by Punchy » Sun Jul 29, 2012 9:28 am
I just love the idea of a battle between the Court Of Owls and the Crime Bible. It’s a very clever use of continuity and one which helps lessen the feeling that the events in Snyder’s Batman are a massive retcon. They are still retcons, for sure, but this book is providing plenty of good context. Basically, the Owls and the Crime Bible are at each other’s throats over who owns Gotham, and Jonah Hex, Doctor Arkham and Tallulah Black are caught in the middle. It’s a little annoying seeing our heroes without any real agency, not really in control of the various evil forces attacking them, so I was glad that Tallulah escaped at the end and is going to be the real force. I found it interesting that this issue let us inside Tallulah’s head after 10 previous issues of being inside Arkham’s, it was a refreshing change of pace. I wonder why Graymiotti aren’t letting us into Hex’s thought process? I guess it’s pretty one-note, fight, fuck, etc. The back-up story introduced what I think is a new character, Terrence Thirteen, who is an ancestor of the more familiar Doctor Thirteen, and was a lot of fun, sharing his contemporary counterpart’s scepticism, but with added awesome facial hair. It was good to see Scott Kolins back drawing for DC, where has he been?