Two self-contained Batman stories in one big issue. In his first Batman story, Al Ewing tells a tale of murder and math. And in the backup, one of Batmanâs youngest fans teams up with the Dark Knight to investigate something going very wrong in his school. Detective Comics Annual 2025 has a main story written by Al Ewing; drawn by Stefano Raffaele, John McCrea and Fico Ossio; colored by Lee Loughridge, Triona Farrell and Ulises Arreola; and lettered by Tom Napolitano, with a backup written by Joshua Hale Fialkov, drawn by Mike Norton, colored by Nick Filardi and lettered by Troy Peteri.
Matt Lazorwitz: We do love a good one-off here on BatChat, donât we? No need for heavy continuity, just one or two little stories that have a punch and do some good character work.
Will Nevin: Funny this comes the day after we record an episode in which weâre knee deep in Grant Morrison, âNo Manâs Landâ and Injustice â things that, at their lowest, can feel like a slog. But a good Batman one-off murder mystery? Hell yeah, gimme that shit any day.
How to End the Universe
Matt: So, would it surprise you to know that this is a last-minute replacement story? This was solicited as a story from series writer Tom Taylor, but apparently Taylor had to bow out after the book was solicited, so we got this instead. It might explain why we needed three artists, although since each does a chapter it doesnât feel too discordant.
Will: That original solicit is a bit strange in its own right, ya know? It seems like fill-in writers have been the rule and not the exception when it comes to annuals. Heck, Taylor himself has done that before.
Matt: I know weâve talked about how we both find horror works better as a genre in Batman comics than sci-fi, but maybe itâs just that Al Ewiing is that good a writer, or maybe itâs that this is SCIENCE fiction rather than science FICTION, but I really feel like it works. Not to mention we get a touch of horror/fantasy in here, too. Thatâs three different genres, when you include the mystery element, yet somehow they blend together well for me.
Will: The magic feels a bit out of place, although that said, I love how Bats was able to use his big, giant brain to outwit old English sorcery, which seems like the most Batman thing ever. The first and third chapters were probably the strongest, but that middle bit was by no means bad.
Matt: That worked for me because it set up, as you put it, Batsâ big, giant brain. Do I think anyone reading this wasnât familiar with Batman already? No. But to quote the old maxim, âEvery comic is somebodyâs first,â and so that struck me as cueing up just how smart Batman is and how he solves problems, to set up the end of the story.
I would agree that the middle was the weakest chapter, though, in both story and art. I like John McCrea, who did that chapter, but his art is a little more unusual, a little more heightened than either of the other two artists, so it looked the most out of place.
Will: I commend editorial, though, for finding three artists whose styles generally meshed well even if they werenât identical. We didnât touch on this last night, but Batman #700 was a bit visually incoherent. All pros, all great, but those big changes in art take you out of a story.
Matt: Canât argue that point.
Will: I think we both love the idea of a locked-room mystery, donât we? (For one of my favorites, check out Dragnetâs âThe Bullet.â) But weâre not really suckered into believing that we have one on our hands here, so Iâm glad the story doesnât waste any space getting us invested in that idea. I do think, though, we could have hit the point harder that âoh, these stupid tech knives were hacked to kill the guy remotelyâ as soon as Batman figures it out rather than underlining that later in the story, but Iâm not mad at it.
Matt: Ewing knows how to pace this story out just right. There is a lot going on here, as we have made clear, but this never either feels too fast or too slow. Really we have a murder mystery, a Batman fighting a wizard and a Batman vs. some military guys and a mad scientist in three chapters. But it still feels very coherent.
Will: And I like how the tech bro ethos â the facially moronic âmove fast, break thingsâ â gets a pretty damning indictment here. We gave them a shot to run the government, and they drove it a mile into the ground. Of course the fuckers would try to unravel reality.
Matt: Greed is one of the main motivators for crime, isnât it? And it makes for a nice counterpoint here, that Batman is smart enough to beat this guy, while this guy, who thinks heâs so smart, is beaten by his own hubris.
Will: Itâs too bad Batman couldnât have spent more time punching him. But if heâs aware at all in that stasis bubble, that seems like punishment enough. Maybe not enough for Elon Musk, but enough for this analog.
Matt: I like the ambiguity of the ending here. That Batman says he should destroy the pages that can create a bubble of no-time that freezes anything inside it. But we donât see him do it. We donât see him destroy them or set them aside. And while the last bit of dialogue seems to suggest he kept them, we canât be sure. I can just see his thoughts, thinking that finding a way to create a small bubble again around, oh, letâs say The Joker doesnât violate The One Rule. But the moral questions of it falling into the wrong hands are too big. A post-âTower of Babelâ Batman has to remember that not even the Batcave is completely safe, after all.
Will: Itâs the Genesis Device all over again â with more than a pinch of Phantom Zone. Thereâs got to be a story where Batman learns about the Phantom Zone for the first time, right?
Matt: Iâm sure there is. And if there isnât? Iâm pretty sure Mark Waid has that in a file somewhere waiting for one of those between-arc one-offs on Worldâs Finest.
Yâknow, we have Matt Fraction starting on Batman soon, and I think Ewing, judging by this issue, would be a great choice to take over âTec once Taylorâs run is done.
Will: Donât tempt me with a good time, buddy. And we still have more than enough âHU2Hâ to slog through.
The Batman Middle School Fan Club
Matt: There isnât a ton to the backup story, but I donât think it could be any more charming. Just a short of Batman and a kid solving a Scarecrow mystery that turns out to not be one, but does do a lot of nice stuff to build up our narrator as a character and to make some social commentary without beating us over the head with it.
Will: This was cute as shit, Matt! I wasnât really familiar with Joshua Hale Fialkovâs work â seems like heâs been out of comics and more into television the past 10 years or so. But he did a Slam Bradley story for Legends of the Dark Knight in its digital first era, so I feel like we have to read that ASAP.
Matt: Most definitely!
The mystery here isnât hard to figure out; I think I had pieced it together after only a couple pages. But it makes so much sense that a kid, even one as smart as David, our narrator, would want the excitement of Scarecrow being involved rather than just lazy or corrupt business people not doing what they were paid to do.
Will: And this is also a natural consequence of the reality of Gotham. Every abandoned warehouse-turned-hideout for guys like Scarecrow and Joker would become a superfund cleanup site. And since Gotham is a world of limited resources (outside of said arch criminals and Batman), of course the cleanup would be rushed and/or deficient in some way. I like when crazy nonsense worlds have reasonable consequences of their reality. (See the quickly abandoned âspeed limitâ in Star Trek: The Next Generation.)
Matt: Thereâs one great detail here that might be me reading into something, but I like to think itâs not. In none of the word balloons does David actually introduce himself to Batman. But Batman addresses him by name. I know that could either be an oversight or weâre to assume that David did it between panels, but I like to think Batman keeps track of kids in fan clubs, not out of any of the stereotypical, âlooking for the next Robinâ ways that the internet will joke about, but out of native curiosity. And when he runs across them, he knows to address them by name because he cares about the people of Gotham.
Will: Thatâs some fine head canon there, buddy. He also probably wants to get these kids into criminology, make sure they have the resources they need. The Wayne Foundation has to give out a ton of scholarships.
Bat-miscellany
- Abigale Heartbalm joins us on this weekâs BatChat podcast to talk about three more stories featuring Stephanie Brown and her numerous costumes.
Buy Detective Comics Annual 2025 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.
