A new arc begins as Batman must make his way through an apartment complex to save a captured police officer. The apartment complex, though, has something more sinister hiding beneath the surface. Batman: Dark Patterns #4 is written by Dan Watters, drawn by Hayden Sherman, colored by Triona Farrell and lettered by Frank Cvetkovic.
Will Nevin: So the State Farm commercial: What did you think about it?
Matt Lazorwitz: Will, remember, I am not on social media anymore, nor do I have commercial television. These sort of memetic moments are generally lost on me now.
Will: Memetic, you say? James Tynion and Eryk Donovan have a book for that.
Matt: Let me go to Google for a momentâŚ
Huh. Well, that was wacky. Itâs not the first time a supporting actor from a Batman film has hocked a product in their movie role.
Will: They got a dead ringer for Jeffrey Wright, didnât they?
Matt: I did a double take on that one. I thought it was him for a few seconds there.
Floor by Floor
Matt: How does a book thatâs first arc was stellar get even better? You let the artist who does some of the best, if not absolutely the best, layouts in comics right now go hog wild and work in an utterly trippy concept around a midtier Bat rogue. What an amazing issue!
Will: This thing was tits from start to finish. Not only do we have the aforementioned layouts and the incredible fusing of Scarface and The Raid, but we also got our favorite formaldehyde-addled medical examiner back.
Matt: We had wondered what the connective tissue between each of these arcs would be, and it looks like Dr. Sereika is here to stay.
By the way, have you ever seen Dredd? Not Judge Dredd with Stallone, but Dredd with Karl Urban?
Will: I have not! I havenât even seen The Raid, but I like making references to it. Got a new Robocop game that seems inspired by it, too. Maybe I actually should watch the things I give nods to.
We make little jabs about Dr. Sereika, but addiction is, of course, a serious issue. I love how Batman has no time for pleasantries. âAre you sober?â Cuts right to the heart of things in a crisis, doesnât he?
Matt: Heâs Batman. Pleasantries are not something heâs really into in general.
There does seem to be more connective tissue here then just our doctor friend. The core of the mystery last arc, the problem that Batman had to deal with, was corporate greed poisoning the suburb of Green Fields. Here, we see the people of Bledin Towers being forced out by rich developers who want to tear down their homes and put up luxury condos. The way greed affects the people of Gotham and the surrounding area seems to be central to what Watters is doing, and specifically about living conditions.
Will: âBledin Towersâ is no coincidence either. This really is a book that can do it all, you know? My central complaint for the last few months with the main Batman title is that it has existed for explosions and nonsense with a few cool visuals thrown in for fun. But this book actually has something to say about greed, the people who get hurt and what they might be driven to do when they have no other options.
Matt: And itâs done with a subtlety we donât often see. There isnât the speechifying you get when Tom Taylor is discussing social issues over in Detective Comics. The events of the story and the character interactions are all we need to make the point heâs trying to make clear. The guy who talks to Batman through the gap in his door, torn between not wanting to be forced out of his home, but also thinking the gang taking the cop is wrong, is exactly the kind of nuance that makes this kind of story tick.
Will: I loved that scene. Hayden Sherman leans toward the surreal and the experimental, but that was straight up classic visual storytelling, with the facial expressions getting across more than a wall of text ever could.
Matt: Speaking of surreal, we have to talk about our villain here. Scarface hasnât gotten a ton of play since the big New 52 reboot. There have been other Ventriloquists with their own dummies, and even at the end of the pre-Flashpoint era, Arnold Wesker was dead and we had a new Ventriloquist with Scarface. And here we seem to have a new Ventriloquist, or something far more surreal. We have read stories about the possibility that Scarface is more than just a dummy, but something malevolent in his own right, but the idea that he has taken the whole building as his new body? Thatâs the kind of stuff you only get in comics..
Will: But I think it works, ya know? At the core, Scarface is a gangster trope waiting on the termites to get him â protection rackets, guns, drugs, all those organized crime classics. If he was in politics, weâd call him a âpopulist,â which is a silly nonsense word for a scary person who will say whatever it is they think you want to hear before they put a boot on your throat. Heâs exactly the kind of character who would take advantage of the people of Bledin Tower. It sounds like you read something supernatural into this, but my take was that it was the acoustics of the building (I almost said PA system before I remembered that moment) mixed with a long campaign to turn the good and/or desperate people of the tower into something bad.
Matt: I was going to add this if you didnât. I think the supernatural trappings might be exactly what you said: acoustics, and boy was that well set up in the earlier part of the story. But the fact that the line âI have a new gody, Gatman. A getter one. And youâre standing in itâ can be read either way (and remember, Scarface traditionally substitutes âgâ for âbâ in his speech) is what adds an element of uncertainty and macabreness to this story.
Will: Multiple plausible interpretations of a story is one of my favorite fuckinâ things, Matt. Of all the characters in this issue that we havenât talked about, Michelle â the abused partner of the new would-be Ventriloquist â is maybe the most interesting to me. Spending time with her and spotlighting her abuse seems to signal that sheâs going to be important moving forward. I even thought for a second there that she might be the new Ventriloquist.
Matt: Oh, I hadnât thought about Michelle being the new Ventriloquist! That would be a nice turn. And letâs be fair, I donât think her sack-of-crap boyfriend is necessarily the new Ventriloquist either. With building acoustics that you can stand anywhere and sound like youâre coming from somewhere else and the natural abilities of a ventriloquist, wouldnât it make sense for the new boss to just have sent this schmuck out to face Batman and take the beating while he stands somewhere else, perfectly safe and providing Scarface his voice?
Will: Thereâs a 65% chance we may have spoiled ourselves, Matt. I think thatâs a real advantage to this funky approach: When you donât have to have your hand up a puppetâs ass, anyone can be the Ventriloquist.
Matt: And isnât that just an absolutely creepy idea? Horror always works best when there is commentary built in, and in many cases vice versa, so having Scarface âbecomeâ the building, and everyone being a hand of Scarface, just shows you how far people can be pushed before they are willing to do something that most would consider irrational.
I gotta say, the timing of the release of this series could not have been better. I was just starting to jones for some high-concept Batman after Ram Vâs run on Detective ended, and we get this. Good times.
Will: And itâs not that itâs just high concept, you know? Batman reads like a young Batman, and all the other characters make logically sound choices. Ram Vâs book was an opus â thereâs no denying that. But it was poetic, ethereal. This (aside from Shermanâs fluidic layouts) is much more grounded but no less stunning.
Matt: The blend of grounded and high concept is a fine tightrope to walk. Go too far one way and it feels like a standard âBatman punching guysâ story. Go too far the other, and it often comes off as Grant Morrison light. But this treads somewhere between Grant Morrison and Greg Rucka. Itâs a masterclass in what you can do with Batman as a character.
Will: And the series has showcased some really incredible ideas. We talked about (spoiler alert for an episode of the podcast that wonât be dropping until next month) âIdentity Crisisâ as a well-done comic built on the bones of some truly awful ideas. But the Wound Man and Scarface as a fuckinâ building? Sweet Jesus, I wish I could be that creative. And itâs not even enough to have good ideas, but you have to be able to execute those ideas as well. And this series is 2-for-2 on that point.
Matt: OK, we have eight more months of this. Once Watters is done here? Itâs time for him to get a main, ongoing Batman title. Taylor seems to have plans for a while, but I think when heâs done, itâs time to let Watters play with all the Bat family toys.
Will: And if the latest house ad proclaiming six issues is any indication, maybe we wonât get an interruption to all that good mojo with âHush 2 2â next year.
Matt: Two weeks. Two weeks till âHush 2: Bandaged Boogaloo.â
Will: đ¤˘
Bat-miscellany
- Patreon backer and Democratic candidate for Congress in Floridaâs 6th District Josh Weil is back on the BatChat podcast this week to talk three Golden Age Batman stories.
- Are you enjoying these more focused BatChats? Let us know if you are, or if you miss the round-up format on socials. We do listen (well mostly, unless youâre the Riddler. Fuck that guy).
Buy Batman: Dark Patterns #4 here. (Disclaimer: As an Amazon Associate, ComicsXF may earn from qualifying purchases.)
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.
