It’s the end of the Dollmaker arc and…well, I would’ve liked another issue worth.
Creative Staff
Story: Tony S. Daniel
Art: Tony S. Daniel / Sandu Florea
What They Say:
As Batman uncovers a deranged plot with far-reaching tentacles that touch some of the city’s most elite citizens, he finds himself facing off against his newest and most fearsome foes: Dollmaker and his twisted family of killers!
The Review:
Continuing with Batman being surrounded by dozens of Joker look-a-likes inside Mercy Hospital, we get a lot of action in this issue. This is the final issue in the Dollmaker story that took off in issue #2 and the writer crams a lot of information into this single book. Bouncing back and forth between Mercy Hospital, the Police Station, and the operating room where Commissioner Gordon is held captive we get a lot of tense moments where it always seems the worst is about to happen.
One of the side plots here involves the Internal Affairs officer who is made to seem untrustworthy and possibly a crooked cop working for some bad guy. Then we have the abducted child, Olivia, who, at the end of issue #3, appeared to have gone over to the Dollmaker’s side. There really is a lot going on here. That’s also the problem with this issue. If they extended the Dollmaker storyline out for another issue we would’ve been able to get everything at a good pace that doesn’t sacrifice anything.
In its attempt to cram everything in, we get a lot of fight scenes with Batman that are extremely stale in their execution. For example, once Batman frees himself from the Dollmaker’s grasp, Batman goes tearing off through the hospital looking for Gordon. This could have been played to ratchet up the tension and build suspense. Instead, extremely quick cuts of Batman plowing through the bad guys removes all sense of flow from the scene. On top of that, we flash to Gordon and the situation he is in resolves too quickly while continuing to bounce back to Batman desperately trying to get to him in time. It just doesn’t feel right in its execution and left me very flat. The basic story elements are good though, they are interesting and help expand a little bit about the world in this series. I look forward to seeing how everything plays but…just pace everything out appropriately from here on out please.
In Summary:
The end of the book does do one thing right, it wraps the story back around to the Joker’s skinned face currently being held at GCPD HQ. That first issue was great and the Dollmaker arc had me ramped up to see everything play out. Well, it turns out this arc was just a red herring to the story we wanted to see. The basic structure of this series is still strong and effective but they needed to slow it down a bit and finish this arc in the next issue. It wouldn’t have felt dragged out if all the elements present here remained, this book is just too rushed for its 20 page limitation despite the solid storytelling.
Grade: C+
Readers Rating: [ratings]
