Welcome back to BatChat! In Detective Comics #1,044, Batman must save Mayor Nakano from the children of Vile while another Bat family member steps in to fight (the seized) City Hall in a story written by Mariko Tamaki, drawn by Dan Mora, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Aditya Bidikar. In the backup, a new Arkham is rising but it seems some things never change in a story written by Stephanie Phillips, drawn by David Lapham, colored by Trish Mulvihill and lettered by Rob Leigh.
Red Hood, Jason Todd, has new employers and a new team. Only those employers are a shadowy government organization and that team are zombie Batman rogues. Jason is in for a world of weird in Task Force Z #1, written by Matthew Rosenberg, pencilled by Eddy Barrows, inked by Eber Ferreira, colored by Adriano Lucas and lettered by Leigh.
The threads of the search for the Master Engine come together, and now itās all a game of who is telling the truth and who really knows what, as various villains tell their versions of the events on the night the Riddler died. The Joker Presents: A Puzzlebox #9 & 10 is written by Rosenberg, drawn by Jesus Merino (framing sequence for both issues), Chris Mooneyham (issue #9) and Freddie E. Williams II (issue #10), colored by Ulises Arreola and Tony Avina, and lettered by Ferran Delgado.
Matt Lazorwitz: So weāre hitting four books this week, counting two issues of Puzzlebox. We fell behind, because DC is releasing so much Bat product we can barely keep up.
Will Nevin: Just drowning in bugs, guts and undead resin over here. *gurgles grotesquely*
The Mayor and the Bat
Matt: Last issue left us with a lot of questions about what was going on beyond the scenes of this āFear Stateā tie-in, and we donāt get any real answers this issue. We still donāt know who is behind Nero XIX, for instance, and the Batman and Nakano plot more or less treads water. Itās not awful, and is damn pretty as ever, and it has the return to Detective Comics of a member of the Bat family we havenāt seen in these pages for a while, but after the previous arc, where things happened constantly, this is a much slower story.
Will: Decompression, bay-bee! I canāt say that this story advanced much at all from the previous issue ā Bats and olā Mayor Nakano are in the sewer when it starts and still there when it finishes, although one of those fellows might be slightly more alive than the other. Seems so strange to introduce Nero XIX and then not go into them at all. Weird storytelling move there.
Matt: Yeah, that whole plot has me a bit befuddled. Is there a connection between him and the main āFear State,ā or is he just taking the opportunity to make a move against Nakano and conquer Gotham? But hey, we got to see Dan Mora draw Batwoman, and those were some great action sequences there.
Will: Speaking of her, I wonder what olā Kate Kane is doing in this story. The appearance struck me as fairly random, but it has to be going somewhere, right?
Matt: She also appeared in this monthās issue of Urban Legends, but there she was on a different āFear Stateā track, dealing with the Seer.
Will: Ya know, I think weāve hit most (if not all) of the Secret Files series, but for whatever reason (namely the deluge of Bat books), we havenāt taken up much of Urban Legends. Is it any good?
Matt: Being an anthology, some stories hit and some miss. I liked the Red Hood six-parter, I was an easy mark for the Tim Drake three-parter, there have been some good one-offs and this monthās āFear Stateā issue wasnāt bad. It had a Batwoman story, an Outsiders one, an Azrael prequel to Arkham City, and one Iām not remembering off the top of my head.
I think more and more, Iām realizing what my issue with āFear Stateā is. And itās not a problem exclusive to this event. Iām reading all the tie-ins to the event, and the continuity is very muddy. When does this Detective Comics story take place? Batman is running around here, and I canāt fit these events into the timeline we see in the main title; there doesnāt seem to be time for it. I commented recently that people were calling Anti-Oracle āSeerā well before the character revealed their identity on panel. Continuity shouldnāt be a crutch, and shouldnāt cause problems for storytelling, but when youāre doing a shared universe event? You have to run with the continuity.
Will: Batman seems to have the good bits, the Saint/Peacekeeper/Scarecrow stuff, while āTec has ā¦ more creepy bugs? I wonder if weāre not supposed to read these as two totally separate stories simply united by the āFear Stateā banner, because otherwise, thereās no way for all of this to make sense. Scarecrow orchestrating the bugs and the memory machine stuff? Saint making his play for the city while the bugs scamper and Nero XIX plays in the background as a coincidence? Wonky.
Matt: On the plus side, it remains beautiful to look at. Mora again does a two-page spread, something I like seeing him do. And as I said, his Batwoman is excellent; it was pretty obvious it was her, even before she masked up. Who else in Gotham is that pale with the fiery red hair?
Also, I like that Deb Donovan remains committed to her job, even as the city burns around her.
Will: Deb Donovan: Aināt nothinā gonna stop her from workinā or drinkinā.
Matt: Before we move on, the backup here? Oh, Nakano. How can you keep finding new ways to screw up? In the immortal words of Chief Clancy Wiggum, āDig up, stupid!ā I like the idea of a new Arkham, and thereās a lot of story potential here, but man, this guy canāt make a good decision to save his life.
Will: I did not care much for the backup in light of the weird press conference (see below!) and the weirder argument presented. Weāre fighting over what weāre going to call Gothamās new loony bin because of ghosts? Ugh.
Matt: More than fair. But can we agree that this kind of gritty crime/horror stuff is perfectly suited to David Laphamās style? I enjoyed the look of it quite a bit.
Will: That, good sir, we can agree on.
The Hood and the Dead
Matt: So, when we talked about this book in the runup to it in the Detective Comics backups, you said you expected it to be āstupid in the best way.ā Did it live up to those expectations?
Will: As a barely rehashed Suicide Squad? Alas, it did not. But I didnāt hate it! So there was that, at least.
Matt: There was a lot of table setting in this issue. They had to explain the concept for everyone who hadnāt read those backups. It was a pretty paint-by-numbers issue one, without a lot of the chaotic charm of Matthew Rosenberg firing on all cylinders, but I wonder if that is issue one syndrome.
Rosenberg does have a good handle on a snarky Jason Todd, and heās doing some world building by adding these scientists and other members of the staff. It is very Suicide Squad, but the title always said this was going to be a Suicide Squad riff to start with, at least. I think we need to see what Rosenberg can do to make it more than zombie Suicide Squad from here.
Will: Itās not even all zombie Suicide Squad! Bloom aināt even dead. What the hell?
Matt: An odd choice, yes, but I figure weāll get some reasoning there eventually.
Eddy Barrows on pencils adds to the feeling of, āThis is an OK comic.ā Barrows is a utility player, the kind of artist who does fine work and can hit a deadline. And thatās a good thing to be! Heās drawn a lot of Bat titles over the years. But he doesnāt bring anything exciting and new to the table.
Will: So youāre saying Barrows is the Brian Azzarello of artists?
Matt: For me, Azzarello is more hit or miss. Iām thinking ā¦ Peter J. Tomasi. His stuff usually isnāt flashy or gets a lot of acclaim, but when you read it, you know youāll get something that youāll definitely not hate, will probably like, and every now and then will dazzle you. This is in the like camp for me.
Will: Again, I didnāt hate it. But it could have been more Looney Tunes, for sure.
The Clown and Everyone Else
Matt: Now if you want Rosenberg at his most wildly chaotic, these last two issues of Puzzlebox, especially issue #10, are Rosenberg cutting loose with some hijinks. Weāve had unreliable narrators to this point, but full on supervillain Rashomon? Fun! And the fact that he gets the personalities of the villains to the point that each story is perfectly distinct and works with their characterization is joyful to read.
Will: Harley Quinn was an absolute blast. Letās get Rosenberg on that book.
Matt: Harley was hilarious, but more me? The Penguin was perfect. Rosenberg gets that Penguin has a swollen sense of self, and seeing how differently he was drawn in each villainās tale was excellent. In his own version heās tall and suave, but everyone else sees him as the waddling grotesque he is.
Will: And not to continue to harp on Harley (but to do that same exact thing), her vision of Joker was positively gross and perfect.
Matt: So many of the artists on this project have been newer or have history in indies. Freddie Williams has been working for DC for 15ish years, and did the Batman/TMNT crossovers, so he had a track record with Batman, and I loved that they let him take his usual, slightly cartoony style, and stretch it to whole new levels. That Joker? Ewwwwwwww. And Harleyās tiny Mad Hatter practically swimming in his giant hat? Hilarious.
We now have ā¦ I believe four chapters left here. Have we reached the point where the āWho killed the Riddler?ā thing is just a Macguffin? It seems like the plot here is in service to getting some wild art and crazy character beats. Unless of course all of this is the product of the reality-warping Master Engine. That seems pretty likely as well.
Will: Matt ā¦ what if weāre a product of the Master Engine?
Matt: Iāve gone cross-eyed. Maybe we were the spoon all along.
Bat-miscellany
- The fakiest fake presser question ever fake asked: āDid you know Arkham Asylum was haunted?ā
- Tired from all the reading and want to give your ears a workout? Try BatChat: The Silver Platinum Audio Edition, where in this weekās episode we get extra spooky with three supernaturally themed books. But what about next week, you say? Things look a little funny. Haha. Haha. HA. HAhAHaHAHaHAHA.
- Chris Mooneyham, the artist on issue #9 of Puzzlebox, was the artist on an Image series called Five Ghosts, about a pulp hero-like adventurer who was bonded to the concepts of five great literary characters, and could call on their abilities: Merlin, Sherlock Holmes, Dracula, Miyamoto Musashi and Robin Hood. It was a great book, and I wish he and writer Frank Barbiere got to do more arcs.
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.
