Talon #0 is worth taking a gander at, especially if you loved The Court of Owls storyline from Batman.

This review is going to be pretty short since I’m still away from home and barely found the time to read these books, but let me say that Talon has real potential. Of the four books I read this week, this is the one that stands out the most. Tynion made a character who is likeable and interesting and Guillem March’s art looks great. It’s nice to see his pencils again after he left Catwoman recently.

One of my biggest problems with Snyder’s Court of Owls 12-parter was that in the end the Owls never had a sense of purpose. They wanted to take over Gotham, but it was never clear why now was the time, how they would hold onto Gotham with all the world watching, and what they wanted from Gotham after they took it over. This book could very well explain what the court’s goal is! But that’s not he only reason I’ll keep tuning in. If Tynion can keep this from becoming a typical superhero book and avoid comparisons to Azrael then this could be a bold and exciting series. Think The Fugitive, but he’s running around in the DC Universe. There’s also a MacGyver quality to the series because the main character is an escape artist who will likely find himself in deathtraps frequently.

However, even though this series has a lot of potential for the future this issue does stumble some. The most daring escape the character makes is totally glossed over without any explanation as to how he did it. Anybody can write a scene like that. Showing him free as a bird in the next panel gets the point across that the guy is good, but it’s not very entertaining. SHOW SPOILER ▼

And his change of hear to a being a good guy comes about far too easily. After years of indoctrination from childhood a character like this shouldn’t have such an aversion to killing. Even in his first initiation he’s very hesitant and I didn’t find that believable. They court has been turning children into monsters for centuries and they could only be getting more proficient at it. SHOW SPOILER ▼ Lastly, the attack on the main character made very little sense and was simply done to have an action scene and give readers an example of the sort of fun escapes our hero will have from issue to issue. SHOW SPOILER ▼

It’s an introductory issue plain and simple. It shows why you should sympathize for the main character, how he got to be such a bad ass, it proves that he’s a good guy at heart, and it gives an example of some of the cool action scenes you can find here that you won’t find in many other comics. I won’t be reviewing any more issues of this until it comes out in a TPB, but for now I can say that everyone should pick it up and give it a chance. It could be a fun and original comic or it could be Azrael 2.0. Only time will tell.

SCORE: 7/10