Some thoughts about Batman #103

How can Batman defeat Ghostmaker?

Bruce is having a final fight against his rival while Clownhunter is contemplating if he wants to kill Harley Quinn or not.

To answer the initial question, very easily and abruptly.

I guess James Tynion IV's is following his mentor, Scott Snyder, rule of "Poor conclusions. Always" although to be fair about Snyder, at least his stories start promising for the most part. Tynion's anti-Batman tale went as predictably as you can get, in fact the opening pages of this same issue start cringely with the typical exchange of "Oh, you're not doing enough! You're weak for not killing!" and is just nauseating.

Even worse is the actual ending of such conflict because Ghostmaker just quits, out of nowhere with very little justification behind it, just because Bruce said the easiest thing that he should have said. Now they're allies apparently because Tynion just needs to have his pet characters around I guess. Speaking of which, Clownhunter also drops his whole angle rather quickly because of an out of character Harley, neat.

Carlo Pagulayan, Danny Miki, Alvaro Martinez and Christian Duce keep a consistent tone during the issue despite of their different artstyles.

Aside from that, good Lord, this book just doesn't get any better. I guess I should give Tynion some credit for trying to make something different with the conclusion? No, because a bad ending is a bad ending.