Detective Comics #977 Review

Writer: James Tynion IV

Artists: Javier Fernandez and Eddy Barrows

Inker: Eber Ferreira

Colourist: John Kalisz and Adriano Lucas

Letterer: Sal Cipriano

Batmen Eternal is in full swing. So far I'm not really liking this story, mostly since James Tynion IV is circling back to simply uncompelling territory; Colony is an already tired concept and I'm sick of this future Tim Drake story already. He's shown up in two different books and his influence continues to be felt, and it's not very good. Couple that with some mediocre art, and we have a middling issue.

We have two artists on this issue: Eddy Barrows and Javier Fernandez. Barrows is a favourite of mine. I love his panelling and while sometimes Adriano Lucas' colouring add a sometimes murky feeling to the artwork, it's still nice to look at and is very expressive. Whatever love I had for the art immediately diminished when Fernandez's work began. There's something about it that I don't quite like. His figures are fine, but characters overexpress in such an anime style that I find personally repulsive. His character acting also isn't particularly interesting or vibrant. John Kalisz's colouring is fantastic as I'm a fan of his work whenever he pops up, but it wasn't enough to save the art entirely.

As for the story, it's simply fine. This run is going to end in a mere four or five issues so I just don't have any excitement overall. I know that whatever happens will barely stick in the long run and will not matter to the next long-term series writer, and the future that Tim sees in this issue is obviously not going to come to pass. Aside from cheap glimpses into the future that unnecessarily padded the issue, Tynion simply doesn't have anything going on. His run has been so light on genuine character and story. Here we see Batwing and Azrael, and I really have no idea why they've switched sides. They sided with Kate during that argument a few issues ago and we've seen nothing of note to truly convince me that they switched sides. For all I know, Batman planted them in Colony so he can have a couple of insiders in the organisation.

In a remarkably story-light issue, the art as a whole fails to impress once again. Tynion is showing us that he doesn't have much to work with since his stories have been very thin since the beginning of the series, so whatever we're seeing is pure padding. Just avoid this while you can and jump back in with June's issues by Bryan Hill.