BatChat makes up for lost time with Batman, ‘Tec, Two-Face and Justice League Unlimited

Jim Gordon is in jail for the murder of the mayor of Gotham, and Batman must find out the truth about what his friend may or may not have done. But with Riddler and the Court of Owls circling, what can Bruce Wayne do to protect himself and all he cares about? Batman #155 is written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Jorge Fornes, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles. 

Batman struggles with the moral choice of whether it’s right to take a miracle drug only the rich can afford while he and Robin attempt to save a young man who made a very bad decision in crossing the Penguin. Detective Comics #1,091 is written by Tom Taylor, drawn and colored by Mikel Janin and lettered by Wes Abbott. 

There’s the criminal justice system, and then there’s the CRIMINAL justice system. In Gotham City, the White Church settles disputes between criminal factions, and who better to try these cases than former district attorney turned super criminal Two-Face? Harvey Dent has plans to make a comeback in the legal world, and nothing will stand in his way, not even Two-Face. Two-Face #1 is written by Christian Ward, drawn by Fabio Veras, colored by Ivan Plascencia and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou. 

A whole new era has begun. Their ranks expanded, the Justice League is ready for any threat. Or so they think. Justice League Unlimited #1 is written by Mark Waid, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Tamra Bonvillain and lettered by Ariana Maher. 

Will Nevin: How about in the prelude to our column we talk about previews for upcoming stories? Seems fitting, right? I don’t know what I wanted or expected from a “Hush 2” teaser, but Tommy Elliott ***literally*** putting pieces on a board is scraping the barest minimum of expectations. “Dark Patterns,” though? Continues to look like my jam.

Matt Lazorwitz: Oh, I am down for Dark Patterns next week! The only thing that the “Hush 2” preview told us is that it is set in the now of the DC Universe, not picking up directly after “Hush” ended, which is only important to continuity nerds like me. If I had not read “Hush” and wasn’t a Jim Lee fan, I don’t think that would have convinced me to pick up this new run. 

Will: And the continuity might be more important than you think — I’m interested to see what Tommy does with Alfred’s death, maybe? Seems like he could taunt Bruce with that.

Matt: That definitely seems in character for Tommy. What a dick.

Jim Gordon Breaks Bad?

Matt:  Man, as much as I have enjoyed Jorge Jimenez on this book, Jorge Fornes is one of my favorite artists working in comics right now, and this issue is absolutely perfect for his style.

Will: It’s a good lookin’ issue, isn’t it? And it makes me so damned mad. *This* is the run we could have had. Complex character work, intertwining storylines, Bullock and Gordon working cases. Guess I’ll have to be satisfied with the seven or eight pages of recap we got, huh?

Matt: I have so many theories and questions percolating in my head after reading this issue. How much of what Jim is remembering is real? Is the Court of Owls really involved, or is that part of Riddler’s long game? Did Bullock rejoin the force as part of a plan he and Gordon came up with to take down Vandal Savage and reinstall Gordon, all for it to go belly up here? I think I said this last issue, but this reads like Batman meets Newburn, and I too wish this had been the entire run. It almost makes the weirdness of Commissioner Savage work, as it gives us a clear foil for Jim to stand against.

Will: The pieces of a longer story sure are here, aren’t they?

Matt: Infidelity isn’t out of character for Jim Gordon; he and Sarah had that affair in “Year One,” after all. I think that little bit of doubt is there to keep us from assuming Jim is just being framed and mind controlled from the start. What’s the old chestnut about the best lies are those surrounded by truths?

Will: If nothing else, it’s a more sophisticated form of mind control because none of what happened seemed to be anything some small part of Gordon wouldn’t want. (There might be a double negative in there, but I’m moving on.) You know you shouldn’t have an affair with the mayor’s wife, you know you shouldn’t punch him in the face and you definitely know you shouldn’t shoot him. But what if your glasses gave you a little push? Of course, the cliffhanger scene last time out seemed more overt than that, so maybe Riddler had to escalate some things.

Matt: Yes, that struck me as a trigger sort of thing, now that we know Hatter tech is involved. As long as he’s not about to be exposed, it’s subtle. But the controlled will do anything to prevent their exposure.

The more we talk about Bruce’s “brother” and the longer we go without seeing him, the more I smell a rat on that. Three issues in and he’s nothing but a faceless voice that no one sees other than a crooked Wayne lawyer and the head of the Court of Owls. I’m beginning to think there’s no man behind the curtain here.

Will: Next issue, Bruce pulls off a mask, and it’s just three mind-controlled kids in a trenchcoat, huh?

Matt: With Bat/Scoob back on hiatus, we need to get our unmasking fix somewhere.

Buy Batman #155 here.

Oh, Right, It’s a Tom Taylor Comic

Will: I take it this is the “Australian crusader” version of Tom Taylor that many readers do not care for?

Matt: Yup, the whole scene with Superman is the Tom Taylor who likes to put long, socially conscious speeches in his comics. It’s not as heavy handed as some of the stuff in his Jon Kent comics, or his Suicide Squad run, but it’s very much right there.

Will: And let’s be clear about this: This nation’s health care system blows. Blows fuckin’ chunks. The whole health insurance scheme is a scam, and whoever invented the concept of “medical debt” should be roasting in Hell if there is such a place. But, you know, I don’t necessarily need that speech in a comic, especially one as clunky as that one was.

Matt: And that’s where Taylor’s stuff always falls apart. You can do comics with a social conscience; heck, you should. But the way he writes it, I always feel like his characters should be spiking the camera and the speech should be followed with, “And knowing is half the battle.”

But aside from that one scene, I liked a lot of what is going on in this issue. A lot of that has to do with Mikel Janin, for whom Taylor writes some great action scenes. Both the fight on and around the van and the fight in front of the Iceberg Lounge look great, and Janin is able to deal with the more subtle scenes just as well, with Bruce getting his physical and Batman facing down Penguin. This was a great week of art all around.

Will: Was it ever a good looking week. And even though I started this discussion by giving Taylor the business, I too like a lot of the writing here. Batman’s interactions with Bullock and Penguin and his lingering guilt over hitting the kid before he turned up on the coroner’s slab were particularly good.

Matt: The guilt there felt especially good, because it felt so out of character last issue. And the fact that Bullock was OK with it and Bruce isn’t is important for the way Batman has to be looked at. A cop facing an armed assailant is trained to shoot because they aren’t Batman (whether that is right or not, well, I don’t want to start that discussion here because we could be here all day). But Batman himself knows that violence, even when faced with an armed assailant, isn’t the answer every time, and those shades of gray are important to show the difference between Batman and the Punisher.

Will: Batman always has to hold himself to a higher standard, and we’ve seen him build entire systems (sometimes quite literally with Failsafe) to uphold that standard. And, you know, as I think about it, the costumed villain feels like such an appendage here. Like, could Batman fight the occasional white-collar mastermind? With the presumed life-stealing tech here, it’s not like he wouldn’t have a compelling one.

Matt: This issue also moves away from all the Joe Chill of last issue. There was so much setup, and now we have two suspects as to who the daughter of Chill is. But the mystery doesn’t feel necessary, as you said. The whole moral dilemma is much more interesting that anything else going on here.

Will: And it’s only going to get more interesting in the next issue when (presumably) the kid’s DNA or some other signature is going to show up in Bruce’s blood sample. Holy additional guilt, Matt!

Buy Detective Comics #1,091 here.

Two Faces, One Justice

Matt: Sooooo… How much jurisprudence are we going to be discussing with this book? Or does the fact that it’s an underworld court sort of void your usual frustration when people who aren’t lawyers write courtroom scenes?

Will: You can write better Perry Mason-type scenes when you don’t have to follow the rules of evidence or criminal procedure or anything other than “don’t kill anyone in the courtroom, pretty please.” This was as good as the One Piece of Shocking Evidence trick gets.

Matt: I’m of two minds on this issue (heh, see what I did there?). 

Will: See yourself the fuck out, buddy.

Matt: I think the structure of the comic, the general idea, really worked for me. And speaking of Newburn, as we did above, Harvey gets his own assistant like in that book. 

If this was an indie book with this concept, I think I’d be unabashedly down for it. But the take on Zsasz here felt off to me, a little too much the knife pervert, not enough of the guy hunting “robots.” And while my preference for Two-Face is less the multiple personalities and more the divided consciousness unable to decide without the coin, we’ve seen good runs that work with the multiple personas (see Ram V’s ‘Tec), so I’ll have to see how Ward plays it out.

Will: Dent trying to rehab his public image is more interesting than what feels like the umpteenth different story about Harvey and Two-Face fighting for control — especially when that particular yarn is never going to get resolved.

Matt: That’s the part that interests me. I’m sure Ward is going to slow-roll the whys and wherefores, but I want to know what made Harvey decide this was the way to come back around. How he imprisoned bad Harvey is interesting, but we just saw that one in ‘Tec, and so I don’t have as much interest. I also really want to know the history of the White Church, the underworld court. Does this date to before the rise of the Arkham set and has been part of Gotham for generations? Or is it something established to keep the balance between the mobs and freaks? I think there’s a lot of potential for this concept.

Will: The White Church name itself is pretty evocative, isn’t it? I hope we get more (under)world building and less of Zsasz as we go on, but knife pervert or not, he could at least be a solid B story with his preoccupation with Harvey’s would-be assistant.

Matt: It’s something I have to accept: Zsasz has not been consistently written since the mid-’90s, and my version of the character is not the one we see that often now. But yes, that will make a good running B-plot. I tend to avoid solicitations for books I’m going to read regardless, so I don’t know what is coming up in this book, but I look forward to seeing what other kinds of cases we might see.

I’m not familiar with Fabio Veras, the artist on this book, but he does a great job. He feels like he’s of a school with Jorge Fornes, and so his gritty style fits the crime comic vibe we’re getting here. I was initially a little disappointed Ward wouldn’t be drawing this book himself, but I don’t know if his wild, painterly style would fit the story he’s writing here.

Will: I thought the colors were sharp as well. Just good work all ’round.

Buy Two-Face #1 here.

Unlimited Potential

Matt: This? A big, widescreen superhero book with the entire DC Universe as its cast and its canvas? The book that is the tentpole the whole universe is spinning around? This is pretty much the book Mark Waid was born to write.

Will: And, above all, it’s got the one thing that so many writers fuck up, that so many of these books forget: heart. This was beautiful — and it was only the beginning.

Matt: We’ve seen plenty of exposition-heavy first issues, plenty of series premieres that are just place setting with minimal plot. Waid here is able to not only establish the status quo, but also give us a whole issue with an action set piece and the setup of another, and it doesn’t feel in the least bit rushed or convoluted.

Will: And everything feels like it matters.

Matt: The character balance helps with that. The problem with a Justice League title focused on the Magnificent Seven is that six of them usually have their own books where most of the character development has to happen. But having Air Wave, Star Sapphire and Red Tornado front and center, there are stakes because things can happen to them here.

Will: And because anyone in the DC universe could be on the Watchtower or sent out on a mission, we don’t have to focus on who’s on the team. As a concept, that’s really sharp.

Matt: Were you getting an extraterrestrial vibe off The Inferno? The way these villains were talking, I think we might be dealing with some kind of invasion, especially since the tech they were using seems outside what humans have access to.

Will: Supes did pointedly make a reference to the reconstituted League being the strongest force for good in the universe, so maybe someone/something wants to step up and try them? But their speech was so moustache-twirly, I could also see it as a big charade for someone — a distraction play so our little cliffhanger mole can destroy the League from the inside.

Matt: A distinct possibility. The fact that Air Wave is torn and is not just revelling in betraying the League makes all of that much more interesting. He’s a C-Lister who usually pops up during crossovers because his powers are useful, but never really gets a lot of play, so he’s the exact kind of character someone who revels in his deep pulls like Mark Waid can really dig into and give some real pathos.

Buy Justice League Unlimited #1 here.

Bat-miscellany

• Three random books from Will’s bookshelf make up this week’s BatChat podcast, including the last full Kevin Smith Batman comic we haven’t covered, Cacophony. Kevin Smith comics are always good for a rant or two.
• Oh, just to be clear, we didn’t miss talking about the art in JLU. It’s just that we’ve rarely had a month go by without saying Dan Mora is one of the best superhero artists out there, and so we kind of take that as written at this point.
• We’ll be playing catchup from the holiday over the next couple of weeks, so don’t worry if you want to hear us talk about the newest issues of Last Halloween, Batgirl and the (*sniff*) final issue of the current volume of The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries. They’re coming.

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