Batman: Arkham Knight #22 Review

Written by: Peter J. Tomasi
Art by: Ig Guara, Juan Ferreira and Andrew Dalhouse
Cover Price: $0.99
Release Date: July 17, 2016

Fill Er Up

I don't know how many times I can tell anyone who will listen that I love this book.  Well. this is the twenty second chapter so for now we will go with twenty two.  Peter J. Tomasi's story has been great throughout and the art of Viktor Bogdanovic and Ig Guara has been really good as well.  A true testament to the quality of this book is how compelling it has been even after the game it's a prequel to was released.  That's right, even with ninety-nine percent of fans knowing the who, what and how of the Arkham Knight, this book is still a great read.  It's all about the characters and the last couple of issues have had the Suicide Squad and it's been awesome.  Does that continue this week...the Squad and the awesomeness?  Let's find out...






The issue opens with Batman being a menace to Harley, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang.  The three were only trying to kill Bruce Wayne when Batman had to step in and cause a bunch of problems.  The action is pretty intense and Tomasi continues giving fans a spot-on Harley, but the star of the scene was Alfred.  When Deadshot opens up the Wayne automobile, Alfred overacts worse than Bette Davis in The Old Maid.  The kids still love Bette Davis, right?  Anyway, it's a hilarious scene that is only made better when Batman calls him on it mid-fight.



The fight continues through the whole issue and while I usually would call it out for that, I had fun reading it.  The three person all-new Suicide Squad is so good and I love the dialogue between them and Batman, but between themselves even more.  Boomerang is the brunt of a couple jokes, but he was too enraptured by batarangs to take notice.  Like I said earlier, Tomasi has nailed Harley (he, he) since she first showed up in this book and listening to her talk about her puddin', then begging for her life, then cracking jokes was great.  Boomerang finally does some major damage to Batman and I thought the tide was really turning in his favor...but I was wrong.  Dead wrong.

The final act of this book certainly took a turn down holy crap street.  We come out of the book with the same amount of Suicide Squad members, it's just a different lineup.  The reason was crazy and the cliffhanger page was awesome.  One of my favorite characters is back in the book big time.

I had a lot of fun reading this issue, but the cold, hard truth is that it was one big fight and not much happened story wise until the end.  However, the end had a couple of major things going down.

Ig Guara takes over art duties this week and while I usually like his art, his Harley was way off this issue.  At points she has a bigger chin than Jay Leno and it's disturbing.  Besides that, however, everything looks great and Juan Ferreira's inks are top notched and Andrew Dalhouse's colors are excellent.


Bits and Pieces:

This issue was fun, but mostly setup and filler.  The crazy ending almost made up for it, but if you skip this issue, you won't be missing much.  The art doesn't save it either and in the end, it's the first issue of the Arkham Knight that I can't recommend.

6.0/10