First, under the Chekhov's gun theory, let me just say that I'm worried about the health and safety of Harvey Bullock's cats. Buccapul clearly introduced them to humanize Harvey, making it likely that they're going to meet a bad end. Nothing good happens to good people in Gotham.
Second, the scene with Batman and Elena's daughter on the pier is spectacular. Buccapul set it up so well, with the short panels giving us snippets of the action before the two-page splash page where Bruce is literally standing on the border between darkness and light. It might be a little heavy-handed in terms of imagery, but it's so beautifully crafted that I don't care.
Moving onto the plot, Buccapul up the ante here by revealing that Wayne Enterprises is connected to the human-smuggling ring (and potentially the Icarus distribution-network), since one of its VPs (Lester) signed for the containers on the dock. He clearly knew what he was doing, too, since Bullock catches him trying to destroy the paper trail. I'm not sure where Buccapul is going with this development, but I'm glad that they've at least shown why Harvey would think Wayne Enterprises was involved.
Unfortunately, we don't have such clarity when it comes to the actual Icarus distribution-network. Batman hypothesizes that Sumo was just responsible for dumping Elena's car, but why then would he leave his phone in it? It's hard to argue that he was that incompetent. (Also, isn't he a bit of a heavy just to be responsible for dumping the car? He seemed to be specifically put at the port to take on Batman.) Moreover, if it wasn't Sumo's phone, but Jonny or the Squid's instead, how did it wind up in Elena's car? Did Falcone's men plant it there to send Batman the Squid's way? We got hints that someone was purposefully directing Batman their way, but it's still unclear how or who. Also, how are the Kings of the Sun connected to Jonny? Did he steal Icarus from them?
I'm hoping we get some sort of diagram next issue making it clear how the various gangs are related to one another, lest this story become (like this review threatened to be writing it) too unwieldy. But, for now, I'm OK with a moderate level of confusion if we get some sort of clarity (that word again) next issue.
*** (three of five stars)
No comments:
Post a Comment