Creative Staff:
Story: Tom Taylor
Art: Daniel Sampere, Juan Albarran
Colors: Rex Lokus
Letterer: Wes Abbott
What They Say:
While Amazo rages on the streets of Delhi, the Atom enters inner space. And Ra’s team faces a crisis of conscience.
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Ra’s goal of genocide on a massive scale got underway well in the first few minutes of the previous issue where some twenty-five thousand in New Delhi were killed. In the time since then, with Batman and his team on the scene, it’s not over a hundred thousand and increasing. Tom Taylor has played with big stakes before in this property and it’s no surprise to work with what just becomes numbers at this point, though it still makes an impact. Daniel Sampere and Juan Albarran continue with this issue and that provides for some really good and creative scenes, particularly with the two Atom’s on their journey that helps to put something a little new into the mix.
While most books in this series run a two-track approach, this one feels like it’s touching on more than that. The main battle sequence has some good scenes to it as we get the team fighting back against Amazon and I love Sampere’s design with Black Adam throwing down against it. There’s a good sense of power amid these scenes and the bodies laying on the ground. This story takes up some interesting real estate in the back half but that comes from Ray and Ryan in the subatomic universe exploring and musing about infinite frontiers that are ahead of them before Ray gets called back to help. That offers up the most interesting bit about Amazo that I hope has some great payoff as once inside he realizes that there’s no way this is human tech at all. It’s no surprise there are defense against the Atom in there but just the minor bit of action-exploration-discovery that Ray gets to do reminds me why I love this character so much.
The book also brings in some good material on the conscience side as we get those at Solovar’s now feeling really conflicted about what Amazo is doing. It does leave you wondering what they really thought would happen when the threw in with him and Ra’s but at least Vixen, Damian and Animal Man are trying to figure out what to do because this isn’t what they expected it to be. It’s good to see them trying to be realistic – and not stupid – but they’re also not subtle and Faux-Batman figures out what they’re up to quickly. To his credit, however, Damian’s able to get through to him to some degree about what he really wants and that this isn’t it, leading to the reveal of who is under the hood. I honestly had no idea because I can’t remember who all has been dead in this series and who could take it on but it’s a decent reveal, though I kind of wish it was someone from outside the Bat-family.
In Summary:
The scale of events is increasing but Tom Taylor is sticking to making it personal, at least within the name characters as none of the actual death and destruction of New Delhi is presented here outside of some meager backgrounds for it that are largely non-descript for the area. The focus on those in the fight is the priority and it works well to showcase what they’re doing as the Atom is in the mix but I do wish it had learned a bit more into the fallout and chaos of what’s going on around them to add to the tension. I’m digging what’s going on back in Gorilla City as that has some interesting potential to it, particularly now with a big reveal, and it feels like the energy is continuing to ramp up – which is exactly what this book needs regularly.
Grade: B+
Age Rating: 13+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: February 20th, 2018
MSRP: $0.99
