Accused of the murder of Simon Stagg, Bruce Wayne has to sit on the sidelines as Superman and Robin try to figure out who really killed him. Metamorpho is on the hunt as well, and an old Justice League nemesis lurks in the shadows in Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #14, written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Steve Wands.
Nightwing and the Titans take a trip to Hell to try to save Olivia, Blockbuster’s daughter, in Nightwing #103, written by Tom Taylor; drawn by Travis Moore and Vasco Georgiev, colored by Adriano Lucas and lettered by Wes Abbott.
Will Nevin: Sure was easier to round up three books a week when DC was double shipping, wasn’t it?
Matt Lazorwitz: Yup. Also, we’re at the point in the publishing cycle where a bunch of stuff is ending, and next month a bunch of stuff is launching. We’ll be drowning in Bat content again soon, have no fear.
More Than Meets the Eye
Matt: OK, I’ll admit it right here at the top: I was wrong about Simon Stagg faking his own death. But how was I to know there would be robots involved?
Will: Each and every week I keep hoping for a quiet, scaled down story about a murder or a theft or other some such thing, and each and every week, my hopes are dashed. Dashed, I say! But, yeah, this thing here took some turns.
Matt: World’s Finest is not going to be the book where you get that, and you know it. This book is Mark Waid riffing on the Silver Age in four bright colors. The previous two arcs were ancient demon and other-dimensional super kid! I always knew this was going to go weird, I just thought it might be a clone or something Stagg had killed. I didn’t expect Professor Ivo to show up.
Will: I know you have a dissertation ready on exactly who that guy is.
Matt: Ivo is old school. Like, nearly the oldest of schools: he is the third villain the Justice League ever fought. He’s obsessed with robots and making himself immortal. As the issue states, he created Amazo, the robot that can copy the power of any hero he fights. In recent years, he often teams up with another villainous robot maker, T.O. Morrow, who built the robotic hero Red Tornado (He was supposed to be a bad guy, but Tornado decided to rebel against his maker, like all androids do).
Will: T.O. Morrow … that’s … well, something. Getting back to my love of all things grounded, I thought the interplay between Bruce and Clark in the beginning of the issue was solid. They really got into the complications of attempting to play foppish billionaire and reporter without making anything seem too personal — although Bruce did get a bit snippy when he called the work “trash.”
Matt: And then we get the interaction with “Ollie Queen,” which is also well put together. Waid absolutely captures Oliver’s voice … except when he intentionally doesn’t in ways that are both subtle and obvious. I know that’s an oxymoron, but the way he says things is spot on, but what he’s saying is off.
Will: Say, Matt, I’m really excited to sit down and read the next chapter in the White Knight saga. Harley and Joker’s kids! Doesn’t that sound interesting? And Sean Gordon Murphy is such a great writer.
Matt: ROBOT!
Do you take the way Waid is pointing out these AIs can’t replicate human speech quite right as a comment on ChatGPT? It seems a bit too on the nose to be anything else.
Will: If this was a Scott Snyder story, it would *definitely* be some commentary on AI and the possibility of writers being replaced. But because Waid seems to be here for a good time (and perhaps not a long time), I’ll say it leans more toward “maybe.”
Matt: The art is stunning, which is not a surprise at all. Dan Mora gets to lean a little more horror here; the enraged Metamorpho on Page 1 and the half-completed Bruce Wayne ‘bot are both particularly creepy, and aided by the shadows that colorist Tamra Bonvillain throws in there.
And before we go, the announcement of the second World’s Finest title, this time focusing on the Teen Titans at the ages we saw them in during that last arc? Yes, please. Let Waid write and curate a whole line of titles set in the early days of the DCU. I’d read them all.
Will: Come on Batman and (Dick Grayson) Robin. I want it.
Hope in Hell
Matt: If you were to expect one of these two books to be grounded, I doubt you would have expected it to be the one set in Hell. But this winds up really being a story about … contract law. Doesn’t get more grounded than that.
Will: Tonally, this thing was all over the place, from “you need Hell blinders to protect you from seeing all the suffering” to “hey, computers down here are loaded with pop-ups.” A few odd decisions made in there.
Matt: A Tom Taylor comic that has multiple tones? I have never heard of such a thing!
The IT guy in me absolutely got a chuckle about the desktops in Hell. It is absolutely what I fear would be waiting for me.
Will: So. Many. Desktop. Icons.
Matt: But, to play devil’s advocate (*insert rimshot here*), is this really tonal whiplash, or more a horror comedy thing? You can’t keep up the tone of Hell blinders in a book that is as generally light as Nightwing is; even the darkest plots tend to be cut with Dick’s patented optimism and cheer. Does this cross a line for you that takes it away from Shaun of the Dead and instead becomes footage of The Jerk spliced into The Exorcist?
Will: If I had my choice, I’d simply cut the blinder bit from the beginning — Hell is great for workplace comedy (see, e.g., Your Pretty Face Is Going to Hell), and I’m fine with that as a concept. I just want more consistency than what we had here. Either Hell is a place of unfathomable suffering or an unending stream of boner pill spam. Let’s try to stay in a lane here, people.
Matt: Fair. However, now that you’ve read Underworld Unleashed, which you hadn’t the last time we covered Nightwing, you have to admit this is exactly how you beat Neron. This guy, and I use that term loosely, loves a deal, and loves a contract, and you beat him by sticking to the letter of the law.
Will: My inherent need to question why a demon needs a temporary court order aside, it’s at least a fun concept — that basically you can tie the devil down with red tape and process and maybe beat him.
Matt: And the Jezebel Jet thing needs to pay off. Why make her the mother if that wasn’t going to matter? You could have any random dead person be the mother. Pick a dead supervillain? Yeah, she’s in Hell, and yeah, Neron is going to use her to try to bait Olivia into Hell or something. Either that or it’s too cute by half. Which I’m not saying Taylor hasn’t done, but I hope it’s more than that.
Will: I was trying to remember where we’d read/seen/met the Jezebel Jet character previously, and some quick googling shows me it was in that Grant Morrison issue of Batman with the comic art exhibition. So meta. But who killed her off?
Matt: Morrison as well. She’s a major villain throughout their run, although you don’t find out she’s part of the villain conspiracy until “Batman R.I.P.”
Will: I guess I asked for that spoiler, huh? I’m going to forget it by the time we get to that story.
Bat-miscellany
- This week on the podcast tracks the evolution of Barbara Gordon from Batgirl to Oracle.
- World’s Finest has a mention of the oft-forgotten financier and mentor to the Teen Titans in the ’70s, Mr. Jupiter, the richest and thus most trustworthy man in the world. Want to know more? Check out this episode of Teen Titans Wasteland. It’s worth it.
- Looks like Batman will be at least including its legacy numbering with issue #900. The march to #1,000 begins!
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.
