Joshua Williamson’s caretaker stint on Batman ends as the Dark Knight returns to Badhnisia in Batman #124, written by Joshua Williamson, drawn by Howard Porter and Jorge Fornes, colored by Tomeu Morey and lettered by Clayton Cowles. In the backup, Poison Ivy deals with the fallout of “Fear State” in a story that leads into her new miniseries, written by G. Willow Wilson, drawn by Dani, colored by Trish Mulvihill and lettered by Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou.
It’s the retirement party for Commissioner Barbara Gordon, and Terry McGinnis is at the party looking to get some intel and to meet the only other honest cop in Gotham. But can he get out of his own head, and out from under Bruce Wayne’s shadow? Batman Beyond: Neo-Year #3 is written by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing, drawn by Max Dunbar, colored by Sebastian Cheng and lettered by Aditya Bidikar.
We’re back to catching up on Batman: Killing Time this week. The Help makes his first appearance, there are vaguely religious undertones, Batman hunts Catwoman and Riddler, and a whole bunch of other stuff happens. Batman: Killing Time #3-4 is written by Tom King, drawn by David Marquez, colored by Alejandro Sanchez and lettered by Clayton Cowles.
Matt Lazorwitz: So we’re not going to be covering this in depth, but I thought I’d drop it here at the top since it’s something topical. I realize there are people better equipped to talk about this, and I know some of the stories are problematic, but the Batman content in DC Pride 2022 is worth your time. The Tim Drake and Alysia Yeoh stories are quite good, but the whole special is worth it for me for “Becoming Batman,” the autobiographical short from Kevin Conroy. We give Paul Dini’s Dark Night a lot of crap over on the podcast, but I would read an entire graphic novel from Conroy about being Batman in a heartbeat now.
Will Nevin: I don’t know much aside from Twitter’s immediate take of “Hey, maybe you shouldn’t textually distance Stonewall from an ongoing struggle for rights,” and that seems like a good observation, especially when talking about a work of corporate ownership. *BUT* I will concur with your thoughts without having read it myself. I trust you that much, Brother Matt.
Ivy Steals the Show
Matt: Listen, I like Joshua Williamson. His horror and dark fantasy stuff at Image? Enjoyed the hell out of that. His Flash run went on a bit too long, but I found it generally enjoyable. But his run on Batman has felt like what I think has been made more clear than ever that it is: a caretaker run in between the end of Tynion’s and the beginning of Zdarsky’s. He was given a directive to keep the book going, to set up the Batman, Incorporated series, and to lead into his own Dark Crisis, and he did that, and not much else.
Will: Hoooooboy was this ever skippable. I might not say that for his entire run, because I guess it was interesting at least, but this issue felt like a coda that didn’t add anything, and my money probably could have been better spent elsewhere, like tracking down the last remaining wild Mountain Dew: Sparks.
Matt: Caretaker isn’t bad; I agree this had some enjoyable character moments and some great art. But as Batman runs go, this will be forgotten. I think Abyss will be joining Batman Inc., but aside from that? This issue doesn’t do much, and plays into one of the things I truly hate about the post-New 52 changes to the Batman mythos. I do not like that Joe Chill was caught and jailed at any point before Batman could be the one to do it. The mystery of it is part of what defines Bruce, and his choice not to kill Chill, and to move on from Chill to fight crime in general, is something I find central, and I don’t think it helps the character to have Chill jailed beforehand.
Will: Before I talk about that point, answer me this: Which artist did the “now” and who did the Chill flashbacks?
Matt: Howard Porter did the now, Jorge Fornes did the flashbacks.
Will: Fucking hated the current day look. More Fornes, please.
Matt: Oh, hell yes. If you haven’t read it, go check out the best Fargo story you’ve read since season one of the TV show, Eliot Rahal and Fornes’ Hot Lunch Special from AfterShock. Brilliant crime series.
Will: A crime joint by Eliot Rahal? You think I’d skip that? Matt, come on. I know I don’t read for the sake of bits, but I actually do look at a few comics from time to time.
Matt: Meanwhile, I liked the backup. I discovered Dani as an artist in the Hill House miniseries The Low, Low Woods, but her work on the Miracle Molly Secret Files issue and Arkham City have really made her a talent to watch in my estimation. Marcio Takara is going to have some shoes to fill in the actual mini after seeing the art here.
Will: The backup was *absolutely* the star of this issue (alongside Fornes), and I’m glad it was used to in essence advertise the mini — I feel like I’ve gotten so many tie-ins to the Batman, Incorporated series that it’s a psy-op at this point, so good on ’em for giving one other thing some attention.
The Future Looks Brighter
Matt: OK, this issue felt like a return to the form of issue #1 after the sophomore slump of issue #2. We got one story without these weird montages, and we’re seeing Terry build his cast in this new status quo.
Will: Combine that with the cliffhanger at the end, and I’d even say this issue makes a compelling case for continuing to read the series. As someone not super familiar with the Beyond-a-verse, it’s got something of a barrier to entry, but the creative team is slowly overcoming that (with me, at least).
Matt: Other than Babs, the other major characters here, Lumos and Beam Boonma, are new, as is much of the prime mover stuff here with Gotham, so I think the series is trying to be a bit more new-reader friendly than it would be if we had Derek Powers, Terry’s mom and brother, his on-again-off-again girlfriend Dana, and all the characters from the show popping up regularly. But I’m glad to see that it’s starting to grow on you.
Will: I suggest terrible things all the time to my poor partner Ian over at our Leftovers column. But you? You’ve never steered me wrong.
Matt: Do we think Gotham and Lumos are in cahoots, by the way? Or are they separate? I wonder if his speech about being from Bludhaven and not being invested in Gotham as anything other than an investment might mean he and Batman have to become uneasy allies to protect said investment.
Will: Lumos has all the deliberate signs of being a bad guy, so I wouldn’t be surprised if there’s some turn in the story. He’d be an interesting contrast with Batman. But also, he’s the kinda guy who would take out the mayor. Guess we’ll just have to keep reading, huh?
Matt: Looks like it. If we’re going to get some sci-fi in our Batman, this is definitely the way to go.
Matt’s Ideal Ghost-Maker Pitch?
Will: Can we use this space exclusively to talk about The Help? Because I think that would be more fun than talking about this series generally.
Matt: OK, hear me out here. I think The Help might be the character who finally makes me want to read a Ghost-Maker related story if it’s played just right. I have a pitch. Will you bear with me in podcast-style roleplay here?
Will: *takes an incredibly deep breath*
Matt: So, we know Ghost-Maker is all about one-upping Batman, right?
Will: *nods slowly*
Matt: Well, obviously my theory that this whole thing was Bruce Wayne setting up Riddler and company is wrong, but I think of The Help as a sort of anti-Alfred. What if, in this new Batman, Incorporated book, Ghost-Maker hires The Help to serve as his Alfred, only instead of taking care of his wounds and such, every time Ghost-Maker goes back to his Ghostcave or whatever he calls it, The Help tries to kill him, Inspector Clouseau style? I would read a book where The Help slaps around Ghost-Maker every issue or so.
Will: I’m sold, writer Matt! How many issues would you like, and how many zeroes should I put in your check? Getting that stupid, smug face punched in repeatedly by a polite man in a tux. What a perfect pitch. But in seriousness, what a fun character! Skilled enough — at 80 years old or so — to hold his own with Batman and evil enough to torture anyone in his way. If he had a goatee, I’d say he was the Mirror Universe Alfred.
Matt: And he doesn’t feel like a fan service-y insert like Ghost-Maker. Sure, he and Batman share a history with Ra’s, but Ra’s is an immortal who has a lot of characters with a lot of history. Connecting the two through that feels right to me. I still find the time hopping in this book to be needless in a lot of places, but I am enjoying it more now that we have this new character.
Will: It’s needlessly overdone, at least, because I wouldn’t mind the gimmick if it wasn’t done on every goddamned page. There’s no need — none, zero, zilch, Nada [sic — shout out to They Live] — to constantly jump around in your narrative. It creates the illusion of a zany pace, with so much action going on that you can’t possibly stick with one scene for more than a second, but that concept breaks right the fuck down when you go back to antiquity because you can’t help yourself.
Matt: The ancient Greece stuff is … I don’t even think it’s a hat on a hat. It’s a big, audacious crown of laurels on someone wearing a tux to the opera. I’m assuming it’s going to become relevant when people start killing each other over the eye of Christ in a religious frenzy (There’s a sentence I never thought I’d type), but it reads as just extraneous month to month. It smacks of writing for the trade.
Will: Paging Bobby Twobucks! But yeah, so many strange decisions in this thing. You made the right call to cover this two at a time, because I don’t know what we’d say from month to month. Truly the only remarkable things about this series are 1) Tom King’s incredible, incurable stubbornness in his Batman storytelling and 2) The Help. How great is that fuckin’ guy?
Bat-miscellany
- This week on the podcast, we’re joined by Matt’s friend Veronica to discuss one of her favorite characters, Poison Ivy, just in time for the miniseries the Batman backup is setting up.
- The reference in Batman Beyond to Bruce telling Terry he calls himself Batman in his head is from Season 1, Episode 7, “Shriek.”
- Will is once again imploring Hassan Otsmane-Elhaou (the letterer of the Poison Ivy backup) to do less.
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.
