Unfortunately, time is up for Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen's incredible Batman: Streets of Gotham. I've been championing the series for some time now, but I suppose the Batman market is a bit oversaturated, and this book sort of fell through the cracks for too long. I can imagine it's pretty difficult competing with titles like Batman & Robin and of course the two mainstay Batman comics. BSOG always had the makings of a classic comic, though. It was always searching for a new angle, constantly illuminating forgotten or minor characters, planting new seeds from which revised Gotham mythology sprouted and blossomed. The artwork was incredible. Dustin Nguyen has been one of the greatest Batman artists in recent memory. The only bit of sunshine I see coming out of all of this is that Nguyen will have more time to dedicate to his Batgirl duties.

Streets of Gotham underwent a tragic time crunch here towards the end of its run, and it shows through in its last issues. If you'd been following the beginnings of "House of Hush," you would see it too. Dini was slowly letting this story come to a boil, and it seemed like when the plug was imminently to be pulled, he of course had to speed up his plot development. He handled it like a pro, but we still lose a lot of great suspense and depth in that expeditious sprint to the climax. Speaking of the climax, that also suffers from having to be crammed into an issue that sums up a lengthy arc in a matter of pages, tying loose ends and even discarding some of the plot trimmings (i.e. Bedbug) for a more concise finale. Truthfully, I'm certain this won't be Dini's final time writing a Batman comic, excluding Arkham City of course, so the seeds he's sewn that never seemed to grow into much here will most likely be revisited at some point down the line.

Nguyen's Streets of Gotham #20 cover artwork

Even with this issue being noticeably impacted by the series' cancellation, Paul Dini does fit a few great scenes into issue 21, and he even ends up going in some pretty dark and unsettling directions along the way. It's a good issue, but it's not the way this book should have gone out. This is a bit of a whimper, not a bang.

I'm also actually quite upset that we didn't get to see the conclusion of Fabian Nicieza and Szymon Kudranski's Ragman back-up feature. "Ashes to Ashes" was one of the only second feature stories that was really quite gripping. Nicieza is one of the most underrated writers out there. His stuff is fantastic.