Batman dives deeper into the Unsanity Collective, and Simon Saint and the Scarecrow’s plans for Peacekeeper-01 and Gotham start to come into focus in Batman #108 with a lead story written by James Tynion IV, drawn by Jorge Jimenez, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Matt Lazorwitz: “The Cowardly Lot” is at issue three of the arc, so probably around the halfway point, and I think this arc is finding where it wants to go. It’s starting to draw what seemed to be disparate threads into one story. And the core of that story, about other forces using Batman’s favorite weapon, fear, against Gotham, is a solid basis for a story.
Will Nevin: “Solid” is the word I’d go with for this issue; the characters seem motivated by reasonable, relatable desires; the plot makes sense, and I didn’t hate it — and I can’t say those things about most of Tynion’s run. And here’s something I wonder: Am I OK with it because most of these threads (as you put it) seem pretty familiar?
ML: We’ll get at that as we discuss the individual characters surrounding Batman, but I think Tynion is at least trying to put some twists on the familiar.
Miracle Molly
ML: We’ll start with the character who gets the most page time in this issue, and who spends the most time with Batman: Miracle Molly. We’d met Molly briefly a couple issues ago, but this is her first full appearance. Maybe it was the amount of time we spend with her, but she felt more human than most of the other new characters in this book so far.
WN: Got a thought experiment for you, Brother Matt: Swap out Miracle Molly for Catwoman (but leave out all the gushy kissy, kissy stuff). How does the story change?
ML: Hmmmmm … a valid point. I think she serves a similar function as Spoiler did in Tynion’s Detective Comics run: the person doing the wrong things for the right reasons, working on the fringes of the law because the system failed her.
WN: And, again, I didn’t hate this — but when you give me a female character who can read Bruce like a Dan Brown novel and operates with a lawful neutral code, that seems a whole lot like Selina to me. It’s Punk Catwoman with a sprinkle of “Endgame”-era Bruce’s salvation via a clean memory.
ML: I absolutely see where you’re coming from here. But let me play devil’s advocate. You can’t do some of the things that Tynion might be planning on doing using Catwoman or Spoiler, as they are established characters, especially Selina, who is a titan of the franchise. So should he have either changed the character to be more distinct from these established characters? Or changed the plot to accommodate a character who fits a different archetype? There’s still potential for Molly to branch off from this established path, after all.
WN: To be fair to Tynion, Molly has her own wrinkle in that she doesn’t know who she really is (if I read that correctly, and given the way Batman brought it up, she has to be someone important). But I think you have to tweak this character — she talks to Batman like she’s known him for 10 years. Not everyone should be able to do that, and her insights/abilities haven’t been established at this point. What are we supposed to think? That she got lucky? Or she has amazing skill?
ML: I think it’s the latter. I always get a little annoyed when characters do that, the “recognize Batman out of the mask from the way he moves” thing, since that was Tim Drake’s origin, how he figured out the truth (Well, he did it by recognizing how Dick Grayson moved, but it’s the same principle), and so everyone who does it after that makes Tim’s genius a little less special, and you know me: I stan Tim Drake.
But to your other point, you are correct, Molly sacrificed her memories as part of this ethos of Unsanity; that you sacrifice your past to move beyond fear and accept a new happiness. If we are to believe Unsanity moves you beyond fear, then it does make sense that Molly isn’t intimidated by Batman. Her familiarity is a bit off-note, but it’s more palatable than the way some of the other newer characters have interacted with Batman.
That idea, the Unsanity thing, is possibly the most novel idea in this arc, if not this run. I can’t think of a single time in Gotham history where someone has put forth this idea framed in this particular way. And extra points for not playing to the obvious, that Mr. Wyze, the head of the Unsanity Collective, is just Simon Saint in disguise. It might have meant one less new character, but it would have been pretty obvious.
WN: One mystery that hasn’t been cleared up is where Scarecrow fits into this. You know, it would be something if he’s not really here at all, some feint a la Iron Man 3.
ML: Huh, hadn’t thought of that. It would be an interesting twist. Or maybe Scarecrow is Wyze, trying to rid people of fear so he can then experiment on them to see what it takes to reinstill it in them?
WN: At least we’re pretty sure Scarecrow is not Simon Saint … right?
Simon Saint
ML: Yes, moving on to our next featured player, Simon Saint is not Scarecrow.
Simon Saint is another archetype dropped into Gotham, and one who is actually not in the established Batman villain canon. Batman has faced a myriad of cracked-mirror versions of Batman, but he rarely faces that with Bruce Wayne: the bourgeois corporate villain. He’s faced Lex Luthor, sure, but that’s a sideline for both of them. And yeah, both Hush and Black Mask have been rich at different points, but they aren’t the exact trope. He’s a rich mad scientist, and while Bats has faced down plenty of the latter, the former is something he doesn’t usually have to deal with, especially now that he doesn’t have an ally in the GCPD to back him against a “reputable” villain.
WN: Saint is all sorts of trouble — smart, immoral and he’s in deep with a mayor who doesn’t know any better. And speaking of Mayor Nakano, Saint eventually turns on him, right? I don’t remember Nakano being featured — or even mentioned — in Future State. Saint seems to excel at finding useful idiots — and then discarding them when they are no longer useful.
ML: I have a vague recollection of Nakano being mentioned, but that might be even more damning: He’s such a figurehead at that point that he barely merits a mention, and Saint himself remains so behind the scenes as to let the Magistrate as an organization run things, while he sits in the background. I think this answers something that bugged me in Future State: why the organization of Peacekeepers is called The Magistrate and not the Magistrates for the Magisterium, the name for an organization of Magistrates: Saint is the Magistrate, even if you never see his face in those books.
As we don’t have much of his origin, aside from being from the Cauldron (the area of Gotham created by Garth Ennis and John McCrea for Hitman), I’m curious about Saint’s motivations. He’s obviously a megalomaniac, but is it out of altruism (Gotham would be better off with me in charge), or is he just so superior that he desires the power for himself and sees masks as an obstacle?
WN: Perhaps there’s a third way: He would have been great already, he would have already conquered and pilfered Gotham, but Batman did something to thwart him and now it’s time for his revenge. The Scooby-Doo “meddlesome kids” origin story.
Peacekeeper-01
WN: And who would Saint/the Magistrate be without his top lieutenant, Peacekeeper-01? I remember talking way back in Future State about how he had to be someone, that he had to be important. And now we can officially confirm: He’s a schmuck who wasn’t good enough to be a cop, an aggrieved dingus whose dad got bounced from the force on account of that no-good Commissioner Gordon.
ML: Oh, yeah, this is Tynion making a point. We had the scene last issue with Harley and the police, where he took on the police force, and here he is making a statement about privatized law enforcement. Mr. Mahoney here is everything wrong with private policing: He is an entitled schmuck (great use of the Yiddish, I had to use it, too).
The retroactive origin, the fact that we know he will be important, and we know what he’ll become, really works here. He’d be almost laughable if we didn’t know that; someone who Bruce was going to take down in two seconds when they finally meet. Knowing he is going to be a force to be reckoned with means we know to not write him off out of hand.
WN: I’m going to admit up front that this observation is basic as hell, but Tynion did it (a cop-adjacent amputee receiving technological enhancements) and I can’t help myself. Robocop had a lot of points/themes: body horror, skewering the crass commercialism of the Reagan years and putting corporations into the body bags where they belong. But of course a central idea of the film is the obligation that police have to serve their communities and what happens when you try to twist that duty. OmniCorp found the best man they could, and their programming (along with the trauma) almost broke Alex Murphy. Then, in the sequel, the company took another approach: What if they put a psychopath in the machine? The psychopath was more compliant, more willing to use force in the furtherance of immoral goals. Mahoney is no Alex Murphy, and I think Saint knows that.
ML: No. Doubt. You said it yourself: Saint finds useful idiots. Saint doesn’t want an Alex Murphy. He wants a John Walker. He wants someone he can bend to his will, and who will think they’re the noble hero when they are, in fact, just a tool of a serious evil.
WN: Did you just cross the streams?
ML: I did, but it’s a reference that is of the moment, so I figured what’s a little complete protonic reversal between friends?
WN: I’d buy that for a Bat dollar.
Bat-miscellany
- So the newscaster is talking to a “Dr. Meridian” about the psychological effects of all this chaos on Gotham citizens. I would assume that is Dr. Chase Meridian, whose one and only appearance in the Batman oeuvre is Batman Forever. You know, the movie where she was played by Nicole Kidman, with Val Kilmer as Batman and Jim Carrey as the Riddler. That, my friends, is a deep pull.
- “Criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot, so my disguise must be able to strike terror into their hearts” comes from 1940’s Batman #1.
- The Ghost-Maker backup continues to be a painful experience. I can see what Tynion is going for — his own anime-stylized serial — but it feels so out of place here.
- Yes, Clayton Cowles is a far better letterer than that story is letting him be.
- Be good to yourself and watch a compilation of all the fake news and commercial interludes from Robocop.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of 5. It was Who's Who in the DC Universe #2, featuring characters whose names begin with B, which explains so much about his Batman obsession. He writes about comics he loves, and co-hosts the podcasts BatChat with Matt & Will and The ComicsXF Interview Podcast.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
