What has happened to Judd Winnick?
I've said it before: as a fan of Winnick's previous work, I suppose I just expect a lot more from his writing. This issue finds Batman bumbling around during a battle with Clayface and a throw-away b-list villain, Blanco. Winnick makes turning Grayson into an inept, untrained idiot look easy. What the heck? Don't worry, Judd. It's not like Dick's been kicking crime's butt almost as long as Bruce.
Something else that really got under my skin: "Boorah." As an active duty Marine, the constant use of the term "soldier" to describe the Marine Blanco and the obviously incorrect exclamation "boorah" really got under my skin. Am I missing a clever pun somewhere? Is it "boo-rah" because they were supposed to be scary? Well, they weren't. So if it was supposed to be funny, it was completely lost on me.
And whose idea was it to run the last Streets of Gotham, where the Penguin is already Black Mask's sniveling servant, before this issue of Batman when the Penguin actually BECOMES Black Mask's sniveling servant?
Even the intriguing Two-Face plot cuts corners in the issue, obviously feeling a time crunch. Teleporters? A completely ridiculous split personality bat-costume? Give me a break. Seriously.