The year is 1776, and the Orgham family is planning to unleash a mystical artifact that will make the Gathome settlement theirs forever. But there is a fly in the ointment. Or should I say a Bat. Detective Comics Annual 2022 is written by Ram V, drawn by Christopher Mitten and Rafael Albuquerque with Hayden Sherman, colored by Lee Loughridge and lettered by Deron Bennett.
The Penguin is out of business. The Umbrella Man, his former major domo, now runs the rackets in Gotham, and heâs not playing the game like Penguin used to. But now, Penguin is back, and is assembling a crew to take back his empire. Batman: One Bad Day: Penguin #1 is written by John Ridley, with layouts by Giuseppe Camuncoli and finishes by Cam Smith, colored by Arif Prianto and lettered by Rob Leigh.
Bruce Wayne has become the Heart of the Demon, the right hand and heir to Raâs al Ghul. Now he must learn the truth and take his last steps to becoming the Dark Knight. Batman: The Knight #10 is written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Carmine di Giandomenico, colored by Ivan Plascencia and lettered by Pat Brosseau.
Matt Lazorwitz: Well, itâs a five-Tuesday month, so DC has a week of annuals and specials. And only one of them is a core Bat book! So weâre playing catchup on a couple of the books we missed due to shipping problems/COVID. Glad weâre able to.
Will Nevin: And itâs not like weâre catching up on bad shit, either! That was some good stuff we missed. Stupid shipping problems. Stupider COVID. (Also, glad youâre on the mend.)
Motif
Matt: So, the history of Gotham, of Arkham and of the Waynes is complicated. And a lot of the versions that we have seen are contradictory. And I can live with that. Because ancient history in the case of comics is there to inform the current stories, and as long as those stories with the characters we love are good, Iâm fine with the details of the hazy past changing, because as many people have pointed out, continuity is a tool and should not be a crutch.
Will: This read more like an Elseworlds but through a filter, like it wasnât quite ready to go there as fast as it could have, and by the time it got there, it was out of pages. It was fine, sure. But it was very much an annual in that it felt nonessential even as a direct tie-in to the main story.
Matt: I would not be surprised if we wind up back in this time period before this run is over, so I wonder if it will get a little more time to breathe when we arrive back. The mysterious coach driver, Mordecai, making reference to the future, makes me think we might be in for some mystical time travel shenanigans, which would be in line with all the crazy magic weâve seen slowly being used by the Orgham family.
I like the title of the issue, which is what I titled this section. This whole run has been using musical terms for the individual arcs and stories, and so this sets up the idea that things will recur, like a motif in an opera. And thatâs what this is saying, in the long run. The Orghams tried to program Gotham as a place to feed them power, but at the last minute something came in and interfered, and inserted Batman. What that is, well, I have some suspicions that shed a very different light on what we have seen in some of those earlier issues.
Will: This certainly feels like one of the stories that will read even better in trade, doesnât it? I certainly didnât not like this, but I still donât feel like it added a lot outside of this idea that the Orghams have been physically meddling in Gothamâs affairs for 250 years. And I donât discount the idea that youâre right â that we might see more of this as âTec plays out â but on this first day of December in the year of our dark lord and master twenty and twenty two, I just canât recommend that anyone go out of their way to read this ⌠unless they are craving Old Timey Gotham with stand-ins for the characters they know.
Matt: And that might be part of it; I like this stuff. Even with all its contradictions, I like weird Gotham history, so this speaks to me. Christopher Mitten, who draws the flashbacks, draws a great old-time Gathome, and the character designs are great. Theyâd all be recognizable, even if the names of the analogues werenât quite so on the nose. I love an Elseworlds. I am not saying someone who has a limited budget needs to run out and drop $5.99 on this issue this second if they have comics they need to get to follow an ongoing this week. But I donât think itâs a bad investment for what is going to come, especially as I canât imagine weâre not going to see Batman have to reckon with some of these events, and I can smell the war between the Orghams and Barbatos on the wind.
Live by the Umbrella, Die by the Umbrella
Matt: So, I think having now read all four, our power rankings on these One Bad Day specials need to do some major moving, huh?
Will: I feel like weâre not going to have any disagreement here: 1) Pengy, at the top of the list with his *one* bullet, 2) Freeze, because of the clever but inconsistent character tinkering, 3) Two-Face, owing to the fact it was ultimately fine and Iâve forgotten most of it and 4) Riddler, because it was dog shit awful and should be pulped.
Matt: Like GCPD: The Blue Wall, this is the John Ridley I have been excited to read. This doesnât rely on buzz words or hamfisted metaphor. This is a solid crime story of a mob boss reasserting his power. Only he happens to be Penguin. And you mention it right there, but the fact that he rebuilds his empire on one bullet? That is a way better metaphor than weâve seen in some of Ridleyâs other work.
Will: This was Goncharov with some Bat characters mixed in. I loved this story for the same reason I loved Dark Knight: It felt real. It was grounded. It had stakes. This has got to be Ridleyâs best mainline work because it doesnât have all of those faults that you already mentioned, and it doesnât have the herky jerky pacing of Blue Wall.
Matt: And it introduces my favorite new member of Gothamâs minor criminal set: Elliot. Comic relief characters are tricky in these kinds of stories, because they can completely devastate the tone of a more serious book. But this poor kid, this nobody, with some seriously deep-seated issues who just goes wild when heâs triggered by it being pointed out heâs such a nobody? That is both a part of Penguinâs character that is mirrored here, and he is just funny. If I ever get into a brawl, my battle cry is now definitely going to be, âLeave me alone, Timmy Quinn!â
Will: What did you think of the idea of Batman abandoning Umbrella Man to whatever Penguin was hoping to do to him? I was against it in the moment, but then I remembered that was basically the big hook of âThe War of Jokes and Riddlesâ â at least this didnât have the fascist armband.
Matt: I was also a little more able to take this since this is clearly out of continuity. This is a Batman who has been quietly broken by the way the rules of Gotham have changed. That isnât something you can do with the in-continuity Batman (Yes, you heard me, Tom King!), but in a story that takes place in a near future/now with a slightly different past? I can go with it because it stands in contrast to the Batman who would never do that and would find a way to do this himself without letting Penguin do his dirty work. A case of âThere but for the grace of GodâŚâ
The Demonâs Heart
Matt: We covered the first nine issues, so Iâm glad weâre able to get to this final one, because this series does end with a couple of bangs.
Will: And, like any good prequel, it leads you right to where you knew you were going. This may be an unpopular opinion in some circles, Brother Matt, but I think this story has been approximately 10,000% better than âFailsafe,â and I would be much more enthused about Big Daddy Zâs run had he begun with this story on that book. Knight, with its character development and slow build, is everything âFailsafeâ is not. To borrow the old James Bond reference, I want every Batman story to be âYear One,â but all I get is some variation on âKnightfall.â Knight is much closer to my ideal Bat story, I suppose is what Iâm trying to say.
Matt: I do agree that this is multiple steps above âFailsafe.â This story did something I didnât think possible. It made me not despise Ghost-Maker. I donât like him, but by giving us the backstory, by making him feel more a part of Batmanâs past, Iâm better able to accept him. So now itâs just Punchline who I roll my eyes at every time she appears on the page.
Will: Punchline exists solely to enable your eye rolling. Yuck.
Matt: Although Iâm not sure if it’s better or worse that in the end he says he keeps Batman around because it wouldnât be fun without him. Thatâs a VERY Joker line. Iâm OK with Ghost-Maker saying it, but I would have liked to see it be a little more of a front. I know heâs a clinical sociopath, but having a glimmer of typical humanity isnât outside the realm of possibility, and him acting like heâs not feeling that? That would have been a nice grace note here.
Will: But, again, we got to where we knew we were going with Bruce telling him to never step foot in Gotham. Really, this does a much better job of introing Ghost-Maker than Tynion or anyone else who has taken him up.
Matt: And when it comes to grace notes, this does have a wonderful one. Bruce worrying about Alfred not wanting to see him, rejecting him, just to see Alfred throw his arms around him and clutch his foster son as tightly as any biological father would his son? Excuse me. I think I might have something in my eyeâŚ
Will: Only way it could have been better was if it had been Michael Caine.
Matt: And speaking of, we get a scene slightly reminiscent of Batman Begins, with Bruce refusing to go along with the plans of Raâs and him facing down the Demon. Itâs not like we didnât know it was going to happen, but it was nice to see it played out, to see Bruce figure this out and to make the choice that he canât do this. He asserts his Batman-ness before donning the cowl.
Will: Had a real cinematic feel to it, didnât it? Hereâs my question: Is this the period in which Damian Wayne is conceived?
Matt: I think, if you want to get rid of the weird and uncomfortable bit that Morrison added where Talia basically drugged Batman to get his ⌠*ahem* genetic material, you could easily say that, yes. But the timeline would be a little wonky for this to be when that happened.
Will: Oh, there is nothing I like more than getting you worked up over the DC timeline.
Matt: The current DC timeline, as made clear in this weekâs first issue of Justice Society of America (which was written by known problematic creator Geoff Johns), establishes that Bruce is currently 39, and if Damian is 13, it means he was born when Bruce was 26. And since he returns to Gotham at 25 per âYear One,â then he could have been conceived here and born after Bruceâs birthday.
Will: So what youâre telling me is that Bruceâs baby juice is probably on ice as heâs having that reunion with Alfred.
Matt: Or Talia just barely has a bun in the oven and Bruce is less than nine months from turning 26. One way or the other, Bat paternity is a near thing.
Will: Baternity. I like it.
Bat-miscellany
- Josh Weil joins the podcast again to talk about three times Batman met members of Young Justice.
- From the Department of Nitpicking: âMyriadâ probably shouldnât be a noun, especially where a shorter construction means the same thing â âmy myriad of mastersâ should really be âmy myriad masters.â Shorter, and we got that great alliteration going!
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.
