Batman has escaped the prison set up by Zur, who now inhabits Failsafe’s robot body. He must prepare to finally confront his robot double. But various other factions are circling Zur, including Gotham’s new police commissioner, Vandal Savage, and Amanda Waller, whose agenda is only helped by a rogue metahuman. “Dark Prisons” begins in Batman #147, written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Jorge Jimenez, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles. In the backup, Riddler is called before Warden Captio in a story by Zdarsky, drawn by Miguel Mendonca, colored by Eren Angiolini and lettered by Cowles.
Mystery Inc. returns to the site of one of its earliest cases, the mansion of Dr. Jekyll, to help Batman and Dr. Kirk Langstrom find the cure that Jekyll had made for himself to stop his transformation to Mr. Hyde, hoping Langstrom can use it to cure his transformations into Man-Bat. But what happens when the ghost of Hyde reappears and awakens Man-Bat? The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #5 is written by Matthew Cody, drawn by Puste, colored by Carrie Strachan and lettered by Saida Temofonte.
Writer/artist Juni Ba takes his signature style to a new Black Label miniseries focusing on Damian Wayne, his internal life and his struggles to be a part of his father’s world, all while reckoning with being Robin. The Boy Wonder #1 is written and drawn by Ba, colored by Chris O’Halloran and lettered by Aditya Bidikar.
Will Nevin: We’ve now got an August launch for Batman: Caped Crusader over on Prime. How ya feelin’? I could do without the J.J. Abrams producer stink, but other than that, I’m ready to see what this team can do.
Matt Lazorwitz: I am excited to see where it goes, the stills look great and there’s a strong pedigree on the majority of the creatives. The one thing I’m getting itchy about is we still have zero mention of voice talent. I don’t know if that means they’re waiting to drop a big bomb with the announcement at, say, San Diego, which will be right before the premiere, or if they are still recording for some reason and want everything in the can before the reveal.
Will: Would you say as far as the casting goes we’re headed … Into Darkness?
Matt: How are there no easily available GIFs of Riker playing the trombone that I could use to punctuate that joke?
Will: Abrams should feel bad about that movie every day for the rest of his life.
A Savage Issue
Will: Check my math on a little theory I’ve got going, Matt. We’re given a scene in which Vandal Savage assumes/is given/whatever passes for procedure in Gotham the office of commissioner of police. (Which is dumb, but we can discuss that later.) But then later, one of Amanda Waller’s goons talks about how weird it is for Batman to be commissioner. Did we goof in the writing and editing process, or did I miss something? I mean, when you’re running a prison, I guess you’re the de facto police, huh?
Matt: Yes, I noticed that too, and it took me a minute to remember. They are invading Wayne Manor. And in “Gotham War” we saw ol’ Vandal buy Wayne Manor. I think they’re assuming that the owner of Wayne Manor is Batman since they were told this is Batman’s HQ.
Will: That’s an awkward and weird place to go.
Matt. Especially since we haven’t seen Vandal at Wayne Manor in months. If you were buying this issue with no reference, or don’t have my memory (and even if you do, it seems), that is a really confusing bit of dialogue.
Will: But your read absolutely makes sense. Thank goodness all readers have the same encyclopedic memory that you do!
Matt: I found this issue frustrating; possibly more frustrating than a lot of the recent issues. And that is partially because there was stuff in here I really liked! But it’s balanced with not just the usual sturm und drang of this series, but a good portion is set aside to set up the Absolute Power event. Because what this book needed was even more complex machinations and characters.
Will: I can’t take any more events, Matt. I’m so tired. At least this had a *little* character development? As a little tasty treat? Framing Bruce’s doubts as seeds strategically placed by Zur was a nice touch, as were the flashbacks and the inclusion of Tim Drake.
Matt: You know I’m there for any and all Tim Drake content. As I’ve said before, Tim is the flag bearer of the Bat family. When Bruce “died” during the Morrison run, it was Tim who believed in his heart of hearts that Bruce was still alive. It was Tim whose faith helped get Bruce back at the end of Zdarksy’s “Bat-Man of Gotham.” If there is anyone who will be able to figure out where Bruce might be going to avoid Zur, and have faith he is going to get out of wherever he is, it is Tim Drake.
Will: I still can’t get over Police Commissioner Vandal Savage. Like, ugh. I will accept the alternate personality of Batman uploaded into a robot body before I accept a would-be supervillain in charge of the police department. Keep stretching rules like that, and nothing seems to matter. Eat Gotham Arby’s.
Matt: Would-be? This dude was a general in the SS. He has killed more people than most countries with his bare hands. He was the inspiration for the biblical story of Cain! He is about as super villainous as you can get. But I don’t know what the point of this plot thread is. Why do we need this on top of everything Zur is doing? What does it do other than clutter up the story? It’s funny, we have said before we like a wider Gotham, but this doesn’t feel like building out the world. It just feels like adding another toy to the toybox when you’re not playing with all the toys you already have.
Will: I hate it, Matt. I really do. Almost as much as I hate muttonchop Riddler.
Matt: I don’t love muttonchop Riddler, but if there’s one thing I hate, it’s Dr. Captio. Why do we need this character? He doesn’t feel any different than Hugo Strange, or Riddler or Jeremiah Arkham when he’s being written more villainously. I am happy to see writers add new characters to the canon, but not when they don’t serve any new purpose. Ghost-Maker may be frustrating, but he exists in a place no one else does. Captio is just another villainous shrink in a city with more than one already.
Will: This is definitely a Strange-sized hole in the story. What’s Hugo doing these days, anyway?
Matt: We haven’t seen him in quite a while. I think maybe the first issue of The Knight where he was young Bruce’s psychiatrist, and before that in the first arc of the current volume of Harley Quinn, but that was years ago now.
Will: Captio can play Strange, but Strange can’t play Capito. Regardless, I’m with you — use the characters we already got, damnit, especially when your new ones aren’t all that interesting.
Starring Velma Dinkley
Matt: This issue has continuity with both the very first Scooby-Doo Team-Up issue and with one of the absolute classic episodes of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? I love that. And I love that we got classic editor’s notes boxes to point that out! It feels like a real classic.
Will: This was a fun one, wasn’t it? We didn’t get a lot of Hyde stuff, but Velma really got a chance to shine.
Matt: I loved the Velma focus that we got here. The idea of Batman offering her the chance to join him, and her reason to say no is that she can’t do all the physical stuff a Robin would do without losing her glasses is another perfect example of how this book uses Scooby-Doo tropes and makes them work in the Batman story. And I liked how disappointed Batman looked when she turned him down.
Will: That was some genuinely funny stuff! And subverting the Scooby trope of unmasking the bad guy — both in unmasking off page and it not being a bad guy — was also fun.
Matt: I appreciated the art in this issue. This book usually leans into Scooby-Doo designs, with Batman looking rounder and more in line with his animated appearances in the old Scooby-Doo. But here it is the Animated Series design, and I love seeing that. It also means you get the Kirk Langstorm and Man-Bat designs from that show, which are top notch. And the art slowly showing Langstrom unravel before he turns into Man-Bat? Just great.
Will: It really is something that Man-Bat and Mr. Hyde aren’t really the stars of this issue — it’s Velma.
Matt: Puste, the artist, draws a great Velma. Her facial expressions sell a lot of what Matthew Cody is doing with her, and I hope that Puste becomes one of the regular rotation of artists after this issue.
Buy The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #5 here.
Once Upon a Robin
Matt: OK, I am going to be frank here: I loved this book. We recorded an episode of the podcast last night where we discussed Black Label books, and how they often have this sense of poetry to them more than most mainstream DC titles (apologies to the ever poetic Ram V, whose work has that poetry no matter what he’s doing). That poetry doesn’t always work. But here, the storybook/fairytale nature of the narration? It really worked for me.
Will: I think I was waiting for it to eventually wrap and settle into a more conventional approach, so I may have been a little less charitable than it deserved, but I thought for sure it was a beautiful book. I think I could have gone with a little more lightness in the tone to better pair with the art — I mean, take out a beheading or two and this could have been a YA book.
Matt: Juni Ba’s work often juxtaposes his cartoonier style with more serious themes. Monkey Meat is a scathing indictment of late-stage capitalism with a protagonist who is a monkey. And fairy tales are not exactly without their beheadings and horror.
What I really liked about this is that it in no way invalidates Damian’s character as we know him, this arrogant little murder monster, but gives it more context around how Ra’s and Talia al Ghul raised him. We see those moments played out in places, but usually from a third-person perspective. Here it is closer to first person, and it allows for more empathy for Damian.
Will: “Arrogant little murder monster” is a good way to frame him, but I think we both agree that the better Damian stories show a softer, more human side, which I think this story is trying to do. It’s not so much giving Damian cover for what he does or how he feels as it is giving context — and certainly giving us more of a window into his inner life.
Matt: Context is the perfect description of what this story does for Damian. And that inner life we see just helps make Damian a tragic character. Dick giving Babs a peck on the cheek, showing honest affection, is something Damian never felt from Ra’s, and something he doesn’t even see in himself. Can you imagine being a pre-teen and really believing you don’t know how to love someone? I’m not talking romantically, but in any way. That is heartbreaking.
Will: Perhaps if someone had loved Wesley Crusher he could have become a real boy, too. But in all seriousness, that was a touching moment.
Matt: And just to draw it out a little more beyond what you said, this book is gorgeous. I love Ba’s sense of motion. He absolutely was made to draw a Robin story. His Nightwing and Batgirl radiate actual joy on the page. I can’t wait to see what he does with Red Hood and Red Robin over the course of the next issues.
Bat-miscellany
- This week on the BatChat podcast we rank our 400th story. We’re reading some Batman: Black and White, an issue of Legends of the Dark Knight from some favorite creators and a Secret Origins special headlined by Neil Gaiman. Good times.
- Can we get an issue where Tim Drake and Velma team up to form a detective agency? They’re two of my favorite characters in fiction, and they both took years to be made canonically queer. I think they would be great friends.
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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.
