It’s party night in the Owl Court Hotel, as the Scooby Gang and Bruce Wayne wind up attending a birthday soiree and running from a Talon in The Batman & Scooby-Doo Mysteries #3, written by Matthew Cody, drawn and colored by Erich Owen, and lettered by Saida Temofonte.
Lucius Fox comes to New York as the Fox family faces a personal tragedy and Jace’s life, both personal and as Batman, nears a turning point, with a long held secret revealed, in I Am Batman #16, written by John Ridley, drawn by Christian Duce, colored by Rex Lokus and lettered by Troy Peteri.
And, uh … I dunno. Something with portals, Martha Wayne’s freakin’ pearls, lost souls and Batman meeting Spawn again for the first time in Batman/Spawn, written by Todd McFarlane, penciled by Greg Capullo, inked by McFarlane, colored by Dave McCaig and lettered by Tom Napolitano.
Will Nevin: Knock knock.
Matt Lazorwitz: …
Will: Play along or I’m quitting.
Matt: You’re killing me. Who’s there?
Will: Hoo.
Matt: Hoo who?
Will: OH SHIT, MATT’S A TALON!
Hoo’s Here
Matt: Hey, it’s the first of two appearances by the Court of Owls this week! And while this was not the best issue of Bat/Scoob, it’s certainly the more successful of the two Owl sightings this week, for sure.
Will: We go *ages* without a Court of Owls appearance, and whaddya know? Two in one damn week. What a treat this book was, and I’ll say this for it: It felt the most Scooby-Doo of any of these stories we’ve read so far. And that’s not a bad thing!
Matt: Oh, it definitely did. It added in that little bit that is often in a Scooby-Doo that I can’t remember us seeing in one of these, with Scoob and Shaggy doing a whole routine with the ghost, where they catch it off guard and put on costumes and such. Charming as all get out.
The art on this one was different from what we’ve usually gotten on this book, and while it didn’t leave me cold, it definitely wasn’t as strong as what I’m used to. But at times I wonder if that was intentional. It actually had that feeling of old Hanna-Barbera cartoons, of the characters animated over matte backgrounds, so I think it might have been a nod to that.
Will: I can’t get over how much fun this issue was, even more so than usual. The scene in the dark? Velma’s glasses and the Talon’s eyes? Too fucking cute. I died, it was so cute. I am now a ghost on account of that over-fucking-load of cuteness.
Matt: And it has a ‘66 reference right there on the cover! If you can always get me with good Tim Drake content, you can always get Will with a solid ‘66 reference.
Will: You’re goddamned right you can. Now we all do the Batusi!
The Last Good Man Has Fallen?
Matt: This is the start of a new arc, so it’s a good time to get back to this book, and it’s a pretty quiet issue. Very little in the way of Batman action here.
Will: For as much as I complain about too much action, I am ready to support a quieter Bat book. And I like the premise here: Some guy is taking out people connected to the Fox family. It’s not some citywide crisis, but it is serious, and it is something Jace needs to handle. Still not sold on the Fox family drama, though, and that certainly includes the big reveal at the end.
Matt: Yeah, that big reveal at the end is going to be a hard pill for me to swallow. I understand that morally upright characters aren’t great for certain kinds of drama, but it’s also OK to have a character who is just a good man. And while having some kind of affair doesn’t make Lucius a bad man, it is very out of character for who he has been since his first appearance. It’s going to take a lot to convince me this works.
Will: My thoughts *exactly*. We don’t need everyone in either Bruce or Jace’s world to exist in some sort of moral gray space. We can have perfectly good, upstanding dudes in Gotham and New York — not everyone has to have some degree of moral compromise.
I mean, I guess Lucius isn’t required to have some affair buried in his past, but the secrecy and stigma are pointing toward that. I hope this is not some story in which he abused his position in order to have what he thought was a consensual relationship. That’s an important story that needs telling … but it ain’t gotta be with Lucius.
Matt: And it’s a story that is the kind of one Ridley is definitely looking to investigate in his writing, but I really hope it isn’t that.
Will: Lucius is maybe not the most treasured ancillary character around, but let’s say — for the sake of this argument — we’ve plotted out where Ridley is going. It seems unnecessary (especially where you can just create a new character to advance the same cogent point) and reminds me of when the South Park fellas brought back Mr. Hankey a few years ago only so they could do a riff on Roseanne’s hate tweeting. Real world people disappoint us all the time and break our hearts. Fictional characters don’t have to do that.
Matt: OK, I have nothing left for that particularly dark rabbit hole. On to comic book stuff in this comic book. It feels like Ridley is working toward some payoff on the Moral Authority, who have been a thorn in Jace’s side since the beginning of the series. Factor in that we also get Jace finally telling Hadiyah he loves her, something clear to anyone who has read a single page of their interactions, and it definitely feels like this arc is closing a chapter of this book that opened with this title’s first issue.
Will: I did not care for how the last arc wrapped, and I sweater God, if I have to see one more character refer to heroes as “masks,” I will scream out loud, but overall, this series is getting better and growing on me.
Sound and Fury Signifying Nothing
Matt: What was that? What? Was? That?
Will: That was a confusing, confounding slog that had some great visuals and demonstrated that Todd McFarlane should stick to toys and his own art for … ever? At least until after Spawn/Batman, in which presumably Image will get the chance to edit what will hopefully be a better book. Woof, this was a mess. Was this written for Spawn folk? Do you think it’s at least something they can comprehend?
Matt: Precisely what I was thinking. As much as McFarlane assumed everyone who read this was following Spawn, I would wager a lot of them (us included), do not, and so I walked out of this having no idea what this was, and it felt mostly like a setup for the next crossover, the one that our pal Tony Thornley said was what everyone wanted, which was our two heroes’ clown-themed archnemeses teaming up. I should have felt like I was being introduced to the world of Spawn, and the world of Batman, but I was thrown into the middle of this and got no grounding in either world.
Will: Yeah. This was ungood. More ungood than the Frank Miller book we read for the pod, but at least this was less Frank Miller-y.
Matt: But it was very pretty. Capullo pulled out all the stops on this one. And that middle two-page spread of the two heroes on a rooftop? Poster worthy.
Will: I got all caught up on I Am Batman for the purposes of … well, I don’t know, completeness? … and I thought there was a better splash page in one of those issues. I think the one we reviewed up there. But anyway, to make up for whatever chicken McFarlane was fucking, the art would have to be all-time great. So great it would make you weep. Capullo was excellent, sure. But not nearly enough to overcome the boat anchor that drowned that book.
Matt: And it wasn’t just the weird lack of context. We spend so much time cutting between the Owls and Batman and Spawn, we never get enough to get clear motivations. Why do Batman and Spawn become friendly enough that Batman is calling Spawn “Al?” And Spawn straight up kills a dude, and Batman doesn’t react terribly much to it. That is woefully out of character.
Will: He says something to the effect of — if I am remembering this muddled mess correctly — “Oh, he killed a guy, so I guess it’s OK if you kill him. I’m Batman and I DGAF.” So strange, but that only speaks to a larger problem: McFarlane does not have Batman’s voice down. In the least.
Matt: Nope, not in the least.
Oh, and how long do you think Capullo has been waiting to draw faceless Joker without the face strapped on?
Will: Since Snyder first told him about Joker cutting his face off. I guarantee McFarlane didn’t bring that up or even remember it.
Bat-miscellany
- This week it’s tales of Damian Wayne from alternate timelines and possible futures in an episode that could only be titled, because Matt loves a bad pun, “Damians of Future Past.”
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.
