Go Back in Time to ’89 as Joker Homages Texas Chainsaw Massacre in Bat Chat

You can’t keep Batman down. Everywhere you look, there he is!

In Detective Comics #1,041, Batman deals with the repercussions of his war with Mr. Worth as The Jury makes its moves against Batman and Bruce Wayne. And in the backup, reporter Deb Donovan gets a tip that leads her down a morbid trail. The feature is written by Mariko Tamaki, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Aditya Bidikar. The backup is written by Matthew Rosenberg, drawn by Darick Robertson, colored by Diego Rodriguez and lettered by Rob Leigh.

Jim Gordon’s quest for the Joker picks up again in The Joker #5, as Jim takes the least romantic trip to Paris ever and we learn more about the Sampson family in a lead story written by James Tynion IV, drawn by Guillem March, colored by Arif Prianto and lettered by Tom Napolitano.

And in the sequel we never saw, Harvey Dent as played by Billy Dee Williams takes center stage in a Gotham that still doesn’t trust Batman in Batman ’89 #1, written by Sam Hamm, drawn by Joe Quinones, colored by Leonard Ito and lettered by Clayton Cowles. 

Matt Lazorwitz: We haven’t been covering Batman: Urban Legends in any detail for a while because there are so damn many Bat books right now, but as it is the main book in The Discourse this week, I think up front we should say: Good for the character of Tim Drake for getting to live his truth, I’m glad DC let something that has been glaring subtext for years be text, and anyone who says otherwise needs to read those old Tim appearances again, because it’s right there!

Will Nevin: It took me about 30 years to figure out the same thing, so ol’ Tim is right on schedule. Good on DC for making this canon — and canon for a very visible character, no less.

For What It’s Worth

Matt: We’ll get to story and all that soon enough, but I am still just floating on a cloud of Dan Mora art here. We spent a lot of the last ’Tec Bat Chat talking about how good his work is, and here it just keeps going. And seeing him draw the classic Batsuit was a treat!

Will: Had no real story reason there aside from “it’s an old suit!” but, you know, I’m gonna try to not let that bother me that much. It looked fan-flippin’-tastic. 

Matt: I agree there’s no story reason. Yet. There is potential for a story beat here. As Bruce’s financial woes increase, and his confrontation with some of these threats does too, maybe he’ll slowly devolve. So we went from modern to classic. Next we go from classic to “Year One.” Then from “Year One” to that “Zero Year”-inspired outfit from Dark Detective. It’s a visual representation of the loss of his resources. Am I expecting that to be the case? Not really, but it would be a neat visual.

Will: How many storage caches does Bruce have to go through to end up as a guy in hockey pads? A Bat Chat investigation.

Matt: A very valid question. You’d think not many, especially if Joker raided them to hand out weapons during “Joker War,” but Batman is always prepared.

Will: Like a dadgum, Boy Scout, Brother Matt. Fashion Bat Chat aside, I thought this was another one of those Perfectly Fine issues — the story zipped right along, it made sense and we’re set up pretty nicely for the next arc that won’t at all be a derivative riff on DCeased/Man-Bat/anything else where Batman appears to be a maniac possessed. I don’t dislike where this is going, but I don’t think it’s going to till any new Gotham ground, if that makes sense.

Matt: I agree. I thought this was a very solid issue with a lot of setup to it. We got visits in with all the players: Batman, Oracle, Nakano, The Jury. There were some cool moments, and it shows that Tamaki is really focusing on the Bruce Wayne aspects of the character more so than any Bat-writer has done in a story where Bruce was no longer Batman in decades, which I like. Batman is the book that is Batman as a superhero in these big, wild stories; Detective focuses on the world of Gotham. That’s a formula that can work if it’s adhered to. It just often starts that way and then becomes just two versions of the Batman book.

Will: ‘Tec works best when the team goes into it with a specific vision of how it’s going to be different from the main book — we certainly saw that with Tynion’s run even as the layouts made me want to tear my hair out. It also helps when the book is a priority for DC editorial, and you got the sense they really started to pay attention to it as it was nearing that magical #1,000.

Matt: You can absolutely tell when DC cares based on the creators attached. You put a rising star like Tynion or an established creator like Greg Rucka on the book, you know DC is paying attention. You put Andersen Gabrych on, who had nearly no credits before a serviceable but forgettable run between bigger runs, you know DC has looked the other way. Eisner winner Mariko Tamaki and shining star Dan Mora? Yeah, DC cares.

So, I think I said this last issue, but I need to say it again: How long until Mr. Worth is betrayed? It was bad enough when it was just the Penguin, but now he has the Party Crashers, a Joker-adjacent gang, and the Falcones, the Corleones of the Gotham set, in his little villain team-up. These are not trustworthy allies! I can’t imagine any of them really believe in Worth’s vision; they’re there to bleed him dry financially and then kill him when he’s just King Lear raging against the storm with no resources. And he’s too blind to see it. And frankly, as goofy as some of his actions have been, this actually is a logical arc, even if it has some crazy beats to it.

Will: I think the question is does he see it coming? Does he plot a way out of this, or does his grief continue to cloud his perception? I think he’s gonna fall. Hard.

Matt: Definitely. I think this is very much the latter, and Mr. Worth might only realize his mistake as the blade from Penguin’s trick umbrella slides between his ribs.

What did you think of this week’s backup? A little less related to the main story, but more a follow-up to last week’s and the setup for a new book. And look, Darick Robertson’s putty-faced people are back!

Will: Aside from that sour note in the hospital (More on that in the notes below — gotta read to the bottom, Loyal Content Consumers!), I think we both agree that Deb Donovan is a great character who should stick around.

Matt: Truly, and it was nice to see her with Vicki Vale in what might be her first appearance in just under a decade.

An American Detective In Paris

Matt: OK, I never thought I’d get the answer to the eternal question of “What would happen if you crossed Texas Chainsaw Massacre with The Beverly Hillbillies?” but here we do indeed get it.

Will: I thought it was a clever reference when the Texas cannibals were from Hooper County, but, man, Tynion went for the damn thing this week with what could have passed for a retelling of the movie (minus Leatherface, which I guess is kinda the point of Texas Chainsaw Massacre). What a clever concept, though — what if that family stumbled into money? Big, big fan. 

Matt: This is the Tynion I love. That opening is clever, Jim Gordon in Paris is great, and the reference to the Morrison run with a member of the Club of Villains is one of those nods I love to see; not something you need to know, but nice as it makes the world feel bigger.

Will: I continue to feel that this man’s talents are wasted on Batman; I know he can write gripping, compelling stuff — Joker, Department of Truth and Nice House on the Lake are some of the best books around. But Batman feels braindead compared to those books. [Grote’s note: Good thing he’s pivoting to Substack!]

Matt: Jim Gordon is such a well-rendered character in these pages. I like that Tynion is really having Jim look at his sins as a workaholic. It’s easy to paint him as the hero, and he is a hero, but he’s flawed, and this really plays to that, without giving him a crew cut and a Bat-bunny robot.

Will: This is a cowboy on his last roundup, not necessarily bitter but someone who sees the mistakes of his life and feels sorry for them all. But there’s also the sense that it couldn’t have played out any other way.

Matt: And it also has that vibe of Jim pulling out all the stops. It was great to see him call Harvey Bullock in this issue. Not only did I like the idea that money can buy anonymity in the digital age, something that is tragically true, but it’s great to see Bullock again. He had that big damn hero moment at the end of “Joker War” and then was gone. I’ve always liked his dynamic with Jim, and he is absolutely the guy Gordon can trust; he sold out the guy who shot Jim to the mob, for cripes sake! That shows that Bullock would do anything for Jim.

Will: Bullock is an asshole, but he’s your asshole.

The Batman Sequel No One Expected

Matt: So you had some worries going into this issue based on the preview art. Have those been allayed or borne out?

Will: Borne out and then some. From the preview, my biggest concern was the overall mood; Batman ‘89 is dark and gothic, and those early pages didn’t seem to carry any of that. Those worries persisted into what we have now with the added bummer of weird stuff like a scrawny Batman and a general lack of detail and polish. Ultimately — from an artistic standpoint — there’s little to connect this to Tim Burton’s vision other than that coal black/yellow oval Batsuit, and if you’re going to do Batman ‘89, isn’t that the goddamned point? 

Matt: The design stuff really threw me. The character design for Harvery Dent looks exactly like Billy Dee Williams. But none of the other characters look like their filmic counterparts. That’s not Michael Keaton (Batman), Michale Gough (Alfred) or Pat Hingle (Gordon). The fact that only one character is that referenced makes for some cognitive dissonance. It’s a shame because I like Joe Quinones as an artist, but he doesn’t feel suited to this book.

I think, as you pointed out, this shows how much the original film was a director’s vehicle and not the screenwriter’s, as this is the same guy who is credited as writer on the film.

Will: It’s so non-Burton as to feel intentional. And setting this story during Halloween? Well, that’s just a big ol’ “fuck you.”

Matt: Halloween could have been a gaudy, wild parade, full of knock-off versions of Burton characters from his other works as an homage. Instead it was just sort of there, with the barest number of homages to make it clear it could have been so much more (although credit for the sort-of Prince cameo). 

And is the thing about the guards being badly hurt when Batman stopped the armored trucks from being taken just a story beat, a subtle dig at Burton’s more homicidal Batman, or maybe both?

Will: I don’t know that I could label any of it as commentary, but there is certainly more gun violence in this issue. That, though, seems tonally consistent with the film.

Matt: This also might feel less rote if we weren’t also in the middle of the Magistrate arc in the main books. But having Batman the outlaw with the military pursuing him? I can get that in “Fear State.”

Also, modern coloring does this book no favors. Even though the print edition was on a less glossy paper, it still feels too bright. If this was a continuation of the Schumacher Batman films, that would be fine. But less technically clean coloring would suit the grime and darkness of the Burton films better.

And how long is this supposed to take place after the original film? Because those gray temples on Batman threw me off as well.

Will: Feels like it could be six months or six years. If I had to guess, I’d go for the former since most of the relationships from the film are still in place but maybe a little (or a lot) frayed. Dent is still rising. Gordon is still hanging on. Batman is still mistrusted or feared. Joker’s gang is still around town. Maybe a year. That feels right. 

I don’t have to sum it up for the bright readers out there that we’re fairly down on this, but I think the writing for Dent is a great and a nice contrast to most other versions of the story. He’s not an ally; he’s skeptical and actively out to get Batman. He’s also got a code-switching twist to his eventual Two-Face duality. Some smart, creative stuff there. And the *only* nice visual is the panel that foreshadows his transformation.

Matt: Dent is definitely the high point of the book. I also like the young Black Robin who is defending his neighborhood as opposed to either the campier Dick Grayson origin or the young-punk Jason Todd one. And it feels like a continuation of the original story if you’re familiar with the casting stories about Damon Wayans as Robin from Batman Returns.

Will: Story good. Art bad. The summary you again didn’t need.

Bat-miscellany

• Have no fear, those who enjoy our coverage of The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries. We’ll be adding that onto next week, which is slightly less packed with Batman books.
• Deb Donovan screaming for a drink in the hospital is a funny bit, but it comes off as incredibly fake.
• Shout out to the Big Penny making an appearance in Batman ‘89.
• This is not Sam Hamm’s first Batman comics writing credit. He also wrote “Blind Justice,” the three-part story that ran from Detective Comics #598-600, and memorably added Henri Ducard to the canon.

Matthew Lazorwitz

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

Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.