Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Daniel Sampere
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
Damian leaves Khandaq for Gorilla City, where Ra’s al Ghul clings to a tenuous partnership with King Solovar and Grodd.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
The two story track is tried and true in this series and I definitely have to give kudos to Tom Taylor for how well he executes it, getting lots in there in a little bit of space. The previous issue worked through some good story material to set up things to come and we’re already seeing some of the fallout with it here. This issue thankfully reverts back to a single artist for it with Daniel Sampere handling the chores and he’s doing some solid work here, having fun with those of Gorilla City and just enjoying some surreal material that Taylor has put in to open things up with a lighter tone.
The general idea here is that Damian has realized that Ra’s is going too far with what he’s doing after seeing the footage from Arizona and is hoping to try and talk him out of it. Which feels a little weird because Ra’s was always clearly looking at a mass extinction event as his goal. So what we see here is Damian and a few others concerned about this level of death and realizing that Khandaq is on the target list now as well since Black Adam hasn’t signed onto things. That makes a lot of wary feelings to be had since even though this group came on board to try and protect the world they weren’t exactly looking at it to end like this. Which, really, is the only way it could end and they were just in blind denial while trying to have other things they wanted achieved.
Having the group go to Ra’s while he’s with Solovar in the throne room is probably the worst thing they can do, but what do you expect from Damian and Buddy. Their questioning of this ends up setting off Grodd as he still can’t believe Solovar has aligned with Ra’s and the rest even though their goals are the same. It’s a curious thing to play out here and the ending leaves me unsure of just where Solovar is pushing things because it could go a couple of different ways. The nature of Gorilla City politics isn’t something that looks too in-depth but it’s put into play well enough as it all revolves around the top two and they have their abilities and their followers to put into motion. It’s admittedly just a bit hard to care about it at the moment.
In Summary:
While I like what we get out of Damian and the rest and it builds off his time with Kara and being out in the world, combined with some sense of starting to grasp the scale of the plan, the issue as a whole is leading more into the Gorilla City factionalism than anything else – and I hope it doesn’t last too long as it doesn’t look too interesting. Part of that may be that a decent chunk of the start of the issue involved a whale-type character/villain that I’m not familiar with revealing to Croc that she’s pregnant by him. It’s a surreal dinner conversation to begin with and it continues on from there. It’s amusing but it also felt strangely out of place even within the context of this series.
Grade: B
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: January 23rd, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
