So Much Potential, Wasted
The Good: Some of the Orphans got some nice character development.
Bruce's absolute freak out at the beginning was an amazing scene. He's been whacked out on fear gas before, but this was a well written and well executed scene.
The plot twist about one of the Orphans was pretty impressively unexpected.
The resolution had a dark cynical realism to it that kept up the mood of the first issue.
The revelation about who the fake Batman was was pretty clever.
The Bad: The art can get make things really confusing over who's saying what, and makes a lot of scenes very hard to understand.
The whole plot becomes a gigantic mess towards the end. There was this thing with this package, and sudden;y ever villain and their grandmother appeared out of nowhere, and I just had no idea what the hell was happening for about half the issue.
The aftermath is incredibly rushed, and the issue ends too suddenly. I feel like there were a few loose ends that needed tying up, and some character musings on the resolution that needed to happen.
All in all, I just feel really disappointed with the second half of this story. A lot of interesting things and a cool crew of characters was set up, but it all got dumped into one big mess. The Orphans were mostly ignored as characters save for about 2 maybe 3, and hardly anyone felt like they were the 'main' character, and so there was no on driving the story.
In Conclusion: 2.5/5
After an impressive start, Batman: Orphans really let the ball drop. #1 set up a whole lot of really impressive dark themes, some strangely gritty realism disguised in spandex, and a slew of interesting characters. #2 dropped it into a vat and molded them together into a confusing mass of bland gruel. If you've bought the first issue, it's worth finishing to see the admittedly clever twists and turns the plot takes, but if you're hoping for more of the great depth of the first issue, you'll likely be disappointed.