Towers That Were Strong

Hey supporting complex fictional characters is serious business!

[gondorosi]

To survive as a Big 2 comics reader, one of the things you have to get used to is authors who you normally cannot stand to read sometimes coming up with work that you genuinely can't help but love.

I think Tom Taylor and Joshua Williamson are both examples of mediocre writers with mostly undeserved plaudits - but by God if they didn't both make me cry this week with their respective books. (Detective Comics Annual '26 and Action Comics Annual - Year One Thousand)

In 'Tec you have Lobo, Batman, a murder accusation from a distant planet, an alliance under threat of ingested mini-suns, an off-world bar, a frame-up - and a Black Mercy. You know, the alien plant which when it attaches to you, paralyzes your nervous system, and sends you into a customized utopia which you cannot distinguish from reality. And from which you cannot escape unless you die, or are able to break away from the world of your dreams where everything you desire from the bottom of your heart is true.

So of course Batman and Lobo are attacked with the Black Mercy.

Bruce experiences a world where Selina is his wife. Helena exists, with a teasing yet doting older brother Damian, who in turn has Talia as a semi-involved mother. Bruce's parents and Alfred are alive, his mother is Mayor, and his parents regularly take Damian and Helena out to the movies so that Bruce and Selina can have a night off. However he is still Batman and she is still Catwoman, but now they get to enjoy the fruits of their labours as finally, Gotham is safe. (Yes - Dick, Barbara, Tim, Steph, Cass are shown to exist and be around.)

As far as dreams go this is a popular take (though I personally don't agree with all of it), and while I love it - these are not the panels which made me cry. However idyllic this dream world is, there is no fooling Batman. While having tea with Alfred on the terrace the next morning Batman turns up and confirms what Bruce has always known - that the world he is in is not real.

Then this panel happens, and cue the tears.

Then we have Williamson, and the long awaited news of what happened to Clark after the climactic KO battle where Superman proved WHY he's the greatest superhero of all time. He won, put everything Darkseid ruined on Earth to rights, and was crowned King Omega. Then he disappeared and we didn't know where he was till now.

Answer - time stream shenanigans. I won't get into the comic book sci-fi plot points; but suffice to say that time has been a fundamental building block of Superman stories. Clark struggling with the concept of being essentially immortal and having to watch as everything and everyone he loves wither away and vanish while he remains unchanged was a recurring motif in Pre-Crisis, and in the first post-Crisis decade.

We see it again in this issue.

This is juxtaposed with Clark losing all sense of time and place and reality while in the time stream, only anchored by his promise to return home to Lois - and the fear that he will miss whatever little time he can have with her. Leading to these poignant and bittersweet panels.

And finally - how it all comes full circle. How Superman comes home from the end of known time. How he reconciles his fear of the future with his joy of the past and the present.

Well done, Taylor and Williamson. I doubt you will ever be in my Top 30 Favourite Comics Authors, but credit where credit is due - these two issues were excellent.

[gondorosi]

@vintagerobin Re: Your tags

I will take your word for it about Williamson's work on Flash - I have not touched any of either Barry or Wally comics post Flashpoint. His work on Superman hasn't given me much cause for complaint, but then again it is also not a run I feel the slightest need to my collection. I have found his work mostly banal and surface level, though he is much more respectful of other characters orbiting around his titular character than Taylor is. He is better than Bendis, but then again that is no benchmark - not when Rebirth has had Tomasi, Jurgens and PKJ. 

However I have been pleasantly surprised by his handling of KO, and after. Scott Snyder and Joshua Williamson together on a cosmic event had every chance of it being an incomprehensible headache, but it was quite decent, even if not extraordinary. The All-In Special was also very well done. So I agree that his strength probably does lie in the more cosmic stories, and I do think he will do LoSH justice. 

I'm less inclined to give him a pass on being truthful to legacy - every time I remember his Mother Soul storyline I fly into a rage.

[aliteralchicken]

One funny thing about the new Batman run is Batman being like “hey hallucination Alfred? Why didn’t you tell me about your great niece?” And the Alfred that I cannot stress enough is a figment of his imagination is like “well master Bruce, it was written in my will, which you have not read” and Bruce is then like “what’s this mysterious society she’s a part of?” And the Alfred, that is not real and does not know what real Alfred did, is like “that’s in the will as well” and Bruce. Still does not check that will

[gondorosi]

Lol now these are the kind of criticisms of the Fraction run I'm fully onboard with because his approach to continuity makes absolutely NO bloody sense.

There was never any point of time when Tim and Damian lived in the mansion together with Bruce (as the flashbacks in Batman #2 seem to suggest). Damian was 15 in Batman and Robin, now he's 14. I can accept that Bruce is teaching Tim to drive an old truck because of the manual transmission which presumably his usual car wouldn't have (Tim got his license at 15-ish under special accommodation for a then-disabled Jack's mobility, and presumably again Bruce taught him how to drive since Jack was out of commission), but I'm almost certain Tim has driven the Batmobile before Damian turned up (Dini run I think??), so THAT timeline is also iffy.

I really do like figment-of-imagination Alfred though. Why should Firestorm be the only one talking to invisible people in his head?

[gondorosi]

Wait is there like a connection between being a Batman fan and an OT5 X-Men First Class fan bc I've been noticing a pattern here

Not sure what you mean by connection - other than that they're two of the longest running and most successful and impactful comic book IPs of all time.

The O5 X-Men have undergone so many drastic changes over the decades that their current iteration is almost unrecognisable from the 80s X-Factor era, let alone the pre-Claremont 70s.

Batman has been comparatively much luckier - his period of absurd mischaracterization and darkness was mostly confined to the 2000-2006 years. Otherwise from the late 80s post Crisis on Infinite Earths era till date, he has been relatively consistent as a fictional touchstone.

[gondorosi]

The fastest way to get perspective on how relatively GOOD I have it as a Batman fan (wrt to overall consistency of characterization, average editorial integrity about respecting a character, and general writing quality of comics they appear in) - is to mentally run through the character progression of my favourites from the other side of the Big 2.

O5 X-Men, the fates that have befallen all of you!

When the best case scenario for your favourite characters is to end up redundant and sidelined - well, happy things aren't in store for their future.

[gondorosi]

To survive as a Big 2 comics reader, one of the things you have to get used to is authors who you normally cannot stand to read sometimes coming up with work that you genuinely can't help but love.

I think Tom Taylor and Joshua Williamson are both examples of mediocre writers with mostly undeserved plaudits - but by God if they didn't both make me cry this week with their respective books. (Detective Comics Annual '26 and Action Comics Annual - Year One Thousand)

In 'Tec you have Lobo, Batman, a murder accusation from a distant planet, an alliance under threat of ingested mini-suns, an off-world bar, a frame-up - and a Black Mercy. You know, the alien plant which when it attaches to you, paralyzes your nervous system, and sends you into a customized utopia which you cannot distinguish from reality. And from which you cannot escape unless you die, or are able to break away from the world of your dreams where everything you desire from the bottom of your heart is true.

So of course Batman and Lobo are attacked with the Black Mercy.

Bruce experiences a world where Selina is his wife. Helena exists, with a teasing yet doting older brother Damian, who in turn has Talia as a semi-involved mother. Bruce's parents and Alfred are alive, his mother is Mayor, and his parents regularly take Damian and Helena out to the movies so that Bruce and Selina can have a night off. However he is still Batman and she is still Catwoman, but now they get to enjoy the fruits of their labours as finally, Gotham is safe. (Yes - Dick, Barbara, Tim, Steph, Cass are shown to exist and be around.)

As far as dreams go this is a popular take (though I personally don't agree with all of it), and while I love it - these are not the panels which made me cry. However idyllic this dream world is, there is no fooling Batman. While having tea with Alfred on the terrace the next morning Batman turns up and confirms what Bruce has always known - that the world he is in is not real.

Then this panel happens, and cue the tears.

Then we have Williamson, and the long awaited news of what happened to Clark after the climactic KO battle where Superman proved WHY he's the greatest superhero of all time. He won, put everything Darkseid ruined on Earth to rights, and was crowned King Omega. Then he disappeared and we didn't know where he was till now.

Answer - time stream shenanigans. I won't get into the comic book sci-fi plot points; but suffice to say that time has been a fundamental building block of Superman stories. Clark struggling with the concept of being essentially immortal and having to watch as everything and everyone he loves wither away and vanish while he remains unchanged was a recurring motif in Pre-Crisis, and in the first post-Crisis decade.

We see it again in this issue.

This is juxtaposed with Clark losing all sense of time and place and reality while in the time stream, only anchored by his promise to return home to Lois - and the fear that he will miss whatever little time he can have with her. Leading to these poignant and bittersweet panels.

And finally - how it all comes full circle. How Superman comes home from the end of known time. How he reconciles his fear of the future with his joy of the past and the present.

Well done, Taylor and Williamson. I doubt you will ever be in my Top 30 Favourite Comics Authors, but credit where credit is due - these two issues were excellent.

[gondorosi]

I'm quite genuinely bewildered by the criticisms flying about on this site about Matt Fraction's Batman run. I find most of them to be based on hearsay, false assumptions, and incoherent projections based on individual out-of-context panels - though I'm sure among the ones who actually read the comics monthly, there would be a chunk of people who have valid reasons for their disengagement.

But there IS something to be noted about how there is an underlying theme of Bruce's first rodeo with parenthood being with Damian.

Thing is, this is not a trend spearheaded by Fraction. In fact, DC has largely been leaning into making Damian the only focus of Bruce's parental attention ever since they decided to make him a permanent member of the Batman cast, thereby denying Grant Morrison's original outline of the character's fate and his symbolism. The trajectory of his character, and thereby the Bruce-Damian relationship has been something like this:

2006-2010: Unlikeable little shit to tragic plot device meant to be a metaphor for collateral in war. Damian being Bruce's son is not given much emotional weight here, because his heritage was meant to be more of a symbol.

2011-2018: Flashpoint gives DiDio his New 52 kingdom, and he gets the chance to make his "Batman and Superman's legacies continue in their BIOLOGICAL children" dream come true. Morrison's original ending is revoked (not that Morrison cared, he still went ahead and wrote the ending to his run the way he imagined and it was up to Tomasi to figure out how to fix it), and Damian is now an indelible, permanant member of the Batman cast. For all the ills of New 52, this is the period where Damian as a character had his actual character growth. In the expert hands of Tomasi and Gleason, and sometimes Snyder; Damian truly comes into his own. A rich, deeply reciprocal, and fiercely loving filial relationship between Bruce and Damian is slowly built up. Within a few years into this period, Damian is pretty much all Bruce is concerned about (apart from Gotham).

Nobody has been able to come close to the quality of these years. However, it cannot be denied that every other familial relationship was weakened and downgraded. Dick became more of a favoured apprentice and right-hand man, Barbara became unrecognisable, Jason continued to have no narrative impact, Tim basically disappeared, Cass and Steph ACTUALLY disappeared. Everytime Bruce used the word "son" - he meant only and only Damian.

Overlap 2016 - 2018: These couple of years are a little all over the place. Damian and Bruce don't appear often in each others' books in the first two Rebirth years, under the assumption that he is more occupied with the Teen Titans and with being half of the Super Sons. The two main Bat writers during this period, King and Tynion, rarely touched upon Damian, and as a result the Bruce-Damian relationship. To their credit, King wrote Bruce and Dick perfectly, as they are meant to be; and Tynion did a relatively good job with Bruce-Tim and Bruce-Cass, even though his Tim was an impostor. However, Snyder was writing the Metal and Death Metal books during this point as well and he kept highlighting the Bruce and Damian bond everywhere he could. Snyder genuinely writes one of the most fun and authentic father-son dynamic between two people with a similar demeanour.

2018 - 2020: Dramatically steep fall in quality. DiDio is still holding all the reigns, and his almost universally loathed 5G initiative is driving all plotlines. Under his vision, the Batman mantle has to be taken up by someone completely unrelated to the family for whatever reasons - and thus the two most likely successors to Bruce must be kept away from the mantle. With Dick this is done with the amnesiac Ric arc dragging on, and with Damian? It's by completely REMOVING every bit of character development and putting him back on the path of becoming a deadly villain. Complete with keeping criminals inhumanely locked up in secret bunkers, stealing from his father, and even murder. Again. Suffice to say their relationship is either never mentioned, or in dire straits. Damian's trauma from seeing Alfred killed in front of him is sometimes treated with empathy, and at other times as an excuse for his heel-turn and friction between father and son.

2020 - early 2023: DiDio's FINALLY gone. But even though 5G might be cancelled, most of the plotlines under process were under those guidelines. Reworking them from scratch would be almost impossible. As a result, you see plotlines and character directions which seem to just go round in circles in this time, with nothing really making an impact. This is house cleaning time. Bruce and Damian are also victim of this confusion even though Damian makes it out relatively better. Williamson turns him into a cookie-cutter YA action protagonist, complete with the no parental supervision and zany adventures and interesting girlfriend. While I dislike Williamson's storylines like the plague, he does do a good job of bringing the father and son relationship back on track. Still nothing remotely close to what Tomasi or even Snyder have done. However, the rest of the family are now back as actual family after Convergence and Infinite Frontier created the "everything you want is canon" timeline. So he is still the apple of Bruce's eye, but atleast he now again openly considers the others also as his kids.

Late 2023 onwards - DC has finally hit their stride and with the 2024 All-In era, their quality has been unimpeachable. They're putting out banger after banger. The Bruce and Damian relationship under PKJ finally gets the next level of focus and growth which we should have had after Tomasi. The dichotomy between Batman and Robin and father and son is as diffuse and intermixed as it ever was, but it's now a characteristic of their unique dynamic. All of Bruce's worry and concern is still tunnel-visioned on to Damian; though Tim does make star appearances every now and then.

Will add specific context and scans later.

[gondorosi]

Sometimes you really like a concept but can't stand the character; other times you really like a character but just can't get into the concept.

Exhibit A: Whatever Bruce and Khoa have (HAD) going on vs Ghostmaker himself

Exhibit B: Hal Jordan vs Green Lantern Corps

[katanahime]

The fundamental problem I have with any version of "Tim Drake forms 'his own' hero identity outside of Robin", is that Tim has never had any internal motivation to feel like that's something that he should do.

His internal push-and-pull has always been about whether or not he would stay in the life at all, and any force that encouraged him away from Robin as a mantle was always external. (Although, I do want to also note that any time he quits or considers quitting, it always reinforces his decision to be a hero in the end via having that arc and continuing to make the decisions that he does, just quick sidenote.)

We also have a ton of proof, including his introduction itself, that he sees no contradiction or problem with having an adult Robin.

And thus, rather than "growing up", moving away from Robin specifically toward something else feels like "doing what other people tell you to".

It's not treating Tim as an adult with autonomy (in-universe, obviously he has no autonomy no matter what, he's a character). It's treating him like people treat children, and in a significantly worse way than even he was treated as a child on the hero side of things, since he actually had an unprecedented level of autonomy as Robin (Robin is, in fact, representative of an autonomy power fantasy in a lot of ways).

It's bending to other characters going "you don't know what's best for yourself, I do".

And while you can always write a character changing their mind (that was arguably what was done with Dick in the first place, and the idea of a universe where he just never stopped being Robin and there was only ever one is more than reasonable from the perspective of before they wrote him say the things he did later), but because of the history we do have with Dick, and the specific ways Tim has been contrasted with Dick on this subject, and it being way more clear how Tim did already feel about it, doing that with Tim now would read like support of the general "you'll grow out of it" mentality that a lot of people have toward young people with strong opinions about things.

And I just loathe that as a message.

[gondorosi]

I think a large part of this conjecture stems from the belief that Dick is the sole arbiter of what Robin is and should be, including but not limited to how long the gig should last.

Not only does this dogma completely undermine Tim's entire journey, but also ignores the fact that Dick and Tim were respectively Robins under vastly different circumstances. It is an established fact in canon that the world (moreso Gotham) started getting darker and more deadly AFTER Dick left the mantle, notwithstanding the Doylist caveat that Dick was Robin in the lighter pre Crisis period.

Of course with changing canon over the years and the necessity of updating DC history to better reflect the times, Dick's time as Robin may be one day recontextualized - but ultimately Dick was Robin in the times of Gotham's organized crime heyday, and the days of theme criminals being more obsessed with setting up traps inside giant piranha tanks and massive calculators. All the iconic trophies in the Batcave were during Dick's time as Robin.

It's Tim who was Robin through the Breaking of the Bat, the Clench, Cataclysm, NML and BW: Murderer/Fugitive. It was Tim who brought Bruce back from the brink of oblivion, it was Tim who lost his father, his best friend and his girlfriend as Robin, it was Tim who came without Dick's toddler training advantages, it was Tim who had to undergo THE most comprehensive and rigorous Robin graduation course.

The post Crisis Batman and Robin dynamics between Bruce, Dick and Tim are quite different - its fallacious to claim otherwise. Dick moved on because Bruce wouldn't consider him an equal partner as Robin (and the fact that he does so with Dick as Nightwing probably cements Dick's own hypothesis that Batman can only respect a Robin who outgrows the mantle) but that's not the case with Tim. Right now Bruce fully trusts Tim as an equal partner and peer, however he chooses to be. Whether that's as Robin or as a civilian or as another identity he takes up. Tim choosing to leave the Robin name behind but still continuing the vigilante life under a different moniker wouldn't be an upward mobility the way Robin to Nightwing was, it would be an unnecessary management consultant style rebranding.

[pufferfishzero]

de-aged bruce wayne but he's in his training years, a young twenty-something and, and oh god, he's talking about what he'll do after. he's (comparatively) bright-eyed and his intense passion is more blazing than dark and imposing, and he wrinkles his nose in playful distaste, and he makes sly jokes, and he offers small smiles, and, and, and he believes he'll live to see an after.

dick has to put his head in his hands, after bruce tells him he wants to travel the world again, peacefully, when his job in gotham is done. tim is quick to reach for the ginger-ale for the nausea rolling in his gut as bruce is hopeful about going to med school, of saving people with gentle hands. jason finds himself in that alley after bruce describes his dream for the people of park row, not crime alley, park row. he doesn't leave for a long, long time. damian goes to spar but ends up just sitting at the mats, staring off into nothing, after bruce shyly mentions a beautiful woman he wants to settle down with. cass tries to go to sleep and forget the hope emanating from bruce, hope and conviction and (comparatively) none of the weary resolution or thick self-hatred that she and bruce knew all too well, when he speaks of the milestone that will let him know he can be stop, a soldier dreaming of a declaration of peace.

they didn't know batman was supposed to be temporary. they didn't know bruce started this with the intention of stopping, because they bruce they all knew would never stop. they didn't know he never intended to sign the rest of his life to this, this violent duty that stretched him thin between gotham and wayne charities and the justice league.

they didn't know, or perhaps just forgot, that their dad used to want more from life than just mission objectives.

[gondorosi]

To bolster this point:

"The day I can hang up my cape and stay home is the day I'm working toward."

Bruce actually did hold on to the hope of there being an end to his crusade for quite a long time. Until horror after horror, and more disasters. betrayals, losses and near deaths than any one man can be expected to bear kept falling on his shoulders.

[pufferfishzero]

i’m crine what the fuck are you talking about are we talking about the alfred that doesn’t even APPROVE of batman?? the alfred who hired people to act out the death of bruce’s parents and then BEAT HIM UP to prove a point?? the ONLY way alfred had a hand in creating the batman is because he failed to help bruce process his grief, and even then bruce might’ve been a vigilante anyways but just slightly better adjusted. mind you fear is why bruce chose a BAT which he was always SCARED OF in an attempt to CONTROL his own fear. mind you that implies alfred never intentionally made him feel SAFE, which is kind of crucial to a victim of gun violence!!

also it’s INTEGRAL to batman’s origin story that his parents WERE good people and they wanted to help the common people. bruce’s no kill rule stems from his father and his charities are a homage to his mother as EXTENSIONS OF HER WORK

10.4k likes that’s ten thousand and four hundred people like that’s one thousand which is already a lot but TEN times i need to touch grass im normal about this im normal im fine its all fine guys im like normal about this

[imsorrybruce]

No, like actually why is it that every time all of Bruce's good qualities are attributed to Alfred? I don't think the same happens with anyone except Clark. Like all other characters can just be heroic on their own because they are good people, with maybe some influence from their surroundings. And then both Bruce and Clark are only as good as their parents/parental figures because they have no innate personality, unlike other people, I guess

[gondorosi]

This insistence on "Actually Alfred is the reason anything good ever happened" is a confounding rhetoric that has popped up in the last 7-8 years. I guess it's a mix of post-death false attribution and Taylor's complete misrepresentation of Bruce and Alfred's roles respectively in Dick's upbringing in his abomination of a NW run? (I swear every time I start giving this man some grace because of his Detective Comics run, his more influential older work comes up and removes any goodwill.)

I mean Alfred is one of the most enduring examples of an observer character; essential to the mythos but never ever a decision maker or a prime mover of the plot. Even as a child, Bruce mostly made his own decisions when they were not made for him by an objective unseen party (the courts, his parents' will, the existing laws). Pre-Crisis to Post-Crisis to even New 52 were mainly unanimous in cementing Bruce's isolation and forced emotional independence since the Waynes' deaths. Dick's upbringing and influence was also entirely Bruce - and this is something which has been borne out in texts and in Dick's own words again and again. Damian is a different issue - but there also the context isn't exactly favourable to Alfred.

[gondorosi]

If DC had any sense, they would compile all of Dan Watters' earlier short stories which were hitherto confined only to anthologies and one-shots.

I mean if the easily missed "Gunsmith" story in a random issue of Batman: Secret Files isn't one of the most topical and relevant observations on Batman....

It starts with a shooting spree and a child hostage situation at a Wayne Foundation funded Weapons Amnesty program where people could hand in illegal weapons without facing any repercussions. The antagonist disagrees with the program. Who is he and why does he disagree?

Well.

The Gunsmith does what villains do - puts a gun in the hand of the older brother of the child he's abducted and tasks him with shooting Batman to save his brother. Which he does - Batman is wounded but takes the gun from the boy. Then Batman does what Batman does, goes after the villain but obviously chooses to rescue the other child over pursuing the villain. Routine textbook Batman stuff.

But then we have these panels.

If Dan Watters doesn't get a full fledged multi-year Batman run someday, DC will have wasted the potential of one of the BEST talents they've managed to get in the last decade.

[gondorosi]

It's so gratifying to see Scott Summers being (rightfully) glazed once again. 😂 Soldier on, O Fearless Leader!

Too bad the X titles have been barely readable in the last few years. Though the Cyclops solo has been so much better than I was afraid of.

[gondorosi]

It's been a couple months and the only thing that has stuck with me from Knightfight is that in the false world where all the innermost desires of Bruce's heart are fulfilled - he thinks Dick should have an 80s martial arts action movie star ponytail.

Why, Bruce, why?? Did you hum a little elegy in the deep recesses of your heart when that thug chopped off Dick's hair and ended the mid 90s ponytail era?

(Then again, not surprising. Not from this guy.)

[gondorosi]

Joshua Williamson's bumbling, amateurish, and poorly constructed Mother Soul storyline is everything that is wrong with modern comics trying to"redeem" their villains.

Ra's was (okay, IS) in my top 3 Batman villains along with Two Face and Poison Ivy; ESPECIALLY because there is an inherent tragedy to his story. Ra's was the epitome of the gentleman villain whose methods and extremism made him the antagonist, but whose core objective still had the brush of selfless nobility. However twisted they became over the years, Ra's had his own unshakeable philosophy and his own form of morality. There's a reason why Bruce always held a measure of genuine respect for him, even under the most heinous personal attacks (e.g digging up his parents' graves to manipulate him in Tower of Babel).

When Williamson takes away ALL of that gravitas, complexity and self-made identity; and creates a banal mystical Grandmother Al Ghul who is the true villain and master manipulator - all so that he can handwave away ALL the LoS history and cruelty to Damian as a child so that he can bludgeon in an eye wateringly fake "Happy Family Al-Ghul" narrative - he utterly ruins decades of storytelling and lore establishment by writers FAR above his caliber. (Not to mention all of this STILL didn't do anything to bring Brutalia any closer to being a thing in comics again which is a damn shame)

You don't redeem the evil a character has done by being wishy-washy and deliberately vague - and then simply attribute the greatest part of their life history to a brand new villain and hitherto non-existent magic. You don't make them better by taking away a large part of their agency, by stripping them of all that made them such compelling characters. That not only flattens the characters to no end, but also doesn't make the redemption feel earned in the least.

There is also a concurrent rant to be made about how major DC writers have turned Ra's and Talia into caricatures of unrepentant villainy which tips the scale just as dramatically on the opposite side. Bloody hell, why do I almost always need to go back to the 70s to 90s era of Batman comics to find complexity and nuance in my villains????

[gondorosi]

Are you even writing the Trinity if they're not constantly snarking at each other about their respective idiosyncrasies which only they know?

I mean if you don't have Clark getting Bruce out of a dangerous situation against his will, KNOWING he's in for a world of cribbing later;

If you don't have Diana rescuing Clark from a situation he's in because he rushed in fists first, head second;

And if you don't have the three of them needling each other even during a sit-rep of an apocalyptic scenario, with Bruce being the textbook grump and Clark and Diana backing each other up;

What are you even doing?

(All caps from the 52:Aftermath storyline. Ah Keith Giffen, how I miss you.)

[gondorosi]

One of my favourite underrated explorations in Batman comics is Bruce's almost anthromorphic attachment to different facets of his city. Case in point: the Gotham gargoyles.

In an absolute riot of a short story in Batman: Black and White Vol. 3, Bruce Wayne is invited to an exhibition of photographic portraits of various Gotham gargoyles.

The photographer in question is leading Bruce around the exhibition, but of course, Bruce has his own relationship with each.

And of course, he knows things she doesn't.

Rare sighting of Bruce being silly!

(There's also a not really subtle but pretty damn interesting parallel drawn in this story between the importance of the gargoyles being an inherent skeletal foundation of the city's architecture instead of simply a facade, and the importance of a mask needing to embody the true character to truly be heroic.)

But hey, it's Bruce fucking Wayne at a gallery opening. So naturally. the owner gets to the crux of the matter.

Gee, I wonder what could have caught his eye?

Why exactly does he look familiar, Bruce?

....... Of course. Clark is a misleading name for a supernatural flying creature who isn't hiding any dark secrets. 🤣🤣 I bloody love this story.

I have to admit though that I love how both Batman and Superman comics just can't seem to help bringing in the other into their storylines. Truly brothers/comrades/best friends. (And yes, also something undefinable that will never be directly addressed in the comics but officially subtexted with all the subtlety of a rampaging herd of elephants.)

[gondorosi]

Impeccable logic, Bruce.