This week, one of the defining writers of DC Comics in the 80s and early 90s will turn 75 years old. John Ostrander has a storied career over more than 40 years. He created an indy hit with his creator owned mercenary, Grimjack, and wrote some of the best received Star Wars comics ever. His…
It’s Valentine’s Day week, and I may or may not have forgotten about that when I was scheduling episodes this year. Fortunately, ComicsXF writer and friend of the show Tony Thornley picked some stories that work pretty well for Valentine’s Day. You see, these are all about love: brotherly love, romantic love, and the love…
Merry Bats-Mas to one and all! We’re getting near Christmas, and so it’s time to go back to the holiday stories in Gotham well (and if you think we might run out any time soon, have no fears, we’ve got stories for years). This year, we’re reading the first Batman Christmas story, which features some…
The beauty of a Patreon request is you never know what you’re going to get. And bless Dan Grote, co-host of WMQ&A and BatChat’s first patron and guest, for coming at us with a request nobody expected. This week, we’re reading three stories featuring Joe Potato, a Gotham PI who we read one story with…
While a lot of Batman’s best known rogues date back to his earliest days, the 80s spawned a handful of memorable nemeses, and none moreso than Scarface, the evil dummy, and his henchman, the Ventriloquist. This week, we’re reading three stories featuring Scarface, including his first appearance, his origin and the first appearance of his…
Spooky season is over, and so now it’s time for some wholesome fun! We covered three of the six mini-series where Batman ’66 teams up with other properties a ways back, and now we’re returning to cover the other three. We have Kevin Smith writing about the team-up of Batman and the Green Hornet is…
It’s spooky season, and so this week we’re covering three stories where Batman teams up with his most diabolical frenemy, the Demon Etrigan. There’s lots of rhyming, most of it not very good. Be grateful I didn’t try to do it in this introduction; I am many things, but a poet is not one of…
James Robinson might be best known for writing the 90s classic, Starman, but he’s written a bunch of Batman too. And this week, Josh Weil stops by to talk about three of Robinson’s stories. We have a Pulp Heroes annual, and two tales of Two-Face. There are some unfortunate sexy corpses, questionable editing and the…
There are plenty of superheroes you could talk about where the issues of copaganda in 2023 don’t come up. I’m sure there are. But Batman isn’t one of them. We’ve had episodes talking about Jim Gordon and the main detectives of the GCPD before and had to look at those questions, and this week, we’re…
The Mad Hatter is one of Batman’s oddest major foes. While all of the rogues who have existed since the Golden Age have gone through various permutations, few are as wildly different. Sometimes he is obsessed with hats. Sometimes he is a mind control scientist. Sometimes he is obsessed with Alice In Wonderland and has…
The beauty of DC’s Elseworlds concept, rather than a more traditional What If? or imaginary story, is the variety it opened up. This wasn’t a simple small recasting of one event, butterfly effect style, but creators imaginations could go wild and choose different times, places, and even twist the most basic concepts of the character…
Wouldn’t it be great to go to school in Gotham City? Well, it probably wouldn’t be scarier than anywhere else. This week, Mrs. Abigale Heartbalm, Esq. stops by, and we talk Gotham Academy and two other school centric Batman related stories. We talk about how Gotham Academy successfully brings manga tropes to Gotham, question how…
From her first appearance, Barbara Gordon was a dynamic and exciting addition to the Batman family. Brilliant, tough and strong willed, Barbara has faced more adversity than most superheroes, dealing with trauma and coming out stronger for it. This episode, we read three stories that trace her evolution from the dominoed dare doll, Batgirl, to…
There are many great supporting characters in the Batman mythos. Alfred. The myriad Robins and Batgirls. Jim Gordon. Leslie Thompkins. And then, there is Bat-Mite, the 5th Dimensional imp who claims to be Batman’s biggest fan. And he is, in the same way that Annie Wilkes is to Paul Sheldon (that’s a Misery reference for…
I have been having a hard time saying that this month marks the 40th anniversary of the first appearance of Jason Todd. It just doesn’t seem like to could be that long ago, but it absolutely is. And so, to celebrate the anniversary of the angriest Robin (well, Damian does give him some competition), we’re…