They have a new artist and the style is a bit jarring from what came in the past. I don't blame the artist. I always feel this way when one artist does eight issues for an arc and they then bring in another for the nineth. It's sort of a me thing, but it does affect how I enjoy the story. Sorry.
Now to the meat of the issue. There's no meat. It's all healthy vegetables that explain what's going on. All tell and now show. We get, by my count, Simon Says, Batman and Ecstasy Girl, Poison Ivy and Scarecrow, all saying what the next step of their plans are. What little action is Batman and Club Drug taking down a 400 pound brute but not actually accomplishing anything.
We also learn what brain machine does. It erases memories. The third Tynion action group would then erase trauma memories to heal Gotham. The machine also apparently stores said memories. A couple of problems. How do you erase the trauma of a couple million people? Even if people stood in line and it took one minute to do the voodoo and ran 24 hours a day, that would be 1,440 per day. That is 525,600 per year. So it would take about 4 years to erase all the trauma. Not a good plan.
What the machine really is is a deus ex machina. Too many people know the bat-family secrets. I predict the machine will be used to erase some memories to protect some secrets. I also suspect it is one of those you can't unring the bell devices. In the old days, when Wonder Woman had her purple ray, it was used for like one story and forgotten. Now the purple ray has become one of the foundations of the Wonder Woman universe and wars have been fought over it. The Black Mercy flower is another. It was a plot device for one Alan Moore story in like 1986, but now pops up all over the place. A machine that forgets for people might only be written for this story, but I predict it will be something popular in years to come. Think Lazurus Pit. Ra's was a villain who exposed himself to Batman and purposely kept the locations of pits secret. Now they are used to empower miniature corpses from Kandor in a Superman book. Everyone knows about them and where they are.
It's another issue with all set up. There are other books, Nightwing, Catwoman, that are also setting up their role in the plot. I won't comment on those, except to say that they are also all set up.
This big event has so much set up that no climax can compensate for the waiting period. (Make your own porn joke here). We have so many people with so many agendas that Batman is almost forgotten in his own book. Just keeping track of everyone slows down the action to a crawl and just makes the story drag on so slowly. Now it's expanding and dragging other books down as well. I am so done with this. AARRGGHH.
Or I could be wrong. more
By: James Tynion IV, Jorge Jimenez
Released: Oct 20, 2021
Batman and Miracle Molly are all that stands between Gotham City and absolute insanity! But an unhinged Simon Saint brings all the resources of the Magistrate to bear on the Dark Knight...is victory at hand for the Scarecrow?
Back-Up: Batgirls Cassandra Cain and Stephanie Brown have each other's backs no matter what-even if it means punching s...