: (2 of 5 cowls)

Hrm, I'm not really sure what John McCrea was intending with this month's cover, but whatever it was has apparently been lost. Though the cover harkens back to the much loved monochrome TEC format of the last few years, it disappoints in many respects. First, at initial glance it doesn't seem to have a bloody thing to do with the story inside (Including the monochrome, but more on that in the art section). After a while I hazarded a guess that the woman in the image is supposed to be Sasha or Vesper. I'm not sure entirely which. If it's Vesper, she's missing her glasses and the hair is a bit short, and the outfit a bit trampy. If its Sasha the hair looks too dark and again the outfit is way off the bodyguard's normal attire. If its Vesper it looks to be a statement on the doubt that maybe the Bat did kill her. I think it works better as a statement of Sasha being in the grasp of her doubts about him. But either way, the female isn't recognizable, and the image seems cut off and has a lot of wasted space. The shadow of the Bat behind her is not a very powerful image considering the more menacing vision of the cropped foreground. Also, all the red made it much too easy to pass over in the racks. If not for the yellow cowl logo I would have missed it entirely.

Story: (5 of 5 cowls)

This was another great installment in this crossover arc. Greg Rucka is a true writer, and as a published novelist his talent for storytelling shines in the pages of Detective Comics. I was really worried about this issue, after reading the promos for it. It sounded like Sasha might just break down and admit to Bruce being out of her sight twice that night, to get out of Blackgate. But instead of weakening the character for me, Rucka has again strengthened her. He gives us a glimpse of prisonlife, and how terrifying it can be, how violent, how degrading. Sasha is a strong woman, a trained combatant, but that doesn't help her when she is consumed by doubt and plagued by Kicker and her pals. Still, she hangs on, and the interior monologues in this issue were particularly well done. The one running during her conversation with her lawyer was an exceptional one, again admitting her love for Bruce Wayne though denying it to Weiss, and voicing her doubts of Bruce's innoncence in her mind though loyally refusing to speak them to her lawyer. The dual train of thought after finding the rat in her bed was another. The highlight for me was the final scene, the silent, simple touch from Bruce being enough to drain away her doubts and reinforce her spirit. It was a poignant moment, both because Sasha was renewed and didn't degenerate into a broken thing, and because it brought Bruce back out of the isolationist outlook he had been having since the murder. Where before it looked as if Sasha didn't matter one whit to him, and that he had entirely forgotten that she was suffering because of this mess as well, that one moment of compassion, and his meaningful display of resistance to being pulled away from her said more than words ever could. Bravo.

Artwork: (3 of 5 cowls)

I am unfamiliar with any of Steve Lieber's other work. That doesn't mean I haven't seen any of it, it simply means if I have, like the work in this issue, it did not leave me with a lasting impression of him. I suppose that once you get used to and learn to highly appreciate a prior artist on a title, you tend to be resistant to change. I miss the monochrome color format, but I can see where it simply would not work with Lieber and Gray's art here, or McDaniel's in the previous installment. If this is the new permanent artist, then I sadly do not see the monochrome returning, as it requires very clean crisp linework. However, I do see potential in Lieber. The majority of his images were a touch on the sketchy side and felt rushed, but I'm not sure whether that is due to the pencils or the ink work. With the likes of Wildstorm doing color seperationsI don't see a real need for using crosshatching style shading, though it seems to work well in a few panels. His best work can be seen in a few particular frames. The close up of the dark and dour Bruce at the bottom of page 3 is one, though the smaller image of Sasha in the background behind the fence is weak. He seems to be having a hard time drawing Sasha in general, though as someone who has tried herself, I sympathize. Her "look" is fairly simple, but conveying her spirit and attitude is something only Martinborough and McDaniel seem able to do. Where he does excel is in the dream sequence with Sasha and Batman. His look for the Dark Knight was wonderful, and the look of relief on Sasha's face in the full page panel, and the look of despair in the waking image on the bottom of page 19, were good mirrors of her mental state. He seemed to improve further into the book, and pages 21 and 22 were his best work, tossing aside the loosely sketched less detailed style for more photo-realistic images. The beaten Sasha and the suddenly aware Bruce were far better drawings than anything else in the book. The image where they were being dragged apart had a great sense to it (even if the inker got a little heavy handed there) and the final 2 panels of this story where they exchange a meaningful look, indicated that with time and more of a grasp on the characters, Lieber can be great. The color work was subdued, trying to almost be monochrome without quite getting there. It worked in #766, here its getting stale. Either go full color, or get back to the true monochrome, the in-between just makes for wishy washy dull work when you don't have a McDaniel caliber artist at the helm.

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