Written by: Joshua Williamson
Art by: Howard Porter
Publisher: DC Comics
The most important Rebirth storyline since the one shot continues here.
Tom King and Jason Fabok have started this story back in Batman 21 and they have given us a beginning worthy of what this is going to represent for the future of the Rebirth. Joshua Williamson has quite a bit of big shoes to fill following the first chapter. He does so with variable success.
Most of the book it is a direct continuation of the events in the first chapter, and for the first part of it it does drag a bit with a bit of exposition and sort of rehashing of those events. The second part of the book does pick up the pace quite a bit redeeming the book, for the most part. This still feels like a middle chapter of the story, and even though it technically this is the middle chapter it was expected that it would give a little more clue as to what is going on. Final couple of the pages do push the story to a new direction and certainly will be interesting how it all plays out.
Howard Porter here takes the reigns on the art and it works really well. Shame is that he did not have a lot of action to play with as Porter’s dynamic during action scenes is phenomenal. What he has to work with here however, he manages to portray with great detail. There are some very cool scenes that happen during the middle of the book that truly make Porter’s art shine.
The final pages of the book Porter manages to put true emotional weight to the events. It is all about the expressions on Flash’ and Batman’s faces and the way their dynamic ends up working out, it is all thanks to Porter’s art in this issue. That is not to say Williamson did not write a decent issue, it is just it did feel like bit of a filler.
Button storyline continues to intrigue even though this particular chapter seemed like an empty diet after the interesting even though sometimes a bit slow moving first chapter. The mystery is still quite a bit out of the reach and one would hope he would have a bit of the clues in this issue.
Overall this still remains interesting story as long as the expectations are curved a little bit especially after this chapter. It is going to be interesting to see how Tom King writes a follow up the great finale we have here as well! Button story continues to be intriguing however, it would be nice if it would pick up a pace a little bit.
