The Unexpected #4 - DC Comics

THE UNEXPECTED No. 4, November 2018

There’s arguably a hint of desperation behind both the promotion and penmanship of Issue Four of “The Unexpected”, considering that “DC Comics” declared Steve Orlando’s narrative for the twenty-page periodical involves “a race to save Gotham City from exposure to the toxic Nth metal” and it crams in no less than three of the Burbank-based publisher’s current ‘bigger named characters’ within its utterly befuddling plot. For whilst “Answers In The Sky” alludes to the Caped Crusader’s metropolis being where the membrane between our reality and the Dark Dimension is at its thinnest, the New Yorker’s treatment hardly depicts Neon the Unknown dashing anywhere in particular so as to save the “fictional American city”, nor is it ever justified why Helena Bertinelli's alter-ego knows so much about "the poisonous Nth metal." 

Indeed, the greatest danger to Batman’s home town would seemingly be the incredibly dislikeable Firebrand and her increasingly grating sense of self-righteousness; “I am [here to fight] whether I want to or not! Don’t you get it? I don’t have the luxury of that choice, because of how you people handle things!” Just how Colin Nomi contrivingly teleported himself and his fiery friend within the proximity of the Huntress is never convincingly explained, yet it soon becomes evident that it’s the very presence of Janet Fals and her disagreeable desire to battle all and sundry which is putting every Gothamite in danger, courtesy of the loose cannon’s “aggression triggering the Nth Metal isotope.”

Such constant rage genuinely becomes tediously overbearing real fast, as the former paramedic launches into Bertinelli and then later the Signal without any rational reason except perhaps to inject a bewildering script with unfounded action sequences. Admittedly, the crossbow-armed Bird of Prey does strike first and Firebrand needs to “start a fight once every twenty four hours” in order to maintain her super-human abilities. But that doesn't explain why no sooner have the pair’s differences concerning Fals bringing “a dirty bomb into a city of millions” been physically resolved than Janet, supposedly sizzled “back to my senses”, then shockingly socks an unarmed Huntress in the mouth simply for voicing her (entirely correct) opinion that the Conflict Engine-driven ‘heroine’ is “out of control.”

To make matters even more unbearable though, once a surprisingly mature and calm Duke Thomas arrives on the scene, Neon’s travelling companion goes into ‘hostile overdrive’, patronising the “kid” one moment as if the always-angry recent addition to the DC Universe is actually the one trained by Batman, and then in the next threatening to beat the costumed crime-fighter to a pulp even when he makes it clear “I’m not here to fight” by helpfully whisking the travellers off underwater to the Bat Cove.

Storytellers: Yvel Guichet, Cary Nord & Scott Hanna, and Steve Orlando