I AM BATMAN #2 Spoilers and Discussion
Well we may have lost Oliver Coipel, but Stephen Segovia is a good second. I am glad to say that this issue did not lose any of the visual quality that a book starring Batman deserves. Whether you like Jace or not, a Batman book should look good.
Anyway so what is this about? Well its about the death of Anarky, and a lot of heavy conversation topics like private militia's, misinformation, the rights of individuals, and a teen shooter. Alright that is actually kind of a lot so let me explain in detail what I mean. Because we find out who murdered Anarky right off the bat...and its just some kid. He's some 18 year old white kid named Morris who is listening to the Seer and joined up with the Militia called the "Moral Authority" and because of what he has been misinformed by the Seer and the whole masks are criminals that he just ran into Anarky and gunned him down in the street. But this gets into a conversation of race and privilege, that maybe people are feeling more sympathetic because he's a young white kid but he's still a gun touting anti-government militia agent. But Renee does not care about any of that, to her its enforce the law and correct justice. But Renee also understands that this kid was manipulated and used to commit murder and deserves proper representation to show a working justice system and so she goes to Jace's mother to represent him.
But that's just the background story, so what is Jace doing? Well he's hunting down the militia and the Seer, he figures the Bat-family has everything else handled with Scarecrow and the Magistrate. Jace's big plan is to have Vol send out a fake message to the militia so that Jace as Batman can jump them and maybe get closer to finding the Seer. Oh and he gets an update that the guy he was hunting in Vietnam is under extradition to the US because the courier that Jace beat up with Katanna in Second Son ratted him out. So that is probably going to lead to some plot point later in the series but I thought I'd bring it up.
And so Jace goes and whoops them. I mean its pretty simplistic but it gives Segovia a chance to draw some cool fight scenes. Afterwards Jace gets to some questioning with one of the militia men, and scares him by taking off his face mask revealing he is most certainly not the Batman that everyone knows while still making it very clear he is Batman. But he didn't get much out of him and the issue ends with revealing Seer was watching the whole time and is getting his people ready to bust out Morris from prison and take out Batman (Jace).
Personally I'm enjoying it so far, yes Ridley continues to handle heavy real world topics but that has been pretty consistent in just about every single comic book he has written at DC so if you weren't prepared for more I don't know what to tell you. I think the story so far is good, I like that Ridley is reminding you that there is a bigger Bat-family event going on in Gotham but that Jace gets to handle his own story within that which is not beholden to what Bruce is doing. It works and helps show how effective Jace is at handling problems and how he is likely to work within the dynamics of the Bat-family from here on out, which is that Jace isn't too concerned with them, that they can handle other threats in the city, and that he will handle issues that he feels need his personal attention. Other then that like I said Segovia does a good job as the new ongoing artist, he's good and his art is clean while drawing Jace in action and while I will miss Coipel Segovia's art work's just as well.
