Future State: Dark Detective #2 Review

Dark as Knight

Writer: Mariko Tamaki

Art: Dan Mora

Colors: Jordie Bellaire

Letters: Aditya Bidikar

Cover Price: $5.99

Release Date: January 26th, 2021

Even though I absolutely loved issue #1 (I gave it a 9.5/10), I was worried that the plot holes would just remain as open-air questions that are never resolved. Maybe it's just the culture that I'm used to with DC at the moment, but issue #2 follows through.

It switches between the current time and the past a lot. On one page Batman is stopping criminals from stealing empty barrels in an abandoned warehouse only to be the target of the Magistrate instead of said criminals, then it goes to what happened to him two years ago.

Yeah, it's been two years. He's been a dude living in poverty for two years, still doing what he can to fight crime while running from the Magistrate. But we see what happens. In that last issue it didn't make any sense that the Magistrate killed Batman and Bruce Wayne, but Bruce Wayne was still alive. So I thought that this Peacekeeper-01 let him go on purpose, said they were dead, and spaced out TOD days to keep his secret identity still secret.

But Bruce ran for his life. He got shot a lot, and then dove into the river. Luckily for him there was another body in the river, because there's a police state killing people everywhere, and Peacekeeper-01 shot that body repeatedly instead of Bruce. And that's how he survived. Yes, they knew he was Batman and, yes, they put out the TOD days out there on purpose. But why? We'll find out.

But that's all in the past. He's now broke and living with a conspiracy theorist. Anyways, Batman looks cool. He has a cool bike. And the conspiracy that his buddy is obsessing about is actually real and it's coming for him...

The main story aside, I was so disappointed with the backup. In the last issue we got a Grifter story that was probably the most fun I've had in a printed DC book for a long time. But now it's a Red Hood story by Joshua Williamson that is not good at all, and Jason's new design is garbage. It also pains me to say that I didn't enjoy the art. You don't make it this far without being talented, but still, this did not do it for me.

Bits & Pieces

In this issue, we see how the confusion of Bruce being dead occurred when he's still alive, and verification that the two days of obits for Batman and Bruce were intentional to hide the secret identity of Batman. And it was awesome. I loved everything about it. The storytelling is great and the art is amazing. The Red Hood backup is not good at all in any way, so that drags my score down but not too much because I don't want to think about it.

8/10