Review by Karl Verhoven
While delivering the story of new Batman Jace Fox settling into his relocation in Welcome to New York, John Ridley was also building up fractious relationships as Detective Chubb settled into the police department, rubbing the idle, bigoted cops up the wrong way. It culminated in her shooting one of them to prevent a murder, and if that didn’t complicate her life enough, her former boss Renee Montoya has now been appointed New York Police Commissioner. It makes I Am Batman a strange series, starting out in Gotham, but with six of the cast now transplanted to New York.
As the volume title indicates to those who know of Montoya’s other life, Ridley’s also acknowledging her covert crimefighting career as the Question for the first time. Jace, of course, has no idea who she is, but is convinced by her reasoning as they begin digging into a crime first investigated in Vol. 1, and with tendrils leading to New York. Ridley’s use of Montoya as the Question lives up to the alias, as she constantly probes and pushes people into consideration, building a relationship where the Question challenges Batman as much as Chubb. He also continues running the story of the Fox family in the background, especially youngest daughter Tiff.
Christian Duce again handles most of the art, with his action dynamic and his conversations well paced with varied viewpoints. It is noticeable, however, that as on the sample art, he draws everyone with their mouth slightly open and lips pursed. Other artists fill in between Duce’s pages, in a sympathetic way. Tom Derenick and Eduardo Pansica are identifiable, but not in way restricting the story flow. Karl Mostert draws an entire chapter, and is different, but very good, and what he draws is an interlude tying in with Dark Crisis.
“There’s a dirty cop on the force we can’t touch and a young black killer who thinks I’m no better than the police he was trying to take down”, says Jace at one point, and it’s not a line you could imagine from Bruce Wayne. Ridley has highlighted throughout that Jace isn’t the familiar Batman. He’s well intentioned, but not the super cool and restrained crimefighter Wayne was, operating on instinct not intellect. When the demons are released it’s shocking, yet Ridley’s foreshadowed well. Where it leads to isn’t as enthralling, but Ridley’s narrative dilemma is understandable, having a summer crossover tie-in forced on him.
The final story delves deep into the Fox family secrets over three chapters, cranking up the tension by the page. Readers are witness to a squirmingly awkward revelation, and a hostage scenario heads rapidly sideways. It’s a thriller in which some matters are well resolved, while others hang. The shame is it being an end to Jace Fox as Batman, but better a short, largely quality run than something hit and miss that drags on forever.
