Finally - after giving Batman the"R" and announcing he's not Robin, which I guess was more than a year ago. And he wasn't - but now he's grown into and reclaimed it.

When you have as much fun reading this as I did, this could just as well be a 10.0.

Nice to see an extra-sized 26 page story for the standard price of $3.99. Pretty rare! The credits are unremarkable on the cover, but the inside credits name Kubert before Taylor. I wonder if that will be true with each issue, and besides it being atypical, whether it has any significance.

Otto Schmidt's art is terrific as usual. But I don't agree with the reviewers who say the artwork is seamlessly shared. Daniele Di Nicuolo drew nine of the 22 pages - the scenes with Batgirl in and right outside of Hugo Strange's lab, and then on the boat with Supergirl, Steel and Black Manta. And while the static panels are okay, his scratchy manga style often meant incomprehensible action. Batgirl's movements in the lab, and the action on the boat, are just too sketchy for me. On second thought - the busiest two pages in the lab are actually downright awful! (I agree with ZONS9's opinion, above, except that I think they were too polite about it.) I'd give this a 8.5 for story (which I thoroughly enjoy) and Schmidt, but deducted a point for Di Nicuolo.

Stephen Segovia is a superb artist, but his pages look rough and unfinished to me in spots, especially the major action scenes. Howard Porter, on the other hand, while not usually one of my favorites, lent an appropriate horror vibe to his five epilogue pages that came across great. I'd like to know how, if Geo-Force can raise a giant rock monster, can launch molten rock (I think?) at the Bat plane, and can repeatedly turn his arm into rock, how is it he is at the mercy of Talia's blade, and is taken down by kicks, first by Damian and then Talia? Is his neck the only vulnerable part of this body? I'd like to see if Respawn can actually respawn himself. I didn't like him particularly, but still it would be nice to learn more about him and give him more development as a character. Overall, I'd say the crossover was decent. It had some interesting ideas and reveals, was a manageable size, and in the final analysis was a pretty good effort.

Not a fan of the art. Some panels look almost like layout sketches. I guess that's the style they're going for here. Maybe I'll get better at distinguishing the characters eventually. Is that Duke wielding Jefferson in the sword? It doesn't look like Jefferson holding the sword, but Duke is never named so maybe I'm just trying unsuccessfully to figure that out. Is Jason reminiscing about Rose (Ravager) in one panel? I guess that makes sense if he's thinking of someone else who can predict moves. But -- Dick doesn't read the future, he just has insight and instincts, so, no, the connection to Ravager is weak and the whole thing vague. Plus - it's kind of an obscure moment. Looking back, she did appear in 2 panels in #1 - once half-naked and not identifiable, once walking away where you can tell who it is if you know she was in the Future State Red Hood backup stories in Dark Detective. I'm making excuses. It's really not easy to read, script or art. It's not welcoming to a new reader. On the other hand, regarding complaints about the backup reprints - in fairness, the book has a 22 page main story, plus 2 pinup pages (are these also reprints?), plus the backup story, for $3.99. So - the extra story pages are "free." And not everyone has read those backup stories - I don't get the feeling the current Batman Black & White sold that well, based on the somewhat smaller number of reviews that title has always gotten at this site, and based on the Comichron sales estimates. But it may be true that anyone Bat-crazy enough to buy this, as I was, was also likely to buy Batman Black & White. The core Bat fan. The extra 10 pages doesn't improve my score. I won't rate something better because "the food may be bad but at least the portions are big."

6 for the interior art - not a great showing by Bengal 3 for the storytelling. Seems this writer can't write, and I guess her editor can't read. Or thinks the resolution involving a wage inequity message overcame the otherwise weak storytelling. This would be 4.5 but I'll bump it to 5.5 because of another superb cover by Jeff Dekal.

I put off reading each issue longer and longer. Finally got to this. With his art, Rossmo seems to be daring DC to fire him or cancel the book, and he's probably just going to continue on this determined trajectory until it happens. It's like he's shaking his head with laughter that DC is still paying him for this, and laughing that anyone can tolerate looking at this. His work has always been eccentric, but it's been getting increasingly hideous and headache-inducing. Batman-news gave it a 1.0, and I agree with every point the reviewer made. Phillips ended this issue with another of her typical 9-page essays, this time a rambling dissertation about masks. So sick of the essays she ponderously delivers each month. You can see that few are still reading this book: mine is the only reader review, and only the second reader to rate it. DC is daring to go WEEKLY with this book in August, including 4 regular issues and then a double-sized/priced annual, so the equivalent of 6 issues. That strikes me as a risky and even insane move. Do sales really justify a stunt like that? Hard to imagine they do. I hate to give something as low a rating as 2.0, but it's probably an honest score - I hated every word and every drawing in every panel on every page, which probably means my real score is 0.0, but I do like Derrick Chew's colorful covers.

FINALLY! There were glimmers in the writing last month, and now here it is: a well-written Harley Quinn book with excellent art. Matteo Lolli's art is great. Clean and expressive. Possibly better than his extensive work at Marvel. I guess people forgot Sami Basri's art on the last Harley Quinn series, the one that ran for 75 issues, but this is a lot like the beautiful art Basri drew in 15 of the last 25 issues of that series. Worth checking out. All the previews are here - just put "Harley Quinn" in the search box and pick the 2016 series.

Reads like you would expect a single story written by 4 separate teams of writers would read. I found nothing enjoyable about this. Stilted speech, over-the-top characterizations, tedious character interactions, and awkward transitions as the writers didn't quite sync up. Mostly, it was boring. This is not an island I'd be in a hurry to visit. I'd like to know why no one at any time asks why Cassie and Donna are introduced as part of the Esquecida! But why should I single out that one question and not give equal time to every other peculiar plot point?

Gets a 4.0 thanks to the backup which isn't great but is readable. As for the main story, no comic has ever left me feeling this stupid. The artwork leaves me lost, the plot and dialog confused. It all goes right over my head. I have a feeling everything is actually quite simple, but obscured due to art I find difficult to understand despite the use of shading and some tones, and dialog that I think is trying to be clever but comes off to me as oblique. I keep buying this to stick it out, as I have good will based on enjoying the main series, but this is the last book I read each week, and I approach it with a big sigh, like taking bitter medicine, knowing that each issue is likely to baffle me more than the prior one. The number of reviews here has dropped from 6 to 4 to 3 to 2, and user reviews dropped from 21 to 13 to 9 to 1 (this review brings that up to 2), so I can see that just about everyone but me has simply given up on this book. Perhaps this has been written solely for the personal amusement of Alex Paknadel, Matthew Rosenberg, and Ben Abernathy.

I stuck with this series. This finale is as expositional as anything I've read. It's nonsense. The theme peeks out from time to time, as Shilo becomes accepting of himself, but the plot?! Don't read this for the plot. This does follow the style of plotting you find on the Berlanti DC TV shows, though, so if you like the ridiculous way stories are told on The Flash or Supergirl TV, then this is like that.

I've read this whole run of Suicide Squad and this issue was just not good. The Before/Now/Before/Now/Before/Now structure was especially pointless and did nothing but make the story a slog to get through. Each time I saw another time hop, I just steamed to myself "What? Again!" Is this supposed to make a bad story more interesting? The writing is different enough that it must be that Dennis Hopeless actually wrote it, not Robbie Thompson. He is writing #14 and #15 solo, so I think he basically took over now. And then #15 is the final issue. So I'm going to assume Thompson plotted out the general idea of what happens, and Hopeless did the script with all the time hops. Maybe Thompson only signed on to write 12 issues, and DC decided it needed to be padded to 15, leaving it to Hopeless to pick it up and finish it. For some reason for the last year DC has had to put multiple artists on almost every book - something that rarely happened in the prior 80 years of comics publishing, but now happens many times monthly. Couldn't they at least have finished this year-long Suicide Squad story with the same writer?!

Seems more like a cash grap than anything else. Too long, too expensive, and too chaotic. So much time spent with Task Force X characters we've never even seen before - I have no idea who any of the new ones are and no reason to care. They don't even get named, but they do get dialog. So - nothing for anyone. Suicide Squad readers? Too much Task Force X that we don't know and don't care about. Flash readers, or Teen Titans readers? Nothing at all for you.

Why did they have to make Kelli transform into straight-haired and with a conventional mask? Looks like yellow-hooded "spoiler-person" undoes the construct so Kelli's real form appears. It's not just the hair - her real headgear is goggles of a different shape and fit than the mask, and I know the overall uniformed was changed in other ways. Why still with the Spanish? I've used translator apps before but was too tired this time. Guess I missed some things - why is John now able to leave the planet he's been stuck on for a year or more? Weren't these old ships already available? How does he still have operating GL tech on the new ship? There are surely explanations I missed? I'm thinking of dropping this.

Red X: "Oh. you were so confident we'd come to the end... but this was just the beginning. For you and the rest of your little flock. What's left of it." Oh wait, I think that's Tim Sheridan speaking, not Red X, and he's talking to us the readers, or what little is left of the readership. Fools who thought this would be a satisfying reveal and ending. Mike Cotton, the editor, quit before this series ended, and the associate editor was left to pick up the pieces in #11 and #12. Didn't succeed. One year ago, for some reason, DC turned half of Future State over to this writer, and then this book and the Shazam mini-series. I hope their experiment with TV writers is coming to a close. Sheridan is co-writing Flashpoint Beyond, which is a reason to at least think twice before investing in that series.