I Am Batman #4 Review

Magistrate 2.0

Written By: John Ridley

Art By: Stephen Segovia, Christian Duce, Rex Lokus, Troy Peteri

Cover Price: $3.99

Release Date: December 14, 2021

Let's head on back to Gotham to see how Jace Fox is making out in being the next Batman. Previously, we saw Jace protecting his mother and police officers from the Seer's Moral Authority group who have been manipulated into becoming a vigilante group that believes that they are special and the only real ones who can take their city back from the masks and freaks who want to make it their own. That was only the beginning though as Tyler Arkadine, the man who put Jace Fox on this path to begin with was extradited to Gotham to face human trafficking charges was murdered in his cell. Let's jump into this issue and see if we can learn the truth about what's actually going on in Gotham and if it's too much for our new Batman to handle.

Gotham has sent the Magistrate packing but it's in this issue that we see that the Magistrate was only the start and everything that we thought we knew about Simon Saint and his machinations behind the Fear State and what would lead to the Future State of Gotham is only scratching the surface of a conspiracy none of us saw coming. Yeah, that's some heavy shit and while I like the scope that this book is going after, the way that we unveil who's behind the curtain, unfortunately, comes off a bit forced and out of nowhere, while diminishing what we've dealt with for the past year with Batman...... Which is a weird thing to say because while I believe that, this introduction to the new big bad feels like it's copying the whole Magistrate thing, so it's just a phase 2 without much of a difference. 

It's weird to hype up this new Magistrate. You get new Peacekeepers called Talos, but when you have The Seer, who changes every time she shows up as a possible ally?  It feels strange. So yeah, I've been enjoying this book a lot, but I don't know how much I'm into the idea of just expanding on the Magistrate story and giving layers and layers of conspiracies and murders to get to an agenda.  I just hope it turns out enjoyable because I got bored with what we got from Fear State.

All in all, the art in this issue is excellent. I continue to love Jace Fox's new take on Batman, not to mention the way that the Fox family as a whole is struggling with the choices they've made and what that will mean for them and their convictions going forward, but I don't know about doubling down the Magistrate thing. I mean, we've just spent a year dealing with Simon Saint, the Magistrate, and the Peacekeepers. Now we're told that there's someone above Simon named Victor Noonan, who wants to do the same thing throughout America, not just one city and the Peacekeepers, who still haven't left Gotham for some reason, are being upgraded with this new Talos suit. It's all rather weird, but the Fox Family characters are what I continue to love in this book, even with Lucius being so far from the original character I loved. Hopefully, things work out in this book, and I can continue to enjoy it, but with all the rather big revelations in this book that deals with something that I don't personally want to see, I don't know if that's going to be the case.

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Bits and Pieces:

The Magistrate was just the beginning!  Sadly, we see that there's something bigger than the Magistrate coming to Gotham and the rest of America, but it's just too bad that it feels just like the Magistrate with a new paint job. The art and character work continue to be top-notch, but I'm not entirely on board with the direction we're heading because it just feels a lot like a rerun.  Hopefully, I'm wrong.

7/10