Batman and Catwoman are on an alien world, trying to steal a Mother Box from Amanda Waller, while dodging the Suicicde Squad. So itās a Tuesday. Oh, wait, whatās that creeping dread? Batman #152ās main story is written by Chip Zdarsky, penciled by Mike Hawthorne, inked by Adriano Di Benedetto, colored by Romulo Fajardo Jr. and lettered by Clayton Cowles. In the backup, the Birds of Prey take some downtime on Themyscira before heading out to take part in Absolute Power in a story written by Kelly Thompson, drawn and colored by Mattia De Iulis and lettered by Cowles.
With Batman and the Batfam caught up at Gotham Comic Con, Mystery Inc. become the star attraction at Wayne Enterprises’ annual Heroesā Ball. Unfortunately, this big-ticket gala with no superheroes has attracted the attention of a couple supervillains, and Mystery Inc. have to stop them, even when they are divided. The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #9 is written by Matthew Cody, drawn by Dario Brizuela, colored by Franco Riesco and lettered by Saida Temofonte.
When Bruce Wayne donned the cowl of Batman to stop Jack the Ripper, he was the strangest thing in the night. But now, the world is growing stranger. Relics from a bygone age of man, ancient warriors, cockney mystics and assassin cults are approaching Gotham. And thereās the little matter of aliens as well. Batman: Gotham by Gaslight ā The Kryptonian Age #2-3 are written by Andy Diggle, drawn by Leandro Fernandez, colored by Dave Stewart and lettered by Simon Bowland.
Will Nevin: We talked about it on the show last night, but since the people out there wonāt hear that for a few more weeks, once again I present to you one of the worst comic tweets imaginable (thatās not patently abusive or foul).
The store has a variant comic deal with Sean Gordon Murphy, sure. But you still donāt have to put White Knight in the same sentence with Dark Knight Returns and Killing Joke.
Matt Lazorwitz: It took me nearly 10 minutes to guess that. I went through all manner of character-defining stories, and nowhere did I expect the story where Harley creates a drug to make the Joker kind of a good guy so SGM can talk about āthe elitesā for seven issues.
Will: A good guy who was still bad! UGH, THAT STORY IS SO DUMB, AND I HATE IT.
Darkseid Is ā¦ in a Panel of This Comic
Matt: When your story ends with the God of Evil showing up and causing everybody to scatter, that is pretty much the textbook definition of a deus ex machina, huh?
Will: It was a good enough ending to all the nonsense going on, I suppose. But if the goal here ā and Iām pretty sure it was ā is to get to a Darkseid story, to me, that just feeds event exhaustion. All this time was spent setting up a big Amanda Waller saga ā¦ but we use that to get to the place where we really wanted to go?
Matt: Event churn and event fatigue are real, and I am definitely feeling them. This is absolutely to set up the Darkseid-centric DC All In Special, which Absolute launches out of. Iām not saying DC isnāt at fault for doing this in the past, but this feels like Marvel in the ā00s-early ā10s, where every event leads directly into the next with no breathing room in between. And itās odd that Zdarsky seems so involved in this planning without writing any of the event books. I guess he can have his cake and eat it, too: He gets to help plan this stuff, but doesnāt have the hassle of having to write a big miniseries with a million characters.
Will: But that has to come with some strings attached, right? If robot Failsafe Zur-En-Arrh is going to work with Waller, youāve got to get to the robot Failsafe Zur-En-Arrh place in your book. And youāve also got to bookend the event with stories that make some kind of sense. Feels like some bullshit, Matt.
Matt: Will, my friend, you came up in an age where DC events were mostly contained to miniseries and one-shots. Talk to old heads like me, Dan Grote, Tony Thornley, Austin Gorton and a lot of the staff who were around DC in the ā90s and early ā00s or read more Marvel, and this is something we are used to.
I do like a story where Batman runs rings around the Suicide Squad, and Zdarsky is doing a pretty good job of keeping the Batman/Catwoman rapport solid without it becoming tedious, but this is very deeply engrained in DC lore. The fact that weāre on Czarnia, Loboās home planet? Thatās a deep cut. And going back on what I said before, the Mother Box is literally a deus ex machina, a god machine.
But weāre putting Batman in a scenario where he is the underdog because everyone else has powers, and you usually get a decent story watching him outthink them. Especially when he has to do it without weeks of planning. I love watching Batman come up with a plan on the fly, because it proves that itās not his preparation but his brain that is his superpower.
Will: Letās be honest, though: The Suicide Squad isnāt sending its best here.
Matt: No. Black Alice and Bizarro are powerhouses, sure, but neither are exactly big on strategy. Deadeye is Deadshot with family issues with Amada Waller. And Clock King and Gunsmith are D-list Bat rogues. It would be nice to get a good Suicide Squad lineup out of this event, though. And a new book where Waller now has to work as an active part of the Squad, since she could easily wind up locked up thanks to all the shady shit sheās been up to.
Will: As long as the Squad has existed, Waller has had to have been on the other side ā¦ right? With a bomb in her neck?
Matt: I donāt think she has ever had the bomb treatment, but she has definitely been on field ops at one point or another during the original Ostrander run. I need to reread that run when I have some free time (HAH!).
Now I have a real quibble with the backup. I loved it because I am reading Kelly Thompsonās great run on Birds of Prey. But I have to imagine for someone not reading that book, this was pretty incomprehensible, right?
Will: I didnāt have a fuckinā clue what was going on, Matt. Not a single, itty bitty idea. But the pictures were pretty!
Matt: Were they ever! Thompson brought Mattia de Iulis, who is the artistic collaborator on their creator-owned series The Cull, to draw this, and never have I seen Nubia or Big Barda look more massive.
Will: And Barda was ripped as shit, too.
Matt: This would have been a great opportunity to introduce readers of the more popular Batman to this book, but by having a story so entrenched in whatās happening there with only a minimum of context, I think it was a missed opportunity.
Kite Man, Heck Yeah!
Matt: I accept certain minor alterations in character for Bat/Scoob. Batman canāt be as angsty as his Earth-0 version, obviously. But that Alfred would schedule a benefit requiring the heroes of Gotham the same night as Gotham Comic Con? Inconceivable!
Will: Ahhh, yes, but perhaps Alfred knew that our heroes would have more fun at Comic Con *and* that Mystery Inc. would be able to fill in at the gala? That seems imminently reasonable.
Matt: Very true. And this did allow recent TV star Kite Man to make his Bat/Scoob debut. If this were, what, five years ago, he would have fit in among the deep cuts this book loves to use, and now heās on Max, Itās a wild world.
Will: Kite Man is ā¦ ascendant.
Matt: Heck yeah! Heās a goof here, which is fine because thatās how he works best, and yet still, Scooby and Shaggy talking him up to get him to help them get back and stop Weather Wizard, and him saving the day were the kind of charming we expect from this book.
Will: Kite Man was a delightful inclusion here, and I loved the pep talk from Shaggy. Embrace the things that make you you, man.
Matt: Meanwhile, the inclusion of Weather Wizard, a Flash Rogue, was befuddling to me until I realized there are no Bat rogues with wind-based powers, so you needed someone that Kite Man would have a hard time dealing with who wouldnāt, well, just shoot him. And yes, itās Bat/Scoob so no one is getting shot, but you get the point. It was a clever pull.
Will: If you fudged it, you could probably get Mr. Freeze to create some kind of micro climate updraft, but that would be a lot of extra work when you could just use one of Flashās weirdos. (Why does he have so many weirdos?)
Matt: And they are unimaginative weirdos: Their team name is The Rogues. Thatās like being the New York Baseball Guys. But theyāre the blue-collar villains, who are in it for the money and not the chaos, so itās a nice contrast with Gothamās band of chaos monsters.
Will: For the record, I root for the Classy New York Baseball Guys as opposed to the scum-sucking Mets.
Matt: The other aspect of this story I really enjoyed was seeing the rest of Mystery Inc. a bit at a loss without Shaggy and Scooby. Itās so easy to assume things would be easier without them screwing stuff up and running around stumbling over things, but they are an important part of the team, and I like seeing that called out.
Buy Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #9 here.
Justice League by Gaslight
Matt: Weāre catching up here, and after three issues, I feel like the title of this series should be āThe Kryptonian Age ā From the World of Gotham by Gaslightā rather than leading with the GbG, since this series is doing a lot of worldbuilding and not focusing a whole lot on Batman or, well, Gotham.
Will: I might even go further and suggest this is more like āThe Doom That Came to Gothamā (doomed polar expedition and all) rather than the original Mike Mignola work or the followup.
Matt: Very true! This is a big, world-spanning, planet-threatening story, rather than the small, almost grounded stories of the original two books. Weāre three issues in, and we have Wonder Woman, Adam Strange, Constantine, Talia al Ghul and the League of Shadows and hints of Superman and Martian Manhunter. This is really a Justice League book.
And let me state for the record I donāt think thatās a bad thing, but itās not exactly what I was expecting. I was expecting Superman (the title gave that one away), but this is a much bigger-scale story.
Will: And Alan Scott is on deck! There is a lot ā and I mean *a lot* ā going on here. And I guess thatās not a bad thing? So letās say we are building to the introduction of Superman in the back half of this, which seems reasonable given the pacing so far. Maybe that leads into another mini? That also seems reasonable given the recent track record with DC vs. Vampires, DCeased, Dark Knights of Steel and maybe more Iām forgetting.
Matt: This definitely feels in line with those series you mentioned. This is a 12-issue maxi-series, so there is a lot of runway, but so were those and they spawned franchises.
I donāt know how I forgot Alan Scott in there. That was one of the more clever reimaginings, as his origin here, a green ring on a train that was caught in an explosion, is nearly identical to his actual origin in the prime realities. Adding in the aspect of 19th century spiritualism is a nice wrinkle; all those folks were humbugs, for sure, but itās a fascinating humbug.
Will: I donāt know if the timeline would work out in the slightest, but Iād love for someone to bring Sir Arthur Conan Doyle into a Batman story. Get Bruce all pumped to work with someone he thinks is a rational skeptic only to find out heās a crank. Doesnāt have anything to do with the story here, sure, but it would be interesting to explore.
Matt: I would read the hell out of that. Of course, while we do have all this wild stuff going on (combining Themyscira with Skartaris? Diggle knows his DC lore), we still have some stuff that is more in line with the original Victorian-era Gotham. The League of Shadows isnāt that far outside the realm of the Victorian Gothic, although they are less racist than those stories of adventure from the late 19th/early 20th century, and Bruce hunting Selina down is a Batman beat. I love that he found her based on smelling her perfume and tracing it. Thatās the worldās greatest detective at work.
Will: Issue #3 closes with a teaser of Martian Manhunter, who seems to be the last survivor of an ancient civilization. Any guesses how he might be used in this story?
Matt: Iām assuming, based on what we saw, that the Martians and the Kryptonians were at war, and he is the last survivor of that conflict. I would also not be surprised to see a Jāonn and Mars more inspired by the John Carter stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, as they would be period appropriate.
Will: Iām going to have to get annotations for this thing by the time itās over. Diggle is pulling, man.
Buy Gotham by Gaslight: The Kryptonian Age #2 here.
Bat-miscellany
- This week, in part two of our 150th episode, we go back and pick some stories that we feel were underappreciated based on their spot on the Big Board and move them where they belong. This is ā¦ THE RE-RANKENING!!!
- When Matt has time he will, 1) organize his comics, 2) go back and reread some classics and 3) cure all disease and end poverty. If only he had the time.
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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.
