Summary: When Bruce Wayne's neighbor, Sarah Worth, is found dead in the sewers after being kidnapped, Batman sees a larger mystery afoot.
Plot: Mariko Tamaki continues to weave a truly atmospheric mystery with her second issue in what I'm hoping is a very long run. In the second installment we get more great character interactions between Bruce and his neighbor Ms.Donovan, a larger peak at the pressure newly elected Mayor Nankano is under, Batman's unraveling relationship with the police escalates further,  and we're teased with a deeper conspiracy behind what otherwise would have come off as a straight forward homicide. The questions Bruce asks about the police reaction time in finding Sarah nearly as quickly as he did and why the Mayor decided to fill that section of sewer with concrete before either the police or Batman could fully investigate the area give you a great sense of growing paranoia with each page and with the added mystery of regular people suddenly acting hyper-violently it begins to turn into a deep conspiracy and the list of who could be behind it all is incredibly tantalizing. I absolutely love that Tamaki has taken Bruce's world and made it smaller again, Gotham City isn't about to be destroyed by some big event here, it's just a single case but it feels all the more dangerous because the scale makes it feel much more real.
Art: I think what I love most about Mora's art is just how well he manipulates the pacing of the story with his expert use of panel layouts. Instead of the panels merely containing scenes Mora uses them to create tension, give a sense of speed to a series of events and to highlight trans-formative moment at the end. In one scene near the start of the issue he starts with a standard sized panel, but as Batman gets closer to discovering Sarah each successive panel becomes smaller and smaller and in the end you never actually see her body, just Batman's face reacting to the discovery which is a really fantastically tense series events that creates an amazing mood for the book. Later Mora manipulates not just our emotions with the panels but time itself, starting out with a large splash page of Batman swooping down on the frantic husband of of Sarah Worth on the street, but then he overlays that image with a series of overlapping panels showing Batman taking him down and dropping him off with the police and that mashed up look gives you this feeling of just how quickly it happened. And finally Mora set up a truly weird page visualizing the drug's impact on one of the characters that was made all the weirder by having it follow a completely traditional five panel page; the contrast between the writing turmoil of tendrils and figures and the crisp cleans before it really sells you on the transformation in a really unique visual way. I really can't wait to see what he does next! 

Grade:10/10  
As an aside, I also really enjoyed the Huntress back up feature here, which is also written by Tamaki. There are some great character moments with Helena and her new friend and I really love how this story dovetailed into the main feature further exploring the weird rise in violent crime in Gotham while also feeling like a unique story on its own.

Summary: When the Archivist threatens two worlds it's up to Batman and Superman to save...Batman and Superman!?
Plot: While I still absolutely adore Gene Luen Yang's writing on this book his second issue stumbles slightly in its execution. After the first issue I thought that perhaps my enjoyment of the Batman and Superman characters from the alternate Earths would diminish once they crossed over together; thinking that once you've seen the first meeting between Batman and Superman you've essentially seen them all but surprisingly that part of the story still seemed fresh and new. The trouble with this issue though isn't the alternate hero plot but rather the framing narrative with the "real" Batman and Superman coming into contact with the Archivist who is the mysterious figure editing the two reels of film belonging to the alternate heroes. The concept of the villain itself is fun, he's not a dastardly being out for destruction but rather he's somebody out to make the perfect vision of the world and that he goes about it like an auteur film director has a great silver age vibe that I just love. But the main line heroes just come off as really awkward and unneeded and their dialogue is just terrible. The closest comparison to why I just hate reading these two talk is to think of how characters in some golden age comics  would describe precisely what was happening and every move they make and while the dialogue isn't exactly that bad it is super exposition heavy in a way that really drags the plot to a screeching halt. What's weird though is that the same isn't true of the alternate heroes, in contrast to how wooden the main characters are the characters from the other universes are incredibly strong. Each one of the heroes and their respective supporting casts (Robin and Lois) come across as feeling really iconic and vibrant and there are some great pieces of dialogue as they get to know each other which make the exploration of their new worlds so much fun. It's just a shame that the framing narrative just kept getting in the way.
Art: While I really enjoyed the two worlds being represented by separate reels of film last issue it began to lose a bit of its novelty the second time around.  What was once a really unique manipulation of the storytelling space started to feel a little rote and restricting here and further when it was used in the design of the Archivist's lair in the "real" world to look a little too busy.
Grade:7/10