When Good People Do Nothing
Written By: John Ridley
Art By: Laura Braga, Arif Prianto
Letters By: Clayton Cowles
Cover Price: $7.99
Release Date: February 2, 2021
*Non Spoilers and Score At The Bottom*
The Future State book for Batman has been pretty good so far and I’m hoping that the quality of this book continues down this road. That said I am still hung up on the price. The $7.99 price tag is steep for a comic book and frankly, the extra stories don’t particularly interest me all that much. Not to suggest they are bad or anything but we bought the book because we wanted to read a Batman book. So when a large portion of the book is something else, then it becomes harder to justify dropping all that money on it. However, at the same time, I cannot deny that we are currently receiving a very high quality Batman story in these books. If the book was just Batman, then it’s be an easy book to recommend, but it isn’t. That said, let’s jump into this book and see where it takes us.
Where we last left our hero, he had tracked down the killers from the previous case and found them to be two parents of a young girl that had gone missing. They took revenge upon her captor but Batman caught up to them and they surrendered to him, but they had been interrupted by the Magistrate, a sort of secret police that now run the streets of Gotham. Batman puts his hands up and attempts to surrender himself to their custody but the squad leader order them to open fire. In response, Batman throws some type of grenades at them which is able to destroy some of their drones and cause panic in the men. Batman goes on the offensive to take care of the bots and proceeds to knock out members of the Magistrate until he comes face to face with the squad leader. He knocks the leader out with ease and then returns to the two parents to escort them to safety. Just as they reach his transportation it gets blows apart by more drones which Batman takes care of with ease as well. The two parents then decided to follow him as they were wearing masks earlier which means they could be killed on sight by the Magistrate.
We cut to the future where the squad leader, named Stanz is reporting in to his superior. His superior, a masked man named Peacekeeper-01 reprimands him for being incompetent. For all the resources he had, he still failed to kill Batman. He orders Stanz to return to his team and then return to the field and not to return until Batman is dead. We cut to the police precinct where the GCPD detectives are looking into the death of the man in the alleyway. He doesn’t seem to have anything in his record that would paint him as a target and yet Batman got involved in the situation. However, the detectives seem to be railroaded by their commissioner who proves that the Magistrate is the one in charge here but then gives advice to the detectives to kill Batman if they ever see him since the new law extends to them as well. We catch back up with Batman and the parents as they take refuge in a church. Batman tells them that it is a safe house of sorts but first he has to tend to an injury. He gives the wife a flare and tells her how to seal his wound. He lifts up part of his costume and then she seals his injury with the flare.
We cut to the Fox household where things seem to be going very badly. Lucius and his wife talk about the new “shoot on sight” law but Lucius seems to brush off any of the points that Tanya wants to talk about and so she leaves the conversation angry. She runs into her daughter who talks with her about all the things they taught her growing up. Tanya believes that things are different because they are dealing with vigilantes instead of groups of people and then eventually she leaves. The daughter, (who I assume is Tiffany) goes to meet with Luke and she asks him if he is Batman. He tells her that he isn’t and the two talk about the situation before moving on. It would seem that Tiffany is confused about how to feel but Luke is sympathetic considering his background. Back in the church, Batman decides to call the GCPD in order to set up a meet to transfer custody of the parents. He calls the detective that we’ve been following, Detective Chubb. After a small argument, she agrees to meet up but doesn’t promise that she won’t try to stop him. After the call, Batman is suddenly attacked by the husband as he wants to avoid going to prison. He focuses on Batman’s injury and then when his wife tries to stop him, he knocks her back. He takes the opportunity to wrap a rope around Batman’s neck in an attempt to kill him. This is where the issue leaves us.
This latest issue of Batman pretty much falls in the same category as the previous issues of this series. If you felt like you got your money’s worth with the first two, you will most likely feel the same way with this issue. The difference is that this issue seems much more action focused. Most of the issue is fight scenes and so the Batman part of the issue goes by very quickly. However, the art is very nice to look at but without the more serious aspects of the previous issue, it has a tendency to become more cartoonish. Not saying that’s a bad thing, but it is a different tone that we get from the previous issue. Other than that, this issue has a lot of interesting dynamics that are set up between the characters and I’m interested to see where we are at the end of the next issue.
Bits and Pieces
If you felt like you got your money’s worth in the previous two issues, then this issue will also be a solid pick up for you. If you think the price is too high, well unfortunately nothing is really going to change. Luckily this Batman story is actually well done and entertaining. This issue was more action focused but with some great art, it came off very well and I left the issue interested to see what comes next.
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