Itâs the final stand against Newmazo. But how can Batman, Superman and the combined might of the heroes of Earth stand against an android both with all their powers and a brilliant mind? Find out in Batman/Superman: Worldâs Finest #17, written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Steve Wands.
Dick Grayson âwakes upâ in Arkham Asylum, imprisoned for a crime he canât remember. As he tries to remember what brought him here, his journey into the darkness gets deeper. Knight Terrors: Nightwing #1, is written by Becky Cloonan and Michael W. Conrad, drawn by Daniele Di Nicuolo, colored by Adriano Lucas and lettered by Wes Abbott.
Catwoman has failed Gotham, and crime is worse than ever. Her own sister wants her dead. Joker is running rampant. And only by helping a new vigilante can Selina hope to save the city. That vigilante: Batman. Knight Terrors: Catwoman #1 is written by Tini Howard, drawn by Leila Leiz, colored by Marissa Louise and lettered by Becca Carey.
Will Nevin: How do you think Mark Waid got out of doing a Knight Terrors book? Just called the office and said, âNahâ?
Matt Lazorwitz: Yow want the serious answer or the funny answer?
Will: Why not both?
Matt: Serious answer: The book is set in the past, so he probably argued that, since he had to do a crossover in Shazam!
Funny answer: There is a cadre of â90s writers who always seem to get work at the Big Two. I have long posited there was an incident at one of the Marvel/DC softball games they used to do, and these guys covered it up for corporate. Now they get what they want to not spill the beans. Itâs the only way to explain Scott Lobdellâs long run on Red Hood comics, for instance.
Worldâs Finest
Matt: The robot revolt has ended. The good guys win. This book remains some blend of Silver Age storytelling and a modern aesthetic. You donât have any doubt in your mind that the good guys are going to triumph, and the plots are big and kind of silly. But between Moraâs art and Waid grounding a lot of what is going on in character, it doesnât have that feeling of a Silver Age trifle entirely.
Will: Itâs a loud, loud book, but at the same time, it feels like it has some substance to it. I donât read it on the same level as someone like you with an inexhaustible knowledge of the fleeting-est of characters, but itâs still enjoyable. I am, though, looking forward to the next arc, which, judging by the teaser, seems a bit more accessible.
Matt: That is definitely the challenge of a book like this: find the balance so you can get a deep-lore DC nerd like me excited by a two-page spread of âName the Androidâ while still maintaining the interest of more casual fans of DC canon.
Will: How many names did you get there, buddy boy?
Matt: The only ones I couldnât name were the blue guy on the far right and the green one on the lower far left. Iâm glad that Waid remembered that Shaggy Man is a robot sasquatch and not just a sasquatch sasquatch, by the way.
By bringing the story around to Batman having to solve the mystery, Superman having to hold the line and Metamorpho getting to deliver the final blow against Newmazo, we get story beats that balance out the cast. No one hero could have done it on their own, and thatâs whatâs important in a team-up, especially one involving Superman; you never want to read one of these stories and get to the end and ask why anyone else needed to be there when Superman could have done it all himself.
Will: Yeah, you donât want Batman metaphorically (or maybe even literally) playing on his phone while the big, strong Supes takes care of all the problems. But you also have to balance that with â and this seems to be an issue with most Justice League stories â the plot having such high stakes that every story is a global existential crisis. We had that here, but the world-eating nature seemed to be mostly confined to the superhero community at least.
Matt: You also donât want the opposite problem, which is famously an issue in the first season of Justice League, where Superman is written as somewhat underpowered so everyone else needs to get a lick in. Itâs a very tricky line to toe, and Waid does it.
I also was happy to see that the story addresses the Bruce Wayne headline that Jimmy was so gung ho to write back in the first issue of the arc. Thatâs the kind of thing that could have easily just been ignored, since we all knew the legal case against Bruce was over, but itâs a good character beat for everyone involved to have.
Will: Fun thing about the legal case. Bruce might have some kind of wrongful arrest claim against the GCPD (doubtful), but he canât sue officers for libel (protected by privilege), and Jimmyâs fears were similarly unfounded; you can report all day long the fact Wayne was arrested, and you can also muse in the paper as to his possible motives (as clearly stated opinion is protected speech under libel law). This concludes your media law lesson for the day.
Matt: And while that is both accurate and informative, as Jimmy says, âThat doesnât necessarily stop billionaires.â As any look at the press around a certain orange tinted ex-president will tell you.
Will: And thatâs why we need stronger laws, including federal legislation, against strategic lawsuits against public participation (SLAPP). OK, now Iâm really done.
Matt: BatChat: Come for the Batman, stay for the law lessons. But not legal advice. None of this represents legal advice.
Nightwing
Matt: So far, more than any other tie-in weâve read for this event for this column, and nearly any other chapter I have read outside of it, this Nightwing story seems to embrace nightmare logic, and I say this as someone who has been having insomnia and some weird-ass dreams this week. Only in a nightmare story can you get away with some of the strangeness that we get here, give no explanation, and I will just roll with it. I donât think it pushes it to a breaking point, which is still possible, but it does embrace some serious weird.
Will: And, you know what, I want weird from this event. We havenât been hitting all of the books (Thank god for that), but the Batman and, perhaps to some extent as weâll soon get to, Catwoman stories seem so blah when you can literally do anything with these characters and stories so long as it falls within the central premise of the event. Bring on the Professor Pyg orderlies, Matt! Have a wall or two melt! Give Dick that same nightmare that I have in which Iâm on the run from some horrible crime! Weâll see how you like it, fella!
Matt: Add in a boneless Scarecrow under his bed and GCPD officers with animal heads and you have some pure nightmare fuel. You hit a nail on the head when you mention your own nightmares. Thatâs the other thing this captures; it feels like a nightmare we all could have. Being imprisoned, not remembering what you did? That is actually a really grounded concept. More so than a trip through the graveyard of your mind while talking to a nightmare monster for sure, or even Jokerâs humdrum life or Catwomanâs blended timeline.
Will: And those last two can be Twilight Zone-esque nightmares so long as they have some dark twist to the stories, but youâre right in that this story does feel more authentically like a nightmare. If nothing else, we have at least a little variety in these stories. Do I get credit for trying to say something good about this event?
Matt: You absolutely do. Even the worst event comics usually have one tie-in that rises above the event.
The art for this issue also suits the nightmare nature of it. Daniele Di Nicuolo isnât fully outside the realm of what weâd see in your average superhero comic, but his style is a little elongated, a little off center. Iâm sure someone like Dan Mora could do an excellent nightmare sequence, but an artist whose style isnât hyper-realistic has an advantage in a story like this.
Will: Iâd read just about anything Dan Mora did. Boring nightmares included.
Matt: Oh, hard same. Iâm hoping next issue, Di Nicuolo really gets to cut loose. With the last page reveal of a seriously cyborged-up Barbara Gordon and again that truly creepy seemingly boneless Scarecrow, I can see the nightmare getting deeper and wilder. And Dickâs guilt over what seems to be the crime that got him sent to Arkham might start weighing on him if he starts buying into this reality. This seems to be a lucid dream right now, where Dick knows heâs dreaming. But can he keep that up?
Catwoman
Matt: This crossover, like the one for Joker, is written by the regular series writer, so that means Iâm looking at it a little differently. This to me has to say something about not just the character, but the run happening around it, because I feel like the writer would be wasting their time otherwise. And here, I think Tini Howard is showing that Selina is not quite as confident in her plans to take over Gothamâs underworld as she seems on the surface.
Will: You mentioned the shifting timeline earlier â when I first read this, I was incredibly confused, *but* if weâre seeing a story thatâs set in the future, that makes more sense. I was like, âWait, Catwoman is already the kingpin of Gotham? Huh?â
Matt: Yes, I think this is a story where time isnât right. Itâs why weâre after the events of âGotham Warâ (or what Selina fears will be the aftermath of that story) but itâs a âYear Oneâ era Batman and a Maggie using the Sister Zero identity she used when she had a mental break in the pre-Flashpoint era. Itâs another hallmark of dream logic, where you can be having a fight with your spouse/partner who you met when you were 25 while still having that college exam you never went to the class for. Itâs off-putting, which works for these kinds of dream stories, but itâs not quite as weird as what we saw in Nightwing.
Will: You know, I donât dream about partners. Family, yes. Partners, no. (The more you know about Will.) And my version of the class one is that I have to perform in a play I havenât rehearsed for ⌠and sometimes that one is Iâm actually in two plays, and we go back to do the one Iâm less comfortable with. (Again, the more you know about Will.) This story definitely means more if youâve got that knowledge of Catwoman going in, but I think for me, the promise is in the second half of the story. Selina is convinced she can teach a young Batman everything he needs to know. How is she going to tragically screw that up?
Matt: Oh, there is potential there. And in the fact that we havenât actually seen Jokerâs face. I would not be surprised if the Joker we see is Bruce himself. Not in a Batman Who Laughs way, where itâs Batman with a Joker bent, but in a Bruce was the Joker all along, so he is both the angel and the devil for Selina. Again, dream logic.
By the way, the dream for me is always I forgot to officially drop a history class, and the exam is that afternoon. Itâs always history, and I donât know why. That and the recurring dream where I am stuck in some building during a zombie apocalypse or some similar scenario, know no one there, and just sort of am at ends and can do nothing about any of it (The more you know about Matt).
Will: One thing I wanted to say about the visuals here was that I found them to be ⌠busy. I donât know if thatâs the right word, but everything seemed to be a little chaotic, a little messy when it came to the layouts and panels sort of bleeding over into other panels. And maybe thatâs the point (again, nightmares and all), but it was too much.
Matt: I agree. I definitely think the art style was chosen because of the nightmare nature of the story, but this one pushed it to a point where there was stuff going on with the snakes that made me wonder if they were a flourish and just sort of something in Selinaâs nightmare or if they were diegetic to the characters around her as well. I know that word is usually used for sound, but I think it actually applies pretty well to hallucinations and nightmares in a story: Are they part of the story or just in the mind, or the mind within the mind here.
Will: And do the snakes serve some kind of story/thematic purpose? Does Selina eventually tempt Bruce to a life of crime? Thatâd be an interesting way to screw everything up.
Matt: I think we have to wait and see on that one. But as opposed to the worst of these kinds of crossovers, even if it didnât work 100%, this at least has interesting ideas that have us asking questions. Nothing could be worse than just getting to the end of Part 1 and just not caring what happens in Part 2.
Will: As you have said on more than one occasion for the show, the worst kind of story is a boring one. This? Not that.
Bat-miscellany
- This week on the podcast, we finish up the original Batman #1 with the first appearance of Catwoman and two other stories of the Feline Fatale.
- I saw a leak on Twitter today of a new series debuting in October: Justice League vs. Godzilla vs. Kong. This comic will be covered somewhere on ComicsXF, whether here or in its own review. Because that might be peak comics right there.
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.
