I read the latest from James Tynion IV and crew, as they start a new arc in this ongoing series. Join me to find out what the Scarecrow has in store for the Caped Crusader!

Home Is Where The Cowl Is

For those of you unfamiliar with what’s been going on in Batman’s world, it’s been a little rough! There have been a string of lunatics attacking Gotham, culminating in a little event called Joker War, wherein Bruce Wayne lost ownership of his company, and hundreds of millions of dollars to boot. Poor fella, the only billionaire who lost money during the pandemic! At least he’s got a new plucky sidekick in the form of Ghost Hunter, his enemy-turned-antagonistic-do-gooder.

Having been downgraded to millionaire status, he finds himself having to deal with things like nosy neighbors, nosier reporters, and not having a fully finished basement. And I feel ya man, who wants to hang drywall? I like that they are taking Batman in a slightly different direction, although when this all started to go down, I was really hoping for a fugitive Batman, who didn’t really have a swanky base, and had to pare down to essentials. I thought that would have been cool, but DC has proved that they are too afraid to make any more than minor course corrections to Batman’s story.

What I like about Tynion is the same thing that made his Detective run great, which is how he treats the ensemble cast of the Bat-family. Frankly, I think his plots can be a little arch and predictable, but man does he write some good dialogue.

Art For Fear’s Sake

While the writing has some good points, I’m doing this review because of the art. This is a very pretty issue, which you’ll have to take my word for, as I got this comic physically and don’t have any screenshots for you. You can see just from the cover though that Jimenez’s lines, coupled with Morey’s colors, really do a lot of justice to Gotham and the Bat. This has been the first time I’ve been really excited about the art in this book since Tom King’s run, and does just as interesting things as Joelle Jones, Mikel Janin and that crew.

Many people go dark with Batman, which makes a lot of sense. This is no exception, but Morey uses a lot of bold colors in a way that really fits the aesthetic, and in this issue there is a lot of great purple shading going on. I also love love love the Scarecrow character redesign, they actually found a way to make him scary again!

There’s a backup story in this issue as well, written by Josh Williamson and with art by Gleb Melnikov. It’s about Robin, and what he’s been up to since skipping town on his dad and hitting the open road.

All in all, I would pick up this issue if you’re really into cool internal art, or like a lot of character work in your Batman book. Get it at your LCS, or pick it up on Comixology!