FASHI's Profile

Best issue yet

It's neat. It's an issue mostly here to catch you up on the world and central thrust of the plot. It's most successful when it's the likable main character giving it through her perspective and feels the most lore-dumpy the one time where that falls away.

This would've been better if it wasn't connected to knightmares. The Lana/Selina half is the most solid part, giving a nice respite for the run and giving King the opportunity to focus on someone who isn't a despondent baby. Bruce, If we're taking the events literally, is celebrating his bachelor party with his apparently only friend (no sign of Alfred or the rest of the bat-family) and doing it with the charisma of a potato. This is in contrast with Snyder's Justice League where their relationship always feels warm and sometimes jokey, here we're dragged back down to the depths of knightmares. Exposing Bruce's fears is after all the point of the arc. You can interpret Selina's reason for loving Bruce as a tad abstract, like she doesn't know the reason she loves him except maybe that the thinks she should. Combined with Bruce's disinterest in Clark's advice to him. Lots of red flags all around. I haven't been in love since middle school but I think it looks a little different than this. Outside of the love-stuff this doesn't really move the plot foreward in a meaningful way.

The issue's heartbreaking in that it's a window into how much better this series could've been with both a re-prioritization of... priorities and tighter pacing. We needed this dive into Flashpoint bat so much like 30 issues ago, maybe showing the character motivations so we know why things are happening or something, maybe dropping bane entirely because he doesn't do anything interesting and thomas is so unexplored. there's easily an arcs worth of cool stuff in this that's just breezed by. It also highlights king's inspired structural experimentation, it took a lot of work to fit this big of a story into 22 pages. it's as clean as it possibly can be and the little thomas bits we do get are potent.

The worst issue in the run so far. We (and Batman) already realized this is a dream last issue, this issue wallows in the surreal without doing anything with it. The scenes with Selina feel like a waste of time and Constantine isn't given room to breath. Ends up feeling like a knockoff 'For the Man who has Everything'. This could've been partly saved by some cool art (like last issue) but it's stiff and bland feels like the opposite of a dream.