Review: Batman #28

Quick Summary

Pros: The story continues to deliver on the action that the previous issues have given. Catwoman’s inclusion is great and makes the story more interesting. Batman’s emotions are at an all time high.

Cons: The story is, very slightly, starting to drag a bit.

Overall: This is another solid entry in the “War of Jokes and Riddles.” It presents the intense action and warlike fights that readers have come to expect. In particular, there are some great moments involving Deathstroke, Deadshot, and Catwoman. It will be interesting to see where the story goes from here, but what can be said now is that this is another fun read.

Story

Batman #28 is a standard continuation of the “War of Jokes and Riddles” that has plenty to keep readers interested. Besides the war in general, there are also fantastic moments such as a fight between Deathstroke and Deadshot, an exchange between Catwoman and Batman, and an overall marked increase in the intensity of Batman’s emotions. These are what set this issue apart and also what contribute to the arc as a whole. Seeing snippets of the war like this issue provides has not gone stale yet, but hopefully the next issue changes things up before it starts to.

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Right off the bat, this story delivers on what people want to see, the actual “War of Jokes and Riddles” itself. It does this by framing the issue around a battle between Deathstroke and Deadshot. The two assassins go head to head in a very cool way. It is an enjoyable and intense part of the story that leads to some great scenes and interesting fallout.

Alongside this fight, we also get to see a little bit of what Catwoman has been up to during this war. This flashback sees her classic costume and back to her old criminal ways, something longtime fans are sure to appreciate. We also see the emergence of her antiheroic ways and her relationship with Batman. Though this glimpse at here is brief, it is great to see and has the potential to play a large part in this overall story.

Another part of the story that was particularly poignant was Batman’s emotions. We hypothesized in our reviews of issue #26 and #27 that the point of this entire arc was to show how Batman blames himself for each death in Gotham; this issue seems to confirm this more than ever before. At one point, the narration suggests that he is choking up in his retelling of the story. An emotional and upset Batman is a far cry from the stoic Dark Knight that readers usually see and a nice changeup overall.

The only downside to this issue is that it did not evoke many aspects of the story which we have not seen already. The fighting between Joker and Riddler has been shown in previous issues. Although war is at new heights here, it still is just a different shade of what came before it. This is not a bad thing, mostly because the story is still very new. However if the next issue continues like this then this arc may be in a bit of trouble.

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Art

Mikel Janín, once again, does the art throughout this issue. In short, his art is fantastic and makes reading this issue an even more pleasurable experience. For a more in depth look at our description of his artwork, see our review of Batman #25 here or our review of Batman Vol. 1: I am Gotham here.

Continuity

This is the fourth issue of “The War of Jokes and Riddles” storyline in the Batman series. So all readers need to do to understand this issue is read the previous three issues (reviews of which can be found here, here, and here).

• Batman references the city being taken before, this happened in Batman Vol. 4: Zero Year-Secret City (Review).