Detective Comics #966

Writer: James Tynion IV

Artist: Eddy Barrows

Inker: Eber Ferreira

Colourist: Adriano Lucas

Letterer: Sal Cipriano

This was a baffling issue. James Tynion IV was just focusing on the wrong things here. I expected more of a dive into Mr. Oz's prison and its inhabitants, but we don't get that at all in this issue. We don't learn anything new about the prison, which is odd since Tynion himself described this arc as a "myth-building" storyline building up to Doomsday Clock. There isn't any myth building present.

This story felt very repetitive. The entire issue is pretty much an action-paced conversation between the two Tim Drakes. When recalling the events of the issue, every conversation ends with Young Tim questioning something Future Tim said, with Future Tim saying something along the lines of, "You'll find out soon enough!" to Young Tim. It was excruciatingly cringey and it deeply irritated me. Frankly, Tynion ruins the story by instead delving into the Tim Drake of Tomorrow, the future Batman. This isn't an alternate universe Tim Drake, but is actually Tim. Without spoiling anything, it seems we've completely moved on from the prison storyline. It looks to be done for in favour of this Tim Batman storyline.

Eddy Barrows' art is pretty great. I love his take on Batman as well as Robin, and the opening few pages in particular were extremely gorgeous. I appreciate his character work more than some of his other creative decisions. For example, a panel involving Doomsday had this water colour quality to it which always bugs me about his artwork. His style in these abstract panels are also coloured weirdly by Adriano Lucas, giving off this fakeness to it that I can't quite put my finger on.

This is a very disappointing issue and a hard left turn to what we were promised. We don't learn anything new about the prison nor its inhabitants, and Tynion is instead using this issue to set up his next arc in the series. It's a confusingly obnoxious choice, and it resulted in a mess of an issue.