Batman #46 Review

Meow

Written By: Tom King

Art By: Tony S. Daniel, Sandu Florea, Tomeu Morey, Clayton Cowles

Cover Price: $2.99

Release Date: May 2, 2018

If you've been following my reviews of Batman you'll know that I haven't been a fan of Tom King's run of the book and it seems that the previous issue was the one that really just put the final nail in the coffin for me in thinking that we'd ever get a decent story out of this writer.  Yeah, the idea of Booster Gold showing up sounds cool on paper, but what we got was a world that was just pretty much opposite world, where Booster changed the timeline so that he could give Bruce Wayne the wedding gift of showing him how important being Batman is............ but it doesn't make any sense because this alternate timeline Bruce Wayne isn't getting married and has never been Batman and that was just the start of the problems from last issue.  Hopefully, that all changes here as we continue this arc, where maybe Tom King will throw some more 'splaining in and make this whole thing make sense in the end.  Let's check it out.

Well, immediately I realize that not only is this an opposite world that we're seeing here, but with this issue we also throw in references to Tom King's greatest hits on the book, where we see that Catwoman is locked up for being a serial killer, all she says is "Meow", throw in some rooftops talk for good measure and because we needed reminding of it, tell us what happened in Everyone Love Ivy.

Really though, I was disappointed right out of the gate because we ended on a pretty big cliffhanger the last issue and when this story opens it's a year later, where apparently Booster has just lost his whole terrible "Bro" persona and has traded up to just being crazy.  On top of that, he's devised a plan that he believes will fix everything and maybe it's just because the character is coming off as crazy that the plan doesn't make a lick of sense for what's going on in the story and of course it only leads to more bad shit down the line.

Overall, I love the art in this book and in my opinion it's the only reason to still be picking this title up, but the dialog is dreadful at times and the story continues to be nonsense, where Tom King proves over and over again that he'd rather have cool moments and call outs to his own work and other Batman properties than actually knowing the characters that he's writing about.  This issue isn't great, but at least I can say that it's better than the previous issue, even if this doesn't do much to make the overall story make any more sense.

Bits and Pieces:

Batman continues to be disappointing this issue because instead of trying to make this ridiculous story make sense in what Booster Gold is actually doing, it instead just references the issues that came before it so that it can just move into a big "wow" moment that doesn't mean anything in the end because we're dealing with an alternate timeline.  Thankfully, the art continues to be great because, besides that, there isn't much reason to still pick up this book.

3.5/10