Who's essence again?
Alright, Red Hood again drags me back to review it, and all I can continue to say is that it's almost maddeningly uneven. Again, there's plenty of good to be found, but the bad really stands out.
First of all, The issue started strong with Roy Harper, who proved himself to be far smarter than we would have thought (almost like an idiot savant kind of thing). And then they diminish those parts later by having him give a speech about how bad at history and biology he is, but he's still got great aim. Right there, you lose what you've just built up. Next they bring back Essence, a character that appeared in the first issue. She's an interesting character, but the problem is that Scott Lobdell left her out of the past five issues completely, so we know nothing about her, and suddenly she's a villain, and we're then given with a dense layer of text and a convoluted back story. If he had just planted these seeds in earlier issues, or stretched this confrontation out a bit, then no problem. But he didn't, so we're hit with all this information that's supposed to have some emotional impact, but it's happening too fast for us to truly care.
There's still good to be found, of course. I liked how Todd dealt with Crux, even though it wasn't as moral as he claimed, it's still Jason Todd, who was always kind of a dick, so it made sense. I like that he was able to put aside the opportunity to take information about Batman Inc. since he had more important things to deal with, which shows growth, and I feel the dialogue between characters has improved, though the jokes still can be very lame. I almost had to stop myself from getting mad at his writing of Kori again, since I realized it made a bit of sense considering how she was at the start of the Teen Titans. I'm not sure how to feel about certain things said on Alien/human relations, but it didn't annoy me too much.
the real saving grace is the art, which has significantly improved. I don't quite care for some of the panel layouts, but it's definitely pretty, and the cheesecake has been almost completely eliminated. Kudos.
I guess I have to get over the fact that this title isn't gonna get everything right, but I still can't help but be annoyed when it keeps raising my expectations and dropping them all at the same time. It keeps swinging from good to mediocre, but it keeps making me hope for more, so take that as you will.
