A Batman ranking podcast, hosted by Matt Lazorwitz and Will Nevin.
Batman is not just popular here in the USA. As our listeners know, as you are from many countries, people outside America love Batman too. And sometimes we get stories reprinted here in the States that feature Batman that were created in other countries. We’re reading three of those today, one from France, one from…
Somehow, as we near 200 episodes, we still stumble across holes in our coverage. He’s appeared in a lot of stories we’ve covered, but we have never done an episode purely focused on Penguin stories. So this week, we remedy that. We’re reading Penguin’s first appearance, the story that changed him from supervillain to mobster…
Superman was pretty great, huh? We wanted to keep the good times rolling this week with an episode featuring characters other than the big guy who appeared in the movie. I really wanted to do a Batman/Mr. Terrific team up, but outside team settings, there aren’t really any, so we instead went with a classic…
The birth of the new DC Cinematic Universe… DC Extended Universe… DC… ah whatever the hell they’re calling it, kicks off on the big screen this week with the debut of James Gunn’s Superman film, so we’re obviously tying in because SEO is a powerful thing. We have three more stories of the World’s Finest…
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…
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…
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…
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: 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…
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…
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…
People love Batman. People love Apes. So when you combine them, you’re bound yo get some fun comics, right? Well, sometimes. Patreon backer Dan Grote asked us to read some Batman and apes stories, and we read a delightful Golden/Silver Age story, a 90s story that had its fun moments and a story that is…
This whole episode came about when Matt was looking for something else entirely, and he stumbled across an issue of Batman: Gotham Adventures, the animated series tie-in, written by Ed Brubaker. As he didn’t remember that at all, he decided he had to read it, and since he has minimal time to read for pleasure,…