Though Batman and Robin Vol. 2: The Gotham Cycle is the second of Phillip Kennedy Johnson’s three volumes on the title, it brings to a close the story he began with the first volume, Memento, and feels definitively conclusive. It’s just a guess but I imagine the third volume will be a lame duck done-in-one as we sometimes get when a writer’s tenure runs longer than the main story they had to tell (Batman Vol. 5: The Dying City is another recent example, proving this is not always a bad thing).

No matter. Johnson had a hard path with Gotham Cycle, at least with me as the reader, and he navigated it perfectly. Frankly, the whole of the “Memento saga” might serve as a lesson for other writers as to how to balance for Batman the realistic with the fanciful. If I have qualms about how Johnson writes Bruce and Damian Wayne’s relationship, it’s no more or less than I have for other writers on the characters, and at least here Johnson delivers a kicky whodunit.