Everyone's A Critic
Let's head on back to NYC to see how this city's new Batman, Jace Fox is doing with his hunt for the serial killer, Manray. Previously, we saw this killer going after corrupt politicians and people in power and now it looks like he's after Mayor Villanueva, the man who put Batman on the payroll. Is the Mayor corrupt, I guess we'll find out as we jump into this issue and see if Batman can finally stand up against this evil threat that was more than he could handle during their first meeting. Let's check it out.
So the Mayor is a target in this issue and for some reason, the Strike-Force-Bat doesn't tail him the entire issue but instead tells us that he's a target, questions whether or not the Mayor is actually dirty, but then they just go off on their merry way and wait for the Mayor to be in danger, which feels like it immediately happens. Now, this isn't a bad issue, it just feels like everything that we've been working towards went and ran out of time with this issue and everything had to be finished up within these pages and because of that, we have a story that feels like it's happening in fast-forward because not only does everything have to come to a head with the progression, but Batman's interaction with Manray has to show our hero overcome his villain even though he was left shook previously and there wasn't much of a plot point to show us that he had gotten not only better but gotten over his initial defeat.
On top of our main plot of protecting the Mayor and Strike-Force-Bat taking down Manray before he can kill again, we also have the police department trying to kill Manray before he can be brought to justice for the murder of their Commissioner but this aspect too leaves a lot to be desired in that while it does set up an interesting cliffhanger, it's just one asshole following Detective Chubb around and it's not a really interesting way to keep that story going.
All in all, the art in this issue continues to be amazing and the way that this book looks is not a problem at all. It's the way that this story decided to fast-track itself past all the interesting things that it set up character-wise to get to the ending of this issue. Yeah, we might go back and explore this story more and this "ending" might just be a swerve and is more of a second act, like in the Dark Knight movie where Joker is captured, but the pacing of this issue feels weird overall to get us to the ending of the issue that we have. Hopefully, things turn around next issue because while I still really enjoy this series and think it's one of the strongest Batman books we have, this issue just didn't hit like the previous ones.
Bits and Pieces:
While I Am Batman continues to be a great book overall, this issue feels like it missed the mark this month with an issue that's pacing feels stuck on fast-forward to get us to the end and set up new drama for our heroes. The art is great though but the progression of Manray's reign of terror felt completely sidelined.
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