One could just read this issue for the art. Alcala beautifully complements Gene Colan. He sort of brings out the lusciousness, but reigns it in just enough. Colan’s never too lush; Alcala is never reductive.
The story’s not bad, but Moench doesn’t quite sell Jason Todd, detective. He investigates, but without any finesse. The scenes where Jason’s talking to potential witnesses flop; no one would talk freely considering Jason’s suspicious behavior.
For the finish, Moench makes an incredibly odd choice–he doesn’t reveal the villain’s face. I had to reread it to make sure I wasn’t missing it.
Moench’s ambition outpaces his skill on the difficult Bruce and Jason character drama.
The Green Arrow backup has decent, if strangely constrained art from Jerome Moore and Mike DeCarlo. Joey Cavalieri makes a funny Superman peanut butter joke. It’s nowhere near as bad as usual.
John Totleben joins Yeates on the art this issue, but it’s hard to see what effect his inks have on it. The issue is almost incomprehensibly dense, with Pasko starting in the States somewhere and ending up in Dachau. Not sure how well the big reveal works—the Nazis were fueled by a powerful psychic who’s been reincarnated and wants to start the Holocaust up again.
I never thought, reading the issues before this one, I would see cheesecake in Pasko and Yeates’s Swamp Thing run. But this issue isn’t Yeates, it’s Jan Duursema. Duursema handles the art in varying degrees of quality. With Tom Mandrake inking, there are some very iconic Swamp Thing action moments. Duursema and Mandrake make Swamp Thing look even more like Redondo’s rendition in the first series than Yeates ever does. But there’s also a strange approach to people—Duursema likes long shots, with the moving figures looking awkwardly static.
