So, I've managed to read Batman 17 early. I'm sure some regulars in the Batman forum know that I'm not generally a fan of Snyder on the book, but even so I found this issue enjoyable.

The biggest problem I have had with this arc after this conclusion is that nothing changed...absolutely nothing.There were no deaths, there was no tragedy....just some trauma which, relatively speaking, wasn't that bad. Everyone comes out OK and everything continues as normal. We find out that Joker has been in the cave, which really annoyed me. It's why I don't like Snyder on Batman...he writes him for a fool. Batman is not arrogant enough to say that he was 100% sure that Joker has not been in the cave because of all the security unless he was 100% sure. He is the World's Greatest Detective for a reason, although not in this book.

The other thing that didn't make sense to me was....why did he make fake faces of that family? Why did he actually leave their faces on? This is Joker we're talking about....the best he could do for a joke was making them think their faces were taken off? Why not switching their faces or something along those lines...I found it very lackluster. Also, what ever happened with Alfred's eyes being burnt out? The Joker is not someone who makes idle threats, so I found that annoying.

I do this issue is a good wrap up to the Death of the Family storyline, which I have enjoyed considerably more than the poorly scripted and trite Court of the Owls. It was weird to see Joker not being Joker, but rather an almost superhuman in a mechanics outfit, but meh. In this issue he is back in his Purple suit and a lot more Joker like. The biggest issues I with the arc are Bruce being written a a fool, and Joker being almost unrecognizable. Those issues are less apparent in this issue, but they pervaded the whole arc. It's a good wrap-up. I give it 3 stars. If they had kept with the classic Joker and had him do something actually horrific and had Bruce be less of an arrogant fool, then it would have been an easy 5.