I gotta ask this straight up to all of the Judd Winick fans on this site:

What does he do for you as a writer? I’m asking this seriously because after yet another poor effort by Winick I fail to see what makes him a ‘good’ superhero writer. I’ve never judged his non-superhero work like ‘Pedro and Me’ because it was brilliant. But I’ve been on again, off again with this guy since he did his original ‘Green Arrow’ run and it’s just been mediocre at best. This issue, except for the hilarious cover by March, shows once again how uninteresting of a writer he really is.

This issue was just a bunch of quips and set pieces I would expect from a JCVD film but only better. The villains are just mindless drones and Winick’s sense of the dynamic duo is laughable at best. At least a writer like Paul Cornell tried to breath some life into this team. What has Winick done to make this group the fun team that has been around since Morrison started the book? Absolutely nothing. Then you have this business with Scarlett which doesn’t make any since because, as member @comicbookchris pointed out, her fate was practically sealed in issue #6 of this title. So why she has any involvement with this book, especially with her mask still on, makes no fucking sense.

Then you have the Tocchini art. While I appreciate it that this isn’t smeared with shit like last issue, it’s still a pretty poor effort on Tocchini, Smith, and everyone else involved. The anatomy and placement of characters in every panel of this book is ugly to look at and doesn’t mesh with an actual body. Tell me if this makes any sense: Todd is downright naked while doing a search in one panel, and immediately is back in his costume the next with no sense of transition. That’s the type of lazy composition Tocchini has to offer here. There are moments too where eyeballs are ‘kinda’ showing when they shouldn’t be (like on Damien) and it gives off this weird horror vibe to it. Basically this issue confirms that I should be very, VERY afraid for the future issues of ‘FF’ down the line.

So what did we ultimately learn in this issue and essentially this arc? That Jason Todd is a cold blooded killer and is one step ahead of everyone because Bruce taught him everything he knows. You know, exactly what Judd Winick has been teaching us for years now whenever he gets a hold of this fucking character! It’s a miracle that Winick doesn’t get a chance to finish this arc out and probably a miracle that Lobdell is writing the character in his future book. The fact that I prefer Scott Lobdell over anyone should tell you my thoughts on this issue as a whole. Shit story, shit art, and we have a very sad end coming with this once exciting series.