The Riddler’s plan stands revealed, but there is more to all of the chaos in Gotham, as Batman learns who has been pulling the Court of Owls’ strings. Batman #156 is written by Chip Zdarsky, drawn by Tony Daniel, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Divorce cases are often ugly things. Divorce cases among supervillains, where the prenup entails the murder of a cheating spouse, are worse. Can Two-Face and his new assistant save their client, King of the Royal Flush Gang, before his Queen takes his heart? Two-Face #2 is written by Christian Ward, drawn by Fabio Veras, colored by Ivan Plascencia and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
The Unburied continue their quest to kill Lady Shiva and her daughter, Batgirl. With civilians caught in the crossfire, and Cassandra Cain learning more about the Cult of Shiva, she must make peace with her mother to save lives, something that is proving harder and harder for her to do. Batgirl #2 and #3 are written by Tate Brombal, drawn by Takeshi Miyazawa, colored by Mike Spicer and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
Will Nevin: Whelp, it’s the first BatChat (print) of the new year — what are you looking forward to most in the world of Batman in 2025?
Matt Lazorwitz: Oh, that is a good question. More Dark Patterns, for one. We know “Hush 2” is going to be six issues (with six more issues in 2026), but I am definitely curious about what might be coming after that. We’re just at the beginning of All In, so it’s hard to look too far ahead when everything is only two or three months into the new. What about you?
Will: I don’t want to say “ditto,” so I’ll say “ditto but with more words.” If “Hush 2” is tolerable, I’ll count that as a win. But someone else (please let them be new) getting a crack at Batman? That’s something to look forward to. And we get more Dark Patterns next week! Hell yeah.
Batman
Matt: Well, I admit to not seeing some of the twists here coming. I had actually wondered a couple times over the course of this story if the Court of Owls was even really involved, or if Riddler was manipulating people by saying it was the Owls backing him, when it was instead just his mind control tech. But as it turns out, it’s the Owls, but the Owls manipulated by … the Russian government? So it’s Red Dawn, Gotham style?
Will: ’Member the quiet issue of character building and how nice that was? This felt like two or three issues of development crammed into one, which is I guess what you have to do when Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee want your book.
Matt: That is exactly the vibe I got here. That Zdarksy thought he had six issues, it turned out it was five, and so this issue was parts 4 and 5 jammed together. I still thought there was some cool stuff, but boy that last part has a lot of answers it still needs to provide, about the Russians and Bruce’s “brother,” plus a big fight between Batman and the KGBeast/Commander Star.
It was nice to see Tony Daniel, a Batman artist for many years, pop back up, and draw the heck out of the issue. It was really nice looking, very dynamic and exciting.
Will: Riddler is never really a mastermind, is he? Always working with or for someone else. Poor Eddie. Yes, of course I’m tired with *yet another* “fight for the future of Gotham” story, but the twists — as underdeveloped as they were — were fun. And, yes, thank god Commander Star is not another new character.
Matt: I think given more time to build it, the idea that someone was manipulating civil unrest to bring down Gotham would have been a really strong, really dramatic take on the “future of Gotham” plot; it would have had some real grounding. But because of how truncated this arc feels, we didn’t get enough to sink our teeth into. If that had been running in the background even during the Failsafe stuff, with discontent among Gotham’s working class, I think I would have been happier with it. But with the way this is coming out, it feels like not just a distraction for Batman in the story world, but for the reader as well.
Will: At least the communist stuff makes more sense now with KGBeast? Almost like he’s doing a Homelander.
Matt: That is a pretty apt comparison.
The page that I really liked, that I really wish had more room to breathe, was Jim Gordon’s reunion with Koyuki. First, I like how he doesn’t get to excuse his behavior entirely through Riddler’s manipulation; his choice to have an affair with the mayor’s wife was 100% Jim, and as we said last time, not out of character for him. But more, I liked her standing up for herself. Koyuki has usually been written as part of someone else’s story. Here she calls Jim and her late husband out for treating her exactly like that, and I really liked it.
Will: Man, that could have easily been three or four times as long as it was and not overstayed its welcome. Alas.
Two-Face
Will: I still like this book. I still *love* the core concept. But splitting focus with three different plot lines made for a messy second issue that never quite came together for me as strongly as the first one did.
Matt: I mean, it’s a Two-Face comic. There should be two plots. It’s in the name.
Will: Boooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo.
Matt: This issue definitely felt a little busy to me. None of those three plots, all of which could have taken up a full issue, felt like they had enough time. Harvey trying this sticky divorce case, his new assistant Lake Cantwell doing leg work and Bad Harv in the prison inside Harvey’s head are all threads I wanted to see teased out more.
Will: I could see bailing on the courtroom stuff later in the series as the larger conspiracy grows, but stepping away from it here almost seems like you’re giving up on the premise. Just feels strange. And while I’m beyond tired of the endless civil war inside Harvey’s brain, at least this was a conceptually different way of going about it — and Bad Harvey having it out with Salvatore Maroni was pretty fun.
Matt: I liked those scenes with Maroni, and the Maroni in Harvey’s head pointing out that Harvey doesn’t really know all that much about Maroni, so he’s filling in the blanks with bits of himself, is a neat take.
I am a bit concerned about the identity of the Shadow Hand, the puppet master behind this. I really hope it’s not Maroni. The fact that the opening shows that Harvey never got him, and Tom Taylor retconning him as being alive and briefly operating in Bludhaven in his Nightwing run, puts Maroni out there, but that just seems too pat, and really outside Maroni’s MO, doing this whole big plot with a bunch of low-level Bat rogues.
Will: But he would like the Gotham underworld to crumble and once again be under his thumb. It’s dumb for the reasons you say it is, but at least it makes sense. He wouldn’t be a Gilda Dent here.
Matt: True, and the leap of logic isn’t that far, it just seems so easy. I hope Maroni is a red herring and it turns out to be something else, but we’ll see.
I got a good chuckle out of the case here. The mundanity, if messy mundanity, of a divorce case taken to an extreme by the fact that we’re dealing with supervillains. The juxtaposition of the ordinary with the extraordinary has always been something I enjoy in my superhero comics.
Will: If it had the space and dedication, this could have been a dark mirror version of Gotham Central. But by focusing almost exclusively on Harvey (I mean, it’s his book, yeah) and getting more into characters rather than procedures, it’s obviously not the direction this series is headed. Too bad, really.
Batgirl
Matt: We skipped over issue #2 of this series due to the vast number of Bat titles that came out recently, and while I enjoyed that issue, and I’d like to talk some about it, I’m really glad we came back for issue #3, which I thought was great.
Will: Interesting that issue #3 held your favor while I liked #2 a bit better. Hrm. I’ll say for the second issue that I loved the scene between Shiva (Cassandra’s actual mother) and Bā Bao (Cassandra’s surrogate mother). That was a fascinating dynamic.
Matt: Oh, I thought Ba Bao was a great character, and if this series continues past the miniseries stage into an ongoing, I would love more of Cassandra with her and her sons.
Issue #3 spoke to me partially as a longtime fan of Lady Shiva. She has always been a character who could heal as easily as kill, and so examining that in line with the Cult of Shiva expanded the character. But I also absolutely have to hand it to Takeshi Miyazawa for the art here. The pages as Cass fights through the League of Shadows on the train done as two-page spreads and splashes are the kind of thing I want out of a Cassandra Cain comic. They need to have that anime-influenced sense of motion that those pages absolutely did.
Will: Fighting on a train might be as strategically sound as fighting in a basement, but it sure did look pretty. And the narration — Cassandra making the argument that she’s the best parts of all the Bat family — was great. The reveal at the end, though? Who is Nyssa, and what does she mean (you reckon) for this story?
Matt: Nyssa al Ghul-Raatko, of Batman: Death and the Maidens fame, is the elder daughter of Ra’s al Ghul. A character introduced by Greg Rucka to take over the House of al Ghul and the League of Assassins after Ra’s’ death in that series, she appeared only in two stories after that initial arc, in the second of which she was unceremoniously blown up by a car bomb planted by Cass when she was being manipulated by Deathstroke. Fucking Deathstroke.
There is probably little love lost between Nyssa and Cass, and the fact that she’s with the League of Shadows, a sub-faction of the League of Assassins, means Talia probably isn’t involved. Throw in Angel Breaker from “Shadow War” at her side there, and some other random dude who I’m sure is someone I could piece together if he was wearing something more distinct, and I think we’re seeing Shiva having to make some very dangerous and dubious allies in this fight with The Unburied.
Will: Ahhh, no wonder I didn’t recognize her, considering I’ve forgotten most of Greg Rucka’s most forgettable Batman story. Does seem like a natural character to include here, doesn’t she? And, yes, this does seem like an alliance that will not hold.
Matt: And it’s a good way of showing how dangerous The Unburied are; getting these characters together to fight a common threat means it has to be big.
For all the action, this book never forgets that the core of it is a mother/daughter story, and I really appreciate that. And the narration remains really strong. The cadence is unique and distinctly Cassandra, and that moment where she just says no to Shiva? Well, we’re going to be covering Cass’ first appearance on the podcast soon, and when you read it, you’ll see how great a callback that is.
Will: Fun fact, Matt: “No Man’s Land” ended 25 years ago. Isn’t that something?
Matt: That sound you just heard? That was the sound of all my joints popping while I got up to get my pills. I am an old man now. Good night.
Bat-miscellany
- The first BatChat podcast of the new year is our traditional Elseworlds-focused New Year, New Batman episode.
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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.
