It’s Not Goodbye, It’s See You Later: Reviewing ‘I Am Batman’ #18

In this modern era of relaunches and rebrandings, eighteen issues is a pretty solid number for a comic series. If one were to count the four issues (originally 12 digital issues) of The Next Batman: Second Son and even the alternate future set four issues of The Next Batman we’re talking about twenty-six issues of Jace Fox-related Batman content over the last two years. That’s not a bad run. 

Especially since writer John Ridley has been here the whole time guiding the evolution of Jace and the Fox family, with colorist Rex Lokus, letter Troy Peteri, and artist Christian Duce working on a majority of the issues along the way. Eduardo Pansica and Julio Ferreira are familiar names as well, having jumped on board to help on a couple of issues of this series, including the last one. It seems highly likely that after all this buildup Jace Fox/Batman will show up somewhere else outside of Ridley’s hands going forward, but for the time being our adventures with this Black Batman has come to an end. 

It’s no secret, as I’ve made it clear in reviews including the previous issue review, the stories with Jace and the family are far more effective when it’s a focus on them and we really get to explore the emotions and situations that have strained and brought this family together. All the cop-related stuff bogged things down far too often in this series, splitting focus that was already razor-thin beforehand. Here Ridley wraps up the storyline surrounding the revelation and kidnapping of Jace’s real mother. 

There isn’t an air of finality to this story, there rarely is in the realm of ongoing universe fiction, as there are numerous revelations and unanswered questions and avenues left open. Yet, it’s a fitting conclusion in the sense that Jace’s mom is saved, we get to see Hadiyah/Nobody in action, Jace comes to a point where he separates from his family but isn’t running away, Tiffany and Jace are a firm partnership, their relationship with the police is solidified more (ehhhh), and the characters ride off into the night to fight crime and keep on going in whatever format that will eventually take place. In the previous review, I worried that too much was dropped in the penultimate issue that could not pay off fully or well enough in this final one. As I said id doesn’t all pay off/resolve but that’s okay because what did get resolved or answered was solid enough and there are enough threads to make it far more likely we’ll see these characters again very soon. 

Through the run of this series, there has been a somewhat revolving door of artists with Duce being one of the most stalwart and probably having the most issues to their credit. Plenty of those issues have in fact had a multiple-artist team going on and often the results were solid with a few spots where the combination wasn’t 100% smooth. The mix of Duce, Pansica, and Ferreira is a relatively smooth one as their styles range from smooth and detailed to a bit rougher around the edges but it all pretty much flows in a way that the change is noticeable but never jarring. It helps that they are generally handling different scenes so the change occurs when there is a scene change so it’s similar to watching a film and it going from a dark night scene right into a suddenly bright day scene, it’s like “whoa” but you roll with it pretty easily. 

All of them are great at capturing emotion and body language and putting it on display, as well as really putting in some quality framing choices that help highlight or zoom in on moments or characters to give us the best view of everything. There are plenty of really great shots found here where it almost feels like a POV shot with us right there alongside the characters which is always cool. 

Speaking of stalwarts, that most definitely would be something that can be said about Lokus who has been here with Ridley since the previous series. Lokus has been here setting the mood and bringing a set of colors that are bright and shiny and flow with whoever’s artwork is on the page while also being shadowy and hefty at the same time. There is just the right amount of vividness to what is on the page to fit into this fantastical world and setting but the rest of the colors alongside them feel more natural in the sense that they feel toned down and more real to what we see every day as we move through the normal world. 

While it hasn’t been as long as Ridley or even Lokus, Peteri has helped cement the voices on the page for this entire series which is a tremendous thing as it helps bring another stabilizing force to the page. All this time we’ve witnessed how Peteri sets up a perfect baseline of lettering style for dialogue that allows for the right shifts to be made to increase or decrease the volume and tone for any given bit of dialogue or even captions. It’s helped us to actually hear these characters all this time, bringing that energy and emotion out even more than we can already see on the page so that the moments strike us emotionally as they are meant to. All those big fonts and colors are thrown in along the way with big logo like namedrops, it’s been fantastic to watch it all go down for well over a year. 

While there have been ups and downs, the entirety of I Am Batman has been a pleasure to read and review, helping really bring some new and old characters a bigger more central spotlight. A Black Batman is something I never thought I would actually see and we’ve had that now for over two years. Hopefully, there is a perfect space still for Jace Fox and all his supporting cast in this new Dawn Of DC that is going on. 

I Am Batman #18 is now available from DC Comics.