Why am I so prejudiced towards fill-ins?  When I was a kid it never even occurred to me who the creators were on a book, just who the characters and villains were and maybe whether or not the art was kind of purty.  Now it seems I'm all about the long game, the creators who have long extended runs planned, and the fill in guys just make me impatient for the next big thing.  I've tried desperately not to let my prejudice influence my reaction to the Hine/McDaniel run on Tec, but with Snyder/Jock/Francavilla on the way it's tough to hold my impatience in check.

In the end this is a serviceable Batman story, and Batman is nothing if not adaptable to shorter creative runs.  There's an interesting concept involving a war between imposter Batmen/vigilante cops and imposter Jokers, along with a suitably grotesque backstory involving one of the only men to ever survive the effects of Joker venom.  All this considered, there's a degree of originality and the McDaniel art is okay, if nothing spectacular. 

The thing is there's nothing that's drawing the reader in.  Batman/Dick is a remote character, barely in the book at all.  The people Hine does focus on are the cop vigilantes, who are kind of dislikeable and the Joker survivor, who seems to be taking his anger out on innocents rather than the man who actually attacked him in the first place.  Not only that but the hook and the plot aren't enough to sustain four issues, it should be three at best.  Even leaving aside the treats to come in November, this story feels like treading water, doing nothing to move things forward or throw us something really new and exciting.  Oh, and Hine seems to struggle with the language in his script.  I just can't imagine a Gotham cop referring to his stomach issues as "the squits", that seems to me an English saying all the way.

I'll buy the fourth part almost because I don't want to risk taking Tec off my standing order before November, just in case, but I can't say I'm counting the days...