavy lifting? Check. Characters talking at each other instead of to each other? Check. Split time line that makes it hard to follow a linear story. Double check. Weird Joker/Catwoman relationship. Check. Quick cut scenes that fail to give a story room to breath and ruin any sense of coherence? Check. Being told instead of shown what characters feel? Check. This is another story where King shows an entire lifetime in one issue, which means we don’t learn about character holistically. King basically says “subtext becomes text” here it is. The result is a bland story that doesn’t stick because points are briefly touched on without enough time being spent on any life-defining moment. King also got too cute with the symbolism. Selina is shown as a baby discarded in a trash strewn ally. She dies walking down an ally after a mugger kills her for her jewelry. Get it? Her life is a complete circle. Also, a healthy white baby found in an ally would not grow up in an orphanage. She would make the news and be adopted so fast, your head would spin. Once again King shows us his own special continuity, and I remain unimpressed or drawn in. It reminds me of a blind person describing a statue. No matter how talented that blind person is, you are going to get an incomplete picture that lacks a certain life. I won’t talk about the art. The circumstances are such that it would be in poor taste to comment. Not a good issue. Or I could be wrong.

The art, of course, is gorgeous. But the story is so decompressed. We finally learn what Creel's plan is. Take hold of a Lazurus Pit to save her life and build some sort of zombie army. Selena beats Creel to the Pit and basically watches what happens. We then catch up to her getting "killed" from last issue and see why she entered the Pit. We get the usual dialog boxes that explain she needs magic and we see her enter a magic club and find out she is visiting Zatanna, who saw her coming. Also, Zatanna drinks manhattens. An unusual choice for a young lady. While Selena is cooking in the Pit we get a lot of inter dialog about why she left Bruce, but it's nothing new. Watching Selena watch an evil plan go forth is static and really makes her a passive character in her own book. Given her skill set, she could have stopped Creel and Creel's goons. Watching achieves nothing except for allowing the story to progress. That's bad writing. Also, since Lazurus Pits grant immortality and are used by a 600-year-old terrorist, one would think they'd be better guarded and that Ra's would also kill anyone even thinking of sniffing around one to use for that person's own purposes. Again, sloppy writing. The plot moves forward only because people don't do the smart or logical thing. Always a sign of poor writing. As to Selena's inner musings on her relationshihp with Bruce, again it's tell, not show, and it's just repeating what we already know. The writers (King and Joelle) seem stuck in a loop. Get off the Merry-Go-Round already. What I liked. I have to admit having Catwoman and Zatanna team up has potential. Paul Dini has retconned Zatanna as having a not-so-secret "Crush" on Bruce/Batman, so having these two characters who love Bruce team up has the opportunity to show interesting character interactions. It just better not end up being a cat fight. (See what I did there). Seriously, the trope of women not really getting along and sniping at each other is overdone and needs to go away, for the most part. I will concede that sometimes people don't like each other and these people can be women, but this action should be used sparingly. Or I could be wrong. There's a lot to like in this issue, but there are problems. Also decompression.

The problem with the "New Batman" is that it doesn't tell us who these characters are. Granted the original Batman didn't get an origin until six months after the character was launched in 1939, but that two-page story told us what we needed to know - why a guy dresses up as a bat to fight crime. Given that this was a comic book in 1939, and people put on costumes as a matter of course to sell 10 cent books to nine-year-olds, that was all we needed. But it's 2021. Nine-year-olds don't read comics anymore. I suspect more people over the age of 15 read them than under the age of 15. That means you have to come up with good explanations as to why people dress as a bat to fight crime. The New Batman really doesn't tell us why young Fox does what he does. We know the Fox family basically stole Bruce's fortune so we know why young Fox has the means, but there is no motive. We certainly don't know how Gotham became a police state outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Constitution. I know the reason behind the story - evil corrupt private police justify having a vigilante fight for justice. But the how of that situation really matters. As much as I hated No-Man's Land (Gotham is cut off from the U.S. and it's Mad Max time despite the fact that Green Lantern and Superman could have solved the problems in 10 minutes, meaning I didn't buy into the premise of the story, so I didn't buy the stories) the writers at least came up with a reason why Gotham was the way it was. Again, I didn't buy that but there was an explanation. I also didn't buy the whole "six months later, Gotham is restored and it's like No-Man's Land never happened, but that's a rant for another day. I liked that we see Cass and Steph renew their vows of sisterhood, as it were. But again they left out the important part of them breaking up as it were. Being placed in the middle of the story means a lot of the hard work of world-building isn't done. So again, I don't buy into the basic premise of the story, so the stories don't work for me. I am also sick of the dystopian future tropes. I have always liked the notion that this is our world, but with superheroes. I know that premise is problematic when you think about it for more than 10 seconds, but I started buying comics when you just had to accept idea, so I did. If you can't I can hardly blame you. But looking at the Marvel movies, seeing heroes in real places among ordinary people works if you do it right. Dystopian futures is just the Hunger Games with different characters. I truly believe something is lost, but that's me. Your mileage may vary, and fair enough. The art was good, though. But overall, I really just don't care about these characters. Their motivations for their actions aren't explained. Their worlds aren't built, so we don't know the rules. Say what you will about old comics, but the producers really did a great job of character motiviation and world-building. The first issues usually did a great job of doing that. The Spider-Man origin in Amazing Fantasy sets everything up beautifully, and it does it in like half an issue of a comic. Now that's efficient, smart story telling. Or I could be wrong.

I LOVED this issue. It did something a comic book hasn’t done in a long time. It surprised me in a positive way. I was very skeptical about turning Jessica Yellow. (See what I did there). It seem d like a twist for the sake of a twist. Sort of “look at what we are doing, aren’t we daring.” Well, Ryan Cady got it right. He presented a strong case for Yellow Jess. Think about it. It must be addicting to be a Lantern, no matter the color of the ring. Jessica had the choice of going home and being powerless, or taking a Yellow ring and still fighting. What I really liked was that we could totally see that she is being seduced to the Yellow side, she was also not lied to, talked down to or criticized by Sinestro. He actually wants her to do well, to learn how to use the Yellow ring. She is actually getting instruction on how to use it, and how it is different from a Green ring. Plus , I think she likes the power. It speaks to her and makes her feel comfortable. She used to be crippled by fear. Now it is her closest friend. Notice how we never see her without the ring. When she wakes up in bad, she is clutching it. When’s he attempts to give it to Sinestro, she holds it in her hand. She doesn’t put the ring down on the table. When Sinestro accepts her demands, including not swearing the oath, he again shows trust. I look forward to her actually saying the oath one day. That will be when she will cross the Rubicon. I hope DC has the guts to do that. Keep her Yellow. As Sinesto says, she is a natural. After all, the truths we cling to greatly depend on our point of view. She is being exposed to a new one and it suits her. Or I could be wrong.

This is just pure speculation on my part. I have no inside info, and many of my predictions have been wrong in the past, so take this with a giant grain of salt. But I now believe that Mary Jane’s kids as seen in recent Amazing Spider-man issues are her biological, not step, kids. What makes me think that? In the latest MJ and Black Cat issue, Cat mentions MJ was gone for six months. MJ says yeah six months in such say that it leads me to believe she was in some dimension where time travels differently, so she had time to birth two kids. There may be some sort of variation on this, but you get my drift. Why would Marvel do this? Reason one, the editors are tools and don’t want a married Peter because he is unrelatable. I guess that shows what they think of readers. We are incapable of having healthy relationships and live in relatives’ basements. Two, by giving MJ real kids, they can kill any hope of MJ and Peter getting together. The call of motherhood will drag MJ away from Peter, and editors have a full proof way to kill the relationship. They tried killing MJ In a plane crash. Didn’t take. They tried a deal with devil and could not kill the vibe. But give MJ real kids, and she can’t expose them to Peter’s dangerous life. She has to stay away and shame on the reader for downgrading motherhood. Are we going to kill or otherwise take her kids away? Who’ the tool now? Like I said this is a guess. If I am right, you read it here first. If I am wrong? Well, I have always admitted to that possibility, but you have to give me points. Because when I am wrong, I am really wrong.