Detective Comics #971

Writer: James Tynion IV

Artist: Miguel Mendonca

Inker: Diana Egea

Colourist: Jason Wright

Letterer: Sal Cipriano

The Victim Syndicate continue to make their presence known in this book, and it's time for this storyline to just go away. This issue isn't bad, but the Victim Syndicate aren't very interesting at all and the story I want to see, concerning Clayface, is relegated to a mere two scenes which promise the next issue will get to the good stuff.

There's a bit of filler thrown in as well. A story like this needs to be a bit more straightforward, but James Tynion IV spends so much time focusing on the mayor and the Colony that it just distracts me from the main story. I don't feel the stakes, and when Batman does what he does near the end of the issue, I'm not terribly interesting nor am I excited by what's going on.

Miguel Mendonca is an artist I'd love to see more of and I think he does a better job than Joe Bennett has been doing the past two issues. Mendonca's art is, however, a little bit compromised by the team of Diana Egea and Jason Wright, who don't do Mendonca's work justice in my opinion. The colouring in particular isn't very exciting.

I'm hard on this issue, and it is the third part of an arc so the next section of the story needs to be set up, but this story should have ended when the Victim Syndicate first went away and I need this book to move on and be fresh again.