Event Leviathan #2 Review

Primary Suspect

Written By: Brian Michael Bendis

Art By: Alex Maleev, Josh Reed

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: July 10, 2019

Alright, let's get back to the event that is so big and bad that it even has event in the name, Leviathan is here and its time for Batman and his detective squad to get to the bottom of who and what this new iteration of this group is and to do that....... we'll hopefully move the story forward more than we did in the last issue.  Let's jump into this and see what Batman is doing with Red Hood and if this issue will move beyond anything we've already seen from Action Comics or DC's Year of the Villain.  Let's check it out.

For this issue we see that all my complaints about why Green Arrow didn't say anything about when Batgirl and him were attacked by Leviathan from DC's Year of the Villain when he met up with Batman and Lois Lane last issue was kind of unfounded because we realized in this issue that that attack seems to have happened between last issue and this........ or at least that's how I read into it from this issue.  With that though, I have no idea why Red Hood would be in Seattle investigating this or why no one was willing to go further into the idea about Oliver Queen waking up in his house after that attack that took Batgirl.  It's all rather odd and after having all of these issues with Leviathan I still feel in the dark about what's going on and all the interactions between our heroes doesn't seem to help because it always seems like they're just beating around the bush and when that isn't the case, they just seem to not be who they're supposed to be because of the strange ass dialog that Bendis gives them....... For instance...... One of Batman's lines in this is, "All we know is that Talia used to run something called Leviathan and it has been taken from her".  Why does this feel like Batman has never heard of Leviathan before?  So weird.

Moving forward, we see Batman break down what's been happening during this event to Red Hood and a lot of this is simple recap for people who have been reading Action Comics up to this point, but there is something new to this issue with the inclusion of a foot soldier of Leviathan that was once a member of ARGUS....... leaving me wondering if people who are obliterated by that blue light are then turned into mindless soldiers, who look rather silly, once they agree to Leviathan's offer.  There are no answers to that in this issue though, we essentially see a guy show up, get shot and then Plastic Man looking at the body in the morgue, while Leviathan confuses things more for me and talks about the Freedom Fighters and the All-Star Squadron.  I have no idea if this means that Leviathan is someone who knows about previous timelines, multiverses or if this is just more bad dialog from Brian Michael Bendis because from everything I've seen from his comics at DC, he just kind of does things whether it makes sense or not.

All in all, I'm still not a fan of the art in this event because when it just doesn't come off as boring, where characters are just standing around and talking, it comes off muddy and confusing and there's nothing that I really enjoy about it and it doesn't do much for this already padded out story.  That's just me though, I'm sure there are plenty out there that could get completely behind it.  As for the story though, there's a lot of recap this issue and the bits of progression we get don't feel like much beyond having our detective squad going after someone by the end.  It's just all kind of boring and the characters involved don't feel or sound like they should here.  Hopefully, things will pick up now that it seems that our heroes have a focus for their attention, but these first two issues of this event have been pretty rough.

Bits and Pieces:

Where this issue doesn't come off as boring, it has its characters coming off weird and not sounding like themselves.  Sadly, the art isn't something that I'm really behind either for this event and I can only hope that the story picks up going forward because besides for a few bits of progression here in an already drawn-out story..... there isn't much new if you've read Action Comics and DC's Year of the Villain.

5.5/10