The Fate of Batman

[anarky]

I probably said it, but once we got to the "Batman could beat God if he had enough prep time" stage about twenty years ago, I kinda gave up.

We're where Superman was when Julius Schwartz took over, except there's no Julius Schwartz to dial him way the fuck down.

[vynsane]

In the latest issue of Batman(issue 130) he survives a “fall” from the Moon all the way back to Earth in nothing but his Batsuit. I don’t care how badass Batman is, that’s a hard eyeroll from me dawg.

hahaha WTF

[jjreason]

Dan Jurgens went from Superman to Captain America at one point....l and there were some growing pains. I think Cap threw his shield into space or something. That was dumb... what happened in Batman sounds at least equally as dumb.

[Tom Foolery]

There was a tribute to Kevin Conroy in the latest issue of Batman. I consistently get the Variant covers, but this week I got the Artgerm variant instead of the Quesada variant.

Did Catwoman:One Bad Day come out and I missed it?

[Diabolical]

Catwoman: One Bad Day was not this week.

I also got the Artgerm Batman cover. It's the first of three. Catwoman and Joker are the next two.
I buy a lot of Artgerm covers, even if I don't read the comic. There was a second Artgerm cover this week also - Avengers 64 - I think it's the 1,000,000 BC Phoenix (or whatever she's called). I almost grabbed the cool Avengers 4 tribute cover until I saw this one under it.

[Diabolical]

It looks like Catwoman: One Bad Day doesn't come out until June.
Bane: OBD is this week.

[Diabolical]

Nevermind, Catwoman OBD comes out this week.

[Tom Foolery]

The Bane OBD was pretty pedestrian. I would say slightly better than the Penguin one, but not enough to put it on a different level.

Riddler was great.
Freeze was good, but not great.
Bane and Penguin were mediocre, with Bane being less mediocre.
The other one was trash.

Five have been released, five more to go. I feel like King came to the editors with this super great Riddler story and they decided to turn it into this ‘event’ and found nine more mediocre inventory stories in the filing cabinet they needed to burn off, and here we are.

[Diabolical]

Riddler was amazing.
The rest have been trash.

[Tom Foolery]

Finally got around to reading the Clayface OBD issue. Damn. Not as good as the Riddler issue, but definitely the second best in the series.

I’m also still enjoying Silverstri’s Batman/Joker series.

[Tom Foolery]

I’m reading Tomasi’s Detective run, and I got snagged on a small detail in issue 1030. Damian has at this point, quit the Teen Titans and given up the Robin identity. He broke into the Batcave and stole Batman’s Black Casebook of old unsolved crimes. So, apparently when Bruce was a teenager, he was the victim of several unsuccessful assassination attempts. Then they stopped happening. Whatever, I’m not hung up on that. But Damian breaks into the GCPD file room and on one panel is a description of both Bruce and Alfred as the victims.
Bruce’s age is listed as 13. Alfred’s is listed as 35.
Which doesn’t seem that weird until you start thinking about it. Sure, 22 years seems like a decent age gap between the two. But when you think about how and when Alfred came to employment with the Waynes and think about his life story preceding that employment, you definitely start scratching your head. Alfred was practically a kid when he joined the Wayne household as his father’s dying wish. A career as a stage actor and a seasoned spy at the age of what? Early 20s??

[Tom Foolery]

The Penguin has a new mini series that started last week. I wouldn’t have otherwise mentioned it, but it’s written by Tom King. The first issue was good.
In the main Batman title, Oswald had faked his own death and given up crime. He was living under an alias in Metropolis and running a flower shop. Then Amanda Waller and Agent Bleep from King’s Killing Time miniseries recruit/blackmail Oswald into returning to Gotham to retake his criminal empire.

[jjreason]

I read what I'm assuming what Chip Zdarsky's first issue of Batman (126), and I wasn't super enthused. The art is nowhere near as good as it was during Tom King's run (or the Nu52 run, or JTIV's run on Detective for that matter) and the story seemed a lot more childish. The cobblepot kids were the antagonists, along with Batman's inner persona or something.

[Tom Foolery]

Zdarsky’s run has been underwhelming so far.

[Tom Foolery]

There’s a new crossover arc between Batman and Catwoman going on right now. Batman has been in a coma/out of comission for a few weeks following the events of the Knightmare summer event(which I completely skipped) and Selina has taken this opportunity to start hiring/training all the city’s henchmen to be burglars and work for her organization. Since the pool of henchmen has dried up, all the usual villains haven’t had enough manpower to do big, bombastic violent crimes. So, other than theft, crime in Gotham has dropped off significantly. And most of team Batman(ie the Robins and Batgirls etc) see this as a good thing.
But when Batman wakes up, he flips out because “crime is crime” so he’s basically fighting his own people. He beats up Nightwing, Cassie, Spoiler, Tim, Jason, etc. The only protege still on his side is Damian. Oh, and he also has a cybernetic hand now, because it got chopped off when he was jumping thru the multiverse a few arcs back.

Now you’re all caught up on what’s going on in Batman. Zdarsky’s run has been…not good.

Joshua Williamson has a new Batman & Robin ongoing that started this week, but I haven’t read it yet.