Breaking Consistency With Disappointment
The Good: For the most part, the art is very solid, with lots of really nice panel layouts that enhance the 'espionage' feel in the flow of the action.
The last few pages of the issue have a superbly intense pacing leading into an absolutely fantastic ending.
The Bad: The cover is pretty decent, mostly just so-so, but its also basically the same as the cover of the first and third issues. This is getting stupidly repetitive.
The doctor is a completely flat love interest for Black Canary who was so un-memorable that it took me a few minutes to remember who he was. At first I was just like, why are they talking to this guy so casually, who the hell is- Oh right... that guy.
Ok, how did Starling just 'know' that Black Canary had a bomb in her head? We and Canary only found that out on the last few pages of the previous issue, Starling had no time to find out. Sure you could say she figured it out, but there's no mention of anything like that at all. We're just treated to Starling arbitrarily knowing for no explained reason.
This issue suffers from a LOT of very awkward pacing issues. We go from the very intensely built up train from the end of the previous issue, to the aftermath in four pages flat. Well that killed a ton of momentum. Oh but wait! We're going BACK to show you the train stuff. Well... too late, the momentum's been lost. It's not tense anymore because we're just getting filled in.
And speaking of getting filled in, this arc feels like it's getting rushed very suddenly. After having a vaguely vague threat of vagueishness, we're given a huge dump of info and suddenly we know almost everything. I don't feel like I've earned that information yet, like the BoP needed to get it little by little instead of one huge steamping dump.
Does everyone just have a cold in this issue? How come practically every character in this issue has a red tinge on the end of their nose? Is it some kind of BS Christmas gag or just something even stupider?
We get a twist to the way Choke works, but I just heard this same twist with infitely batter pacing and buildup last month in Batman #3. Ooohhh. They're in hidden floors between floors. It's not as dramatic as when the owl nests are in your freaking houses.
So after being very firm in the first issue, Batgirl just agrees to work with Black Canary just like that? It doesn't make sense, they just kind of call on Batgirl and she's on board. It's just lazy writing.
In Conclusion: 1.5/5
It really pains me to give this issue this score, because overall I've been enjoying this series enough. But this issue was an absolute mess. Sure there was some nice pacing in the artwork, but plot wise everything was all over the place. Nothing feels like it was put in the right order. It feels like someone told the writer things were going too slowly so he needed to give away all the answers, and damn the expense. The expense apparently being subtlety and pacing, because this issue absolutely murdered those concepts. And finally, this series needs more covers tat arent "The team members posed in front of a tree."