Good Writing, Not So Good Story
The Good: This arc seems to be the culmination of a lot of things Tony Daniel's been culminating for a while, but it seems like he got rushed into a corner. He does do some really interesting things with the Riddler, and it's kind of interesting to see where he's gone through all of Daniel's run.
Plus the way he weaves the arcs together. We actually see the effects the explosion had on The Riddler, and Riddler's involvement in the previous arc was all to set up the climax of this arc to serves his own ulterior motive. I liked it much.
I still miss Tony Daniel's glorious artwork, and this is perhaps the furthest Steve Scott's art has been from Daniel's but in a way it's also probably better than the previous 2 issues art. It has more of its own identity rather than trying to be something else.
Enigma's been progressively more annoying and I've been wondering more and more why Riddler keeps her around. That's not addressed, but she does get some just desserts for her obnoxiousness imo.
The cover's actually quite nice. It doesn't completely stand out as a great cover, but it has a quiet, almost oddly calm demeanor to it, which forms a drastic contrast to the actual content of the cover, making it quite interesting.
The writing for all the characters is pretty good, I was able to enjoy reading the issue, even when the story was driving trains full of rainbow spoons across LSD tracks.
Which leads us directly to…
The Bad: There's quite a lot in this issue that either makes no freaking sense, or is never explained. Or both. Like I said before, it feels like Tony Daniel was forced to culminate all of the subplots of his run in 3 issues and cram a Two-Face story in as well. So why write this Two-Face story? Focus on the stuff that's already established because you have a lot to tie up in only 3 issues!
Well while we're on the subject of Two-Face, What REALLY was the deal with Gilda Dent? She just shows up after years to fake fall in love with Mario Falcone to free Two-Face from…… What exactly? I think she implied it was himself, but that didn't hold up very well to any sense of logic or reason. She needed to stage this elaborate scheme to pretend to sell the plot point of the last arc to The Riddler who was only in this plan to get the Falcones away so he could steal some other plot point? And how did she get ahold of his coin? One of his flunkies threw it in a hobo's cup!
On a side note "I Believe in Harvey Dent," Isn't that the big 'catchy' viral tagline for The Dark Knight? Unless THAT came from some other comic, it's a very poor attempt at 4th wall humor.
It seems like Tony Daniel's trying to tie up all the loose plot points from Long Halloween, apparently not realizing that THE HANGING PLOT POINTS ARE WHAT MAKE IT SO GREAT. Instead all it serves to do is run Gilda Den't character into the ground. She was gone and done. Don't turn her into some manipulative seductress. Or was she? I was never clear on her motivations, but the mystery there just comes off as indecision and hesitance to have any impact. If she IS a manipulative temptress, you've trashed Long Halloween and used it as toilet paper. If she DOES truly love him, Harvey Dent could be on a road to possible redemption with love back in his life in a shocking twist. Now maybe the editors were the ones hesitant to go one way or the other. Whoever it was. SHAME ON YOU!
Now we get to Enigma. Sure she SAYS she's Riddler's daughter, but is that ever adequately explored? Not at all. And then after the last issue, she's so obnoxious and the 2 are at such odds I wonder why he keeps her around. And once he's done he ditches her. What was any point of including Enigma whatsoever? She served no role or purpose whatsoever.
No I know a lot of people had the same thing to say about Catgirl, but I enjoyed her. Plus she had an interesting backstory, motivation, actual emotional connections with other characters, development, and everything. So Tony Daniel brings her story to a close when she decides to ship out to private school…. Wait, really? Why the sudden drastic decision reversal? Last issue you were actually sort of proving to be an asset, and even being slightly more endearing. Suddenly you want to listen to your elders? Bull crap! Kitrina's a rebel! I know she says she still will be, but her decision is really weak and has absolutely no explanation of motivation or why she changed her mind. There's no real reason or drive given for her to do this.
While I like the idea that the Riddler is there to steal knowledge of his past life, we're never given the reason for him losing it in the first place, nor any indication that he had lost it until now. Unless it happened in a story I missed.
In Conclusion: 2.5/5
It's hard for me to score this one, because the writing is nice. Tony Daniel is essentially a good writer. He has a way with words. and the knowledge of flow. He has a nice grasp of the characters and writes some damn fine dialogue and flows the story really well. He just needs someone else to come up with the stories because his are full of massive plot holes, or just aren't great. Like the last arc. I had fun reading it, but the arc never really captured me.
(At the time of posting, there's 2 other reviews up. One gives this 5 stars, one gives it 1/2 a star. I took the middle ground!)
*(It's also interesting that all 3 of us wrote incredibly lengthy reviews. It's rare to see such a variety of opinions all of whom have given the work an equal amount of thought.)
