Batman is now fighting crime in New York City, but the corruption in the police force and politics is a lot to handle. Jace Fox has been building infrastructure not only with the police with a special task force but with friends too as he builds his own Batman headquarters. In I Am Batman #11, out today, the local politics get even more complicated.
Enter Commissioner Montoya who has moved to New York and is more or less ready to plant herself there. That is just one reveal in the latest issue that continues to embroil Batman’s supporting cast. Add in the fact that Batman’s right-hand man Detective Keenan has a history with Montoya and you can see writer John Ridley is thoroughly mixing up this melting pot. Much of this issue is devoted to relationships, be it those about to boil over in the police department, or Jace’s family.
Character work is the name of the game with this issue, with key characters meeting and talking throughout. Ridley progresses relationships and the information the reader needs to understand the drama between them well. Characters can get to talking a lot, to the point where it feels like Ridley spends too much time focusing on dialogue and not enough time on action or advancing the plot visually.
A two-page scene between Jace and Vol is a good example of how this series is more of a procedural with lots of dialogue than action. It’s neat to see them discuss where the headquarters for Batman could be in New York, but it also reads like the scene could have taken place over two panels rather than two pages, or at least had them doing something in the scene beyond standing around.
A neat way to see both sides of the story.
Credit: DC Comics
There is one major conflict that requires Batman to rush in the last second or Detective Keenan could die. It’s a bit odd that Batman can get to her so fast, but this is comic book stuff and questions like that are best ignored. This scene lets the artist–this issue is drawn by Christian Duce and Tom Derenick–show off a very pointy Batman costume. The armored boots and gauntlets look great.
The standout visual moment has to be the cliffhanger, which introduces another superhero figure into the narrative. A nice thing to see since the supervillain seems to have fallen out of the narrative entirely.
Speaking of, much of this issue focuses so heavily on character drama that it seems to have lost sight of Batman patrolling the streets, fighting crime, and villains needing vanquishing. It’s becoming much more clear that this isn’t a Batman comic or about Jace anymore, but more about the supporting cast. That’s a bit of a bummer, as seeing Jace take on the mantle of Batman in a new city was the main selling point of the series.
I Am Batman #11 is a good character drama, but lacks Batman fighting villains and criminals in general. There’s a promise of more superhero stuff, but expect to dig into character relationships more than anything else.
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