Gotham is getting stranger. Not only is there a Bat-Man, but now seeming undead Monster Men are rampaging and killing political movers and shakers. Bruce Wayne is in a strange new world, and he has some hard decisions to make if he wants to save his city. The Bat-Man: First Knight #2 is written by Dan Jurgens, drawn by Mike Perkins, colored by Mike Spicer and lettered by Simon Bowland.
Dylan Dog and Batman are in a race against time to save people they love from Jokerâs new strain of toxin. But even with that taken care of, they have another problem. An old enemy of Dylanâs, a particularly nasty serial killer, may be back from the dead. And the only way to find out is to take a trip to Hell with John Constantine and Etrigan. Batman/Dylan Dog #2 is written by Roberto Recchioni, drawn by Gigi Cavenago and Werther DellâEdera, colored by Cavenago and Giovanna Niro and lettered by Pat Brosseau.
Catwoman has made some enemies who can find her anywhere. And the best way she can think of to stop them is to blind them. Not literally, but by taking out the satellite theyâre using to find her. But that would require a trip to space. So why not steal a low-orbit space plane and take a little trip? Catwoman #64 is written by Tini Howard, drawn by Carmine Di Giandomenico, colored by Veronica Gandini and lettered by Lucas Gattoni.
Will Nevin: Itâs the end of a legendary era, Matt: The trailer for the final Kevin Conroy Batman project, Justice League: Crisis on Infinite Earths Part 3, has dropped. What a man. What a voice.
Matt Lazorwitz: Iâve been getting the Blu-rays for the Crisis trilogy, but have been holding off watching them till I had all three to marathon them. But now? I might wait a little longer so itâs not all over.
You know, if Paul Diniâs Dark Night counts as something we can cover for the podcast, Conroyâs short from DC Pride a couple years ago probably counts, too.
Will: Hell yes, it does.
First Knight
Will: Weâre starting out with a couple of real winners this week, huh? I canât find a single thing to gripe about with this book â two issues in, and itâs a great retelling of the âMonster Menâ story in addition to reframing Batman in a pulp noir setting. And it continues to handle pre-World War II antisemitism in just such a great way. I love Batman going out of his way to protect a synagogue â and pointedly reminding a complaining gangster pimp of his Jewish heritage to get that done. The setting and the trappings may be different, but this is a book that gets what Batman is supposed to be.
Matt: Itâs so easy to talk about what doesnât work in a comic, and to really poke holes in it. When a book is tightly plotted, beautifully drawn and captures the essence of a character, itâs a whole lot harder to come up with more to say than what you just did. This is a Bruce who is very much alone, since Jurgens is really only working with characters from the first few Batman stories. We donât have Alfred or Robin, so weâre seeing him build a life and a cast in Gotham with Jim, Julie Madison and Rabbi Cohen.
Will: I am so goddamned dumb for not remembering why Alfredâs not in this. He doesnât come along in the canon until later!
Matt: Yup, as much as weâre used to Jim always being there, he didnât pop up until 1943, four full years into Batman as a character.
I am curious about how the mystery here is going to turn out. The warden at Blackgate is so obviously the chief suspect in all of this, I feel like it would be a swerve that might not work if someone else comes out of the woodwork. Vuthe doesnât seem like Hugo Strange, and Monster Men usually mean Hugo Strange. Itâs keeping me on my toes!
Will: It feels like we could be OK either way, you know? Strange would be satisfying, but a fun twist works, too.
Matt: Now hereâs the big question: How do you take the last page? Bat-Man specifically tells Rabbi Cohen using a gun would betray the death of his parents. But Jim tells him he will need a gun to deal with the Monster Men, and he has repeatedly had the crap beaten out of him by them at this point. The last page seems to indicate heâs making a decision, but being a last-page cliffhanger, that might be reversed at the beginning of issue #3. I stand firmly in the âBatman shouldnât use gunsâ camp, even knowing he did in this era. And you tend toward that stance as well. What do you think weâre going to get next issue on that point?
Will: This Bat-Man might reckon that the undead are different, and he at least knows he needs to expand his arsenal since we see him going to brass knuckles on multiple occasions. I trust Jurgens to handle this with the care and attention it deserves, especially after that line in the conversation with Rabbi Cohen. And what about Bruce unmasking to him? This book is just stuffed with great character moments.
Matt: I hope that we get another story in this world after this. And while Jurgens seems to be sticking with those very early characters, if thereâs one character from later in the mythos Iâd like to see for a sequel? Kate Kane. Bruceâs cousin, Jewish on her motherâs side and a lesbian in the 1940s? There is a ton of potential for that character in this setting, especially with everything Jurgens has been setting up.
Will: Green light that book now, you DC editorial COWARDS.
Buy The Bat-Man: First Knight #2 here.
Dylan Dog Goes to Hell
Will: I was not as hot on this as you were coming in, mostly because I didnât have much familiarity with our imported friend here. But there are a couple of undeniable things now that weâre in the second issue. First, this is not a story so much about Dylan Dog as it is him interacting with Batman and the slightly extended DC Universe. Second, this is a goddamned beautiful book.
Matt: The descent into Hell, and the scenes in there, are truly excellent. Werther DellâEdera draws a great Etrigan. And I like that Dylan and John Constantine look different. These are two characters in the very same mold, and it would be easy for an artist to be lazy and draw them looking very similar, but if you swapped their clothes, you would obviously be able to tell that they were different characters even then.
Will: And they have a great interplay between them storywise. I was worried when Constantine started to throw around the term âpolitical correctness,â but Dylan rightly pushed back and called it hypocritical bullshit. That had to be a difficult thing to pull off in translation, and I thought it came out well.
Matt: This book does a great job of balancing the serious tone with the comedy. The moments of comedy (Dylan having arrested John for public indecency and their awkward reunion) donât undercut the serious stakes of a possibly resurrected serial killer who might be allying with Joker, but also keep everything from being too dire. I like that.
Will: And the plot just makes sense. Weâre worried that Joker brought back a soul from Hell, so we go down there to talk to the guys he might have hung out with. Finally a detective story, Matt. Hallelujah.
Matt: And one with a heart! The first part of this issue is Batman and Dylan working to save people they care about, and because of that we both get a look at who they really are, but there isnât a ton of that âI work aloneâ stuff we get from Batman, because he knows this is as important to Dylan as it is to him. And that moment with the medium, where she says, âI met your parents, and they’re very proud of you.â That was a good moment after years of writers casting doubt on whether the Waynes would indeed be proud of Bruce.
Will: Youâre glossing over an important part there, Matt: We got a Joker-ized version of Groucho Marx. Did you ever think youâd see that? Wild.
Matt: Only in my wildest imaginings. I am glad this book is turning out to be as fun as I hoped it would be.
Ground Control to Major Selina
Matt: We have four more parts of âNine Livesâ left, and while itâs still enjoyable enough, 10 issues is a lot of real estate to fill, and Iâm a little worried weâre running out of steam here. How much more wild can these capers get?
Will: Classic fuckinâ âFast and the Furiousâ problem here â we started out stealing DVD players, and now weâre in space.
Matt: A very apt comparison.This issue was certainly pretty, and I liked the pieces of it, but it really doesnât forward the character arc that weâve been seeing for Selina, and the villains arenât all that interesting. Some generic army guys and the Demolition Team, who are DCâs attempt to recreate Marvelâs similarly blue collar Wrecking Crew. So much of Big Two superhero comics is stealing an idea and repurposing it, but thereâs a reason the Demolition Team appeared and then sort of didnât for years. A few writers have tried to use them to good effect the past few years, and they never really work for me, because they still donât have anything making the different members distinct.
Will: Yeah, those guys didnât really do it for me. But I also donât know what I would have done to make the story better? Catwoman stealing a low-orbit space plane is some cool shit, for sure. But what do we really do after that? Superman made his cameo a couple of issues back, so I feel like itâs a little bit of writing yourself into a corner.
Matt: We also have been getting little glimpses of Gotham throughout this run, and we donât get any of that here, no connection to the other supporting characters. We do get time with this Catwoman Revenge Squad, but they also arenât that interesting. We have a second-rate Catwoman, a second-rate Lex Luthor and Flamingo, who was literally created to be a personality-less murder machine.
I feel like this issue was really an exercise in âWouldnât it be cool to see Catwoman in space?â While it was by no means bad, it needed more of a hook than that, because it felt like it was just moving some pieces into place and getting Selina down to one life left. Place setting for the final act of the story.
Will: To Tini Howardâs credit, this was better than the âWouldnât it be cool to see Batman in space?â we got a couple of months ago. And we got a better resolution than Batman somehow surviving reentry.
Matt: Yeah. I think there is still potential for this ending to be a really big and exciting story, maybe by building these villains a little more and getting Selina back to Gotham, so we have more than Selina talking to herself and narrating for an issue. And the fact that she canât cheat death again, when sheâs gotten used to it? Definite story potential there.
Will: This arc is still really imaginative. They just canât all be winners, I reckon.
Bat-miscellany
- Stephanie Brown takes center stage in this weekâs BatChat podcast, with three stories featuring each of her heroic alter egos: Spoiler, Robin and Batgirl.
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Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. 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 creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
