A motorcycle gang called the Ratpack made up of rat men is terrorizing the home of Kathy Kane, the original Batwoman. The Scooby Gang teams up with her niece, the original Bat-Girl, and the new Batwoman to find out what happened to her and who is behind the Ratpack in The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #5, written by Sholly Fisch, drawn by Dario Brizuela, colored by Franco Riesco and lettered by Saida Temofonte.
Jace Fox makes a final stand against the Moral Authority with his allies. Can he save his mother? And what does all this mean to the Fox family? I Am Batman #18 is written by John Ridley, drawn by Christian Duce, Eduardo Pansica and Julio Ferreira, colored by Rex Lokus and lettered by Troy Peteri.
We’re playing catch-up as we look at the first two issues of Batman: The Adventures Continue — Season Three. Issue #1 sees Batman trying to protect the hitman known as The Muscle from being rubbed out, and issue #2 finds Batman trying to find a missing heiress while having to team up with her ex: Harley Quinn. Both issues are written by Alan Burnett and Paul Dini. Issue #1 is drawn by Jordan Gibson, colored by Monica Kubina and lettered by Josh Reed. Issue #2 is drawn by Kevin Altieri, colored by Kubina and lettered by Reed.
Matt Lazorwitz: So, with this week’s selection, I have a question for you: If the powers that be at Warners came down and said we could all have only either all-ages, Bat/Scoob or Animated Series-esque Batman or all Black Label-style darker Batman, which would you take?
Will Nevin: Way to put me in the Bat screws there, Matty boy. Can I hedge? I want to hedge. I think either is fine and good — so long as Batman is a detective. He can be the Adam West White Knight or the Robert Pattinson Emo Knight so long as he’s solving crimes with his brain and not simply punching all of his problems away.
Matt: I like that. I can respect that kind of hedging. I think I would lean more toward the former, the all-ages Batman, only because I’ve read too many Black Label, adult-oriented Batman stories that lean too hard into the DARK KNIGHT and forget the heart of the character, and the punchy Batman is definitely part of that.
A Missed Opportunity?
Matt: So, while I enjoyed this issue a lot, I feel like DC left money on the table here.
Will: … by putting a lot of the focus on Batwoman’s past and not necessarily her queer present, eh?
Matt: Yes, especially with the canonical revelation of Velma’s queerness in the recent Trick or Treat, Scooby-Doo! Movie. Was I expecting Kate and Velma to start making out on panel? No. Was I hoping for some playful banter and Velma getting kinda blushy if Kate flirted with her? Yes. And was I hoping for a setup for a Batwoman & Velma Mysteries spin-off? A guy can dream.
Since you haven’t read all of Morrison, you probably have little familiarity with Kathy Kane. Did you read Grayson?
Will: That I did not, sir. Be a good sport and tell me and the good readers what we need to know from it.
Matt: Nothing that really affects this. I enjoyed how this streamlined the somewhat complicated retcons of those books that involved Kathy by just making her Kate & Bette’s aunt, and not tying that into the Wayne/Kane dynasties explicitly. This doesn’t work in the DCU, since she and Batman were romantically entangled. In the main universe, she was the younger wife of a Kane uncle, hence the name, but no one Bruce knew, which was a bend-over-backwards way to keep the last name while working in the framework that Bruce is a Kane on his mother’s side. Comics can get weird.
Will: Comics are hella weird, Matt. But this still got in all of our favorite Scoob gags, including Fred’s priceless “I used my best mask-pulling technique” lament when it turns out the gang of biker rats they were up against were, indeed, monsters.
Matt: The thing I love about this comic, and I know I’ve talked about it before, is how much it loves all of the crazy history of all these characters, but is only beholden to the best bits that it wants to deal with. So no complicated weird backstory for the original Batwoman. You can use Professor Milo, a Bat villain we just read about for the pod (stay tuned), but not have to talk about all the weird stuff done to him recently and just run with mad scientist Milo. And it’s fun. Ratman bikers versus Batwoman and the Scooby Gang is such a fun concept.
Will: We’ve said this before, but it’s worth repeating — this creative team knows the history, knows the characters and is just having a blast. You really get the feeling that they’re having the time of their lives putting this series together.
Matt: This is the primary Scooby-Doo Team-Up creative team of Fisch and Brizuela, who have been working on these books on and off for years, and any time I see their names in the credits, I know we’re in for a treat.
A Surprise Ending?
Matt: I don’t read solicitation copy for books I know I’m going to buy.
Will: So it was a surprise to you too that this was the final issue, huh?
Matt: Yup. No idea. And it seems like John Ridley barely knew as well, as while this satisfactorily wraps up the arc, it feels like the end of just that: an arc. There has been no word on a Volume 2, either. Is it me, or does canceling the book starring the Black character with at least the highest-profile name in DC Comics during Black History Month seem a bit tone deaf?
Will: And let’s be honest — this is at the point where it was getting good, or maybe a better way of phrasing is that the series had finally arrived at what looked like its status quo. Jace is set up in New York, fighting alongside his sister and a new version of the Question (who I suppose is just gone now) and navigating this revelation that the woman he’s always known to be his mother is not the person who gave birth to him. Reading it, you get the sense that this is gearing up for the next chapter, but then you get to the big honkin’ END. Total surprise to see it end here, and I’ll agree — not what you want for February.
Matt: This issue does everything right. It’s what I’ve wanted from it from the beginning. It has good action, good character beats and focus. Everything circles around either Jace or Tiff, meaning there weren’t any tangents. The art is solid superhero art; the greatest sin of this comic, even beyond some of its use of buzzwords, has been wildly inconsistent art, something this arc has fixed.
I do wonder if this was Ridley’s decision. He just ended his run on Black Panther as well. He might have Hollywood calling, and so chose to end this here, at a place where he can pick it back up when his schedule opens again. I’m hoping it’s that. But the timing is just shite.
Will: I pulled up the solicitation for ya: “Jace Fox is on the most urgent mission of his tenure as Batman: to save the life of his mother. At war with the domestic terror group called the Moral Authority, Jace fights a relentless battle alongside his sister Tiffany and a new hero who bridges DC’s past, present and future as I Am Batman comes to a spectacular and emotional close.”
That sounds like more Question rather than JaceBat, if you ask me.
Matt: We’ll have to see. But we probably should talk a little more about the book. I thought all the character beats here were so good, and so true to everything we’ve seen with these characters. Jace is a hothead, and he shoots his mouth off with everyone, but the conversation he winds up having with his bio-mom is really smartly done. It’s not a simple thing for either of them, but it’s the first steps that open up a thoughtful future. And something of the opposite is his interaction with Tanya. Anyone who says nurture doesn’t affect a child as much as nature hasn’t read this, as her snapping at him as he moves out is right in line with how he reacts to so many confrontations. The loss of this character arc, of Jace coming to terms with the relationships with his two mothers, the one who bore him and the one who raised him, feels to me like the greatest loss of this series ending here.
Will: Especially when we get details about his bio-mom! Once again, it’s a story aching to be continued.
A Strong Start?
Matt: We’re covering the first two issues of what solicitations say will be the final of these Adventures Continue miniseries (which I’ll believe when I see poor sales numbers).
Will: It’ll be gone until DC revives digital-first publishing for the fifth or sixth time, only to abandon it. But you know, I was expecting two issues that had some sort of connective tissue — only to have that expectation dashed. Ain’t mad about it, though.
Matt: We talk enough about missing one-offs, and so much of Batman: The Animated Series was one-off stories, so I think it’s fine. I honestly expected the end of issue #2 to tie in to the end of issue #1. I thought we would get Waller building a new Task Force X over the course of five issues, especially since Harley is so tied to the Suicide Squad now, and see it pay off at the end. But nope. And again, I’m fine with that. If this last volume is just a series of tales of villains in Gotham with Batman as sort of the influence behind the story, I could really dig that.
Will: If that could focus on stories you couldn’t tell within the confines of a ’90s television series nominally for children — say a queer love … rectangle? … like we have in our second story, that would be some good shit.
Matt: I was curious how that story hit you, as you are a notable detractor to the way Paul Dini has handled female characters since you read his autobiographical Dark Night OGN.
Will: Dear Loyal Content Consumers, there are two things you gotta know about Dini: (1) He’s got an uncomfortably broad streak of misogyny in his work and personal life and (2) He’s also got a preoccupation with Zatanna. Those things are probably related somehow, but since Zatanna isn’t in this story, we can save figuring that out for later.
Cassie, a trust-fund layabout who fakes her own kidnapping to gain access to her inheritance in one lump sum, is your prototypical Dini female: She uses sex to get what she wants, lying and taking advantage of partners along the way. If Harley wasn’t here to blunt some of the impact of that, it would be a very, very bad look, but once you add her, the story goes down much smoother than it would otherwise.
In fact, I hadn’t considered Dini’s … well, whatever complexes he might have … until you asked. It’s there on the page, for sure. But like I said, Harley helps.
Matt: See, for me, the narrative structure also helps blunt those edges. This is a noir, and Cassie is a femme fatale. She sticks mostly to the genre tropes, so unless you argue Dini is leaning into the genre because of whatever predilections you may read him as having, this fits very well there. I think we would have seen a lot more queer noirs in the heyday of the form if not for the Hays Code, honestly.
Will: I don’t know if Dini is thinking that deeply, but because I am a gentleman, I will accept your point. For all its faults, The Harley story in issue #2 is definitely the stronger of the pair, but I think the art is weaker — when I see The Animated Series in my mind, I see sharp, clean lines. Too much of the second issue was messy. It’s an impossible standard to live up to, alas, but that’s one of the jobs of this series.
Matt: Funny, I was going to observe that the second issue was drawn by Kevin Altieri, B:TAS director who drew one of the stories in the Batman Adventures Holiday Special, the Joker at New Year’s piece, where you made a similar observation. You, my good man, are consistent.
Will: It me, hobgoblin of little minds.
Matt: Issue #1 is a much more paint-by-numbers Batman story, with Batman trying to keep a mob hitman introduced in Season 2 alive as he is transported in custody. The highlight for me in that issue was the introduction of Gotham’s newest mob boss, Esther Velestra. That’s a great Mask of the Phantasm easter egg, as she must be the daughter of Sal Velestra, the mobster voiced by Abe Vigoda, who employed Joker as his bodyman before Mr. J went all, pardon the phrasing, cuckoo bananas. Although it was a good choice presenting so much of the story from The Muscle’s POV. Made a one-note character from the previous series a bit deeper.
Will: Speakin’ o’ Mask of the Phantasm, I picked up on the Andrea Beaumont reference in issue #2. Aren’t you proud? It was good to see a new character like Esther holding court with Pengy and Rupert Thorne. There’s still life and things to be explored in this universe 30 years on.
Bat-miscellany
- For Valentine’s Day week, BatChat digs into romance, with tales of Batman reckoning with love. Three tales of Silver St. Cloud, Vicki Vale and Wonder Woman.
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.
