Ram V’s operatic run on Detective Comics reaches its conclusion. What more is there to say? The lead story of Detective Comics #1,089 is written by Ram V, drawn by Guillem March, colored by Luis Guerrero and lettered by Ariana Maher. In the backup, we see the effects of Batman’s confrontation on his enemies and allies in a story written by Dan Watters, drawn by Christopher Mitten, colored by Patricio Delpeche and lettered by Steve Wands.
The Justice League has been possessed by Eclipso, and Batman and Superman are going to need help to save their teammates. Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #31 is written by Mark Waid, drawn by Adrian Gutierrez, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Dave Sharpe.
On Halloween a few years ago, the serial killer called Holiday began to murder his way through Gotham’s underworld. Now, Batman and Robin face a new killer following the pattern and Gotham faces one last, bloody Halloween. Batman: The Long Halloween — The Last Halloween #1 is written by Jeph Loeb, drawn by Eduardo Risso, colored by Dave Stewart and lettered by Richard Starkings.
Will Nevin: Given any more thought as to how we’re going to tackle the Ram V ‘Tec run for the show now that it’s officially over?
Matt Lazorwitz: Phew, I am thinking probably four parts? Each of the acts and the Intermission as its own story. Kind of like how we handled “Knightfall” and Batman: Eternal: use the built-in logical breaks so we aren’t handling a thirty-part story in one go.
Will: All that’s left is figuring out what eight stories or parts of stories to throw in there! Should be easy peasy, right?
Matt: Oh, absolutely. That’s not at all going to leave me pouring over lists of other Batman stories.
Will: I’m not sure the math works out, and we might have to wait a long-ass time to do this, but how about pairing it with that just announced Dark Patterns book? That would be some fun shit.
Matt: I would be down for that!
The Grand Finale
Matt: And the symphony ends, and silence falls over Gotham.
Will: And we as readers stand and applaud.
Matt: I wasn’t very worried that Ram V and company wouldn’t stick the landing, but there’s always the fear. And I am happy to say, the landing? It has been stuck. Up to and including bringing back some threads that I had completely forgotten about! There is just so much to this run. It is absolutely going to be one of those that will only get better on subsequent readings.
Will: The thing I liked most — aside from how everything was so neatly (but not too neatly, of course) wrapped up — was how this got to the essence of Batman as a character. He’s a thing to be feared … by those who would do harm to others. He’s a symbol of hope and resilience. Strength. Character. He is a little boy hoping to shine a light into darkness. Shit, I’m getting emotional again just thinking about it. What a fantastic finish to an amazing run.
Matt: I liked that there are bits of story that we don’t get to see wrapped up. We don’t need to see Batman and his allies defusing Joker’s Daughter’s bombs. That was the little bit of chaos added to the story, but it wasn’t essential to the overall plot, and so it gets mentioned, but it doesn’t take up page time better spent elsewhere.
And inserting the backup right before the brief epilogue between Bruce and Selina was a great idea. It lets Ram have the last word, but doesn’t throw out the general structure of the run by not having a second feature.
Will: Sliding the backup in right there was so smooth. Brilliant execution.
Matt: It’s hard to talk about the last issue of a 30-issue run as an individual piece of art. I wouldn’t recommend this issue to anyone who hadn’t read the run leading up to it, as they would be completely lost. And that’s OK. The old argument of “Every comic is someone’s first” is valid, but could you imagine trying to lay out everything that happened before this within the pages of the story? It would take up at least ⅓ of the issue!
Will: That reminds me of a point I wanted to make as we recorded the show last night. You know that Black Mask Arkham Asylum trade? It only collects the final issue of the Catwoman “Relentless” arc. And, you know, for the big-picture stuff? For who Black Mask is and what he means in that particular corner of the Bat universe as imagined by Ed Brubaker? It kinda works. And I think this might work too as it speaks to those core Batman values.
But in terms of understanding the details of what’s going on? Oh hell nah. That new reader is going to be all sorts of lost.
Matt: There are so many great pages here. Talia and Arzen Orgham’s cavalry moment. Azrael rising up in the backup. The final gorgeous splash. But aside from Batman confronting the imprisoned Scarecrow and instilling the fear of the Bat into Gotham, I have to say my favorite moment was Gordon and The Question fighting and working together. I’m a sucker for both of those characters, and it’s great to see them together.
Will: Fuck me, that was a great moment. So ready for that Question book.
Buy Detective Comics #1,089 here.
Total Eclipso
Matt: We’re starting this week off with an ending to a monumental run. And the third comic we’re talking about is the first issue of another big series, even if it is in itself the end of a trilogy. And here in the middle we have World’s Finest doing what it does: telling a fun superhero story.
Will: It sure is starting to feel more and more like a Justice League book, isn’t it? The softest of soft launches — although I’m not complaining. Info dump on me about Eclipso, DC Encyclopedia Matt!
Matt: Originally, Eclipso was a Silver Age, Jekyll/Hyde sort of villain. Bruce Gordon got scratched by a magical black diamond, and when there was an eclipse (something that happened a lot in the DC Universe) he became Eclipso. One of the few villain-centric features in those old DC House of Secrets anthologies. He was a generic bad guy: super strong, super durable, could shoot energy blasts from his black diamond.
Post-Crisis, though, DC decided they needed to have more than just Darkseid and the Anti-Monitor as world beaters, so they changed Eclipso. Eclipso is a fallen angel. He was the original Wrath of God, the one who perpetrated the Flood. You know, Noah and the ark and all that. But he enjoyed that all a bit too much, so the Presence (since DC doesn’t want to just say God) imprisoned him in a giant black diamond and made a new angel of vengeance, the Spectre. But eventually some great white hunter a-hole found the diamond in a jungle temple, had it cut into a thousand smaller diamonds, and now anyone who is holding one when they become angry either creates an angry rage monster or is possessed by Eclipso.
This story takes place at the point where the heroes still think Eclipso is just Gordon’s dark side, but Eclipso is demonstrating his fuller power set.
Comics, everybody!
Will: That was a zany Aristocrats joke, Matt.
Matt: The short short version? Vengeance demon who can possess people and is vulnerable to bright light.
Will: Now that I can understand. How do you feel about Waid getting to play with the Justice Society?
Matt: Well, I love the Justice Society, and they have a history with Eclipso. Or a future rather, since this story takes place before their modern clashes with him, so Waid, Master of Continuity, might be adding a layer to that rivalry, which is fun. And Waid can handle a big cast, so I’m happy to see him continuing to play with the whole universe.
I am still perplexed that this book has not been announced as ending. Not complaining about that, but between the JLU book and Batman and Robin: Year One, Waid is busy, and all the stuff he’s doing here seems to be able to be done in those books.
Will: That is a bit of a stumper. At the very least, it seems like he can’t continue on the book with those other projects. But what the hell do I know?
Matt: I also will miss Dan Mora on this book. I’m glad to see Adrian Gutierrez getting the gig after Blue Beetle ended far too early, but Mora’s work was always such a treat. At least he’s going over to JLU with Waid.
The First Last Halloween
Matt: If you are a listener to the BatChat podcast, and I have to imagine the venn diagram of people who read the column and listen to the pod might not be a perfect circle but is pretty close, you know that the Loeb/Sale Batman stuff lives in the upper half of The Big Board. The lowest of their collaborations is at 232, right around the median, and the highest is at 5. This is to say that going into what was supposed to be the end of their Batman collaborations with another artist in place felt like a dicey proposition.
Will: Long Halloween is something of a singular achievement, a marvel of a thing that has influenced 25 years of the works that have followed it. Dark Victory, When in Rome and the special that came out a while back certainly tried to capture that same magic, but none of them got particularly close, especially as they were burdened by the one bad Gilda-shaped thing in Long Halloween.
I tried to go into this with an open mind, to be unburdened by that trepidation, and … I think I was able to do that? I mean, I felt the strains of continuity as I was reading this and fumbling for how Joker was involved in all of this, but I’m always a sucker for an early-career Batman story.
Matt: For me, the jury is still out on IF Joker was involved. That might be a red herring by whoever is really behind it.
What I was thinking about reading this is how this is really getting to the point of mid-career Batman. There have been six Halloweens over the course of these books, two in each of the maxi-series, one in the special and one here. So we’re at year 7 at this point. This isn’t a problem, necessarily, but it means Batman is far more experienced than the Batman of the original series.
Will: This is a Batman with a Robin now, for goodness’ sake.
Matt: I don’t think this was a bad comic. When Jeph Loeb is on, his stuff has a charm to it. But I was reading this, looking at the page layouts from Eduardo Risso, an artist whose work I like, and I absolutely saw Loeb writing for Sale here. There are panels and especially pages that absolutely feel like they should be Tim Sale pages. And while Risso’s art looks nice, I felt a twinge when I saw a moment that immediately said to me that it should be a Tim Sale moment.
Will: Definitely not bad by any stretch. I feel, though, that it’s going to suffer for the rotating artist gimmick. Is there enough juice in a James Gordon kidnapping to carry an entire book? I guess we’re going to find out.
Matt: My money is that is part of a bigger conspiracy. I know Loeb said in an interview that this is the story of the final battle between the established mob and the freaks, and so I read that and the assaults on Catwoman, Grundy and Two-Face as part of the mob’s first strike. Gordon is probably seen as part of Dent’s past, not to mention he was there when Alberto killed Maroni, so they might view him as complicit?
Will: I could see that as being an interesting story, with Batman struggling with the Holiday legacy while also navigating a larger (and I hate to use this word with the past 10 or so Batman arcs) war in Gotham. I think this could be good. But I think there are many, many things weighing against this thing being great.
Matt: All the artists involved are top notch, but they’re not exactly all of one style, and at least judging by Risso’s work here, they are not (thank God) trying to look like Tim Sale. I don’t know what we’re going to get here, but I maintain my hopes.
Buy Batman: The Long Halloween – The Last Halloween #1 here.
Bat-miscellany
- Patreon backer and friend of the show John Wickham joins the podcast this week to trace the evolution of Jason Todd from “One Year Later…” to “Battle for the Cowl.” It’s pretty rough going for Jason in there.
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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.
