The main plot of “Fear State” wraps up as the Bat family takes the fight to Simon Saint while two Ivys come together and Batman has a final throwdown with Peacekeeper-01 in Batman #117, 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, the Batgirls go a little stir crazy in a story written by Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad, drawn by Jorge Corona, colored by Sarah Stern and lettered by Becca Carey.
The final Secret Files of this recent series detailing the pasts of the new characters of “Fear State” tells the story of The Gardener, who she is and how she and Poison Ivy are connected in Batman Secret Files: The Gardener #1, written by James Tynion IV, drawn and colored by Christian Ward and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
And a final finale with the final issue of the current run in Legends of the Dark Knight #7. Batman races against the League of Assassins and Ra’s al Ghul to find a holy relic that will make Ra’s permanently immortal, only to run afoul of Azrael in a tale written by Brandon Easton, drawn by Karl Mostert, colored by David Baron and lettered by Becca Carey.
Matt Lazorwitz: Three finales this week: a series finale, the last of a series of one-shots and the end of the main plot of a crossover. Feels like we’re moving into a new phase of Bat books.
Will Nevin: I can’t say what the future holds for them there Bat books, but I’ll say this: I’m ready for whatever is coming next.
The Magistrate Falls
Matt: That was … an ending. I will give it that. Before going into details about this issue, as someone not reading all the “Fear State” tie-ins, how did this issue land?
Will: I think that’s the best thing you can say, right? That it’s over? Lots of punches and set pieces and talking heads of exposition with little to no resonance — so basically a fine ending to this particular Batman run.
Matt: This felt like a lot of plotlines that hadn’t gotten much fleshing out being resolved quickly so we could see Batman kick the crap out of Peacekeeper-01. And I am all about Batman beating on fascists, but if that’s what we wanted and needed here, that’s what we should have gotten.
As cool looking as the splash of the Bat family in Magistrate gear storming the headquarters blimp was, if you haven’t been reading Nightwing, that was kind of out of nowhere. The Ivy stuff resonated better after reading this week’s Secret Files, but if you read this first, or that not at all, it’s just a fairly standard “love conquers all” beat. I like the message of Bruce’s final speech to Miracle Molly, because we all know I’m a sucker for Batman showing his humanity, but because of everything else in here, instead of giving him time to flesh this out and have a real conversation with the most well developed of these new characters, it’s just a speech.
Will: And Bats removing the cowl seemed like a completely unearned moment. I will never understand how Tynion can be a serious and competent storyteller in literally every other book while Batman has all of the emotional weight of a lesser Michael Bay picture.
Matt:All the real villains of this story have complete feet of clay, which is another action movie trope. Simon Saint, Scarecrow and Peacekeeper-01 all go out pretty damn easy, for characters built up to be such threats. And The Seer doesn’t seem to get any page time in the main story. They’re just gone. If you’re going to do a crossover with all these threads that don’t fully connect, you can’t try to tie them all up in one place where they never seemed to be a focus to begin with.
Will: And incredibly enough, that’s not the end of the story because we’ve still got Fear State: Omega. I guess that’s a bridge to Batman #118 and the post-”Fear State” status quo, because I have no other idea what it could be. I would, however, settle for 22 pages of Simon Saint getting beat up in Blackgate.
Matt: Beat up or just crying in his cell. I could go for either.
Yeah, I figure Omega is going to be much more table setting than it is resolution, since all the resolution happened here. And I truly hope, as that is Tynion’s final word on Batman’s world outside of the last five issues of Joker, that he doesn’t try to blow the doors off with a bunch more action and instead does a bunch of character work and really leans into his core competencies, and does some quiet character work for a double-sized issue. That’s where his work has always shined for me: he writes truly engaging characters when he gives himself the chance to.
Speaking of character work with minimal action, I do continue to enjoy the Batgirls backups, and am really looking forward to that series.
Will: I took one look at the first page of this week’s backup and said to myself, “Nah.” Too much text for me. For whatever faults Tynion might have had on the main Bat book (I’m still shocked we seem to be the only people on the planet who don’t absolutely love his run on the series), he doesn’t weigh down his pages with a bunch of dialogue or narration. That’s something I can appreciate.
Matt: This is a story that’s about Cass and Steph stuck in an apartment together for days while waiting for stuff to blow over. Is it wordy? Yes. But that adds to the sense of claustrophobia and plays to their characters: Stepahnie Brown the motormouth and Cassandra Cain the silent but deadly one. Mileage may vary, absolutely, but I can dig it.
Tilling the Soil
Matt: I think because of the podcast, my brain does a lot of ranking now. This being the last of the Secret Files one-shots of this batch, I’m trying to figure out where it lives in relation to the others.There was the excellent one for Miracle Molly, the mostly forgettable but inoffensive one for Clownhunter, the fun but not-related-to-anything-else in the rest of them Huntress one and the mostly superfluous Peacekeeper-01 special. Where do you feel this one lies in relation to those?
Will: It was … OK-ish? I feel like I didn’t learn a whole bunch about the Gardener aside from her connection to Ivy, and really, this felt like Secret Files: Poison Ivy. Inoffensive and not a total waste of time, I guess. I like how the Gardener was able to tie herself, Ivy and Swamp Thing together, even as she wasn’t able to recognize her ol’ bud is the man behind that thing down there in Louisiana.
Matt: The other scientist mentioned is involved with DC’s other plant-based occult hero, Black Orchid. That’s from some earlier stuff as well, the ties between all the plant folk through Jason Woodrue.
This was a fine issue, but felt like it was as much an Ivy story as a Gardener one. I don’t know how much better I know Gardener. What made the Miracle Molly Secret Files so great was that I now understand this character better. There wasn’t that much more here than there was from before, it just answered some Ivy questions. As I said above, it made the ending of the Ivy plot more resonant for Ivy, but not necessarily for Gardener.
Will: Yeah, there’s just some hand waving at Gardener’s back story that doesn’t amount to much, and maybe that’s because the character itself doesn’t feel all that vital. She serves a specific purpose: to look cool and to reintroduce to the world the more caring parts of Ivy. With that done, why should we care about her?
Matt: This does say, “To be continued in Fear State: Omega.” Maybe that’s where all of this will come together?
Will: Maybe! It can’t be any less useful or interesting than Alpha, right?
Matt: Aside from all that, Christian Ward’s art is gorgeous. This story is lush and a little weird, and I think that works for this story. Woodrue has a real menacing presence despite just being a creepy hippy dude, and the jungle-esque greenhouses are beautiful yet eerie.
Will: You ain’t wrong, Brother Matt — the visual vibe here was pretty damn good.
The Demon and the Angel
Matt: And another one bites the dust. We’ve talked about it before, but it’s a shame to see another volume of Legends of the Dark Knight go with so little fanfare.
Will: In our super serious production meeting, I may have gotten confused thanks to the Kindle app not properly showing me which digital chapters we’ve already covered — i.e. there may be one more issue. But the point stands. I remember being so excited in the spring when the revival was announced (It was the same day I got vaxxed — real red letter occasion), and it’s done and no one at DC seems to give a shit. This could be a marquee property with its rich history, and yet it seems doomed to the same fate as the last digital-first volume: forgotten and abandoned.
Matt: And this issue was fun! It’s one of the kinds of Batman stories I want from LotDK: a rollicking adventure story. There is space in this book for all the sorts of Batman stories you can’t get in the main ongoing because they’re hooked into all that continuity. Here? Batman can be on the comms with Alfred while dealing with Azrael, who is being a lot less crazy and a lot more zealous about the church than he is in main continuity, while fighting a moustache-twirling Ra’s al Ghul. That’s fun!
Will: I might be in a curmudgeonly mood today, but even I won’t shit on the fun of Batman and the Last Crusade. The art wasn’t great (OK, I’ll poop on it just a little), but this was a nice pulp read and a good exploration of how Batman faces down — and remains apart from — zealotry.
Matt: “Master Bruce, we named the dog Batman.”
Will: That’s some good shit there.
Bat-miscellany
- No future issues of LotDK have been solicited in print, but there are two other digital chapters. We might get to that if we ever have a light week again. Or drop it as Patreon bonus content for the pod.
- Did you catch that totally cas. plug for the Patreon?
- This week on BatChat super premium unleaded audio edition, it’s three stories Will thought would have good art. (He was 66.66% right.) And next week, it’s three more all-ages Bat stories on a very special episode in which Will tries extra hard not to swear. [Grote’s note: My money’s on he doesn’t make it.]
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.
