Plot: It's Azrael's turn to meet Gordon, except he, er, doesn't.
Turning Points is "a special look at the relationship of [...] James Gordon and [...] Batman [...] in different eras". This time around it's the time of KnightsQuest, with Azrael in the souped-up Batman suit, dishing out his brand of psychotic subjugation of the criminal masses.
Brent Anderson provides gorgeous art to a pretty lack-lustre story of Gordon trying to work out what has happened to his old friend after the events depicted in Knightfall - there's a completely different costume, a completely different attitude, and a different way of working - hey, Jim Gordon, maybe it's a different man in the suit, y'know?
The real problem with this issue is that you just feel like you've read it all before - if you've read the KnightFall/KnightsQuest/KnightsEnd saga, that is. You don't need to flick back to issues you've read three, four, more, years ago, to read this and think - "hang on, didn't Gordon go through all this at the time?", which renders the point of this issue moot. After all, if you haven't read the Knight... set of stories, then there is nothing here to give you that context; and if you've read them before, it's all too familiar.
What should've been done is to aim this at the relatively new Bat-reader, one who is vaguely aware of recent bat history but not the specifics - more exposition about the history behind the Bat-change, even a textual prologue or epilogue to set the historical context, recommendations for further reading; anything like that would boost the issue.
As a standalone story it really misses out, and is unfortunately a big disappointment.
