There is a brush thin line between pop art and comic art.  Phonogram’s Jamie McKelvie dances that line beautifully.  Guillem March sort of lurches around that line in this issue.  The faces are inconsistent, not so inconsistent that I kept noticing it during the issue, but when I got to the end, and felt a little off, I flipped back through, and decided it was March’s faces and lines that were bugging me.  The best example I can think of is on the page folloiwing the Blackest Night ad:  Panels one and two have lush shading, and while I’m not sure whether the pupilless Selina in the first panel is the result of the angle or…something else.  But there is no shading in the third and fourth panels, and it gives Ivy’s face a completely different feel.  Again, it’s never awful, just inconsistent.

Story-wise, this was a filling course that borrows spices from many of the previous Batman Reborn stories, and Battle For The Cowl.  It’s not shocking to find that Dini knows every scrap of history these characters have, and he uses those scraps without any footnotes or heavy-handed dialogue.  Every issue feels like a complete story, even though it’s clearly part of a giant universe of continuity that he stays true to.  If you like any of the current bat titles, and aren’t reading this one, you’re really missing out.