It’s all been leading to this. DC’s new Batman event starts in Batman: Fear State Alpha. Numerous threads from across the Batman line start to come together, with many villains making their move and the heroes caught on the back foot. The issue is written by James Tynion IV, drawn by Riccardo Federici, colored by Chris Sotomayor and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Matt Lazorwitz: So this is it. This is everything Tynion has been building toward since the end of “Joker War,” not to mention what Ram V has been building toward in Catwoman, John Ridley in Next Batman/I Am Batman and Stephanie Phillips in Harley Quinn.
Will Nevin: This is the culmination of Tynion’s run, yeppers — all these threads and random-ass new characters all drawn together to face Scarecrow’s ultimate master scheme … that leads to the outcome we already have seen. Although I guess we can wave our hands at that as only one possible version of events.
Matt: Yes, we’ll have to see how it pans out, but a lot of the books that … pre-follow up on Future State events seem to be playing that will they/won’t they game, and not just in the Bat-line. I figure, since this is the rare week where we have only one Bat book, we’ll divide this column up into the three main beats of the book. Shall we?
Will: One cotton-pickin’ minute, mister. Two main gripes: I don’t like the visuals (Just run with the house style since this is Batman #11whatever basically) and FOR THE LOVE OF ALL THAT IS GOOD AND DECENT, write a damn recap page instead of a clunky-ass two-page montage of talking news heads that magically happens to read like a summary of where we are.
OK, I’m better now.
Matt: The art is definitely not up to the Jorge Jimenez standards. And I don’t know why DC is pathologically against recap pages. It would spare a lot of time and effort, especially when everyone is writing for the trade.
Will: It’s not even the quality so much as this colored pencil look doesn’t vibe with … anything else.
I swear, we can move on now.
Scarecrow and the Magistrate
Matt: The largest part of this issue deals with the previously unrevealed history and direct fallout of what has been going on in Batman. We see Simon Saint’s first meeting with Scarecrow, the deal they made, and Saint trying to recover from Scarecrow’s betrayal. It becomes clearer than ever that Saint is completely out of his depth here. You pointed out in the last issue of Batman that you shouldn’t use cliches, and having Saint say that Scarecrow is playing Gotham like a fiddle is meh phrasing, but if anyone is getting played like a fiddle, it’s Saint.
Will: I mean, if I was writing it, I’d have Crane ask Saint, “Are you a stupid motherfucker?” But that doesn’t play well outside of Black Label, does it? It’s clear he’s out of his element (cliche) and playing with fire (cliche). And we know he’s going to get lit the fuck up. It’s fun to see him get played, though, especially while he’s trying (and failing) to successfully exploit Peacekeeper-01.
Matt: Oh, yeah. If Saint were a patsy for Crane, it would be much less satisfying to see him get his comeuppance. But he’s not a patsy (the legendary patsy is in one of Tynion’s other books). It’s the fact that Saint was so full of himself, so sure he was the right man to make the right choice for Gotham right now, that makes it feel good to watch him flounder. And speaking of floundering, we don’t see a lot of him, but Mahoney, our dear Peacekeeper, is completely shot right now, and it’s only going to get worse.
Will: Play stupid games with bad former Arkham guards, win stupid prizes. Quick question about Scarecrow: In that aforementioned terrible recap sequence, one of the newsbots says Crane forced his former dean to kill themselves. Brother Matt, that’s not the story I remember from Batman: The Animated Adventures. Do you happen to know where that’s told in the comics? Might read it after the next tough faculty meeting.
Matt: I believe that would be Batman Annual #19, from the year that DC’s annuals were all Year One themed, but since Batman had already had a thoroughly examined year one, each annual focused on a villain, and the Batman annual was Scarecrow-centric. I might even have this lined up for future reading for our kinda-sorta secret project that will be fully revealed at the end of the month (that’s a new tease, folks). [Grote’s note: That’s right, kids, read Bat Chat every week in September for more edging.]
Will: I wonder where Batman Annual #19 would rank in a list of all the Batman stories ever told. Interesting question. We’ll probably never find out. Alas.
Matt: A couple more notes on this part of the story. First, Scarecrow is using Mad Hatter tech? No good of that is going to come. And I love that Montoya is coming to the realization that Nakano is no better than any of the other schmucks who have been mayor of Gotham.
Will: Scarecrow with gas *and* mind-control technology? Yeah, that’s enough to make you shit your pants. And remember, Montoya, ACAB. Even (and especially) the ones who run for mayor.
Matt: Final question for discussion. I am assuming, since Scarecrow told Saint he needed a clean-out from Arkham where no one would be hunting him, that means that Saint was the mastermind behind A-Day, yes? He had been high on my suspect list to begin with, but that pretty much seals the deal.
Will: Maybe Joker will be the guy who finally guts Saint. That’d be a fun finish for him.
For more Scarecrow and Simon Saint in Fear State, read Batman and for more Mayor Nakano, read Detective Comics, both of which we talk about in this very column.
Anti-Oracle
Matt: Of the three main beats of this issue, the Anti-Oracle is the one with the least amount of lead-in. We hadn’t seen any hints of this going in, either here or in any of the other books. I’m trying to decide how I feel about it. It’s not the first Anti-Oracle we’ve gotten: Calculator was a criminal Oracle back in the mid-’00s, and the Batgirl and the Birds of Prey series started with someone hijacking that identity as well. But here, Tynion seems to be playing to our very 2021 fears of misinformation and how it spreads. This is the kind of stuff Tynion likes to play with: these big modern fears, the same way the police state and institutional violence is dealt with in The Magistrate. I just don’t know if he has enough room to deal with all the ramifications, or if the book that will be tying in and dealing with it has the ability to either.
Will: If you read Department of Truth, you know that Tynion has done his homework (cliche) when it comes to conspiracy theories — he consistently impresses me with the amount of care he puts into exploring these ideas. So it wouldn’t surprise me if he wants to do something with misinformation here, and it gives Barbara something to track down and figure out — and maybe get back in the field.
Matt: And more space for the Batgirls and Nightwing. I wonder if this is a new character, or if we’re gonna get a revelation that it’s someone we know. We also don’t exactly know how this event was planned. I assume that Tynion is the showrunner here, and had these threads that were sort of handed out to the appropriate creators of the other books. This does seem like a Tynion plot, but Tom Taylor, who is writing Nightwing, which is one of the books that will be headlining Anti-Oracle, could also have come up with it, although I trust Tynion to have more of a nuanced handle on it. That’s the thing about crossovers: You never know how the sausage got made until after they’re done.
Back to the actual comic, though. Whoever is doing this seems to actively embrace misinformation, is spreading it out of some sadistic glee and calls it, “my truth.” Which I admit to finding utterly terrifying, mostly because of the real world implications.
Will: What better way to spread fear than to fake a trusted voice who tells you to be scared as hell?
Matt: I wish that felt like something that was utterly fantastic. But honestly, after that past year? It feels like just another Tuesday.
Will: Brother Matt, you’re being overly dramatic. It’s not something we’d ever have to worry about in real life, and especially not in the local news programming that remains a trusted source of information for many people in this country.
Follow the investigation of Anti-Oracle in I Am Batman and Nightwing. And you can read analysis of Nightwing on this site from Armaan Babu.
The Unsanity Collective and Queen Ivy
Matt: And finally we have the Unsanity Collective, Queen Ivy, the Gardener, Harley and Ghost-Maker, although blissfully little of the last one. This one is the plot I’m least invested in from this book, although the fact that it’ll be tying in the Ivy stuff from Ram V’s excellent Catwoman series has me more interested. I don’t precisely know what the Tynion characters are going to bring to that, aside from Gardener. Is this a juxtaposition between the tech obsessed, transhuman Collective and Queen Ivy’s radical environmentalism?
Will: Feels like it? And you know, for the relatively extensive (and bad) recap we got, there was little summary if any of what’s going on with Ivy — although that would be admittedly hard to shove into the narrative format. So there’s two Ivies, right? How did that happen?
Matt: That comes out of the Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy miniseries that had the unenviable task of trying to deal with the fallout of the best-left-forgotten Heroes in Crisis where Ivy “died.” Ivy’s resurrection led to part of her being split off from the rest, and that series ended with the fragment, the part that had loved Harley and had been travelling with her, sacrificing herself to save Harley from Queen Ivy; this would have been right before “Joker War,” so the Harley who arrived to kill Joker had also just lost Ivy. We saw a little follow-up on this in The Swamp Thing, where the new Swamp Thing encountered both Ivies when travelling through The Green, and the fragment Ivy has been in Catwoman for some time now. It’s important to note both of those books are by Ram V, so the tie-in between them tracks more smoothly anyway.
Boy, you’d think they would have found some way to address all that in the comic for everyone who doesn’t read any comic with a Bat character. I can’t think of a single way to do that. Oh, wait…
Will: Can’t do a straight recap page, Brother Matt. It’s against the law.
Matt: Anyway, this does mean that this plot will be tying in with Catwoman, where fragment Ivy is, and where the Magistrate is making its most militarized move, since Catwoman is currently the Queen of Alleytown, where the Magistrate is cracking down to show how tough they are.
Will: I should be reading Ram V’s Catwoman, shouldn’t I?
Matt: It’s probably the best ancillary Bat book right now, and the best the Catwoman solo has been since Brubaker was writing it over a decade ago, yes. It’s a crime book, mostly, with Selina trying to be a good-hearted Fagin to the urchins of Alleytown while dealing with the entrenched gangsters, an assassin hired by Penguin to take her out for the doublecross at the end of “Joker War,” and the GCPD and the Magistrate trying to push around the disenfranchised. Very good comics. Oh, and she has teamed up with various other Bat rogues, from the mostly reformed Clayface to the “People are trying to kill me and I need someone to help protect me, so I’ll help you if you do that,” Riddler.
Will: I just looked up the first Ram V trade, and Sean Gordon Murphy has a writing credit on it. I’m scared.
Matt: Just a two part fill-in. They can be skipped and not affect your understanding of what Ram is doing.
Will: I believe that for sure.
Sean Gordon Murphy: Doing Not Very Good Comics since 2005.
See how Queen Ivy plays into Fear State in Catwoman and Harley Quinn. And Armaan Babu is also reviewing Harley Quinn for the site, so check back for his insights.
Bat-miscellany
- Montoya deployed some super cop senses to extrapolate Saint’s plan to shut down city communications after seeing an infomercial for the Magistrate. She also had the super cop senses to tell her guys to quote “dig out the old walkie-talkies” because GCPD uses some other means of communication? I mean, if the police band is down, why wouldn’t Saint be able to shut down all wireless communication? Bad. Dumb.
- Aside from the titles listed below each section, other tie-ins to Fear State will be in Batman: Urban Legends, Arkham City, Task Force Z and Batman Secret Files. That’s a lot of crossover.
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.
