The revolving doors of any prison or mental health facility in Gotham City are running jokes, and rightly so; they can’t keep a D-lister like Ratcatcher locked up, let alone someone like the Joker. But they do keep winding up back in custody, so there has to be story potential there, right? This week’s episode…
Hunting for the kidnapped Harvey Bullock, Batman finds the secret organization called Elixir has another victim: The Penguin. Batman and Penguin must work together to find Bullock and escape Elixir. Detective Comics #1,098 is written by Tom Taylor, drawn by Lee Garbett, colored by Lee Loughridge and lettered by Wes Abbott. Will Nevin: Let’s talk…
Doug Moench wrote Batman stories for about a decade over the course of his runs on the character. And while his Bat work is probably best associated with his collaboration with Kelley Jones, generally his best known collaborator is penciller Paul Gulacy, with whom he defined Shang-Chi over at Marvel. That isn’t to say he…
Waylon Jones is missing, and Batman has discovered he has been taken to the black site outside of Gotham, Ark M. Batman must find his friend, but he faces a threat like he has never encountered. Enter: Absolute Bane. Absolute Batman #9 is written by Scott Snyder, drawn by Nick Dragotta, colored by Frank Martin…
The evolution of representation of queer characters in mainstream superhero comics is something that entire books can, and should, be written about. So I’m not going to wax rhapsodic about all the changes here, but it’s June and thus Pride Month, and so we’re back with queer Bat characters. First we wrap up Greg Rucka’s…
Batman travels into The Rookery, one of Gotham’s darker neighborhoods, investigating a murder and learning about the history of a familiar name: The Red Hood Gang. Batman: Dark Patterns #7 is written by Dan Watters, drawn by Hayden Sherman, colored by Triona Farrell and lettered by Frank Cvetkovic. Will Nevin: It’s no “the man is…
We’re getting near 200 episodes of this show, and many of those episodes have been experiences where we discover fun, fascinating comics. And then there is this week. Patreon backer and friend (?) of the show John Wickham made his pick for his return, and he decided to pick three stories related to the Joker…
We’re back to our three runs we’re following in order. In “No Man’s Land,” we meet a new character who will be an important part of the Bat Family moving forward. In the Morrison run, we get some side stories in the run up to The Return of Bruce Wayne. And in Injustice, Renee Montoya…
Batman’s quest to stop Hush and save Red Hood from himself leads him to Hush’s allies, while Nightwing finds Hush, Red Hood, Joker and more characters as “H2SH” rolls on. Batman #160 is written by Jeph Loeb, penciled by Jim Lee, inked by Scott Williams, colored by Alex Sinclair and lettered by Richard Starkings. Will…
Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight was a title like no other at the time, with its rotating creative teams of big name creators. As the series progressed, some of the creative teams featured less well known creators, but the series always tried to do something different, even if some themes came up over and…
Batman learns the details of the origin of the new Ventriloquist, as her plans fall apart and she makes one final, desperate attempt to stop her home from being seized. Batman: Dark Patterns #6 is written by Dan Watters, drawn by Hayden Sherman, colored by Triona Farrell and lettered by Frank Cvetkovic. Will Nevin: I…
Y’know, sometimes you get an episode request, and you wind up with stories better than you could have expected. Patreon backer and friend of the show Matt McThorn specifically wanted to talk about the Batman annual with the origin of Clownhunter and art by James Stokoe. So we decided, what better theme than more annuals….
Patreon backer Sam Hopper wanted to give us a nice, fun week, and we appreciate that. He requested three stories that inspired episodes of Batman ’66. There are surprisingly few episodes of that show that were adaptations, but definitely enough or an episode. But these are really short stories, so we wanted to add a…
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 Batman’s 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…
We’re back with two of our favorite ladies this week: Patreon backer (and Will’s wife) Abigale Heartbalm and Stephanie Brown. Abigale wanted to read three stories featuring Stephanie, and we wanted to go with something similar as the first time we did a Stephanie episode where we touch on different eras of the character, but…