When going into this month’s issue, I rolled my eyes, thinking to myself, “Here we go…another fill in!”  Yes, I probably could have not bought it, but it had two things working for it.  The first was that it was written by Geoff Johns.  The second is that I was too lazy to overpower my OCD.  But low and behold, this book really surprised me.

It wasn’t that it did anything overly amazing.  There weren’t any moments that changed the history of comics nor was there anything to immediately jump on the boards to talk about.  But what is here is a really fun comic story featuring life from the villain’s perspective, specifically The Toymaker.  He’s out to set the record straight about his criminal history, so he kidnaps Jimmy Olsen after a murderous rampage that lead to his escape from Arkham Asylum.  Now, this is a villain that I don’t have much experience with, so a lot of what was presented was new to me.  His history, at first, seems really heartbreaking, but as the issue unfolds, we learn that things are quite what they seem.

One of the more fun aspects of the issue, for me, was the way the Toymaker continued to claim he was a “Superman Kind of Guy.”  He hated being captured by Batman and being housed with Batman’s enemies.  He escaped from Arkham not to be free but to show the world just how he was a “Superman Kind of Guy.”  This added a level of humor to the issue, and it’s kind of fun to see a villain fighting with others over what hero he really is enemies with.  It just made the issue plain fun.

The art this issue was a mixed bag for me.  I liked that the artist did a different, more washed out style for the flashbacks, but some of these panels didn’t really work for me.  They just felt a little bit too sloppy.  But when he was drawing in his regular style it was very excellent, and I really enjoyed how The Toymaker got more and more insane looking as the story went on.  It was a really nice touch.

If you skipped this one because you thought it was a filler, fear not, for it was actually pretty good and just goes to show that even with a filler, Johns can create some magic.