Man, I definitely feel like I missed an issue.
First, I still am having trouble figuring out the various gang connections. This issue makes it clear that Holter was clearly the sole supplier of Icarus (more on that revelation in a bit). If I'm putting two and two together correctly, it seems that he worked with the Falcone organization to make sure that he could smuggle the kid that generated Icarus into Gotham City (hence, the Wayne Enterprises VP fixing the books to hide the contents of the shipping containers). We knew that Jonny assassinated Elena on the orders of the Falcone organization, because Elena's plans for the Waterfront clearly threatened the Icarus operation. This revelation now seems to confirm that the Squid was merely working for Falcone, not a player in his own right. Moreover, we learn that it was actually Holter who ordered the hit on Elena; as such, it makes it clear that Falcone was clearly working with Holter, not against him. However, we never actually see Holter deal with Falcone (or the Squid deal with Falcone, if I'm not mistaken), so the reader is left to draw all these conclusions on his own, from Falcone and Holter colluding to import Icarus into Gotham to the Squid handling the distribution for both Falcone and Holter to the originator of the hit put on Elena. The conclusions make sense (more or less), but I'm still left with the nagging sense that I might have missed or misconstrued something. I don't need a lot of exposition detailing the villains' plans at the end of my stories, but it is usually helpful if we have some idea of what the actual plan was.
The oddest part of this story isn't actually the revelation that Icarus is derived from some kid with radioactive powers (though we'll get there in a minute). Instead, it's that Bruce berates himself for having missed nabbing Holter. Bruce seems to suddenly realize that Holter was behind the whole affair when he sees the Waterfront explode, but I can't for the life of me see how the explosion inspired this epiphany. Bruce even seems to know to bring the super-armor, presumably because he knew that he'd be facing the irradiated dude. But, again, we get no insight into how Bruce knew that this kid generated the Icarus. Moreover, Bruce says that he could've saved Elena if he had realized that Holter was the mastermind earlier, but I'm pretty sure that Elena was killed before Bruce even knew about the Kings. If he did know, we certainly didn't see the events that led him to that conclusion.
Finally, regarding the irradiated dude himself, that development couldn't be more from left field. I feel like we're supposed to recognize him, like he's Annie's ex-boyfriend from the annual. But, I'm pretty sure that it's not the case, since that kid clearly wasn't irradiated from the start. So, who is he? (I'm now pretty sure that he's the guy in the container in issue #31, but what happened to Sumo then?) He disappears when Bruce arrives, so we get nothing close to an answer. We also have no idea why Harvey finds an anarchy symbol in the abandoned container at the end of the issue. Are we supposed to believe that Anarky was somehow involved?
In other words, what the Hell just happened?
* (one of five stars)
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