Wasn't a big fan of comsic god lore in the previous issue, so this story was a significant improvement IMHO. Spurrier & PKJ deliver a more grounded take on Mongul & Superman. The stories are a bit cliched but both authors are very good witers so they can deliver simplistic stories in an entertaining manner. Churchil & Eaglesham did awesome job on the art which is accompanied by beautiful coloring by Lee Loughridge espeacially during Clark sequences.

I like how Brisson writes Ghost-maker & Clownhunter, but all the other Batmen are one note bummers. Hope Brisson will give them more stuff to do in Batman Inc. series. Story wasn't worthy of 40 pages, the amount of exposition really drags it down. Not a fan of Timms art but it's not terrible, just bland. Grey Wolf seems like a fun new Batman, so I'm still mostly hyped about Batman Inc. but this annual could be better.

Hardware was the weakest out of all the new Milestone books. I enjoyed all the others to a certain degree but this one wasn't it. The story quickly lost steam and repeated the same bits all over again. Hardware as a character was very bland & Alva's personality was only "I loved you like a son" phrase and that's pretty much it. The art by Cowan & Sienkiewicz looks fine but doesn't fit the action.

Kind of a pointless preview. Nothing of substance was revealed, it could have been easily skipped or shown in tie-ins or smth. DC really wants to make Nightwing/Jon duo a thing, Pariah is still the most boring villain after the GREAT DARKNESS, Nocturna's story was out of nowhere, like she hasn't interacted with Batman since Detective Comics during NEW52. Ace & Wally story was nice but Adams already does it better in his ongoing. The art is very mid, although Jurgens really made Jon look like Nightwing clone with a different jawline.

Shadow War is such a frustrating event. Like most of Williamson event writing, it feels half-baked. I like the idea of Ras dying, I like the idea of Deathstroke getting a second chance at being a father, it's a nice change of status quo. Hell, the idea of Geo-force being the real killer is very cool considering what has been done to Terra and Markovia (lol, I forgot that it even happened in Checkmate. Spy Bendis bored me to death). But those ideas are wasted. The reveal of Geo-force has no build up, so it feels very rushed & pointless. There are zero consequences for Talia or the League. Deathstroke is alive so his death didn't matter. Respawn/Slade was potentially the most interesting thing to come out of the event but fuck that. Batman and Damian patching their relationship was probably the only saving grace plotwise. The art is fine, Segovia is better than some previous artists but he didn't bring his A game like on Hellions. Overall, SW is a skippable event that probably won't matter in the long run.

Tynion & Bueno continue to deliver a good story, although not a lot of things happened in this issue. I wish we would've got more of Arturo's perspective in this one. He wasn't fleshed out very well previously beyond just being Sam's partner. Although Nora & Walter's conversation was the highlight of this issue.