The rubicon has been crossed. Batman has pushed his family away harder than ever before, and now he must face off with them as well as Catwoman’s criminal empire. And Vandal Savage’s plans become clearer in Batman #138, written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Jorge Jimenez, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
An Azmer demon now in his head, Batman is fighting with everything he has to keep in control of himself. Unfortunately, that isn’t going so well, as he is committing arson and assault. As the GCPD closes in, can an unlikely ally save the Dark Knight? The lead story in Detective Comics #1,074 is written by Ram V, drawn by Dustin Nguyen, colored by John Kalisz and lettered by Ariana Maher. In the backup, the Ten-Eyed Man is hungry and wants some pizza. Nothing can go wrong here, right? Written by Dan Watters, drawn by Hayden Sherman, colored by Triona Farrell and lettered by Steve Wands.
Peacemaker and Red Bee are at the end of their adventure, and the Brain is more pissed than ever. Can our heroes defeat the Brain in Chemo’s body? Who will live, and who will die? Will anyone come to Peacemaker’s birthday party? Peacemaker Tries Hard #6 is written by Kyle Starks, drawn by Steve Pugh, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Becca Carey.
Matt Lazorwitz: It’s been a couple weeks, but we’re back!
Will Nevin: It’s good to be back, Matt! This’ll feel like getting back on the ol’ Bat bike, I’m sure.
The Descent
Matt: Sooooo … I don’t know what to do with this. At all. Batman has become a monster, Catwoman is a dupe, and what initially was a story about the conflicting philosophies of the two characters is quickly turning into a story about a supervillain playing all sides against the middle to obtain immortality. I rarely have your complaint about Batman stories not being grounded enough, as I have a higher tolerance for the wilder aspects of Bat history, but this feels like it’s trying to be both grounded and weird, which can work (as we’ll talk about in a minute), but it doesn’t feel like it is here.
Will: And Batman is as close to the Frank Miller version as we’ve seen him while writing this column. Not only does he basically inflict psychological torture on Jason, but he also refers to the family as “soldiers” — something you and I both dislike. This final chapter we’re catching up on in Batman, man, Matt, it crawls into a goddamned black pit of despair. But on a lighter note, Scandal Savage! Daughter of Vandal Savage. Aunt to Randall Savage. (Oh, yeah.)
Matt: Oh, I am all about seeing Scandal, a phenomenal character from Gail Simone’s Secret Six and one of the few canonically openly polyamorous characters in comics. This is a character who is awesome; she’s got a little bit of that Talia thing, with the conflicted relationship with her father, but has been usually presented as much more independent. We do see some hints of that here, and I have a feeling she might side with Selina before this is all done, but at least she has a logical arc here.
Will: Is she also immortal, or does that sort of thing skip a generation?
Matt: I don’t think she’s quite as immortal as her father, but she is extra durable and long lived. She’s taken bullets that would kill a normal person, and she’s healed up rapidly (not Wolverine healing from one panel to the next rapid, but way faster than normal), and while we don’t know how old she is, she is much older than she appears.
The thing with Jason makes me honestly angry. Is there a way, short of mind control of some kind (whether from Zur-en-Arrh or some other outside influence) that he can be redeemed after doing that? Dick Grayson lost his temper and called him a monster. Dick Grayson, the most compassionate person in the DC universe.
Will: We’ve been struggling with that question from the beginning of this story, whether there was some sort of redemption for Batman. And unless it truly is — that his robotic hand, as you’ve speculated, is some sort of malevolent force dictating his actions — I don’t think there’s an escape hatch. What he did to Jason is vile, and if any other hero did it, they would absolutely be brought in. DC keeps talking about this as a story with consequences, and I gotta say, I’m nervous about what they’re going to be.
Matt: I think Batman may have crossed what I like to call the “Hank Pym Horizon,” where a superhero does something so terrible that it defines his character moving forward. It’s hard for that to happen with a character as long lived and varied as Batman, but they seem to be pushing it. Even if you could find some way to excuse what he did to Jason, and you’d have to do the same tortured gymnastics he does to get to that point and believe them, his abandoning Damian, leaving his 13-year-old son crying in the rain? That’s awful. This kid has stuck by his side when everyone else has left, and he just leaves him there. That final moment on that page, of Tim embracing Damian and saying, “We’ll help our dad,” should have hit me harder. But we’re at a point where I don’t know why they would want to.
Will: I don’t know what would irk me more: Batman coming out the other side of this as a morally diminished character or getting a hand-wavy “Secret Empire”-style ending (loljk wasn’t *your* Batman the whole time!). Both are frustrating in their own way — the former for all the reasons we’ve discussed and the latter for making the whole mess a frustrating waste of time.
Matt: The only plus I can say here is that the art is, as ever, gorgeous. I love Jimenez’s Vandal Savage, and his fight choreography is second to none in modern superhero comics.
Will: Almost unfair to compare his work with what we got in Catwoman. He really is one of the best currently working the Big Two capes-n-tights beat.
Matt: And, just as another aside, the Red Hood miniseries? That is completely superfluous, huh? Flashbacks to Jason’s earlier involvement with Selina and now him hunting Scarecrow, I assume. With what was done to him in this issue, I feel like a Red Hood tie-in could have served a much stronger story beat in this event.
Will: Losing a would-be henchman pales to having your brain scrambled, but it’s an awfully big coincidence for Jason’s Bat-bestowed mental block being fear. Maybe Batman will tie into that story? I sure hope it will. Otherwise, you’re right — it’s a big head scratcher.
The Struggle
Matt: We pull back from a lot of the high weird of the Orghams this issue to something a little more intimate and grounded, or at least as grounded as a story about a mind-controlling demon can be. This story is focusing on Batman wrestling with the Azmer in his mind, fighting it with his best memories, and a cop who has been tasked by Montoya to find Batman. We get bits of the bigger picture going on, but that is all through the lens of these two stories.
Will: And not just any cop! A nice pull from Secret Files to bring back an officer who spent years institutionalized after a bad hit of fear toxin. That was a solid short, and I like the callback here with an officer stuck between doing his job (bringing in Bats) and having a personal appreciation for what Batman has done. Have you seen The Swimmer?
Matt: I have not. Please continue, as I am now curious.
Will: Detective Fielding asks his partner the same question, and I was curious as to whether it was an actual movie, and, indeed, it is. I won’t spoil it (kinda regretting Wikipedia spoiling it for me) but it involves a middle-aged man backyard party surfing and reliving memories and trauma as he it makes it from one end of the neighborhood to another. Seems rather appropriate here, doesn’t it?
Matt: It does. I am going to have to check that out.
It’s fascinating to compare this issue to the new issue of Batman. Here we have a Bruce who is desperately fighting to maintain his grip on himself, and using his love of his family, his father and Dick, to try to hang on. The character in Batman seems to have simply surrendered to the bleakness this one is fighting. And I guess that takes place after this story, since Vandal Savage, when flashing back, has a flashback to last issue there. But how you can marry these two books into one continuity makes my head spin.
Will: I think the answer here is to be grateful Ram V’s opus wasn’t sucked into “Gotham War.” Did you happen to see what script he teased the other day on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter?
Matt: Oh, I did not!
Will: I don’t know what book it was — maybe ’Tec, maybe something else — but Page 1, Panel 1 featured … the Question!
Matt: Whoo-hoo! I feel like we got some hints of that in the backup here, with Ten-Eyed Man talking to Montoya. I love how the backups and the main stories enhance and support each other.
Will: Oh that was a nice, tight little story.
Matt: The little corner of the Bat Universe that Ram V and Dan Watters have been building is my favorite version of Gotham we’ve had in years.
There are two more important points to bring up from this issue: Barbatos saving Batman and what Ten-Eyed Man saw, or wasn’t seeing. I’m very interested to see how Batman is going to deal with the ally he has being the demon who has haunted him and Gotham for centuries. I love the wolf and Bat imagery, and Dustin Nguyen absolutely slays in the way he draws those creatures in Bruce’s tortured mind.
Will: And how does Fielding possibly linking the Wayne murders with what Batman is doing play into the rest of the story? Is he, like Barbatos, going to become another unexpected ally? Plenty of reasons to stay tuned to this one.
The Party
Matt: Damn you, Kyle Starks! I can think of very few of your books where we get to the end and I don’t wind up tearing up at least a little bit and I thought I was gonna make it this time, but halfway through this issue, I may or may not have gotten some dust in my eye as Peacemaker and Red Bee have their final conversation.
Will: It is impossible for Starks to write a story that doesn’t make you cry. That’s been proven. This one … ouch, it hurts. Both in that scene and when Peacemaker is sharing a beer back at the hive and thinking about how his father is such a bastard and that the bees had it so much better. Shit, man. Right in the feelings.
Matt: And the very end, while still comedic? It’s nice to see everyone show up for his birthday party! Amanda Waller’s little speech of back-handed compliments was hilarious, and I feel like Chris has learned enough there to realize that’s what they are. Character growth! I don’t know if we’ll see another story with this version of Peacemaker, but I want one.
Will: It was really the perfect finish — we had the emotional moments we didn’t have time for in the previous issue, we have that growth and, also, he gets to be happy. I don’t know if this is *officially* in the same universe as the television show, but I’m reading it that way, and this character has been through the shit, Matt. Just heaps and heaps of it. He’s still not perfect, but as Red Bee noted, he’s trying, goddamnit. And that should count for something. He deserves a little happiness. As a treat.
Matt: And Dancestroke, the teenage clone of Deathstroke, is the only tolerable non-villainous version of that character ever. I want a Peacemaker/Dancestroke/Vigilante team-up so badly.
Bat-miscellany
- This week’s BatChat podcast digs into the New 52 origins of Nightwing, Red Hood and Red Robin. They are … not good.
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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.
