Comic Book Reviews: Batman #28, Nightwing #28 and Blue Beetle #19

Greg Capullo, to his credit, is very meticulous about his artwork. He has made sure that every issue of Batman he's worked on so far has looked nothing short of brilliant.

Unfortunately, that can be a time-consuming process, so Capullo's work on the final act in "Zero Year" has been delayed a month. Luckily, thanks to the help of James Tynion IV (as a co-writer) and Dustin Nguyen as an artist, Scott Snyder was able to do a Batman #28 issue that still served a purpose.

The issue is a one-shot set a little past the midway point of Batman: Eternal, the new upcoming weekly Bat-title. So basically this is a spoiler-filled issue for what the Batman Universe will look like in a few months.

Overall, the voice is still there of Batman and Harper Row (who is now called Bluebird in this issue) and Catwoman is back to being a straight-up villain like in the 1960s (which truly excites me). I can honestly say I'm excited for Eternal after this. Now I may actually have to consider buying the title and committing to the 52 issues.

The main spoiler is, well, Spoiler. That's right! Stephanie Brown has finally returned to the DC Universe, and even though she's only in one panel, it's awesome to see the former Robin and Batgirl being used again. With any luck, people will respond well to her and we'll be seeing Steph in a permanent title after Eternal.

Anyway, there isn't much to say regarding the quality since I have no real context as to the plot. But I'll give it 8/10. It's good and definitely worth the price of admission, but if you don't plan to follow the weekly title, it may be hard to recommend it.

Nightwing, on the other hand, has very little future left in the title. The book ends with Issue #30 in April, and it's clear that Kyle Higgins is trying to end the title by rounding out as many storylines as he can.

After the little girl who is friends with Dick's roommate found out his identity, I had no idea what they'd do with it, but they found an interesting route by having her become orphaned by Victor Zsasz and leaving Dick to stop her efforts to track him down.

Meanwhile, Sonia Branch returns and she formally apologizes to Dick. The two finally get a degree of closure in their lives, and I think it was well-done.

The problem is that there just isn't enough time to round everything out in my view. Remember, there are still people with vendettas against superheroes and I have no idea how the plan would work to put that plot into the last two issues, especially since the last issue will have a guest writer.

It also didn't help that scenes seemed to end way too abruptly and had no real connection to the main narrative. I think only one of the first 10 pages involved the main story.

There's still solid work here, but it's definitely being dragged down. I'm giving it a flat 7/10.