Cover art to BATMAN #688 by Tony Daniel
With all of the natural distraction of there being a new Batman under the cowl, Judd Winick and Mark Bagley remind us of what else is going on in Gotham City. The Penguin and Two-Face are still in the midst of a war with each other and the city is acknowledging that Batman is back. Dick Grayson's methods are different than his mentor's and this issue gives us a look at that as well. From his dealings with the police to the way he's training a new Robin, Gotham's new Bat is getting his balance, figuratively and literally. Two-Face may not give him a grace period though, and begins a balancing act of his own.
There's still a lot of hype on the new Batman and it's nice that this book has a $2.99 cover price still attached. Since all of the relationships are asserting themselves in new ways, the best scenes are like the one where Damian (the new Robin) is still awake when Batman comes home after patrol, eagerly anticipating a training session. They're at odds with each other to a certain extent, but a relationship is starting and it's fun to read.
After the high water marks that Battle For The Cowl and Batman and Robin have set, this one reads and looks very 'meh' by comparison. Judd Winick has never wowed me and he didn't wow me here. It's not that he does a bad job, but he doesn't take any risks either. It all reads very safe, very standard and thereby very blah. Mark Bagley's art is equally un-wowing and these two just seem to have been the wrong choice for their role in Batman: Reborn. To be fair, this is the best showing from Bagley I've seen, it just didn't seem to be up to what this book needed.
Cover art to BATMAN #688 by Tony Daniel
I've bitched in the past about the forcing of Two-Face being Nightwing's Joker, and this was used heavily at the end of the Nightwing series. Well now that Nightwing is Batman, it looks as if Winick plans on taking it right back to that dry well. If Grant Morrison's series is all about the new, this Judd Winick book comes off as bringing back the old into a new setting. Average writing plus average art leads me to an average grade of C. This is even more disappointing because of the opportunity for doing bold new things in the Bat-Books right now, which neither of these guys are bringing to the page. It seemed like everything was set-up wonderfully; Tony Daniel gave these guys a hell of a pitch with Battle For The Cowl (which Winick was originally supposed to write) but these guys bunted instead of swinging away. Kind of makes me wonder what it would have been like if Tony Daniel had been left on the book.