Here are some things to think about: -WHAT IS THE MOTIVATION OF THE COURT OF OWLS? They seem poised to "take back Gotham". And yet we are also told that this group has ALWAYS owned Gotham. Which is it? What is the extent to which both things may be true? We never get any relatable details -- just a lot of vague posturing. Are they just "bad guys"? Even the most one-dimensional Bat-villain usually has a motivation. These guys are already rich and powerful, so as readers we can't even assume that they're after money and power. There is literally no motivation here. Just a cool-sounding name and a spooky aura. There's no grounding, which makes the story seem like a child's nightmare. To an extent, that's an appropriate and GOOD way for this story to seem... at the beginning. But we're seven issues in and it seems like everything that could make the Owls a believable villain has been thrown out the window. It's like they're literally a boogieman that Snyder's using to scare the reader at this point. We need more nitty-gritty. Looking over the entire run, it seems like Snyder started out with the idea that the Owls had to sabotage Bruce and the Mayoral candidate, but then he just sort of fell in love with their surface-level spookiness and decided to emphasize that vague stuff at the expense of putting the nature of their threat in context. -WHY IS THIS HAPPENING NOW? Is the Court displeased with Bruce/Batman for some reason? In issue #1 we are told that Bruce might put up some new buildings in Gotham. Does that have anything to do with anything that's actually going on? What is so special about what Bruce is doing now, or what Batman is doing now, that it would provoke the Owls to come after him? Was the Mayoral candidate any more special than any other candidate? We never find out anything specific about any of this. All the stuff from the first 2-3 issues now seems like a throwaway setup rather than the start of a natural progression. From a storytelling standpoint, it's important to note that the Owls are coming after Batman, not the other way around. And yet there's no motivation for this. Bruce didn't get "too close" to them. It isn't the case that Bruce stumbled upon their existence, because Snyder insistently leaned on the tactic of Bruce saying that no, the Court of Owls was just a fairy tale. -WHAT ABOUT THE GUY WHO DIED IN ISSUE #1? He came up with an almost absurdly contrived way to alert Bruce Wayne that he was going to die soon. Actually, the message was phrased more like a threat, but then Snyder told us that the victim wrote it, intimating that he was trying to warn Bruce. Is this setup ever going to be explained? Or did it exist just so we could see a neat flaming message at the end of issue #1? Please don't tell me it was just style over substance again. -HOW DID BRUCE KNOW THE EXACT WAY TO PUNCH DICK IN ORDER TO KNOCK THAT ONE SPECIAL TOOTH OUT? On the one hand, this is nitpicking on my part. On the other hand, the setup on Snyder's part is extremely contrived. When the history books are written, this might make the top ten most ludicrous moments in New 52 history. Every part of this is unbelievable. All of the bio-scans and X-rays and probable dental work that Dick has gone through over the years, and this Owl thingie was never found before? It was apparently doing something to him on a cellular level, but no one ever picked up on that? And Bruce adopted him when he was a kid, but I guess the Owl-dentists got to him AFTER he lost his baby-teeth? And Bruce apparently knows exactly which tooth this item is behind and exactly how to punch -- taking into account how Dick will move his head to react -- in order to knock the tooth out? It's really contrived, guys. I honestly don't know how anyone could read that scene with a straight face. -WHY, AGAIN, WAS DICK A TALON-IN-WAITING? The answer we get runs along the lines of "Because ancient gladiators were escorted by circus people." That makes no sense. It's just another one of the factoids that Snyder feels obligated to throw out every other page. It's a neat factoid. Honestly. Kinda interesting to know that. But what does it have to do with anything? It's like saying "Robin Hood fought the Sheriff of Nottingham. Therefore whoever Robin the Boy Wonder is fighting must be a secret sheriff." (I understand that there is at least some stuff about Haly's Circus in current issues of Nightwing. But in this issue what we get to begin that line of thought is the non sequitur about ancient gladiators. So the starting point of this forced connection is... just not good writing.) You may think I disliked this comic. I didn't. I'm still having a very okay time with Batman. Capullo is quite amazing. The whole art team, really. The inking and coloring are incredible. Every scene has an awesome aura to it that instantly chills your bones and matches the script perfectly. And I like the IDEA of the story that Snyder is telling. It's like a streamlined version of "R.I.P." I think it's cool as heck. But on a craft standpoint there are just too many poor choices here. Too many logic leaps. You can't have a real mystery story with so much non-logic in it. But if you just go with the flow, then I guess you'd miss all this stuff and not care. Because what we've got here is just the illusion of a mystery, the illusion of depth, the illusion of originality. Actually, I don't NEED those three things in my comics. You can have a 4-star comic that's straightforward, shallow and derivative. And you can have a 2-star comic that's mysterious, deep and original. But comics that don't have those ingredients shouldn't be praised as if they did have them. In the glowing reviews of Snyder's Batman, I don't really see anyone talking about the nitty-gritty of what's going on in the story, or how the craft works or doesn't work. Instead all of the praise seems necessarily vague. You guys are taken in by the dangerous aura and spooky atmosphere. I get that. But you've been wallowing in that same formless attitude for six months now without really taking it upon yourselves as readers to investigate this supposed mystery that's going on. When you do investigate it, when you read actively instead of passively, you find that there really isn't much depth here and there are a lot of craft problems. It's not a shallow comic, but isn't not a deep one. It isn't a stupid comic, but it isn't a smart one. It isn't a bad comic, but it isn't a great one. It's "just" a good one. It's a 3-star comic if you are paying attention to what it actually is. It's a 5-star comic if you can only sort of bask in the atmosphere and hype and never investigate anything. You can say, "Well that's just your opinion. It IS a 5-star comic." But I doubt anyone who thinks it's a 5-star comic even paid enough attention in the first place to notice any of the plot-holes that I mentioned. Lastly, did we really need another callback to Year One for no reason? Also, we get it: owls eat bats. You told us. And told us. And told us. Did we really need to waste a whole splashpage on it, to see it literally? The ideas are GOOD, but the heavyhandedness and lack of subtlety gets tiring.