Welcome back to BatChat! In Detective Comics #1,038, Batman must deal with being a fugitive in both his identities, as Mr. Worth goes on a rampage and Hue Vile’s plans begin to … come to fruition maybe, as written by Mariko Tamaki, penciled by Viktor Bogdanovic, inked by Daniel Henriques and Bogdanovic, colored by Jordie Bellaire and lettered by Aditya Bidikar.
In the backup to the issue, Penguin contemplates his place in Gotham in a story written by Meghan Fitzmartin, drawn by Karl Mostert, colored by Bellaire and lettered by Rob Leigh.
And Garth Ennis brings his brand of superhero deconstruction to Gotham, where someone is going around and brutally attacking members of Batman’s rogues gallery in Batman: Reptilian #1, with a story by Ennis, drawn and colored by Liam Sharp and lettered by Rob Steen.
Matt Lazorwitz: This is an … interesting week. For reasons I think we’ll get into, there is a lot to discuss, although none of it is a rave.
Will Nevin: My answer? Get Liam Sharp on ’Tec and get someone to clean up some of Tamaki’s cliches. That’d be a great book.
Mr. Worth Sure Loves His Bazooka
Matt: So, we really loved those first couple issues of Tamaki’s run, didn’t we? And it feels like we’re in the law of diminishing returns here. The longer this arc has gone on, the more it’s wandered and become just this big mess.
Will: If I had to plot out a 20- or 30-issue run, I’d be effed in the a, no doubt. But you’re right — this thing had momentum (Deb as a character and not someone to be rescued! Mayoral henchpeople you could keep separate!), and now it just feels tired. This issue went nowhere, and it took its time doing so. Add in some fill-in art, and you’ve got something imminently skippable.
Matt: Is Mr. Worth the new winner for least interesting new character?
Will: That is not a horse race I’d risk losing money in. Poison Ivy’s ex has been inconsequential. And we just flat fuckin’ hate Ghost-Maker, but I guess that takes him out of the “least interesting” running. The only good thing I can say about Worth is that I’m perversely fascinated by his constantly changing proportions.
Matt: Oh, that Bogdanovic art is all over the freakin’ place. Worth is just this rage monster. I can’t figure out how this guy became some kind of civic leader/mob guy. I mean, the death of a child can absolutely affect you in terrible ways, but this guy, he’s just unbalanced. And I can’t figure out his logic in this story. He seems to come around and feel bad for his bazooka-wielding madness, only to completely revert to type it seems like less than an hour later. Was that a scheme to get past Batman, maybe, or is there something else going on? Or is it just inconsistent characterization?
Will: I think we have some real overthinking here. If you recall the last time we left this happy little book, Worth had emptied out the police station so as to blow it up and kill Bruce Wayne. Now, I’m not the murdering type, but wouldn’t it have just been easier to walk in there and strangle this effete Gotham playboy? Keep it simple. Lower your explosion count. Have Worth bring out the bazooka in *this* issue. Or the next one. Or none of them. As to the characterization, I don’t think there is any; he’s as stock as the “angry dad who turns on Batman” from Future State: Next Batman, except he’s bigger and we waved our hand at some mob/business thing. Although, to be fair, Worth gets some depth *after* everything goes kablooey in this issue.
Matt: True, and he’s working with the mysterious Hue Vile (oh, nominative determinism at its finest). I still want to give Tamaki some more time to flesh out exactly what he is, and his alien/supernatural/metahuman shtick could be interesting. I generally prefer a Batman who is fighting crooks and villains not grounded in the supernatural, but there are always exceptions; Ra’s al Ghul is the obvious one.
Now, I have a question: Other than the hook of her needing vengeance for her friend, why is Huntress the character teaming up with Batman in this story? Why use her rather than a Batgirl or a Robin? Huntress has existed in a specific niche in the Batfamily; the frenemy who Batman begrudgingly respects and who has a more lethal bent. None of that seems needed here. If she was using her mafia princess background to get information on Worth’s mob ties, I could see it. I also have no issue with this being a favorite character of Tamaki’s she wanted to get back into the limelight (I love Huntress, too), but I am curious if I’m missing something.
Will: We’ve certainly talked about Huntress as a recent strength, both in backups and in the main book. But in this issue, she’s given precisely squat to do outside of Normal Robin Duties. I would hope we’re going in a direction that you’re suggesting — that’s there’s some reason she specifically is in this story — but it’s hard to know at the moment.
I can definitely say that if you’re missing something, I’m missing the same thing. Maybe some smart person will tweet at us and spell it out.
The Penguin is Back
Matt: I will say this: The backups in Detective remain my favorites of nearly any book DC is doing with two features (Ram V’s Justice League Dark over in Justice League is the only one that beats it, and frankly is the better of the two features in that book). I like that these are short bites, giving us perspective into side characters and background players in general, whether it’s Huntress, Deb Donovan or now the Penguin.
Will: Another nice thing is that they’ve tied neatly back into the main stories, and they’ve also generally given some much needed depth to these characters. This week’s backup on Penguin was no exception, as it not only situated him specifically in the ongoing story but also examined his status quo and how it might be changing.
Matt: Penguin is the classic Bat-rogue who has gotten the shortest end of the stick in recent years. Joker, Two-Face and Ra’s al Ghul are always big deals. Poison Ivy and Riddler got some push in the King and Snyder runs, respectively. Catwoman is a marquee character. Penguin is in the background. Snyder used Penguin a couple times, and King gave him one short arc in the spotlight, but that’s it; he was a main antagonist in the Tony Daniel and John Layman runs of Detective in the early New 52, but those runs are not fondly remembered. I remember when he transitioned from supervillain to club owner and mob boss in the early to mid-’90s, and that really worked for the character, but it’s gotten stale.
Will: Everyone needs a lil’ polish. A little shine. And Penguin is a lot like Scarecrow in that neither is physically intimidating, so you have to work a little to make them credible villains. Speaking of Scarecrow, where the hell did he go?
Matt: I’m not sure. I wonder if there’s some timeline stuff here. Does this arc of Detective maybe pre-date the current Batman arc? That would explain why there’s no mention of him, and Nakano keeps asking for the never-seen but finally named chief of police, since Montoya might not be installed as commissioner yet.
Will: These books tread on ground so similar — both clearly on the road to Future State, both dealing with little weasels in the mayor’s office. Simon Saint and Hue Vile are two different people in two different books, and that doesn’t seem possible.
Yes, Garth, We Know You Hate Superheroes
Matt: So, Will, what is your familiarity with the works of Garth Ennis?
Will: OH BOY. I’ve read the Ennis shit that people don’t talk about in polite company, Matt. I read Crossed. To me, he typically falls into one of two modes: excessively grotesque or macabre and in desperate need of an editor or boring as hell.
Matt: Yeah, that is a lot of Ennis. I first encountered him in his character-defining run on Hellblazer, which is some of his best work. So you haven’t read his more mainstream stuff, like Preacher and Hitman?
Will: I read a couple of volumes of Preacher, and I dabbled in Punisher. Need to get back to the latter, especially the run that inspired the Thomas Jane movie. (It’s good stuff, people. Don’t @ me.)
Matt: Yes, see, I agree on all that. Ennis is best when he has a strong editorial hand and is working on a book with a strong theme. Preacher is, even with all its religious trappings, a Western and a love story. Hitman is a story about friendship and brotherhood. Punisher is about the wages of sin and cycles of violence. Even The Boys, which meanders, is about power and the abuses of it.
All of that is to say that, for me, Ennis needs a focus for a story beyond his almost pathological hatred of superheroes, which is on full display in the first issue of Batman: Reptilian.
Will: If cape hate is one of his pathologies, then so is sexual assault, and his reference to that was 100% unnecessary. In terms of the writing, I don’t think I cared for this at all — I already had a nasty taste in my mouth from the assault talk, and then he goes on to give us basically a British Batman. Did no one at DC read this dialogue? It’s ass.
Matt: I wonder if they really did. It’s Black Label, so they might just let Ennis do anything as long as he’s not swearing up a storm. In an interview with CBR, Ennis said:
“What we’re talking about here is a billionaire aristocrat who beats up poor people, as well as the mentally ill. I don’t know what that has to do with a code of honor, but it certainly appeals to my sense of humor — which was probably my way into writing the character and the reason I enjoyed writing him more than I otherwise might have.”
Why would I want to read that book? If I like Batman, why would I read a story from a writer who clearly doesn’t? If I don’t like Batman, OK, maybe I read it so I have a writer who agrees with me, but that doesn’t seem fun.
Will: I edited “humour” into “humor” for spite. SPEAK AMERICAN, GARTH. I think any enjoyment I’m going to get out of this will have to come from ignoring the Batman parts and focusing exclusively on the Rogues Gallery getting mauled into squishy, fleshy bits, which brings me back to Crossed. Like, this book is going to look great, and it might be fun in spots, but I don’t think this will be good in any objective sense.
Matt: Yes, Liam Sharp is at the top of his game. This has an almost Simon Bisley-esque quality to it: all exaggerated bodies and weird angles, while still being absolutely recognizable as Liam Sharp.
Will: Good enough to make a man wish the script was better.
Bat-miscellany
- Meghan Fitzmartin writes the Penguin backup this week. I really enjoyed the first part of her Tim Drake serial in Urban Legends, and I liked the way she wrote the Batgirls in this issue. Maybe let her do a longer story featuring these characters. I’d be all for it.
- Note from DC editorial: Matt, you know girls can’t write Batman.
- Note to DC: *sigh*
- Note from DC: You got Mariko Tamaki. Be happy with that.
Matt Lazorwitz read his first comic at the age of five. 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 creator interview podcast WMQ&A with Dan Grote.
Will Nevin loves bourbon and AP style and gets paid to teach one of those things. He is on Twitter far too often.
