The battle with Zur is over. And now it is time for Batman to pick up the pieces. He has to deal with the teenage clone of Bruce Wayne that Zur created, sure, but Zur left a lot of pieces in place that he has to look at. A new era begins here. Or does an old era return? Batman #149 is written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Michele Bandini and Steve Lieber, colored by Nick Filardi and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Jimmy Olsen has become the champion of Earth, and he must fight the Mite Killer to save the 3rd Dimension. Can Superman and Batman escape the 6th Dimension with the aid of Bat-Mite in time to help Jimmy? Batman/Superman: Worldās Finest #28 is written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora and Travis Mercer, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Steve Wands.
What looks like a fun mystery scavenger hunt turns out to be something else, as the kids of Mystery Inc. wind up locked up in jail after being arrested by Batman. What is going on, and what villain has caused this schism between these crime fighters? The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #6 is written by Amanda Deibert, drawn by Dario Brizuela, colored by Franco Riesco and lettered by Saida Temofonte.
Matt Lazorwitz: Weāve talked about this show before, but did you see that the voice trailer for Batman: The Caped Crusader dropped today?
Will Nevin: Indeed, I have, Brother Matt. Got some dadgum legends in that cast, but Bats himself seemed ā¦ a little breathy. Iām not too alarmed, though. Itās casting. Iād be surprised if the internet had normal takes about it.
New Status Quo = Old Status Quo
Will: Whelp. This was a painfully transparent attempt to set up a new status quo.
Matt: It was absolutely a housecleaning issue. But to be fair, this is setting up a status quo that I am actually looking forward to seeing if it gets some time to play out. We have the family under one roof. We have Bruce in a better place emotionally. I would have liked to see some connection drawn directly between Bruce naming the house Pennyworth Manor and building an affordable living space and Dickās Alfred Pennyworth Foundation, but that might still be coming.
Will: So I thought this was a fun thing about the nature of these funny books and the āindustryā weāre in. Over at Screen Rant ā which I generally took to be an OK website, but donāt forget that I am a moron ā they dropped a review-ish piece on #148 with the headline, āDC Confirms New Evil Robin Is a Permanent Addition to Gotham Lore (& Damian Wayne’s Perfect Nemesis).ā See, I never actually read the thing, but I assumed it wasnāt bullshit and that DC did, indeed, confirm that the clone Bruce was sticking around.
Would you believe, Matt, that someone published bullshit online and that the aforementioned piece does not include one tick turd of anything close to a āconfirmationā? We swim in a sea of schlock, my friend.
I guess I was supposed to have feelings for this character I just met? It was all so clunky, though. You like where we wound up, and I can agree with that. But getting there was tiresome.
Matt: Iām trying to decide if it would have been better to have clone Bruce around for a few issues, so you could get to know him better, see him develop as a person, or if that would have just felt like knife twisting. You had to try to make him more than just a body parts bank for Bruce, since you knew he was going to get the hand to replace his own there, and him just sort of dying after that without any attempt at character resonance would have been ghoulish.
There was some potential there for both Bruce to be able to literally talk to himself, and for Damian to see a mirror of his own experiences as someone grown in a lab to be used as a tool, and while I think both of those are given lip service, theyāre not given enough page space to really be more than just moments. I donāt think I found this tiresome, but I did wish that it had room to better explore its themes.
Will: Not only is there no room in this issue to properly do that, thereās no room in this run to do that. We have to do something big and noisy in #150, which will get us into Absolute Power, which will only give us *more* Failsafe (gotta cut off the head like heās a vampire, I guess) and all sorts of other nonsense. I donāt think Iāve seen a more āThis is the problem with Big Two comicsā book here lately.
Matt: Yes, we are definitely into crossover country again. Itās been quite a while since DC did a crossover like this, with it really entering ongoings, rather than releasing a ton of specials and miniseries, and I forgot how intrusive it can be.
But hey, there were more pluses here than what weāve talked about. For one, Zdarksy continues to remember Duke Thomas! Thatās always good. And I enjoyed the scene at the end with Bruce and Selina. If there is anyone either of them can be with and look at how ridiculous their lives are, itās each other. The fact that Selina in this story reacted pretty similarly to how we did to her jaunt into space was a nice moment.
Will: Absolutely ā thatās the sort of thing you canāt take too seriously. And while I admire your devotion to optimism and pluses, I thought a big minus here was the art, which was all sorts of flat and inconsistent.
Matt: Artistically, I wish the whole issue had been drawn by Steve Lieber, who just draws the last half dozen pages as the family gathers. He has a long history with Batman (He did a lot of work with Greg Rucka), and I have always been a fan of his work. I didnāt mind Michele Bandiniās art, but it wasnāt up to Jorge Jimenez or Lieber.
Jimmy Olsen, The Mighty Mite
Matt: I think weāve mentioned this before, but it takes real talent to make Bat-Miteās emotional arc central to a story and make it really work. So kudos to Mark Waid for pulling that off.
Will: And itās metacommentary without hitting you in the head with the fact itās metacommentary. Batman telling Bat-Mite that his time has passed was a real emotionally resonant beat handled with some class and dignity ā impressive as all hell.
Matt: Itās so easy to write Bat-Mite and Mxyzptlk as basically the same character, only one who does his pranks out of malice and one out of a weird adoration. But this issue does the best job yet of showing just how different they are. Bat-Mite has a sense of whimsy and excitement that Mxy doesnāt have. Bat-Mite gets carried away tearing through dimensions because itās fun. But Mxy is just a bully and a coward; the minute he is confronted with a bigger bully, he wants to take his ball and go home.
Will: How did you feel about the pacing here? I think we may have put a little too much air into this story with this confrontation that at least started with a superpowered Jimmy Olsen stretching into a second issue.
Matt: Itās a weird case. I think it did feel a bit dragged out in this issue. But I donāt think it could have all been squeezed into one issue with the Batman/Superman plot also going on. And dividing them up into separate issues also wouldnāt work. I think there might have been a way to pace this differently, but Iām not sure what it would be.
Will: This wraps next issue, right? Has to.
Matt: Yup. And then we get Waid telling a Trinity story.
As for the art, well, I can only say what Iāve said before. Mora kills with this book. I especially liked all the different versions of Batman and Superman in the 6th Dimension. Interpretations of panels from things as recent as Batman #125 and going back to āYear One.ā Itās just a visual feast.
Will: I could not place that recent reference, so thank you for that.
Matt: It took me a bit to place it. I had to think about Penguin stories and do some digging. That absolutely screams either Waid, Mora or both just thought that was visually striking (which it is) and decided to throw it in there. It might have been nice to have an editorās box or two with issue references there.
Will: So hereās a complicated question for you. Reading this series and heading into āAbsolute Power,ā where do you think Waid is as a superhero comics writer right now, and how might that have changed over the last 30 years?
Matt: Wow. That is a big question. Iāve been reading Waid since the mid-ā90s as a superhero writer, and while I didnāt follow him to his BOOM Studios stuff, I have read pretty much all of his DC work and a lot of his Marvel work.
Absolute Power surprised me as a Waid project, since he has focused mostly on smaller, notalgia projects since his return to DC; I know there was Lazarus Planet, but that was pretty forgettable, and only partly him. I wonder if this is something DC came to him with, wanting someone with a strong hand to guide the universe through this event. He hasnāt been writing any of the books running up to it, making it all the more strange. Could this be him viewing this as one more big event before riding off into the sunset of event comics? Possibly. Heās not all that old, his early 60s, so he has plenty of years left to write. But you wonder once youāve written a couple of these big events, how much more interest you have in them and how much you want to focus on more personal projects. Waid puts a lot of himself into his work, and thereās only so much of that you can do in those event comics.
Will: I canāt say that Irredeemable/Incorruptible have aged all that well, but they are at least interesting reads. This Detective Comics Comics run Waid is on has surprised me to date ā and will probably keep right on surprising me until he decides to call it a day.
Mystery Inc. Behind Bars
Matt: When we read Bat/Scoob, we are reading a comic that is geared toward a younger audience with a very specific formula, and so I usually let the story play out and as long as the expected beats are there, I let it get away with a lot. But I was a little perplexed that Batman actually let Mystery Inc. get locked up here. Batman has found them doing all sorts of wild stuff before, and heās never let that happen. Was that really all to draw out Cluemaster?
Will: Is Cluemaster always a disappointment? I feel like heās always a disappointment.
Matt: He definitely is. A Cluemaster story always leaves you saying, āBut it could have been Riddler.ā
But aside from that? This is Bat/Scoob. I never want to stop reviewing it, because it is consistently a joy, but we have reviewed so many, and they all follow the same formula. You occasionally get a real gem that does something that twists the formula just a bit, but a standard Bat/Scoob is still fun.
I wonder if there is an issue of Scooby-Doo, Where Are You? That extends the bit from the opening couple pages, where the gang is just bored because they have no cases. Itās not the purpose of this comic, obviously, but I think that would be a fun story to read. What do these kids do on their off time?
Will: If nothing else, this had a double mask pull. We canāt complain about that. I felt like I was not getting the āthrow the book at them joke,ā especially the first time it came up. Like that didnāt make sense to me.
Matt: It was kind of a flat joke. What I did think was funny was the idea that a library would have its security guard dress as a ghost because the guard uniform would ruin the ambiance. That is the kind of logic that only works with Scooby-Doo, but it does work.
Will: That was a good bit. Fun as hell. But I agree with you that the rest of this was kinda meh. Guess they canāt be all winners, huh?
Buy The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #6 here.
Bat-miscellany
- Josh Weil, friend of the show and Patreon backer, joins the podcast again to take a swing at the top 50 on the Big Board. And he does a good job.
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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.
