I’m honestly surprised to see the relatively low rating this issue has gotten — it’s incredibly literate, and only suffers when you compare it to the absurdly high quality run that preceded it.

The Absence is a fantastic villain, and genius that he is Paul Cornell makes full use of her gimmick, her ‘schtick’, to say something substantial not just about Dick Grayson, not just about Damian Wayne, not even just about the Absence herself — but about Bruce Wayne, about Gotham City, and about the whole “Batman” mythology.

It’s insightful and it’s intelligent, and it’s full of depth and texture…and a whole lot of fun. It’s so rare that a writer has something real to say about the characters that they write about — not just telling entertaining stories, but really saying something FUNDAMENTAL and yet NEW about their subjects — and do that with a character like Batman, who has undergone a thousand iterations and a hundreds of writers, is doubly impressive. Morrison is maybe the first writer in forever and a day to have something seriously new to add…and yet Paul Cornell comes in for a 3 issue throwaway arc and manage to replicate the feat (on a smaller, less technically adept and sweeping scale).

Impressive.

Even the art by McDaniel was so much better than I expected it to be, tighter than it’s been in years.

Great great stuff, and kudos to Cornell, who is maybe the best character writer in DC at the moment.