Batman and Ghost-Maker enter the mind of the Bat for a journey into his subconscious as more about Scarecrow’s plot to instigate a Fear State are revealed in Batman #113, with a lead story written by James Tynion IV, drawn by Jorge Jimenez, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles. And in the backup, Clownhunter has his own mental battle with Scarecrow in a story written by Brandon Thomas, drawn by Jason Howard and lettered by Cowles.
The origin of the tech genius behind the Unsanity Collective is revealed in Batman Secret Files: Miracle Molly #1, written by James Tynion IV, drawn by Dani, colored by Lee Loughridge and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
After a bit of a delay, Batman’s European adventure returns. Bruce faces down Equilibrium and her gang (cult?) before learning her tragic origin in Batman: The Detective #5, written by Tom Taylor, penciled by Andy Kubert, inked by Sandra Hope, colored by Brad Anderson and lettered by Clem Robins.
Matt Lazorwitz: So let’s start with the big news: On Thursday, the new podcast component of our little corner of the Batman internet arrived! BatChat With Matt & Will Ep.1: Beginnings is now available here on ComicsXF, and soon on your favorite podcatchers once I get those logistics worked out.
Will Nevin: It’s BatChat, but in audio form. And not talking about current books. So if you’ve ever read this space and thought, “I wish Matt and Will would talk about older titles in a form where I didn’t have to stare at so many squiggly letters,” then the podcast is for you, friendos. This week, we talk about “Year One,” “Zero Year” and “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” Batman’s first appearance in Detective Comics #27. It’s been a great time recording these episodes with you, Brother Matt — and we even got our first bit of negative feedback from a guy who says Dark Knight Strikes Again is the best Bat story in what I’m 65% sure was a troll.
Matt: Hey, to all their own. But don’t expect to see that one anytime soon, because I will not choose violence. Just yet anyway.
Will: We’re still working on that Patreon, but we’re going to have to come up with something like the “Pee Pants” level of support: Plug in at that level, and we’ll read the Widening Gyres and Strikes Agains of the world. But not before you pay us, you cheap bastards.
[Grote’s note: I will pay Pee Pants prices.]
Journey to the Center of the Bat(’s Mind)
Matt: So, this issue is Ghost-Maker heavy. And neither of us has made our feelings of general dislike for that character anything but obvious. But here, as with issue #109, when he had the discussion about his clinical psychopathy, there are these little hints of something more underneath … just for him to once again say or do something completely douchey.
Will: Generally — and in this issue specifically — Ghost-Maker feels like an appendix that’s gone sideways; he doesn’t add anything to the story, feels out of place and really needs to go ASAP. Was I interested in him when he came out as bisexual? Yes. Have I been interested since? Absolutely not. And the fundamental, original sin of Ghost-Maker still persists: There is no room in the canon, no place for him in a consistent Batman universe if we’re to believe he and Batman have been rivals since forever. Felt fake and contrived in the first Ghost-Maker story, and it felt fake and contrived here. Really, the only thing he’s good for in this issue — aside from the “Oh hey, I met Scarecrow that one time, and isn’t that convenient?” story beat — is summarizing Fear State: Alpha for the people who wisely skipped it.
Matt: This issue does move the plot forward, at least in a couple ways. We get better ideas of what Scarecrow is up to, and even if it wasn’t directly mentioned here either, we know why he needed Mad Hatter tech. And I was happy to see Commissioner Montoya acting like I would have expected her to, pretty similarly to when Jim Gordon had administrations that were anti-Batman. Tynion generally respects established characters too much to change Montoya as drastically as I was concerned, but I’m glad to see Renee is being pragmatic, and not buying into the Magistrate’s weird line.
Will: Since we’re talking about the Mad Hatter tech and what ol’ Straw Bones is doing, let me see if I can put it all together. The opening scenes we’ve been treated to — of Batman being captive — didn’t actually happen, right? So Bats was never in the forreal gimp suit. And the Hatter tech has allowed Scarecrow to implant memories rather than simply scare people?
Matt: I think so. That bit of text made me think that a lot of this has been a construct, as you point out, and it would make sense, as Bruce wasn’t out of costume when he escaped Crane. It is a pretty ingenious use of that tech, and well within Scarecrow’s wheelhouse. What I’m not sure of is if he is implanting memories, or just subconscious suggestions, and what we see, with the gimp suit and the jail, is Bruce’s mind processing what Scarecrow has sent him.
Will: Bruce’s subconscious: “The Batsuit is not gimpy enough. GIVE US MORE.”
Matt: This issue really did allow Jorge Jimenez to show off. The trip into Bruce’s subconscious is delightfully trippy, and after seeing him get beaten down a bunch, his fight with some Magistrate androids is wonderfully cathartic, especially as he lectures Simon Saint as he does it. Batman might not be Scarecrow, but he is still a master of fear and intimidation.
Will: “Lectures” is a funny way of spelling “I’m coming for you, motherfucker, and there’s nothing you can do to stop me,” but you do you, Brother Matt. That was a great moment — nothing about that felt forced or contrived — and we got to see Saint literally sweat. The note about him going to jail was interesting; I put that percentage chance at about 35, with the rest of the odds going to him dying or — as in the case of most of the rich and powerful people in the world who do bad things — facing exactly zero consequences for what he’s done.
Matt: As we said with Fear State Alpha: If he was indeed behind A-Day and used that Joker toxin, I weigh those numbers much heavier toward dead because he pissed off the Joker, and the life expectancy for anyone who does that is notably very small.
Will: I hope the Joker does some weird shit with him. He’s earned it.
The Little Moments Are Where the Pain Lies
Matt: Before we get into any substance of this issue, I have one particular line I want to call out and make a personal statement about. This is a bit of a tangent, but it’s something that actually has a lot of resonance for me, personally, if you’ll allow it, Brother Will.
Will: This column is 43% tangent, Brother Matt. The floor is yours.
Matt: When Mary Kowalski, the woman who will become Miracle Molly, is on the phone with her mother, the mother brings up giving her some grandchildren (as well as other quibbles about the mother’s issues with Mary’s marriage and that Mary doesn’t do enough for her husband). To end the conversation, the mother says, “You need to stop being so selfish.”
My wife and I are childless by choice. We like our life as it is, and we have no desire to change that. She has had this exact conversation with her mother, and her mother has said that exact same thing, as have various other family members and acquaintances, usually unbidden. First, that rang painfully true to me, so good capturing of a bit of honest humanity, Tynion. Second, to everyone out there, I just need to say, whether someone has kids is none of your damn business, as are the circumstances for that, so you should kindly keep those opinions to yourself.
Sorry, that one struck close to home, and I needed to get that out.
Will: No apology necessary, and I’m right there with you as someone who’s made the decision not to have children. You point out a small (but important) moment, yet it speaks to the issue as a whole: The thing resonates. It’s meaningful. We’ve all felt trapped by circumstances as we’ve gotten older, had our lives go in different directions that we didn’t anticipate. However, we can’t pull the ripcord that Molly does — we feel her pain, but we can’t get her release. That’s profoundly depressing but in a meaningful way that superhero comics usually can’t touch. This is a great read and one that folks should go out of their way to pick up.
Matt: As is usual, we agree on that. Miracle Molly as a character is now much more defined, and much more sympathetic. You see exactly why she was willing to give up her entire past. It’s also mostly … an ordinary set of problems. Her husband isn’t a supervillain. Her father-in-law isn’t a Yakuza boss. Her boss turns out to be vile, but in a way you know has happened across tech companies in the real world. Remove the Unsanity Collective, and this could be a straight-up “literary” story about the disaffection of modern life. But it never feels banal or trite. This is Tynion doing some of his best work in superhero comics.
Will: Let me wildly speculate, guess and otherwise do a bad job of journalisms and critique. I think it’s fun for Tynion to write Ghost-Maker and most of what he does on the main line. I think that’s the stuff he’d do to just have a good time, kinda like what we do here when we talk about the things we super duper like in Bat books. But when he has to do real work — when he has to take up real pain and hurt and misery like in this issue and in Joker and in the best parts of Department of Truth — that’s when he really shines as a writer. Everything else is him screwin’ around. Which I don’t begrudge a bit.
Matt: While speculative, I can definitely see where you’re coming from.
What did you think of the art on this one? I know you didn’t take a shine to Dani’s chapter of The Joker Presents: A Puzzlebox, but this is a very different type of story.
Will: It’s the coloring here that makes the book. Molly’s world is loud and garish, full of electricity and energy, while Mary’s is muted, somber and restrained. Even if I couldn’t read the dialogue, I’d know a lot about the story just from those coloring choices. Loved, loved, loved it.
Equilibrium Revealed
Matt: It’s been a couple months since our last issue of The Detective. This issue is really divided into three main pieces: Batman investigating Equilibrium, a big fight and the origin of Equilibrium.
Will: This is a thing we complain about all. the. time. but when you call your book “The Detective,” you’re asking for it: There’s not a whole lot of detecting here. Intrigue? European globe hopping? Sure. But there ain’t much detective work going on here. Of course, to be fair to the team, the original title was “The Dark Knight,” which would have been confusing AF. Best title for this book probably would have been Batman: Europe, but then again, we run into problems with Batman: Europa. ANYWAY, you had a question? Possibly? My only other thought about this issue and the big reveal of Equilibrium was that — even as I like this series as a moody travelogue — it was disappointing to see the core of this big bad team dedicated to erasing Batman’s work turn out to be founded on what reads to me like a tired trope (a grieving partner and parent looking for revenge).
Matt: Yeah, this is a really boring reveal. I just read it and thought, “That’s it?” And I don’t know why you’re trying to give a sympathetic origin to a character who is killing the innocent so blatantly, or at least wasting so much time to establish it. Nothing is going to make me like or empathize with someone who is killing people to make herself feel better.
Will: I think the problem comes from trying to give this team some kind of motivation other than fuckin’ with Batman. I think this would be a much darker book if we simply didn’t know why this team of hardcore mercenaries was gunning for all of the people Batman has saved over the years — a number of individuals that seems oddly high in Europe, but whatever, I guess.
Matt: My favorite parts of this story do continue to be Squire, who is scrappy as all hell, and Henri Ducard, whose cocky attitude is much less tolerable than with Ghost-Maker because you’re not supposed to like Ducard as much, and him being an ass is OK.
I will also say I like that Batman can pull up the name of pretty much anyone whose life he has saved from memory immediately, and remembers the circumstances. Shows what his real motivations are: not the criminals, but the victims.
Will: Here’s a depressing thought for the day: I’m sure he also remembers the names and faces of the ones he couldn’t save.
Bat-miscellany
- From my seat as a pop psychologist, Crane’s “fear state” theory seems to be a mix of moral panics and exposure therapy on a societal scale, although it isn’t described in those terms. I’d be interested to read a real psychologist’s or sociologist’s take on what Tynion is advancing as Scarecrow’s blueprint to improve society. Calling it “mind control” in the text seems off and reductive — but you gotta call it something, I suppose.
- The box Batman takes his “Bat-Mind Control Helmet” from is a treasure trove of Easter Eggs. It also has a Talon mask, a Court of Owls mask, an Adam West-style cowl, a can of Bat-Shark Repellent and the Joker’s super-long gun from Batman ’89.
- The Wayne Family Adventures strips on Webtoon continue to be a delight.
- Up next on BatChat With Matt & Will (audio edition), it’s an episode all about the end of the big, bad Bat’s career: We’ve got Dark Knight Returns, Tom King’s tear-you-up-on-the-inside story in Batman Annual #2 and “The Last Batman Story?” from Batman #300.
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.
