There’s been a blind Batman story before, right? Oops, spoiler alert. Kieth makes Batman blind at the end of the issue as the twist. He opens it with a bit of a twist too. The Kieth girl is a blind, but we don’t know she’s blind in the first issue. So it’s a surprisingly character trait revelation in the second issue. How exciting.

I thought Kieth had done a Batman comic before, but if he has done so… no one edited him or told him where he was lame. Because he’s got some really lame stuff going on here. Batman’s crushing on the girl. And he can’t shut up about it.

Batman and crushing aren’t two words I think anyone would say should be in a sentence together. Even when Batman has a romance, he doesn’t crush; especially not since Kieth draws the girl to look pretty young.

Icky bad.

So Sam Kieth has gone photoshop? I guess it’s not a surprise, only how photoshop he’s gone. He’s got panels with smoothing effects here. It’s so photoshop-happy, in fact, the thing looks like a bad digital collage. All the art is too crisp–even the stuff clearly digitally enlarged (he’s not into inking much this story either).

Speaking of story, there’s not much of one yet. Batman’s investigating a mysterious sulfur creature who’s killing homeless people. There’s a girl–in a Kieth comic, there’s always a girl–who’s going to figure in at some point. Also, the sulfur monster knows something about Bruce Wayne’s parents… maybe. Kieth doesn’t even use it as a cliffhanger. His cliffhanger’s awful, actually.

Also terrible is the dialogue. I suppose some of the Batman narration is fine (it’s the standard post-Year One Batman narration), but Gordon’s dialogue is laughable. Way too Sam Spade.