[Locke]

Just finished Night of The Owls. I think it's best described as a 'Hot Mess'. It wants to be this sprawling epic, but it's more meandering and confused. It leaves in the most pointless chapters from City of The Owls but leaves out pretty much all of the key ones. This means Night of The Owls regularly slams head first into walls or just full on fizzles out because its destination was for some reason left out. But oh well, lucky we left in those chapters about Mr. Freeze because they were so crucial!

It's so bad, at times, I contemplated if my book was just misprinted. The issues placed within this are genuinely in the wrong order. I understand what they are trying to do with the books timeline, but there is at least five instances where an issue will actively spoil another issue that comes way later in the book, as if they just slotted in the issues at random. And also because of some of the most key stuff of City is left out, sometimes the characters are referencing things that haven't even happened in this book. It really pulls you out of the story, as it's meant to be this sprawling, chaotic war in Gotham but it seems at times, even DC can't keep up.

I guess it's more frustrating, because pretty much all the chapters, individually are wonderful. With Court laying most of the groundwork, Night could start at Eleven and go for there and although at times it was a shameless advert for the extended Batman Family, look who bought the first Batgirl trade.

DC seems quite happy with the heroes losing, regularly, as long as the heroes win in the end. The Court and their army of Talons practically bring Gotham to its knees before the book is done, and I don't mean that in some cheap gimmicky way, I mean that genuinely with each page it's like the Batman Families grip on victory becomes looser and looser.

Plus, although I really didn't enjoy a lot of the art, I enjoyed the contrast of so many different styles from page to page, it was beautiful stuff. Especially with all the different Talon designs and the contrast of the Bat families styles and motivations. Very visually fulfilling. Probably the best artist in the whole book is Kenneth Rocafort, it's a shame I've heard so many bad things about the book, because his art alone made me wanna go out and read Red Hood and The Outlaws.