The final stop on Bruce Wayne’s tour to become Batman is here, as he and “Anton” meet the final master they will train under: Ra’s al Ghul. Batman: The Knight #9 is written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Carmine di Giandomenico, colored by Ivan Plascencia and lettered by Pat Brosseau.
A rift in space brings a young man from a parallel world to our Earth, and Batman and Superman find a tragic story they both know too well repeating in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #7, written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Aditya Bidikar.
Harvey Dent is again reformed, and this time he’s Gotham’s DA again. But a mysterious threat sent to him about his father’s upcoming birthday party leads him to ask for Batman’s help in determining who is threatening both his father and the new life he has built. Batman: One Bad Day: Two-Face #1 is written by Mariko Tamaki, drawn by Javier Fernandez, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Ariana Maher.
Will Nevin: This is the last time we’ll be able to do a print column without having read Batman vs. The Undead. Isn’t that something?
Matt Lazorwitz: I hope that our minds are not completely broken by the experience and we are able to return to the column whole next week.
The Final Lesson Begins
Matt: This is the beginning of our grand finale, and as long as you completely ignore established continuity? This is a solid ending. We’ve had this discussion before, about continuity as a guide vs. continuity as a crutch, and so I’m willing to accept this in the way that I’ve accepted everything since Infinite Frontier: The story matters more than the continuity.
Will: The die was cast when Ghost-Maker was invented. If he was truly going to be an integral character to Batman’s history, then this was the period when he would be most important. And I like the idea of Ra’s being the final boss (as it were) of Bruce’s training. I also like the idea of Daddy Ra’s making his two sons fight to the death. Seems pretty on-brand for him. This is also the *exact* period in which Bruce would be both susceptible to Ra’s brand of save-the-world ruthlessness while also having the mental faculties to know he’s a monster.
Matt: And with the earlier introduction of Talia to his life, it adds an extra level of pathos to that relationship. In the original Ra’s tales, they are not just fully grown adults when they meet, but she falls for him pretty quickly. I like here that she is more or less rolling her eyes at yet another of these young men who train with her father and invariably fail. It allows for a more logical progression for her infatuation and more of a reason for Bruce to view her as strongly as he does.
Will: I concur, Brother Matt. This feels more like a streamlining of continuity with some well-placed tweaks. I was a big fan of most — if not all — of the stuff we had here, but I do have one major concern: How are we going to wrap all of this up in one issue?
Matt: I’m not sure. I think Bruce has to defeat Ghost-Maker and reject Ra’s, thus both setting them up for their conflict and earning Ra’s respect. I wonder if this ends where “Year One” picks up, with Bruce on the flight into Gotham, getting ready to touch down. I would love for it to end with his reunion with Alfred, but that’s the good sad-dad stuff I’m looking for in my Batman comics.
Will: Give Chippers another maxi and let him retell “Year One.” Tell me you wouldn’t read that.
Matt: I would, no doubt. I want to actually see him get a Ra’s mini. This is one of the more balanced depictions of Ra’s that we’ve gotten in a number of years. He is written with the gravitas I feel like the character deserves. And yes, I know he’s technically dead, but let Zdarsky bring him back and do the story of him reclaiming his place as leader of the League of Assassins. That would be some good stuff.
Will: We know that no one is truly dead in comics, and I feel like that has to go double for someone whose gimmick is not dying. Ra’s works best when his arguments are at least plausible, when he doesn’t seem like a raving madman. Again, we got all of the good stuff here.
Last Sun, Good Son
Will: We didn’t get a chance to review issue #6 (since the Supes boys get to have nice things too, apparently) but I wanted to say that shit was great. We need more Quantum Leap-style Batman, Robin and Superman time-traveling adventures. Between that and our pitch for a Slam Bradley/Riddler buddy private dick series, I think we’re 2-for-2 on ideas.
Matt: Oh, we will go back and read some crazy Golden Age Professor NIchols time travel stories for the pod soon then. That is some high-quality crazy old school comics shit right there.
But as for this issue, we meet David Sikela, the last refugee of an alternate Earth, and one whose origin is a combination of Batman and Superman’s. Sure, he loses his whole world like the Man of Steel, but he also pretty much witnesses the deaths of his parents like Batman. Imagine the one-two punch of those traumas. That is not going to be good for this kid.
Will: What I *really* didn’t get was Batman refusing to reunite the kid with his parents on this Earth because they had already lost a son. Yes, Batman was correct in that it would “open the wound” but it also gives them their son back. I know that’s not the story Waid wanted to tell, but I think there has to be a more logical way around it. Just say the parents are dead here. Much cleaner, and it doesn’t make Batman out to be a prick.
Matt: I don’t know. I am, granted, approaching this as someone who has not lost a parent, sibling or close romantic partner or friend, but I see where Bruce is coming from here. This David is not their son. And this couple aren’t his parents. Yes, they might bond and it might be wonderful. Or they could just become a reminder of everything they lost when it turns out Mom-Prime doesn’t like roses like Alter-Mom did, or this David is allergic to mangoes, which were David-Prime’s favorite. And while Bruce wouldn’t have this frame of reference, don’t tell me he wouldn’t have been better off to never meet Flashpoint Thomas Wayne.
Will: I think *we* would have been better off without Flashpoint Batman. Logically, you’re right — of course — but it’s a weird emotional beat here when I think it’s pretty easy to write around. But I’ll drop it. This is going to end in some kind of tragedy, right?
Matt: No doubt. This kid is in for a bad fall. I don’t know if we’ll see it start during his hangout with the Teen Titans, where he shows a temper or plays a little too rough, or he has a great day with the Titans only for something horrible to be waiting for him when he gets back.
I am curious to see how The Key factors in as a villain here. He’s a master of psychoactive chemicals and so might mess with the kid’s head? And from that one page, he has a definite Jigsaw vibe (from the Saw movies, not the Punisher’s nemesis).
Will: Would you like to play a game, Matt?
Does This Count as Two Bad Days?
Matt: First thing that popped into my head reading this: Are all of these going to be father-and-son themed? Because we’re two for two on the bad dads here.
Will: Bad dad sad. Tamaki certainly played with her canonical toys here (Hi, Deb!), but what have we seen to date of the elder Dent? Also, side note, I know the “88” was supposed to be one more tempting thing for Two-Face, but given that number’s connotations — and the fact that Dent himself didn’t look nearly that old — I would have gone with literally any other number.
Matt: The only appearance of the elder Dent was in the post-Crisis origin of Two-Face, Batman Annual #14, “Eye of the Beholder.” I haven’t read that in some years, and I read it when it first came out when I was … 10 probably, and it was a serious book with some serious stuff in it. I think Tamaki changed quite a bit about him, in that there he was a loser, alone in a nursing home before Harv confronted him. And there, the abuse was considerably more on the surface. Here you get hints he might have abused Harvey, but in that book, it was clear he absolutely beat his son mercilessly.
Will: And that was the sense we got from Batman: The Animated Series as well. I suppose we knew him to be a prick, and while he certainly wasn’t a great dude here, I think we could have gotten a bit more as to just how obsessed with appearances he was. Why not a flashback to the hospital after the acid? “You look awful” or “I don’t want to see you again” would have worked to do more to sell the ending we got.
Matt: This, like we discussed with The Knight above, makes some continuity changes. It takes “Hush” as it is, and references the latter parts of “No Man’s Land,” so we’re dealing with a lot of the classic continuity, but it has The Roman alive, which is a change from Batman Eternal in the New 52. Again, not a complaint, just an observation.
I was perplexed by the little bit at the end about Harvey papering over some of his stepmom’s past indiscretions. That really seemed to come out of left field for me.
Will: Was that the only reason Harvey was made the DA again? So that he could have the power to do the confusing thing?
Matt: I think so. … It would have been just as easy to have him as a powerful defense attorney if it was just going to be about appearances, after all. There were some leaps of logic on this one, especially when it comes to Harvey being reinstated as DA.
Also, I was 99% sure that Two-Face sent that note from jump, so I don’t know why it took Batman so long to get there. Assuming a split on Harvey’s mind, of course he wouldn’t know Two-Face started this whole thing. It wound up going down a different path, I suppose, and I guess that was why you had Batgirl here making the point that when it comes to Harvey, Bruce has a blind spot?
Will: I guess? Or that Bruce will forever have the idea in his mind that Harvey can be “saved,” which — if this in continuity — I think can be definitively laid to rest.
Matt: Yeah, I don’t know if any of these are in continuity, since there is no way this lines up with what we saw in ’Tec last month, with the golden-masked Harvey. I thought this was going to tie into that, but apparently not.
Will: We talked off-air last night about how there was no way this story was going to be worse than the Riddler book, and I think that ever-so-low bar has been cleared with some success. But this still doesn’t feel either 1) all that essential or 2) like anything that couldn’t have been done in a two-issue arc in Batman or ’Tec.
Matt: Agreed. We’re two specials into eight, and while I think we’ll keep covering them, I’m not super psyched for whatever comes next.
Bat-miscellany
- It’s stories of Batman running afoul of DC’s favorite muck monster in this week’s BatChat podcast with three tales of Batman and Swamp Thing.
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.
