The grand opening of Orgham Place holds something sinister, and the Bat Family must try to stop it. But the Orghams have plans within plans that even Batman may not be able to stop. The lead story in Detective Comics #1,072 is written by Ram V, penciled by Ivan Reis and Stefano Raffaele, inked by Danny Miki and Raffaele, colored by Brad Anderson and Lee Loughridge, and lettered by Ariana Maher. In the backup, the youth of Arzen Orgham begins to unfold. Written by Dan Watters, drawn by Raffaele, colored by Loughridge and lettered by Steve Wands.
Nightwing has two hours with godlike powers. What will he do with them? And what might he have to do to keep them? Nightwing #104 is written by Tom Taylor, drawn by Travis Moore, colored by Adriano Lucas and lettered by Wes Abbott.
Robin and Batwoman try to find the answers to the Chaos Monster saying Kate is a child murderer, and the path leads right through Timâs boyfriend, Bernard. Tim Drake: Robin #9 is written by Meghan Fitzmartin, drawn by Nikola ÄiĹžmeĹĄija, colored by Lee Loughridge and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
Will Nevin: Whelp, we took two light weeks and smushed âem together into one. Whereâs that unending stream of Bat books when you need them, Matt?
Matt Lazorwitz: Five Wednesday month, my dude. And have no fear, with the âGotham Warâ (formerly âShowdownâ) starting in September? Weâll have Bats by the bucketful again soon enough.
Rising and Falling Action
Matt: Kudos to Ram V! This is a master class in how to craft what is pretty much an all action issue that still finds a way to explore the characters and not feel like just a mindless slugfest.
Will: That sort of storytelling is allowed? Who the hell knew?! This is fresh on my mind because I read it for the show this week, but this really does feel Grant Morrison-esque in how all the pieces have been coming together ever so slowly â and now Ram V is ready to hit us with everything.
Matt: The comparison is absolutely apt. This is the closest weâve seen to something Morrisonian since their epic run. Ram is finding a way to blend these high, mythic concepts with some very grounded stuff: Batmanâs questions about how heâs aging, Jim Gordon finding his place in Gotham, Arzen Orgham finding his place in Gotham and seemingly the world. And here, we see Batman having to fight his way through Orghamâs forces and lieutenants while other members of the family try to figure out what the seeming endgame is. Itâs good, good comics.
Will: This is going to read fabulously in trade and on reread â just as you might say Morrison does. The idea of Batman having to make a choice in the end was an interesting one, and Iâm excited to see where it goes.
Matt: It really is, and especially because it feels like there is care being taken with the artistic choices. Yes, weâve had a few artists over this run, but they feel like they have been curated, rather than the occasional vibe you can get of an editor walking into a bullpen and shouting, âWhoâs got free time to draw this book?â Itâs going to make for a cohesive reading experience, and I can dream of an Absolute Edition of the run. Big, glossy pages giving us some space to look at all the details? Yes, please.
As with another seemingly impossible choice weâll talk about in a minute, it feels like there was no option here: let a bunch of bombs go off and kill civilians, or bring down the tower on himself and save them? For Batman, there is no choice. But since Orgham is in there too, I have a feeling like itâs not that easy. He doesnât strike me as the guy who underestimated Batman’s willingness to sacrifice himself.
Will: Itâs still striking to see Batman pull the lever himself. Usually when he has to act in one of these Kobayashi Maru scenarios, he has to save person A or school bus B or traveling circus C. Here, he literally pulls the tower down â and I wonder if that might be a thing we eventually wind up exploring.
Matt: Or is it part of the Orgham plot? They have surveillance footage of Batman bringing down the building? Itâs taken way less than that to turn Gotham against Batman in the past. And this might play into Gordon and Montoyaâs scene, where she has to start putting whatâs right against what is political and start investigating rather than just towing the line.
Will: I think we can absolutely talk ourselves into a Batman Eternal Jim Gordon-derailed-the-train style story coming up. But ⌠doesnât that seem a little too simplistic for what this book has been?
Matt: If thatâs all that was going on? Yes. But I have a feeling the League is still out there, Vandal Savage is coming, and if we have a hunted Batman having to possibly work with the Orghams to stop the greater threat of Savage? Thereâs definitely potential there.
And letâs welcome Dan Watters onto the backups, picking up from Si Spurrier. I really liked this one. Giving us some insight into the youth of Arzen Orgham, and specifically the aftermath of the death of his father, brings some very interesting parallels between him and Bruce. Not Batman, mind you, but Bruce Wayne specifically. Itâs a really cool angle to play with a character whose personality has only slowly been played out over the course of this whole run.
Will: Again, this thing is going to read so well in trade when readers can meet Arzen and then get his backstory. But watch DC do something dumb and collect it weird.
Matt: Blasphemy! DCâs editorial and collections departments never make mista â Sorry, I couldnât even finish that with a straight face.
Power Doesnât Always Corrupt
Matt: Tom Taylor is playing with one of the oldest chestnuts in comics here: the corruptibility of power. Neron has given Dick Grayson close to Superman-level powers for two hours, and we see Dick go and use them for good. And then heâs given the option to keep them if he does a bad thing
Will: Itâs the olâ âHide and Qâ gambit, Matt! I understood literally nothing else going on, but the ultimate temptation is a story you can really get into â and this one plays out perfectly. We get a little disco-era inspired costume redesign, Nightwing flies around the world doing a bunch of cool metahuman shit and he makes the right choice in the end, sending the bad guy back to Hell in the process. A+ conclusion to a confusing as heck (for me) story.
Matt: Part of me felt like it was a little too easy, that Dick should have struggled with the choice, but after a moment of thinking (0.68 seconds. That is an eternity), I realized this is Dick Grayson. Having him wrestle with whether or not to keep the powers, especially when the cost would be the life of a child? That would be false drama, because you know heâs not going to do it in the end. So having him just say no? Makes perfect sense.
Will: An excellent nod to Dataâs temptation at the hands of the Borg Queen there, sir. Like Data, Iâm sure Dick could see that it wasnât really a choice, that heroes have to maintain some core morality, and giving up the life of a child â even if it might mean saving the world a thousand times over â isnât worth the moral cost. Also, itâs the devil. Heâs going to fuck with you regardless of what you do, so thereâs no business shacking up with him.
Matt: Taylor always works best when heâs tugging the heartstrings or tearing the heart out (figuratively sometimes, literally when it comes to Joker in Injustice). And while the scene between superpowered Nightwing and Superman was a bit cliche, it was beautifully rendered by Travis Moore, and Dickâs thought, as he floats in space and thinks about how seeing the world like that, he doesnât understand how anyone would want to hurt it? Peak Grayson.
Will: Thatâd be a thing that Clark would absolutely do. Great character moment.
Matt: I think this is the end of the stuff in this book that leaves you perplexed. Now that Titans has launched out of it, I think weâll be back to Bludhaven adventures next issue. As a matter of fact, next issue looks to be one of those Taylor/Redondo gimmick issues, like the one that was basically one continuous shot. This issue is going to be a second-person comic, where YOU are Nightwing, with the whole thing âshotâ from his POV. That could be a lot of fun.
Will: I adore stupid gimmicks, Matt. Canât wait.
Character Drama
Matt: With the penultimate issue of this series, I think something really clicked for me. There have been a lot of Tim Drake fans who have not been a fan of this series. Some of them are the usual human garbage who donât want any queerness in their comics, sure, but some just didnât like this book, and this issue crystallized for me what could turn someone off it (not me; I really have enjoyed it).
This is a romance/slice-of-life comic with superhero trappings, rather than a superhero comic that has some character moments. When was the last time you read a superhero comic that spent as much time digging deeply into the emotions of the main character? Or any comic where a romantic relationship was as central and spends as much time being explored, rather than just presented (looking at you, Tom King and Bat/Cat, when it comes to presented romance). If youâre coming into this comic looking for superhero action at the forefront, this isnât the comic for you. And if the book could have been marketed that way, it might have lasted more than 10 issues.
Will: Seems like a real damned shame to bring Batwoman in, develop this conflict and then put the series out to pasture. But thatâs been a thing of late with DCâs neglected little darlings, hasnât it? I certainly see the argument youâre advancing (positing?) â that this represents more of a queer character study than an action book â and my response to all the dum dums complaining is that there are about eight or nine other monthly titles that are ACTION ACTION ACTION and they should go read one of those.
I would (not actually) kill for an ongoing series that did more detective stories with some queer life on the side ⌠say a new Question book. People need to broaden their goddamned horizons for what monthly Big Two comics can do already. It is 20 and 23. Get with it.
Also, I saw that Question reference in this weekâs âTec, so Iâm allowing us to dream.
Matt: I would read the hell out of a new Montoya as the Question book.
This book is at its best when it is doing these character beats. Tim and Kate having to interrogate Timâs boyfriend, Bernard, because of his connection to the story’s villains, the Chaos Monsters, and Kate going a little too bad cop with it. Timâs neighbor coming over, seeing the Robin costume and assuming that Robin is Timâs side piece? Hilarious, but also heartfelt in the end.
Will: That was some teen hi-larity right there, Matt. Refresh the good people on the Chaos Monsters since Urban Legends has been a while ago, and not all of us have the amazing big brain memory that you do.
Matt: The Chaos Monsters werenât terribly well fleshed out, but they are a cult that seems to worship pain and suffering. They took in disenfranchised, hurting teens, and they twisted them to their beliefs. So theyâre awful and make a logical villain for Tim, who is a character who is really searching for himself in the world. These guys look for kids like that and use them as fodder. Iâm glad we came back to the villains from the story that started Timâs journey, but I would have liked for them to be better fleshed out by this second story. I wonder if this was intended to be a longer arc, and the book was canceled so Fitzmartin had to squeeze five or six issues of content into three. It kinda has that feeling to me.
Will: Thereâs too much Batwoman stuff alone to get wrapped up in one issue, much less Tim and Bernard stuff. Weâve got a whole ass murder mystery that we know almost nothing about, but I guess weâre going to get some kind of payoff. Whatever issues there might be in the story pacing, I lay âem squarely at editorialâs door.
Matt: Same, especially since we got little payoff to the other major cliffhanger from last issue: Timâs sidekick of sorts, Sparrow, bleeding out and Detective Williams saying he isnât sure sheâll make it. For someone who is so concerned with others, Tim sort of handwaving that away with, oh, Williams has got it, feels very much like a writer who doesnât have time to deal with something they had to deal with before the hammer dropped.
Bat-miscellany
- Spooky episode of the BatChat pod this week, with three stories of Elseworlds based on classic horror!
- This weekâs DC Pride 2023 has a great Tim Drake/Connor Hawke story from sometimes Bat scribe Nadia Shammas. The whole special is great, but that story is really worth your time if youâre a â90s DC fan. Fun fact learned there: Bruce Wayne has a Letterboxd account.
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.
