Good, but not quite 4 star good. Better than everything in the new-52 I've read, but needed a bit more something to make it as awesome as Year One or Hush.

one of the better batman stories i have read. my only quibbles were that the ending felt anticlimactic and going from the francesco francavilla chapters (fantastic) to the jock chapters (not to my taste) gave me whiplash. lots of good, creepy images.

I wanted to give this book 5 stars. Jock and Francesco Francavilla did a wonderful job with the artwork and the story was so great! it was very suspenseful and James Gordon was done so well. Scott Snyder is by far one of my favorite Batman writers. The ending of this was just too anticlimactic for me. *possible spoilers going forward!* the whole baby formula plot just seemed a little too silly for me. I did like the ambiguity about whether or not James could have pulled it off, but the whole scheme just seemed a little flat compared to all the sinister acts James was known to have committed or was suspected of committing. I wanted James' final big plot to tie in more to the Dealer than just simply buying some old version of the joker serum. I also wanted more of The Dealer in general. What a creepy, dark, twisted character! I also thought the whole Sonia Zucco/ Tigershark/ Roadrunner story fell a little flat. It mostly just felt like a distraction from the main story. I thought that the character of Dick Grayson as Batman was very well done. he had just the right amount of witty banter (especially when alongside Red Robin) and some pretty funny one-liners, without being over the top and obnoxious. He was also very multidimensional, as we're most all the main characters in this book (again, Snyder is a master!) Overall this is definitely one of my favorite Batman reads! Great for new batman readers who want to get to know Dick Grayson and some of the Gordon family's background as well as seasoned Batman fans.