For the last couple of months I have been praising James Tynion IV and rightfully so. His backups in Batman and now this new ongoing series has really impressed me. Scott Snyder certainly knows how to pick his writing partners and the Batman universe has improved because of it. However, it would be very bad for me as a reader to just stay positive and not see certain faults. I hate to say it but: this is probably the worst issue of Talon to date.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this isn’t terrible by any stretch. But there’s some wonky moments that bugged me a bit. It mainly comes from some weird dialogue he puts in some of the characters. Definitely from baddie Felix Harmon because his dialogue tells you nothing about him other than he loves to kill. It’s fine at first but by the end it just gets tedious to read as Tynion uses every trick in the book to make Felix sound deranged. We also have a ‘Not like This!’ moment and I would have thought Bendis would be the last to use that line. The ending of this issue was also pretty weak for me and very predictable. The moment Calvin says “We’ll never seem him again” you could almost hear the dramatic sting as we get the ‘twist’ ending.

The art by Guillem March is also a bit uneven in some of the pages. Mainly from the layouts because some sequences are a bit confusing. The opening pages of Calvin using a grappling book took me a few seconds to figure out what happened. March’s issues of reactions in characters are also a bit unnerving. His influence from manga definitely makes sense because I only see these type of reactions in a book like ‘Bleach’ or ‘DragonBall Z’. There are still some nice moments like Calvin getting away on the train or the breakout from the bank. Still, not the best issue for March considering what we’ve seen the last two issues.

The more I type this review the more pain I’m in. James Tynion IV has done a remarkable job going from literally nothing to writing some big books for DC. But this issue had so many problems for me that I couldn’t find myself enjoying it that much. The story is predictable and some of the dialogue in here is really bad. Even the art by Guillem March can’t keep my interest with some wonky layouts. I’m hoping this is just a slight bump in the road because I really see a lot of promise with this series. Tynion IV is still new as a writer so I’m going to chalk this up as still being green than anything else.