Excessive Force-d
The Big Apple calls us back to check on Jace Fox and his continued adventures as the next Batman. Previously we saw Jace overcome his fears of his first psychotic supervillain, Manray, and take the murderous fiend down, but while that problem was solved Detective Chubb went and got herself into a new heap of trouble when overzealous, revenge-happy Detective Keenan decided to get some street justice against Manray for murdering the Commissioner and Chubb was forced to fire on a fellow officer. Let's jump into this issue and see what's next for Chubb and Batman as Renee Montoya visits the city that never sleeps. Let's check it out.
For this issue of I Am Batman, all the Manray stuff seems to be completely over, which is a disappointment because while I was hoping that he had some grander plan or intended on police on police violence to sow chaos in the city, it seems that the Manray storyline has just ended so that we can move on to Renee Montoya possibly becoming the recently murdered Commissioner Becket's replacement. Now, this fast-forwarding of Manray's story is a total disappointment because that end just felt out of nowhere but doing so that we can add yet another Gotham character, who's also The Question just feels like we're slowly losing this book's identity and we might as well still be in Gotham.
Besides ending previous stories early and strange choices in new ones, this issue also offers more Fox Family drama and hopefully the ever-growing prospect of Tiff Fox becoming a Robin one day.... or a hero all her own. Also, we're isolated Detective Chubb from her fellow officers for the shooting incident, which seems like an interesting story, but it feels weird because we had a Strike-Force Bat team previously, but because we have to isolate Chubb, except for Whitaker, that team just seems to be gone now and if that wasn't weird enough, we also end this issue with a question brought up about who was the real perpetrator of something in this book that happened way back in this book's days of Gotham and boy does it feel out of nowhere.
All in all, I've been really enjoying I Am Batman and Jace Fox's attempt to become a new kind of Batman, but around two issues ago it felt like out of nowhere that everything was put on fast-forward which in my mind means the book is on the way to being canceled and John Ridley wants to put out everything he had planned as soon as possible or DC is pushing for this book to be more like a regular Batman book to try and boost sales and really, with either of these scenarios being the case, it's seriously hurting the book and is making me lose interest in the title overall because where previously things felt intriguing, well thought out and was doing something different under the guise of something Batman related, it just seems to be painting by numbers and eventually feels that it will just be another Batman book with all the supporting characters you'd expect showing up. Now maybe that's rough, but from what we get in this issue it doesn't seem too far off. Thankfully though, where I think that the story disappoints, the art continues to be top-notch and I can only hope that the series picks back up to how it felt previously and that all we're experiencing now is a weird transition in arcs.
Make sure to listen to our Weekly DC Comics Recap and Review Podcast to hear us talk more about this book. Just look up "Weird Science DC Comics" anywhere you listen to podcasts or click here for podcast links and more: https://campsite.bio/weirdsciencecomics
Bits and Pieces:
While I have been enjoying this series a lot, this issue and the last seem to be lacking a bit from what we usually get out of I Am Batman and maybe it's just me talking about things I don't know or understand but it feels like editorial is trying to make this book more Batman than it previously was and because of this, the flow and storytelling that we were previously getting is now lost. The art is great though and there's still some interesting stuff going on, especially if you need more Question in your life, but this issue didn't do it for me overall.
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