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Time travel is risky business when you’re dealing with serial characters like Batman. To have Tim Drake come back from the future to “fix” things is even riskier! James Tynion IV has managed to create a rather complex story so far and with Tim Drake back it’s time to send this story to its conclusion.
So what’s it about?
The official summary reads:
“A LONELY PLACE OF LIVING” finale! Tim Drake is back on Earth — but if the deadly threat he brought back with him from outside of time has its way, it won’t be for long…and this shadowy figure wants to take one of Batman’s team down with him, too! Everything Tim died for the first time is at risk, if he can’t survive this attack!
Why does this matter?
The death of Tim Drake was a big deal, even if he was never actually dead. This story takes that story home. It also involves a very angry older Tim Drake that’s so powerful we’re going to need the entire Batman team to work together.
Fine, you have my attention. What’s good about it?
The sky is about to fall.
This is an action packed issue with plenty of fighting and some interesting twists for our heroes to face. Tynion keeps these heroes on their toes while also delivering key exposition and plot twists very well. The heroes have some secret weapons of their own — one of which fans will be shocked and excited over — and the resolution to the story is a satisfying one. Tim Drake comes out of the story stronger than ever too and with his future self dropping shade left and right it’ll be interesting to see how he’s used going forward.
The art by Alvaro Martinez is jaw droppingly good. The use of double page layouts pulls your eyes up, down and all around, which adds to the chaotic nature of the battling. There’s plenty of detail and good use of shadow to convey the future Tim Drake’s evil nature. Seeing as this is a team book it’s important every character gets to do something and Martinez sticks to that even if it means Clayface doing something in the background. There’s also a fantastic effect of Tim Drake being pulled from the time stream with a neat painterly effect that’s strikingly different than the conventional look to everything else.
Lotta Batman in this panel.
It can’t be perfect can it?
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I know Tynion IV continues to toy with Batman’s fear and weakness, but it’s frustratingly used in this issue. It’s a very brief moment, but he lets his guard down over a rather obvious ploy. I’m all for seeing Batman’s flaws — Tom King has portrayed it well recently — but it comes off as Batman being bad at what he does rather than flawed here.
Is It Good?
An exciting and action packed conclusion wraps up this story. The fact that time travel was used well is just icing on the cake!
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