I read issues of comics pretty quickly.  For me, it’s always about story over art.  And while I do really appreciate good art, and it does slow me down a little, most of the time it doesn’t effect me enough to change the pace of how I read.  Most of the time.

The art in this issue (and the last) is so good, you could have pulled all the word balloons out, and I would have enjoyed it as an art book.  If JH Williams III doesn’t win some sort of award for the work he’s doing on Detective Comics, then there is no justice in the industry.  This is the most well laid-out, beautifully colored pieces of art, disguised as a comic, that I’ve read since Jonathan Hickman’s “The Nightly News”.  But that was an indie book, where the artist (who, in that case was also the writer, layout…er, colorist, and letterer) has a bit more freedom.  In DC/Marvel comics the artists tend to have a bit of wiggle-room, but unless it’s an event issue/series (such as “Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader?”), the editors seem to prefer mediocrity to original style. 

All that praise is not to take away from Rucka’s writing.  It’s good.  Very good.  Excellent, even.  But, while I would have thought this issue was fantastic as art without the words, I probably would have called it mediocre to good without the art.  It’s well-plotted, and has some great character development, but, it’s, you know, a good superhero story.

I’m a bit tired of comics that feature villains who identify with Lewis Carrol’s “Adventures in Wonderland, and Through The Looking Glass” stories, but it seems like Rucka is going to tie it in to The Hatter (this is not a spoiler, this is a guess), and that may make the cliche make a bit more sense.  EIther way, the villain is pretty cool.

Cully Hamner is the artist on The Question back-up story, and following Williams’s story seems unfair to any artist.  Hamner’s coloring and shadows make this story look like it’s ripped out of Dark Reign, and not The Batman Universe, but the story (also by Rucka is good enough that I wasn’t too distracted by it.

If I could give the art on the first half a sixth star, I totally would.