Batman has reached the end of his journey across the sands. Now, all that remains is the last temptation by Dr. Hurt and the Demon Barbatos. Batman must step up and face these dark spirits down to rise from this journey reborn. And in Gotham, the Question finds evidence of the truth she has sought, a truth the Orghams do not want to be revealed. The lead story of Detective Comics #1,083 is written by Ram V, drawn by Riccardo Federici and Stefano Raffaele, colored by Lee Loughridge and lettered by Tom Napolitano. In the backup, the experiments and mind games of Dr. Hurt reach a new level, with a strange examination of the not-so-good-doctorâs motivations in a story written by Dan Watters, drawn by Jorge Fornes, colored by Triona Farrell and lettered by Steve Wands.
Lex Luthor has a map that will lead him to an artifact that will give him final victory over Superman. The only problem? To read it is to go insane. So what better way around that than to recruit someone to read it who is already insane? Enter the Joker in Batman/Superman: Worldâs Finest #25, written by Mark Waid, drawn by Steve Pugh, colored by Adriano Lucas and lettered by Steve Wands. And in the backup, we get a prologue to the next arc, where Batman and Superman deal with the only threats more trying than Luthor and Joker: Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite in a story by Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Wands.
A new interpretation of Batmanâs life and history begins here. Witness the death of the Waynes and the misspent youth of Bruce Wayne. What mysteries are going to lead this version of Bruce to take up the mantle of the Bat? Batman: Dark Age #1 is written by Mark Russell, drawn by Michael Allred, colored by Laura Allred and lettered by Dave Sharpe.
Will Nevin: With Mark Waid finishing his 25th issue of Worldâs Finest, I gotta say, Iâm really surprised â I assumed he was in for maybe half of that. Think he makes it to 50?
Matt Lazorwitz: Iâd like to think so. He dropped Shazam! after #9 to go and do DCâs big new event, but heâs sticking with this, so I think heâs going for the long haul. No complaints coming out of me.
I Donât Need to Win. I Just Need to Try.
Matt: This issue? This issue shows a very particular reason why this run has been so good, and one that I feel has flown under the radar when weâve talked about it, because so many of the technical achievements and the storytelling elements are flashier and just keep getting better. Ram V GETS Batman. He gets why Batman works as a character, who he is, and that makes this run, and this particular issue especially, sing.
Will: âPeople shouldnât have to look up for a hero. They should look around.â Thatâs a bit paraphrased because Iâm too lazy to look up the quote, but goddamned if that doesnât nail Batman as a symbol. The stuff about not needing to win, only try? A thousand percent right. God, such perfection.
Matt: I donât need to win, only try gave me goosebumps. Itâs like the bit from the Nolan movies about men learning to pick themselves up, which has become so connected to Batman, but you canât say that because it would get the trombone sting. But that idea is so Batman: He knows heâll never win. Crime wonât go away. But he wonât stop because thatâs who he is.
This is the end of this arc within the greater âGotham Nocturneâ run, and while I know his style wouldnât fit with a more realistic arc, I am going to miss Riccardo Federici. He was absolutely perfect for the surreal vision quest through the desert, for the monstrous Barbatos and the somewhat surreal Dr. Hurt. Seeing him, even for a panel, draw Superman again was nice after his work on Action Comics with Phillip Kennedy Johnson. And again, even though it was one page, Ram V gets Superman, too! Now I want him to do an arc on this new creator spotlight title version of Action Comics that theyâre doing over in the Superman line.
Will: Thatâs a fun little idea, isnât it? Just an all-star roster coming in for a series of larks. Sure would be a fun route for âTec when this is over and done with. And while Iâm not excited for that to be the case, I am excited as hell for (spoiler) Bruce to be back in Gotham.
Matt: And no better way for him to return than dropping in to stop the Orghams from killing Jim Gordon and Montoya. Without Alfred around, and Selina off doing her âNine Livesâ thing in her book, Jim is his biggest anchor in the city.
When Dan and I interviewed Ram V recently, he talked about how, to him, the Question isnât about justice but about truth. And we get that here. While the two might line up in this case, whatâs driving Montoya to take up the mantle again isnât finding justice for this fallen officer, but finding the truth about it. The scene with her and Gordon, when she gives him the evidence and says that while truth might not, justice needs a face? Again, just a golden moment.Â
Buy Detective Comics #1,083 here.
Whoâs on First? But with Murder.
Matt: After the intensity of the previous arc, itâs nice to step back for an issue and just have a lighter little one-off, isnât it?
Will: Lighter if weâre talking a Lex Luthor/Joker team-up that could spell doom for the planet and maybe all of reality, sure.
Matt: Well, lighter when it comes to emotional stakes anyway. This isnât Superman investigating his own failures, like we got in âReturn to Kingdom Come.â This is Lex having a plan to get a mystical artifact that can rewrite reality and needing someone who has lost touch with that reality to read the map. So who better than Joker?
Will: Oh, and the map can make you go nuts if you look at it for too long. If nothing else, that was a fun little twist on the idea of a treasure map. And as far as what Joker wanted when he inevitably double crossed Luthor? That was Waid pulling from âClown at Midnight,â for sure.
Matt: Luthor and Joker are great contrasts as characters. They are perfect examples of Lawful Evil and Chaotic Evil, and are both towering egos. So the back-and-forth between them is usually charming. And as with any story featuring these two, itâs never about will they betray each other. Itâs the question of when and who will do it first.
Will: Youâre right there â the destination was never in question here. But it was a fun ride getting there.
Matt: And thatâs what this issue is: a fun ride. This is, as we say over on the podcast, a trifle. It ties in with Shazam!, which Waid just finished his run on, and just has Joker being a pain to Lex, and Lex having to finally make the right choice and be a secret hero, which is a bitter pill for him to swallow. Because if you are going to do good, whatâs the point if everyone doesnât see it?
Will: Obviously, the only point in doing good â at great expense to yourself, no less â is for everyone to see it and tell you what a wonderful person you are. Luthor must be dying inside.
Matt: We also get the second prologue to the next arc, the first being in the annual that slipped through the review cracks for us. Letâs see how a serious arc, or one with stakes by the feel of it, dealing with Mr. Mxyzptlk and Bat-Mite works. I trust Waid to do it, and Mora to draw the hell out of the madness, but itâs a heavy lift.
Will: Was that a Green Arrow-inspired imp there at the end? Does every hero have a wee little magical counterpart?
Matt: That is part of what weâll be seeing in the next arc, as the story from the annual showed us a get-together of JL fan imps that went horribly wrong. Itâs gonna be another story with some high weird, but this book thrives on that, and grounding it in Batman and Superman as friends and allies, so I am along for the ride.
The Dark Age of Bruce Wayne
Matt: So I have two questions to start here.
1) What are your feelings about Mark Russell?
2) Did you read his Superman: Space Age miniseries?
Will: 1) I think he can be absolutely spectacular. His Flintstones? Crushing. I know that everything he does has a point, even if not everything works.
2) No, I did not.
Before you have a chance to respond to my responses, hereâs a question for you: In a story that is so far (too much of) Bruce Wayneâs wayward, idle youth, do you think thatâs a natural and flowing consequence from Russellâs decision to remove him from the alley the night his parents were killed?
Matt: 75% yes. The other 25% is knowing that his parents were killed by an organized mob that could, and probably will, hunt him down at any moment and kill him, too. If you havenât seen the exact horror of the crime, the trauma is different, and living on borrowed time changes who you are.
I am wrestling with this book, because I think it is a very well written comic from a technical standpoint. But it violates so many of the principles of what a Batman story is for me. And as it is an Elseworlds of sorts, itâs allowed to. But I am going to have to see how Russell can get me around to liking this Bruce Wayne as a character. âCause so far? Heâs an unlikable little shit.
Will: And Alfred is a doormat and an enabler. Thereâs none of the stern, tough-love side of Alfred here, and I guess that has a point? I found a lot of this to be boring or weird, with the latter comprised mostly of the Wayne Enterprises shenanigans that simply wouldnât exist in a real world. But, hey, the art is worth the price of admission (so far).
Matt: I will give Russell some leash here: The man who wrote Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles earned it for that alone. But I didn’t read Superman: Space Age because I have rarely felt Russell as a superhero writer when working with corporate characters. Heâs too much of an iconoclast. And I was expecting him to write Thomas Wayne as a bad guy, like a lot of writers do now because of societal distrust of inherited wealth, but instead heâs just a dreamer who let Black Mask get too close to him and have him offed.
My assumption is the big reveal at the end, of Pariah, ties into Superman: Space Age, since these take place in the same world. If it doesnât, itâs an even weirder pull to use that particularly obscure character. I might have to hop on Infinite and read that to see, but I am also resentful of having to read another series to get whatâs going on here. But maybe thatâs the curmudgeon in me.
Will: Iâm supposed to be the curmudgeonly one, Matt. In general, I think if you want to do a Batman origin story, you better have some damn good and/or fresh ideas, and at least in this first chapter, we didnât get many. Keeping Bruce away from the crime scene is novel, but I didnât get the sense that Russell was doing much with the time period. So I come away from this with the profound feeling of, âWhatâs the point?â
Matt: Russell is the most actively anti-capitalist writer in mainstream comics, so him writing a Batman story seems an odd fit, judging from Billionaire Island or My Bad, his books over at AHOY. Keeping Bruce out of the alley is a result of story here, since the False Face Society would have less than zero reason to keep Bruce alive, so for him to survive, he canât be there, and his new personality springs from that.
I was somewhat surprised how little the police corruption was treated as a problem here. Itâs so matter-of-fact that Bruce just does what he wants and regularly just bribes the cops and it all goes away, unless the mundanity of it is the point. The moment at the end, though, when he finally runs into the one cop who wonât take his bribe, good old Officer Gordon? Nice touch. I hope that Russell plays more with the corrupt systems in Gotham as the series progresses.
Will: I will pistol whip the next (first?) writer who makes Jim Gordon a dirty cop. There are only so many changes I can put up with in an Elseworld. Wayne Enterprises is certainly corrupt â maybe thatâs the point with, as you stated, Russellâs clearly anti-capitalist sentiments.
Matt: I know you block out as much of it as you can, but remember âgo along to get alongâ Jim Gordon from Batman: Earth One? The only corrupt Gordon I have ever read.
Will: Thatâs just an invitation to our Patreon backers to get us to read the other volumes. Gross.
Bat-miscellany
- Patreon backer Josh Weil is back this week, and heâs bringing his favorite with him: Green Arrow, for three more stories of Batman and Green Arrow, including a favorite of Mattâs with another guest hero: The Question.
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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.
