Scan barcode
A review by unladylike
Batman: Detective Comics, Vol. 5: A Lonely Place of Living by James Tynion IV
3.0
2.5 stars, elevated to 3 because the art is consistently good and it's still a better series than most.
I found this to be the weakest in this run of Detective Comics thus far. The majority of the book reveals where Tim Drake has been imprisoned on some other plane of reality. He has conversations with "Mr. Oz" that feel like a forced means of exposition, and then Oz steps out of the room for a while or something (or Tim hacked into the computer system using old Kryptonian coding theory, which is the mulligan he always pulls to turn the tables in basically every story he's a part of, but Oz might as well have just left the keys in the door while going to take a leak). In rapid succession, Tim puts out a distress call, hears a response from someone in another room of the prison that just says "Hey, it's Batman! Unlock corridor H!", and Tim just believes him even though he doesn't sound like Bruce Wayne, and also doesn't follow specific directions well, which is uncharacteristic, and instead just tells the computer to unlock EVERYTHING. Of course none of those things were good ideas, but I can sympathize with young Master Tim for panicking and reacting in good faith after being pulled out of his universe for some time without any indication of why or how.
The storyline about this 20-year-older, murderous and fatalistic Tim Drake who wears the mantle of Batman after Bruce Wayne died sucks. It feels like the same illogical plot points that I've seen too many times before.
At the end of this volume, like in the end of the previous volume, we get an issue focusing on Steph/Spoiler, before Tim escaped back to his reality. This had great potential, especially since Leslie Thompkins (sp?) and Harper Row are there working to build an underground community-based, egalitarian/anarchist utopia. But instead of getting to learn more about THAT, we're given the same trite bullshit from Anarky that we get every time he shows his damn pretty mug in that hideous gold mask. He named himself Anarky but he ALWAYS just gives anarchism a bad name and proves to be a self-serving, egotistical blah blah blah.
I found this to be the weakest in this run of Detective Comics thus far. The majority of the book reveals where Tim Drake has been imprisoned on some other plane of reality. He has conversations with "Mr. Oz" that feel like a forced means of exposition, and then Oz steps out of the room for a while or something (or Tim hacked into the computer system using old Kryptonian coding theory, which is the mulligan he always pulls to turn the tables in basically every story he's a part of, but Oz might as well have just left the keys in the door while going to take a leak). In rapid succession, Tim puts out a distress call, hears a response from someone in another room of the prison that just says "Hey, it's Batman! Unlock corridor H!", and Tim just believes him even though he doesn't sound like Bruce Wayne, and also doesn't follow specific directions well, which is uncharacteristic, and instead just tells the computer to unlock EVERYTHING. Of course none of those things were good ideas, but I can sympathize with young Master Tim for panicking and reacting in good faith after being pulled out of his universe for some time without any indication of why or how.
The storyline about this 20-year-older, murderous and fatalistic Tim Drake who wears the mantle of Batman after Bruce Wayne died sucks. It feels like the same illogical plot points that I've seen too many times before.
At the end of this volume, like in the end of the previous volume, we get an issue focusing on Steph/Spoiler, before Tim escaped back to his reality. This had great potential, especially since Leslie Thompkins (sp?) and Harper Row are there working to build an underground community-based, egalitarian/anarchist utopia. But instead of getting to learn more about THAT, we're given the same trite bullshit from Anarky that we get every time he shows his damn pretty mug in that hideous gold mask. He named himself Anarky but he ALWAYS just gives anarchism a bad name and proves to be a self-serving, egotistical blah blah blah.