The Good
One of Batman’s greatest strengths is his ability to plan ahead and wargame a variety of scenarios, having a plan ready for a thousand different contingencies. For awhile, this strength nearly eclipsed the character, making him oddly predictable and dulling the excitement of his books. Of late, there has been a movement to test his ability not only to improvise but to move his allies to do the most good, and it’s revitalized the character. This issue is a fantastic example of the people around Bats being as integral to his success as the man himself, and also does a fantastic job of solidifying Julia Pennyworth as a fantastic addition to the Bat-Family. As Hush refuses to play nice with Bats’ “toys,” Julia formulates a contingency plan of her own, and Jim Gordon manages some fancy moves from behind bars, engineering some vicious improv. Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, Kyle Higgins, Ray Fawkes and Tim Seeley are rounding the finish line and looking like they’re ready for a victory lap with how consistently good these issues are. Once again, plot threads come together from seemingly disparate places and unite in ways that seem organic and like they’d make total sense if one went back several issues to see where they began.
Fernando Blanco gives this book a jagged, rugged, hard-edged look that absolutely complements the tone of desperation and barely holding on that has come to permeate the title, and that actually gets some relief in this issue. Once again, the action shifts with a breakneck pace, but unlike previous issues, this one feels like each shift matters and has a real motivation behind it, giving further insight into each scene shifted into. Marcelo Maiolo’s colors simultaneously highlight the darkest corners of Gotham while strategically choosing when, and where, to shine the lights the brightest, again playing up the theme of hope returning to an absolutely desperate situation.
The Bad
The scene shifts do, indeed, feel more earned this time around but for one: the scene with Spoiler. She feels like she deserves more of the spotlight, particularly after all the hype surrounding her return, but her story has felt the most like it’s spinning its wheels. Last issue’s cliffhanger felt like a solid development, but this issue largely left her where she began.
The ending feels like it comes abruptly, and while it’s got a good sense of tensing before the big finale, it also feels like the door slammed down all at once.
The Verdict
With less than a month’s worth of weekly offerings, this issue feels like the true beginning of the end, and that means that is coming at the perfect moment for this series. Without wearing out its welcome, and by fitting a vast number of ultimately interconnected plotlines, this will be one collection that is worth keeping an eye on. It’s becoming increasingly hard to pick out single issues on their own as they’ve bled together in a way that, without proper creator correspondence, would have been a garbled mess but as it is makes something more akin to a tapestry. This may only be one piece of that tapestry, but it’s a solid one.