I Am Batman Vol. 2: Welcome to New York is John Ridley’s best volume of I Am Batman so far, further cementing my suspicion (as with Batgirls) that a lot of these titles were better off with Fear State out of the way. In moving the cast out of Gotham and into the relative blank-slate of fictional New York, Ridley fulfills the promise of a “Next Batman” character — a book that has recognizable “Batman” elements, but that at the same time offers a new take on the Batman paradigm, an answer to 80-plus years of Batman or a glimpse of what Batman might be like were he created today.

This second volume is fascinating, gripping, wonderfully gory, everything one has always wanted from I Am Batman. It’s also, predictably, the second-to-last volume.

Better that Ridley’s I Am Batman go out on a high note than a low one; better that, if I Am Batman is to be cancelled, we can say, “Too soon!” and not, “It was a mercy.” But if the third volume is anything like this one, that cancellation’s going to hurt.

[Review contains spoilers]

“Don’t say a word! You don’t know how bad this just got.” It’s all too rare for the end of a collection to hit with the force of a season finale; all too rare, too, for a book to have as many character-based twists and turns as Welcome to New York and still to surprise by the end.

[See the latest DC trade solicitations.]

Throughout, we’ve seen Batman Jace Fox deal with growing anger over his inability to stop a serial killer; throughout, we’ve seen a police force just looking for an excuse not to trust him. But in the final pages, it’s Ridley’s dynamic creation Detective Chubb who kills a fellow officer to keep him from killing the villain. Chubb’s a character we’ve grown to care for (a fine addition to the ranks of Montoya, Allen, and Bullock), but most of the plot has been Chubb trying to keep this Batman in line; now, in the final pages, it’s Chubb who’s put her own self in danger on behalf of Batman and a sense of justice that not everyone shares.

From the first pages of Welcome to New York, Ridley posits a Batman story unlike anything in recent memory, where Batman is a deputized member of the New York police force, working with his own Special Crimes Unit backing. Though marred by racism and corruption behind the scenes, it is on its face a more angst-free and cooperative position than we usually see Batman in, and in Ridley’s depiction of a team of oddballs rounding out the SCU, it favorably reminds of a Donald Bellisario or Dick Wolf primetime police drama. When comics have an often, unfortunate tendency to create tension through characters acting unreasonably, that Batman and Chubb can calmly agree he’ll handle the serial killer if she’ll go after the gun runners is a welcome change.

I was pleased that, after what seemed narratively too long, Ridley finally brings Vol on to the scene — Jace’s de facto Alfred (though, also, the Jace Fox equivalent of Lucius Fox, after a fashion) who’s only phoned in previously. (That Jace’s supporting cast is remote in Gotham but present in New York again suggests the Gotham issues as something I Am Batman needed to get through before the real story could begin.) But, 10 issues in, I’ll say (as I felt with I Am Batman Vol. 1) we’re in desperate need of a flashback issue; Vol is still a blank slate (I didn’t know he was Russian until another character comments on his accent) and the references to dark deeds in Vol and Jace’s love interest Hadiyah’s pasts fall somewhat flat without context.

Also as I mentioned in I Am Batman Vol. 1, it still feels as though Ridley sometimes tells more than he shows (all disclaimers as to here I am criticizing the winner of an Academy Award for Best Adapted Screenplay). Ridley has made Chubb likable, and we believe her journey from mistrusting “masks” to recognizing Batman’s good intentions. But (in an otherwise really moving scene) when Chubb’s partner Whitaker calls her “the best cop I’ve ever worked with,” I’m not sure we’ve seen Whitaker do really anything with Chubb such to make the audience actually believe this.

From Welcome to New York’s first pages, I Am Batman ups its level of gore (as drawn initially by Ken Lashley); though “Batman” is still in the title, the book exiting the main title’s immediate crossover orbit perhaps gave Ridley more free rein. Such gore, used well here, helps sell the depravity of the Man Ray killer that we might otherwise think Batman could more easily stop. (Though, I note, DC seems perfectly fine with two victims with severed limbs, but when it comes to Christian Duce drawing the villain holding up an eyeball, someone inartfully censored it with a dialogue box. I was also less impressed when, around issue #8, Ridley starts using grawlixes and then starts using them everywhere, an affectation that conveys the opposite of maturity, especially since he gets away with “cheap-ass” earlier in the book.)

Despite perhaps that Jace and the other members of the Fox family are still not as fleshed out as one might hope, it can’t be overstated how much stronger I Am Batman Vol. 2: Welcome to New York is than what’s come before. Man Ray’s insanity and the goriness of his crimes, the “no one is safe” aesthetic when John Ridley bumps off a police commissioner (again, bucking Batman tradition), the nail-biting final chase through City Hall (also drawn well by Christian Duce) — the ill-defined “Seer” threat from the previous volume doesn’t come close. More’s the pity I Am Batman hits its stride when it’s too late for the title.

[Includes original and variant covers]