Written by Tom King
Illustrated by Mitch Gerads
Published by DC Comics
Tom King starts off the year on a strong note in this issue.
This has been a rollicking two years with Mr. King writing this book and it’s honestly been great. In this issue, he teams up with artist Mitch Gerads to make a very special issue indeed.
They have worked together a lot so they really gel together well in harmony.
This issue opens with Batman being told to “open his eyes.” He does so during that first page. That’s when he sees that he is hanging upside down waiting to be slaughtered like a piece of ungodly meat. The person who is responsible for his current predicament?
Why, it’s none other than Professor Pyg.
Pyg is one of the rare Batman villains that make you want to throw up in you mouth.
Batman gets down from hanging. He and Pyg get into a brawl. It’s a beautifully rendered scene by Gerads. The fight is extremely brutal and every punch is felt. The rest of the issue seems to be one big fight scene. Or is it?
King provides us with some crazy writing where Batman doesn’t really know where he is. Luckily in this case, neither does the reader.
By the end of the issue, Batman utters the first bit of dialogue in the book. He asks where he is and how did he get there? And then Pyg answers him. That’s when things get downright straight. The stranger that they get however, the more intrigued I was. By the very end, I still had no clue what was going on. I just knew that Tom King has a plan and I’ll trust in that.
The art and the writing work perfectly together. You can’t get a much better team than these two working together. It’s a great little stand alone issue that works and links up to a bigger storyline. And it’s very interesting and intriguing indeed.
RATING: A
