It’s been awhile since I’ve written a review, and now, with how busy my life is, it seems that I can only do it on special occassions.  For me, this issue counts as one of those times, so I thought I’d take the 5 minutes I have before I start dinner and share my thoughts with how pleasantly surprised I am with this issue.

Going in, I don’t think many of us really knew what to expect from this comic.  Of course, Winick is a divisive writer, which would make the response to this issue really interesting.  I picked up this title because, for the most part, I’ve enjoyed Winick’s writing, and I’m very excited about the new direction of Batman.  For this issue, I thought Winick did a great job.  There were some excellent emotional moments and the story was engaging.  I think that this is the start of some interesting Batman stories indeed.  I sort of liked how this issue seemed to take place inbetween the stories from Battle for the Cowl.  It was as if Winick read the concept and thought, “Man, this would be kick ass to include!”  Since it didn’t grace the pages of that mini, it’s nice to see these concepts implemented, and I thought he did an elegant job of placing these moments into a comic that makes sense in the present.

I’ve never really been opposed to Ed Benes.  I enjoyed him for the most part when I was reading JLA for awhile, but his style is very welcome in this issue.  While he has a style simialr to Jim Lee’s, I found that the coloring and inking lended well to his style, so the issue is just dripping in dark details.  Of course, his style isn’t my favorite of all time, but for this issue, I felt he nailed the emotional parts with the different facial expressions and the body language.  Overall, I was pleasantly surprised by how much I enjoyed the art in this issue.