Welcome back to Bat Chat with Matt (and Will!). In Detective Comics #1,035, Batman and Huntress collide as their cases intersect and the mystery of the murders in Fort Graves deepens, as written by Mariko Tamaki, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Aditya Bidikar.
And in a Huntress backup story, we see where Helena was before the main story in this issue, in a story written by Tamaki, drawn by Clayton Henry, colored by Bellaire and lettered by Bidikar.
Meanwhile, Batman: Black and White concludes with issue #6, featuring:
“The Second Signal,” written by Brandon Thomas, drawn by Khary Randolph and lettered by Deron Bennett.
“The Abyss,” written by Pierrick Colinet and Elsa Charretier, drawn by Charretier and lettered by Ariana Maher.
“Opening Moves,” written and drawn by Nick Derington and lettered by Steve Wands.
“Like a Monster of the Deep,” written by John Arcudi, drawn by James Harren and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
And “A Thousand Words,” written by Scott Snyder, drawn by John Romita Jr., inked by Klaus Janson and lettered by Napolitano.
Matt Lazorwitz: Two very different books this week. Detective remains a very straightforward book, although this issue begins to bring in some aspects that are moving into the macabre. And Black and White wrapped up with lots of thoughts on what Batman is, as well as a couple of much more straightforward stories.
Will Nevin: For me, ‘Tec started off with one of those “disorienting intros for the lack of a recap page,” and it never really got going after that. A definite “meh.”
Gotham and ‘Innocence’
ML: So this issue is a lot busier than the past couple have been. This story has really had two threads so far: Bruce in his neighborhood and Nakano and his staff. Mr. Worth was there, but he’s been tied into the Nakano stuff. Now we’re adding in Penguin, Mr. Worth’s shady dealings and whatever is … infecting(?) the killers. Plus the return of Lady Clayface, one of the myriad Clayfaces. That’s a lot for one issue.
WN: Let’s talk about Lady Clayface since she doesn’t do much talking here other than to say she oozed out of Gotham on A-Day and things have been hazy since. What’s the dirt…er…mud?…on her?
ML: Lady Clayface is Sondra Fuller. She was given Clayface powers working for the Kobra Cult and battled the Outsiders. She ditched Kobra and came to Gotham, where she joined up with the other two Clayfaces at the time, the original (Basil Karlo) and the third (Preston Payne); Matt Hagen, the second Clayface, had died during Crisis on Infinite Earths. She and Payne fell in love, had a clay-powered kid named Cassius (Oy, what a pun there), and those Clayfaces pretty much disappeared for the better part of two decades. She appeared in Steve Orlando’s criminally underrated Gotham City Monsters series but seemed to have gone straight. How she wound up in Arkham, I don’t know.
WN: You know, I’m not sure any of that sounds better than “Feat of Clay,” but what do I know. It seems strange that Batman is not 100% sure it’s Lady Clayface, but I guess with that many clayfolk running around Gotham, you never know who might be the lump in your duffel bag.
ML: There are some continuity issues with all of this, but between Infinite Frontier and such, I’m not going to haggle too much. It’s clear to me that the choice of Lady Clayface is just to get someone to have seen her entering Bruce’s place, and suspicion being cast on him. Otherwise, any witness to the crime would do. What that’s going to mean for him moving forward, especially with the seemingly redoubtable Deb Donovan discovering the body of the person who accused him, is probably nothing good.
WN: Yeah, our lady of clay being disoriented just enough to be helpful without fully explaining what happened while also turning Bruce into a suspect is crazy contrived, something I’d expect of lesser stories. Then again, if this is all part of turning the Gotham we know into Future State, setting Batman up is the whole deal, and I guess that has to happen somehow. Don’t we have a “trial of Bruce Wayne” or some such coming in the solicits?
ML: I believe we do, so this seems to be laying the groundwork for that.
I’m not sure where this whole “pink wormy things in people’s eyes” part of the story is going. It seems like a pretty big curveball for a story that had felt like a serial killer narrative up until now. I don’t mind Batman and the supernatural as a rule, but I was hoping for more detective work, although Batman does actually use deductive reasoning and simple tech to track down our killer, as opposed to calling Oracle or having Alfred (whom I still miss) do it from the cave while he stalks the rooftops, reminding people he is a detective himself.
WN: Three things: 1) The wormy things look cool, but, like you, I have no idea where it’s going or why it was introduced into this story, 2) Come back, Alfred (but at least we have the new Pennyworth mini to look forward to) and 3) Let’s get back to what I think you wanted to do with this section — I don’t buy the fact that this *one* death in Gotham would be something that galvanizes the people and policymakers into change.
ML: Absolutely. The death of Gotham’s innocence has always been the murders of Thomas and Martha Wayne. After that, it’s been a slow decline. And while there have been bright moments for the city, it has never truly recovered from its favorite son and his wife, a daughter of one of the city’s other founding families, being gunned down. So the death of the daughter of a man who seems to be Gotham’s answer to Jimmy Hoffa seems to me to be just another Tuesday for a city where killer clowns massacring people in the high double digits might not even appear above the fold in the daily papers. If we had more time with Sarah Worth, had established what she meant to the city? I could see it. But here it’s telling, not showing.
WN: And telling with some awkward journalism, to boot. I think if the serial killer angle had continued — if all the failed sons and daughters of the monied class had started waking up dead — that would have been something a little more believable. But this is, like you said, just another day in Gotham.
Hunting
ML: The Huntress backup was definitely the best backup we’ve seen yet, and absolutely fit the title. Tamaki did as much as she could with an eight-page story to establish Huntress actually, y’know, detecting.
WN: I think we said this with the last Huntress backup, but it’s worth repeating since so many of them are disposable (Robin) or actively hurting the credibility of the main story (Punchline): This is the best Bat backup, and I’m not even sure what I’d put in the discussion for second place.
ML: Absolutely. This story has some good emotional beats for Huntress. If you didn’t know who this character was before these two backups, you have a good idea now, and it makes her presence in the main story make a lot more sense than her just popping up, and gives her stakes in it.
WN: And it helps that it’s such a simple fucking story: A good, regular person died in an unjust and horrible way, and Huntress wants justice. We don’t have to have an existential emergency for Gotham or some rending Batfam trauma to tell a good story, and I wish more Batman writers took note of that. Give me Batman detecting shit, goddamn it. All the shit.
Batman: Black and White #6
WN: The following are Will’s awards for Batman: Black & White #6: Best Overall Story: “The Second Signal;” Best Use of the Concept: “Opening Moves;” and Best Creative Team Which Was Strange For This Run Because It Seemed to Have Some Teams Thrown Together at Random But I Guess This Is The Final Story So It’s The Prestigious Coda: “A Thousand Words.”
ML: I absolutely loved “The Second Signal.” This deals with the social issues of Gotham in a way that doesn’t fall into the same old saw of “Batman could make everything better by just being Bruce Wayne” while still addressing the inequities in society, while also showing that Batman can be good with kids. He isn’t by default this nightmare beast that so many creators want to cast him as.
I also enjoyed the symmetry of this issue. You start out with the story of two kids making their own Batsignal, and you end with the man who was there the first time it was turned on. Anthologies don’t need structure like that, but it’s a nice touch when they have them.
And we’ve talked about how much we like Nick Derington before, but “Opening Moves?” That’s some next level with the way he colored or inked those pages (I’m not literate enough in comics art to say if all that shading and maybe painting counts as which). It was stunning to look at.
WN: You’re damn right it was stunning. And, like I said, it actually made good use of the concept, something that not all of these stories do. (“The Abyss” kinda got there with the Rorschach test but didn’t do much with it otherwise.)
This was a fun run. I’m glad we still have Legends of the Dark Knight, but, man, it’s going to be a long couple of months until Batman ‘89.
Bat-miscellany
- If you enjoy Batman-related stories, you should really check out The Other History of the DC Universe #4, out this week. It’s the story of Renee Montoya, told from her point of view, with social commentary baked in. If it’s on par with the rest of the series, it will be something to read.
- The idea to open ‘Tec with what appeared to be a newspaper front page was clever and novel, but as usual with these things, that’s 1) not straight, hard news prose and 2) not newspaper design. This is a note for Boss Man Dan. [Grote’s note: The only accurate newspaper I ever saw in a comic was the one with the big headline that said, “Everything awful / Oh God somebody do something” in Fraction & Aja’s Hawkeye #2.]
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. 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 creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
