I’ve been rapidly losing interest in the Batman Universe over the last couple of months.  ALl of the Bat-titles seemed really solid during the Reborn phase, but Batman & Robin is going in a direction that I’m not enjoying, and Batman has become fairly boring.  Right now I’m really enjoying the ancillary characters: Batwoman, The Sirens, and Tim Drake are involved in much more interesting stories.

While I enjoyed the first arc of this series, I was glad to see it draw to a close so we could return Tim Drake to Gotham.  And Yost has written a fantastic return issue for him.

I really enjoy Yost’s use of those pesky narration boxes here.  They’re done sparingly, and always seem to add to the story rather than explain the picture that you can clearly see (known as The Claremont Over-Explanation Box).

(I’m unclear who the penciller is here….the cover says Ramon Bach, but the interior says Marcus To, and also credits To as the cover artist.)  Whoever the penciller is, he’s drawing some of the cleanest Batman art I’ve seen.  It’s not the spectacular artisianship or Williams, or the textured work of Quitely, but it’s quite dazzling in its simplicity.