You may have forgotten that there’s an ongoing Batman/Green Arrow/The Question crossover in the form of the BLACK LABEL series “Arcadia”.
I don’t blame you; it’s hard to keep up with a story, let alone get invested in it, when the releases are every other month. It gives more time to the creative team to invest in the books, which adds to the prestige of the project. You’d think they could just take their time and finish the whole thing, and then release it monthly. But it’s a relatively minor complaint, and it really just reminds us that these are meant to be read as collections.
At the end of part two, we learned a few things. One, Rotha knows Batman’s identity is Bruce Wayne. Two, Ceres, the “terrorist” organization Rotha hired Batman to stop, doesn’t even exist. It’s merely a label he gave to the kidnapped slaves of Arcadia who are organized and fighting back (so why hire him in the first place?). We learn this via Question infiltrating and joining their ranks. Three, Billings and the rest of Rotha’s hired guns are fine with just killing anyone not obeying their orders. Just in case it wasn’t clear who the villains are in this story. This last one is what really gets Oliver Queen riled up, aligning all three of DC’s detectives towards the same goal of stopping Rotha and the Arcadia project.
You might think issue three opens with the story consequences of all these reveals. And it kinda does, albeit in the form of twenty pages of action before any of the good guys actually have conversations with each other. Pages of action aren’t a bad thing, especially in comics. It’s just odd pacing when a book sold itself as a mystery/political espionage story, and even started that way. But political thrillers have to make room for action scenes too. Once the heroes do get settled/backed into a corner, we do get a lot in the way of reveals and backstory as they prepare to take their stand against Rotha and his forces. No spoilers here, but the revelations of the book’s biggest mysteries are a mixed bag. There’s still more to come, I would think. As long as I remember what they were two months from now, I’ll be sure to talk about them.
It’s hard to give this issue a grade in isolation, because it’s so closely tied with what came before and what’s going to happen after. The story progresses, but it seems like the most important resolutions aren’t here yet. Our characters all come to grips with things they’ve been trying to avoid, so there’s a lot of movement on the character arcs. Even with these developments, Batman is still just kinda there. This is mainly a Question and Green Arrow story. Bruce gets his moments, but they are less impactful than Vic’s and Oliver’s. And again, it’s all a little rushed in the last few pages after shootouts, escapes, plane crashes, just about every generic action set piece you can think of. This is a good time to mention that the art is still excellent, probably the best thing about this issue. There’s only one issue left, and I’m still curious to see how everything wraps up. – Trey Jackson