After being blasted by Failsafe, Batman wakes up in a world very different from the Gotham he knows. Batman #131 is written by Chip Zdarsky, penciled by Mike Hawthorne, inked by Adriano Di Benedetto, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles. In the backup, Tim Drake is sure that Batman is alive and is trying to find evidence while keeping Gotham safe in a story written by Zdarsky, drawn by Miguel Mendosa, colored by Roman Stevens and lettered by Cowles.
Helen Wayne, the infant princess of Gotham, has been found dead, and Slam Bradley is in it up to his neck. Between the cops and the Waynes, Slam is between a rock and a hard place. Gotham City: Year One #4 is written by Tom King, penciled by Phil Hester, inked by Eric Gapstur, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Joker Deux is fleeing Gotham General Hospital, but the GCPD and Red Hood are trying to capture him (at best). The Joker: The Man Who Stopped Laughing #4 is written by Matthew Rosenberg, drawn by Carmine Di Giandomenico, colored by Arif Prianto and lettered by Tom Napolitano. In the backup, Zatanna curses Joker with the worst thing: a child, in a story written by Rosenberg, drawn and colored by Francesco Francavilla and lettered by Napolitano.
Matt Lazorwitz: I feel like Iām in a sour mood today. I usually walk into these with at least one book I really liked, but Iām between curious and apathetic this week.
Will Nevin: Letās try to put a smile on that face, Matt. (At least one backup did that, right?)
A World without Batman
Matt: I was sorely tempted to call this section āAnd Now for Something Completely Different,ā but I think Iāve used that one a few times over the course of this column, so I went with something else.
Will: At least we know for sure weāre not getting the Zdarksky of Newburn, which allows me to properly recalibrate my expectations for this run.
Matt: Yes. This isnāt going to be a crime comic; itās going to be a superhero comic. But Zdarsky has written crime-tinged superhero stuff over in Daredevil that has worked very well. But most Daredevil stories donāt have the world-shaking bombast of a Batman superhero story, so I think Zdarsky got the bombast out of his system for now on arc one, and weāre getting something weirder and a little more grounded on arc two. At least as grounded as alternate Earth stuff can be. Although Iām not 100% convinced this is an alternate Earth either.
Will: I donāt know what the hell to think. Imaginary Skeleton Jim Gordon is an amusing distraction, and Judge Punisher Dredd Harvey Dent is ā¦ well, there, but Iām certainly not feeling anything after this first chapter. The idea at its core ā stripping Bruce of everything but his mental and physical faculties and shipping him off to a new Gotham ā is not bad, but like with another book weāre talking about, thereās too much noise in the signal.
Matt: I think for this issue, thatās a feature, not a bug. Weāre as thrown into the deep end as Bruce is here. Have you ever read A Clockwork Orange?
Will: That I have not. But Malcolm McDowell is the shit. And I understand that was a question about reading the book, but Iām givinā you all I got.
Matt: The book starts off narrated in the nadsat, the colloquial language of the characters, with no explanation or glossary. You are thrust directly into this world and have to slowly get acclimated to it and find your footing with the world. Itās disconcerting and a bit confusing, but it works for a world that is meant to feel that way. And I think thatās what Zdarsky is doing here.
Will: Wonder where heās going for his third arc. Batmanās already been to space. Maybe he gets to tap into the speed force. Or time travel. Or both!
Matt: I have no idea. Weāre just one part into this one, and there are more questions than answers. Do you really think this is an alternate Earth story? That seems too easy. I think there is something more going on here. So much of this is playing to Bruceās fears. But at the same time, weāre seeing stuff that Bruce canāt be privy to, specifically Selina and Red Mask (who Iām 99% sure is going to be Bruce or Joker), so it turning out to be some kind of psychic prison would be a cheat.
Will: The backup is giving us at least a little grounding in that Bruce has physically disappeared from Tim Drakeās reality. So whether heās off in his own prison somewhere or in another universe, heās gone. And good on Dick for believing heās not dead — because no one but Alfred dies (for good) in a Bat title.
Matt: Dick learned his lesson. After āBatman R.I.P.,ā only Tim believed Bruce was still alive. And he was proven correct then. When Tim Drake says Batman is still alive, you better believe it!
Slam!
Matt: Weāve talked before about continuity, and about how it should be a guidepost to inform good stories and not a crutch for lazy writing. However, this issue has me asking: At what point does ignorance of, or simple ignoring of, canon become a distraction?
Will: You ask about canon, and all I want to know is if Slam Bradley is Bruce Wayneās grandpappy. But I get your point. What in particular has you so preoccupied?
Matt: One of the key moments of this issue sees Slam beating the police commissioner nearly to death with a baseball bat in an alley, an alley that, because of this, winds up being dubbed Crime Alley. This is so far outside canon that itās blowing up established continuity. Park Row, as Crime Alley was known before the deaths of Thomas and Martha Wayne, was in one of Gothamās better neighborhoods. But the deaths of the Waynes in what should have been somewhere safe was Gothamās moment of innocence lost. This series is obviously reframing that idea, making the death of Helen Wayne that moment, and while I can deal with that, needlessly throwing in that wink-at-the-camera line just bothers me. If this was Black Label, I would have been fine with it. But this is supposed to be Earth-Prime canon, so it just goes against decades of established continuity.
Will: Let me start by saying your reading of this is probably correct, since itās the most reasonable interpretation, but let me also throw this at you: What if Slam is an unreliable narrator? Heās relating this story to Bruce at a very advanced age, and maybe heās given into self-aggrandizement.
Matt: From another writer, I could probably go with that. But this is Tom King. As the page right after the Crime Alley line indicates, King has never met a wink-at-the-camera moment he doesnāt love.
Will: Oh, did he ever lean into the ācreator street/place namesā deal. That was an exhausting bit. As weāve talked about before ā in his last damned book, of course ā once or twice in an issue is a cute nod to those who have built the world heās working in. When it gets to the point of breaking immersion in the story, itās a senseless distraction.
But even with that self-inflicted wound, Iāve gotta say, this is an enjoyable noir story. Itās not the best ā itās not doing anything new with these tropes ā but itās fun.
Matt: I would go with solid over fun. I love a noir, but I have read and seen so many that I have a very high standard. And for me, this feels overwritten. I enjoy purple prose in a noir novel, but here it feels like Kingās narration is getting in the way of letting Phil Hester tell the story. I donāt need quite as much narration as Slam is fighting Richard Wayneās private thugs when Hester is amply telling the story with the art. I know itās tropey as hell to have that purple prose, but again, itās breaking my immersion.
Will: This is another common complaint we have with King: his commitment to form over anything else. While thatās been the nine-panel grid in the past or the various time-shifting gimmicks weāve seen in other books, this series is quite clearly his love letter to the hard-boiled detective genre. And nothing ā certainly no artist ā is going to get in the way of him telling that story exactly how he thinks it should be told.
Matt: Final note: Iām not sure if the use of a big āSLAMā sound effect every time Slam Bradley really hits someone is cute or too cute by half.
Will: Iām on Team Cute. But as a fan of the genre, whatās your guess as to whodunnit? It canāt be Richard, right?
Matt: Nope, way too easy. Constance Wayne is our femme fatale, so I wouldnāt put it past it being her, especially because King is playing with all the tropes. We donāt really have any good suspects aside from either Wayne; Maybe Wayneās security guys who were trying to make a buck, but we havenāt gotten any good evidence on that. And all the owls have clearly been red herrings, because the Court would NOT fit into this story.
Will: Setting up Richard would seem to fit into her character and circumstance, but killing her own child still feels like a stretch. Maybe Helen is not hers? I dunno; I donāt have any other good ideas.
Matt: The only other thing I can think: She arranged the kidnapping to get the money to get out, and her accomplice killed, accidentally or not, the baby. Adds the weight of guilt to her grief. Maybe sheās shtupping the security guy, who was the kidnapper, as well; that would be a very noir trope, using him to get her way then seducing Slam and pitting her lovers against each other.
Will: I know we donāt quite agree on the strength of the series, but how about this point: Doesnāt this make you want to rewatch HBOās Perry Mason? How great was that?!
Matt: On that, Brother Will, we can agree.
A Clown in a Cancer Ward
Matt: So, four issues in and I still have no idea what this book is trying to say.
Will: My guess is certainly no better than yours. This particular issue was certainly not that gripping ā decompressed with a central idea (āaā murderous Joker let loose in a childrenās hospital) that didnāt strike me as particularly interesting. Thereās no skill in writing a Joker who offends the most basic norms you can imagine.
Matt: And then a few pages later do something actively kind for a dying woman. That level of empathy is sorely out of character for Joker. It makes me more inclined to believe Joker Deux, as we have called him, is the fraud or the duplicate or whatever.
We were talking about Joker in the episode of the podcast we recorded last night, and I said there that I like a Joker with a sense of humor, rather than one who is a whirlwind of chaos who just looks like a clown because that is disturbing. But that sense of humor has to be, yāknow, funny.
Will: The book approaches some measure of self-awareness when Joker observes that sick kids donāt find dead kid jokes funny, and itās the same reason this doesnāt work: Saying the most offensive thing imaginable isnāt funny. And, to be clear, I donāt think Rosenberg is trying to be terrible here. Itās just not working.
Matt: I think we both came into this series with unreasonably high expectations after the last volume, but even having recalibrated them, Iām not feeling this. I donāt want a series where Iām in Jokerās head. I donāt want to sympathize or empathize with Joker. I donāt even know if weāre supposed to.
Will: Hereās an idea that would have made this series a thousand percent better: make the whole damned thing out of the backups. How great was this one? A pregnant Joker? It made chodes online upset, and it was hilarious. No notes.
Matt: Letās play with genre in that way, Every issue is a full-on Silver Age parody with Joker doing wacky shit. It wouldnāt sell, but it would be more enjoyable.
That did bring up something else, though. When Joker is in the childās ward, he picks up a comic and comments on it, and it is clearly him reading one of these backup comics. But one of the kids says he doesnāt think thatās him and when he flips the comic to face the camera, itās Superman. Are these backups delusions of Joker Deux? Each one does tangentially touch on what is happening in the main story, so maybe this is his unreliable narrator-ness coming through on page.
Will: I like that theory ā maybe somehow reality intrudes more and more and the final showdown somehow takes place in the backups? Iād like to see that, like the backups get longer and longer as a sign that Mr. Deux is falling deeper into delusion.
Matt: I also have to wonder why three of the four have prominently featured female heroes. I havenāt seen any reason aside from either Rosenberg wants to write them or Francavilla wants to draw them, but there might be more to it down the line. Iām not willing to give up on this book, but itās not giving me what I want.
Will: dave_bautista_give_me_what_I_want.gif
Bat-miscellany
- In this weekās BatChat podcast, we visit three stories of very different versions of one of Batmanās first foes, The Monk.
- Perry Mason season 2 starts Monday, March 6.
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.
