Jim Gordon is trapped in Gotham Central as the Red Hood Gang makes an audacious play. But also in Central is a factor no one expected: the Joker, who has decided to show his old gang, and its new boss, exactly what he can do. âJoker: Year Oneâ concludes in Batman #144, written by Chip Zdarsky, penciled by Giuseppe Camuncoli and Andrea Sorrentino, inked by Stefano Nesi and Sorrentino, colored by Alejandro Sanchez and Dave Stewart, and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Darkseid is ⊠here, and he wants the part of the Anti-Life Equation Gog possesses. Two sets of the Worldâs Finest heroes and Magog stand between them. And the choice that Magog makes will change the world of Earth-22 forever. Batman/Superman: Worldâs Finest #24 is written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Steve Wands.
Catwoman has an old debt to pay off to someone very dangerous: Amanda Waller. Fortunately, Waller has a simple job for Selina to run with the Suicide Squad: just steal an artifact. From Black Adam. OK, maybe not so simple. Catwoman #62 is written by Tini Howard, drawn by Carmine Di Giandomenico, colored by Veronica Gandini and lettered by Lucas Gattoni.
Will Nevin: We talked about this in our last recording, but for the benefit of readers who 1) donât listen to the show (come on, already, give it a shot!) or 2) donât want to wait a couple of weeks to hear it, I think weâve concluded that the Folio Societyâs Batman collection is the first half of a yet-to-be-announced two-part work. And that weâre really and truly begging comics to move beyond Killing Joke.
Matt Lazorwitz: Yeah, the fact that seems to posit that important Batman stories, or stories fundamental to comics and Batman, stopped in 1993 is kind of ridiculous. Also, as we stated, we need more reprints of harder-to-find comics; this is fine as a big, standalone book, but I want more of the weird and wild stuff you just donât find everywhere.
Will: If weâre being honest, they could have reprinted Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told and called it a day. Thatâs more hard-to-find stuff at least.
âJoker Beginsâ Ends
Matt: We reach the end of âJoker: Year Oneâ with what was probably the chapter of this story I enjoyed the most, but itâs still something of a head scratcher to me. What was the purpose of this story? Was it all to get to that final moment in the flashforward where Batman thinks Joker could have killed him all along but didnât? I mean, thatâs an interesting enough idea, but did we need three issues to get there?
Will: Matt, we needed to make the subtext text once again as Joker confesses his love for Batman. We had to. Had to! And Iâm with you on the overall point here. For a story that editorial hyped as *the* Joker origin, this reads more like a Red Hood (no, not that Red Hood) piece, and nothing in this final chapter really felt essential to the Joker character. Shit, even his vengeance against the gang leader/police commissioner (boy is that ever some commentary) that was decades in the making takes place off panel. Strange, strange choices made by all involved here, Matt.
Matt: This chapter worked best for me because it felt almost (but not quite) like a companion to James Tynion IVâs superb Joker series. We have Jim Gordon caught up in the middle of a conflict with the Joker playing with the same pieces in a way that Gordon is unaware of. We said we wanted more of the Gordon stuff from the first two issues, and this delivers that. But as much as I like that, Gordon isnât even a part of the present-day stuff in the rest of the run, so I donât see why we would spend this much time with him. Except maybe Zdarksy just wanted to write a Gordon story?
Will: And we both want to read Gordon stories, Matt! Iâm just going to blame the strangeness on editorial, and maybe Big Daddy Z will spill his guts in a couple of years and confirm as such. And what the heck was up with Sorrentino in this issue? Did he budge an inch off his Batfleck model? I wouldnât be surprised if some of that was traced â it was that similar.
Matt: I honestly want to know why this was the two nesting narratives as well. Other than the two beats we mentioned (Jokerâs confession and Batmanâs realization), and Zdarsky almost issuing an apology for the way he had Bruce treat Jason during âGotham Warâ by saying he loves him like a son, that flashforward served no purpose except to allow Sorrentino to draw this weird future.
Was I the only one who was getting The Dark Knight vibes here? Joker arranges an elaborate, Machievellian Rube Goldberg device within a police station. Thatâs not in itself a bad idea, but it seems to mostly abandon all of the wheels within wheels, Jokers within Jokers stuff of the first two issues and instead is just a normal Joker story.
Will: The less time, attention and thought given to Three Jokers, the better. The story as a whole has felt derivative from the jump, and while it never plodded â only having three issues is a big plus â it never shook the feeling that weâre just wasting our time here. This is by no means bad. For whatever else we can say about it, it is a competently constructed comic. But itâs not great.
Thy Kingdom Come
Matt: This finale shows what you get when you have a creative team who work together seamlessly. Waid ties the themes of this arc directly into the themes of the original Kingdom Come. Moraâs art is still clearly his, but I feel like heâs added a more brutal edge than we have ever seen in the fight with Darkseid and in Magogâs final fall from grace. And Bonvillain colors it lushly, but with darker hues when Darkseid is present, as if heâs sucking the light from the scene itself. Itâs really smartly done all around.
Will: And narratively, it closes the loop, connecting this arc to both Kingdom Come and flashing to a postscript for that seminal work. As I come back to the question that weâve constantly pondered â whether this is essential to Kingdom Come or a needless return to what he and Alex Ross created 25 years ago â I think I land somewhere in the middle. This story doesnât overstay its welcome, never feels too trifle-y and even lands in a good, satisfying place. But I donât think weâll be clamoring for it to be collected with Kingdom Come, either.
Matt: Yes, I think this is by far the best of the Kingdom Come follow-ups (the others being Waidâs own The Kingdom and Alex Ross and Geoff Johnsâ Justice Society of America arc, âThy Kingdom Comeâ). Waid finds a way to balance nostalgia with serious character work. I was concerned trying to humanize Magog, a character created to be a stock example of an EXTREME hero, would just fall flat, but it works here. We see why he does what he does, what pushes him to eventually cross that line again with Joker, and it all feels natural. I donât think I want a follow-up Magog mini, mind you, but I think as a cap to that characterâs story? This works really well.
Will: I think you could count on one hand the number of people in the DC universe whoâd say you canât kill Joker, and it makes every bit of sense that David/Magog would be a hero to the people of Metropolis and the rest of the world for doing so. And that would certainly leave Kingdom Come Batman with a mighty big ax to grind. I donât know if we need that particular chapter or beat to be told, but itâs at least interesting. And I wonder if thatâs whatâs always been in Waidâs head.
Matt: That does appear in Kingdom Come, in a brief flashback. The whole story is told over maybe two pages, and I agree, thatâs the most we want of it. Itâs background, itâs not a story on its own.
I really like the closure we get at the end, not just for Magog, but more for âourâ Superman. From the beginning of this arc, he has had such an ax to grind with his counterpart, and him learning that itâs Superman-22âs belief that he was not needed, that a Superman is always needed, and getting a moment of reconciliation with Magog after delivering a very Superman speech about redemptions and better paths, serves as the emotional core of the arc coming to fruition.
Will: And then the splash with Magog getting redemption? Very uplifting conclusion ⊠although I feel like I need to consult the original text to determine whether Magog can be redeemed. (See what I did there, Matt?)
Trapped between a Wall and a Black Adam Place
Matt: After last monthâs particularly dark issue, itâs nice to swing back to a much lighter story. Just a good olâ heist with a Suicide Squad trying to steal from Black Adam. What could go wrong?
Will: Everything? I would generally not mess with either Black Adam or Amanda Waller, but, hey, Selinaâs gotta do her.
Matt: Catwoman seems like the perfect kind of character for the Squad: clever and willing to do anything to save her own skin; her only interaction with them before this was during âI Am Suicideâ during the Tom King Batman run. I just wish it was during a period when Waller wasnât in her supervillain mode. I donât blame Tini Howard for how quick on the brain bomb Waller was in this story; thatâs just how sheâs being written across the line now, which I am not a fan of.
Will: That was a bizarre conclusion to the story â as readers, we know this arcâs gimmick, but Waller canât be that cavalier when it comes to offing someone like Catwoman. Sheâs a known person in the world! Friends with important people! It would be ⊠suicide ⊠for Waller to push that button. Yet she does because the arcâs gimmick demands that she does.
Matt: There were less contrived ways to get Waller to blow the brain bomb, I suppose, but itâs sadly within character for this current incarnation of Waller.
I like the mix of the supernatural with the mundane in this arc. I think weâve talked about it before, but the supernatural stuff never drowns out the more grounded aspects of Selina running crazy scores, but it adds a flavor to it. Selina meeting up with Bastet, the goddess of cats, who made her DC debut in The Sandman, by the way, is fun. I like that weâre getting a little wild comic magical nonsense to tie in with the nine lives, and I like that Selina just sort of shrugs at meeting a god. When you run in her circles, thatâs just sort of something you have to accept.
Will: Too much of the god stuff, and my head wouldâve been spinning, but itâs kept nice and tight here. Although Iâm certainly confused by the Black Adam stuff. You can steal his powers by taking the thingy?
Matt: The power stealing there was Black Alice; that is her power. She can steal the powers of other mystical characters. The thingy was just a macguffin that Waller wanted to acquire to see if Selina would play nice, which she clearly didnât. By the end, I think this was all a gambit by Waller to see if she could get Catwoman to join her, or at least use her, which by the end it was obvious she couldnât.
Will: I had a bad case of the sleepies when I was trying to read this issue, so Iâm not surprised that was lost on me. Will is also not very smart.
Matt: All in all, this continues to be a fun arc. Iâm curious to see how it all wraps up, and how the stakes can keep escalating, because itâs hard to get higher than these past couple issues.
Will: Coming next month: Selina fights God! (probably)
Bat-miscellany
- This weekâs BatChat podcast takes us into deep space and to the deepest, darkest heart of humanity with three tales of Batman and the New Gods.
- Irredeemable â as both a film adaptation and a new comic series â appears to be stuck in development at Netflix after missing its announced 2023 launch.
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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.
