Bruce Wayne’s journey to become Batman brings him closer to home as he stops in New York to learn escapology from one of the greats: Giovanni Zatara. But what else can the Batman-to-be learn during his first encounter with the supernatural alongside Zatara and his daughter, Zatanna? Batman: The Knight #7, is written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Carmine di Giandomenico, colored by Ivan Plascencia and lettered by Pat Brosseau.
Batman, Superman, Supergirl and the Doom Patrol join together as the battle with the Devil Nezha reaches its conclusion in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #5, written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Aditya Bidikar.
Catwoman’s balancing act of playing Gotham’s Five Families against each other attracts a new wrinkle as the Bat family gets involved, and we see a scene from Batman #125 from another perspective in Catwoman #45, written by Tini Howard; drawn by Sami Basri, Vincente Sifuentes and Robbi Rodriguez; colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
Will Nevin: With a slate of books that opens with a tribute to George Perez and closes with a moving homage to Neil Adams coming out the week that Alan Grant dies, it’s hard to know what to say. We’ve lost what seems like a generation of legends in a matter of weeks.
Matt Lazorwitz: And that’s not including another legend, one who worked with Grant on more than one occasion and who is the subject of this week’s podcast: Tim Sale.
Will: I’ve given Grant the business on the podcast, but I’d like to think it was in good fun. What’s your favorite work of his?
Matt: That’s a big question, as Grant wrote Batman for over a decade with minimal interruption over multiple titles. I think my favorite would probably be “The Last Arkham,” the arc that opened Batman: Shadow of the Bat and introduced two key characters to the lore: Jeremiah Arkham and Zsasz. Although issue #13 of the series, “The Nobody,” also sticks in my head.
Will: I look forward to covering them on the show — and I’ll try to take it easier on Grant when his Scottishness shows.
Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
Matt: The Knight is creeping closer and closer to “Year One” at this point, I think, as we’re back in the states, and we’re back to a story that has deeper ties to the DCU as a whole, with Zatara and Zatanna appearing in this issue. I liked seeing them, tying in with the established continuity of Bruce’s training, and even adding in the Dini retcon that Zatara was friends with the Waynes.
Will: This really feels like some combination of “Year One” prequel mixed with the streamlining of “Untold Legend of the Batman” in addition to finding space for Ghost-Maker between the raindrops. Some of the middle chapters may have stretched on too long, but I think Zdarsky is doing some great work here, especially in how some of the tertiary characters like Giovanni are given moments to really shine.
Matt: Zatara is a character with such a rich history. He’s older than Batman, having appeared in a story in Action Comics #1, the issue that introduced some other character you may have heard of, what’s his name, with the red S…
Will: Super…dude?
Matt: That sounds close. Maybe we’ll talk about him later. But anyway, he has all this history, but outside of the Young Justice cartoon, he has spent the past 40 years or so as “Zatanna’s dad.” Giving him a character arc, something to feel that was not all about Zatanna, is long overdue in modern comics.
Will: And none of this feels forced. Putting aside the practicalities of Houdini-style escape tricks, the Batman mythos is built on theatrics, and who’s going to teach him that? Definitely not an Alabama detective. And I loved the idea that Bruce could have become a master magician because of course he could have. Charm. Skill. Discipline. Could have been the greatest.
Matt: And we also get Batman’s first encounter with magic. Batman and the supernatural, in the DCU proper, can be a tricky proposition, since he is a rationalist at heart. But we’ve talked about this before: Batman subscribes to the Sherlock Holmes axiom of “Eliminate the impossible, and whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”
Will: I think that reads better in the original Vulcan, but your point stands. Again, of course Bruce would want to master magic five minutes after he learns it’s a real thing — there’s nothing (in his mind) he’s not ready for. Oh to be young, Brother Matt.
Matt: My creaky back hears you.
If you take this story alongside Vita Ayala’s recent Batman/Zatanna story over in Urban Legends, you get a really full understanding of who these two characters are to each other. Zatanna has feelings for Bruce that he can never return because he is who he is, but Zee isn’t a shrinking violet who will pine for Bruce. She is tough, and will stand with, and up to, him. When he wants to stop the demon in this issue? She’s in. She stands up to her dad when he’s on the wrong path, and talking to any family member, especially a parent, like that? That takes steel. I’d love to see more Zdarsky Zatanna, if Ayala’s plate is too full to spin something out of Urban Legends.
Will: Really, anyone aside from Paul Dini should step on up there if they think they can do as good as what we’ve seen lately.
The Greatest Trick Ever Pulled on the Devil
Matt: We’ve said it before, but we’ll say it again: when it comes to currently practicing superhero artists, Dan Mora is the gold standard. This is an incredible looking comic.
Will: Holy shit is it ever. I’m mad we have to share custody. Even madder we didn’t get to talk about the Lantern-powered Batman/Superman fusion from issue #4. That was a crazy-assed character design, but I loved it.
Matt: We did miss that, but we get to talk about the big, climactic fight scene, which rocks so damn hard. And I know “rocks” is a slightly dated parlance, but for a book with a retro vibe? I felt it fit. The Devil Nezha is still a fresh character, and not the most terribly developed, but sometimes a bad guy is just a bad guy, and he is certainly sinister, with a great diabolical design. The middle half page, where he’s tearing his way out of the Phantom Zone? That’s the stuff of the best nightmares.
Will: The best boss fights are defined by critical weaknesses. Khan was slow to adapt to 3D warfare and couldn’t let go of a personal grudge. The Devil Nezha? Weren’t built for fightin’ no robots, Matt. Such Golden Age kinda-convoluted logic. Precious.
Matt: It is! Mark Waid was one of the writers in the ’90s who brought a Silver Age sensibility to his work that pulled away from the grim and gritty ’80s, and you feel that here. It’s a sci-fi answer to a fantasy/horror problem, and I love it.
And in all the combat, there is a ton of heart. You see the nobility in all our heroes, willing to sacrifice themselves to stop Nezha. You get the pain and rage from Batman as Superman seems to make the ultimate sacrifice. And look at that cover!
Will: I think Superman passed the Kobayashi Maru test, wouldn’t you say? Also, this arc ends with Robin stuck in time flux. How stupid cool is that?
Matt: I loved both of those points too! Superman out-thinking Nezha and counting on Batman, his friend, to put two and two together? That’s so Superman; his faith in humanity in general, and his friends in particular, is one of his defining characteristics. And I look forward to some time-hopping hijinks in next month’s issue.
And while the hop from event to event isn’t my favorite thing, this has done a better job of setting the stage for Batman Vs. Robin than any other table-setting story in ages, mostly because it didn’t feel like table setting. It felt like its own story that happens to have set up another story, and if you don’t want to read that event? No problem, you still got a full story here. If we need to have an endless churn of events, more stories like this, please.
Will: I read that as “chum of events,” and I agree (especially since it’s “Shark Week”). But I’ll try to be good and give this a chance. Gotta be better than “Shadow War,” right?
Fighting Like Cats and Bats
Matt: So I’m going to ask a question I ask of you often, Brother Will: As someone who was not reading Catwoman before this issue, how did it feel jumping in right here?
Will: Aside from not knowing who the fuck Valmont is and wondering why he looks so much like Ghost-Maker, I was pretty good here — although I think this story could have been stronger if it was more focused on the central issue (sex trafficking and the mob) rather than Bat family drama. Or maybe take those topics up with a little more separation. I dunno — neither felt particularly served here.
Matt: Valmont does feel like Ghost-Maker lite, and has since his introduction in the first issue of Tini Howard’s run, and the fact that the two are so visually similar, as well as both being unctuous and self-satisfied, doesn’t help.
I had assumed this was going to be a full-on jumping-on point issue, since we just came out of a two-part road trip with Harley Quinn, and while we didn’t get something as clean as that, I think this is a decent place to start.
Will: It’s certainly a fine place to pick up after the wedding that never was, a thing I did not expect to see so prominently featured.
Matt: Me neither, but it makes complete sense. This is the first time most of the Bat family has run into their nearly stepmom since those events, so feelings would be running high. And I like the different dynamics: Robin (Tim) is all business. The Batgirls think Selina is the coolest thing out there. And Dick is closer to a peer, and having had his own failed wedding in his past, is understanding. Selina has been mostly out of the Bat fold since the not-wedding, so this slow reintroduction to the extended clan works, although it would have been nice to get more of it.
Will: There’s still time for more. Probably? I’m hoping they can push through this — we don’t want another Taylor/Kanye episode that stunts the growth of all of these people and keeps them emotionally malingering.
Matt: One final note: I like that we got to see the scene from Batman #125 from Selina’s point of view. I was really confused that it looked like she and Valmont were sleeping together in that page in Batman, so seeing the context here was a relief. Was it probably an intentional trick to get people to read this issue of Catwoman? Sure. But I don’t mind cross-pollination of titles, and I was reading it anyway. All things considered? I think we’ll stick with Catwoman for a couple issues here, to see where we go. Up for that?
Will: More righteous Catwoman as the defender of the world’s forgotten. Less Valmont.
Bat-miscellany
- With Alan Grant’s passing today, we actually have a story written by him in this week’s episode of the podcast, which happens to be a tribute to Tim Sale, as mentioned above, another creator we recently lost.
- If World’s Finest is any indication of where the state of the art is headed in re: the use of lettering to (over)emphasize emotion, Will is ScAAAAAAreD (imagine that in a particularly ugly and jagged word balloon).
- “If it’s not Scottish, it’s crap!”
- One last Alan Grant aside: The last-page reveal in this week’s Catwoman? Amygdala is another Grant creation springing out of “The Last Arkham.” Add in Ventriloquist, Anarky, Ratcatcher and some other D-Listers, and I can think of few creators who added more villains to the canon since the original days.
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.
