This is going to sound harsh to Mr. Greg Tocchini but it must be said:

He brings dispair where ever he goes.

Okay I actually don’t care if that sounds harsh because it’s true. What a horrible artist that has befallen on Batman and Robin and now this book. I’m not gonna be cute or anything in this review, this was a horrible issue. This has been my favorite series at Marvel for a while now but now Tocchini is ruining it for me. His pencils are so inconsistant and down right unfinished at times it’s embarrassing that he is considered an ‘artist’. There were times that I looked in this book and I said ‘Really!?’ out loud. How about that ‘amazing’ two page spread in the beginning where it looks like faces were an afterthought? Or how about that confusing sequence with a supercomputer(?) that makes it even harder to follow with Hickman’s script. Or how about the ‘brilliant’ effects that makes it look like Paul Mounts (a fantastic colorist for the most part) smears his colors all over the place?

Then you have the story here and for once I have to literally scratch my head with a Hickman script. Seeing Black Bolt return should be a big deal but what happens in between the return makes no sense to me. Is this connected to the stories of Abnett and Lanning? It must be because there is a hell of a lot of references to ‘War of Kings’ here. Going back to that sequence with the supercomputer (again is it a computer or a person? I don’t know) and the scientists. What the hell happended there? Should I care about these characters and the massacre that follows? I probably should, but Hickman absolutely does nothing to really make me care.

This is by far the worst issue of the series to date. You got a mess of a story and quite frankly a ‘shit’ artist to go along with it. Hell, I have more respect for Greg Land at this point because at least he tries to make his tracing look good. Greg Tocchini is, at this point, not even trying to be a good artist. A shit issue with a shit artist and we still have one more to go before Epting comes back. I can’t imagine it could get worse but hey, I’ve been wrong before.