#phantom one

[getanshi]

khoa and phantom one

[zeetannas]

[skeleton-brainz]

i reject that Khoa is a bad father. I just know he tries his hardest to one up bruce.

Though i also hc Phantom-One or Johan (my hc) as autistic. Prime Aspd x Asd solidarity. One can't understand social cues because they dont feel empathy. The other cant read social cues because they just cant.

Khoa doesnt love him in a traditional sense, he "loves" him for what he can do for him. He "loves" him because he is his. He is like a trophy, and a pet. But not in a negative way, just as a this is how i explain how i see you.

Similar to how Khoa feels for Bruce.

____

Khoa: Now my son, kill the man

Johan/Phantom, learning other languages instead of swedish: I only 8, why i have do this?

Khoa: Because your other father is currently raising your twin-

Johan: i dont have twin

Khoa: METAPHORICAL TWIN, but without bloodlust. And as if i didnt find you covered in your own parents blood.

Johan: They made their bed Koko, i will make you proud.

____

Johan, sarcastically: Yes koko, i will do it for you, Thank you for being my god

Khoa, indifferent but has read parenting books: Thank you, anyways here is your next mission

Johan: I was being sarcastic, im not doing it. I am too tired, ao if you need me i will be in my room.

Khoa: i knew that.......

Khoa, once he left: I wish i knew 13 year olds were going to be this terrible

____

Johan: she said i was unreasonable, and that i should have seen all the signs she was unhappy.

Khoa, making his little project baby a sandwich because his metaphorical twin died: Why couldnt she just say something?

Johan: Exactly, instead she decided to ignore me for weeks until i snapped.

Khoa: We could always kill her?

Johan: No, weve been over this koko. No killing everyone

Khoa: Isnt it a service to the world, ridding it of her?

Johan: This is why "Jack" left you, im going to go watch some ants eat and wallow in my pain

Khoa: Fuck, hes just like Bruce.

[the-dykeknight]

I love Ghost-maker. I hate Batman: the Knight. (An analysis, cont’d)

Hello again! This segment took way longer simply because I have a job (booo) and have been writing fic rather than writing essays in my free time. Whoops.

Better late than never, though, here comes…

Part Four: Sunglasses and Pseudonyms

To start, let’s all just read The Panel. From Batman #109:

Okay then. “There are fewer than five people alive who have seen my entire face.” That’s quite a statement! But what does it mean, exactly?

In Batman #104, during the flashback-within-a-flashback, we see Khoa’s full face while he and Bruce are first training together:

Then later, in Batman #113, we get more maskless baby Khoa in his memory of meeting Jonathan (ft. left-handed Khoa confirmation 🥰):

So Khoa can’t literally mean that less than five people have seen his face - he didn’t come out of the womb with that mask on, after all. Instead, I’ve always taken this to mean that less than five people have seen his face— with the knowledge that they’re looking at the Ghost-maker.

Subsequently, I don’t have any issue with Anton being maskless in his introduction, or with him being maskless in most anything set before the Dublin flashback, really. The problems only arise once Anton does start wearing the Ghost-maker mask, as it’s never given so much as a line’s worth of significance. Not even upon appearing.

Speaking of which, when does it appear in BtK?

The first we see of the mask is in issue #8 - very, very late in the game. Aaaaand Anton isn’t even the one wearing it.

This is a baffling choice to me. Qiu mentions being targeted by the police - a potential reason to want to conceal her face, and therefore her identity - but anonymity is far from her actual shtick. I don’t even know what her actual shtick is (at least not in any real detail) because she’s only in the comic for two damn pages. Zdarsky did not take any time to flesh her out; she’s a throwaway character in BtK who only got actual plot relevance in Batman Inc. We never even see her and Anton interact. So why is she the origin of Ghost-maker’s mask?

Bruce and Anton spent an entire issue training with Avery, someone whose whole thing is hiding her identity. If any trainer should have served as Ghost-maker’s guide to covering his face, it easily should have been her. Anton is even shown having an immediate, specific interest in her masks— a detail I genuinely really like that I wish had served as actual foreshadowing:

I mean, think about it. Khoa would need access to a kind of fabric that would provide full coverage with only one-way visibility, resist sweat/moisture, and be comfortably/safely worn for extended periods of time. Of all people, would a disguise artist not be the most reasonable person to ask for pointers? Avery could have been the source of the fabric, and then Khoa could have done the actual designing himself. We know that Tynion intended for him to have crafted his own suits, from this panel in Batman Annual 2021:

So again, I ask: why Skyspider? Why the Arkham-games-line-launcher trainer and not the mask lady?

Well, because Zdarsky doesn’t treat Ghost-maker’s mask as a mask. Its purpose in BtK isn’t to hide anything - certainly not his identity. Instead, it functions as an accessory. And rather a specific one, once you draw the comparison…

Yeah. That thing is just Anton’s Advanced Sunglasses. Seriously, just look at this from issue #9:

These guys are fully surrounded by strangers - enemies! - and the kid who I’m supposed to believe is Ghost-maker is out here pushing his mask up to rest on his head like it’s a pair of shades. That is a piece of fabric to him, and absolutely nothing more.

The mask isn’t even reflective of Anton’s personal tastes or fashion sense, because he never commits to the Ghost-maker aesthetic! In the entirety of BtK, there is literally only ONE (1) appearance of Anton in Ghost-maker’s actual suit - specifically as it was shown in the Gobi Desert flashback (albeit with sleeves). It’s in issue #8:

But no matter how hard I try, I can never process this panel as Anton. The Ghost-maker suit - with all its gradual, meticulous adjustments and improvements - is so at odds with Anton’s blasé, coolguy attitude that I just cannot make the connection. I cannot imagine Anton hunched over that sewing machine. I cannot imagine him making and remaking a cape, a belt, a sheath, a chestpiece, over and over and over again until he’s finally satisfied with it. I cannot imagine him crafting the Ghost-maker helmet, or building the Ghost Stream, or seeing any need to program Icon. I cannot see him doing what Khoa does in Batman #109 - resolving to toss the latest Ghost Racer into the industrial furnace once he’s judged it to be inferior to the Batmobile. Because Anton does not have Khoa’s perfectionism, or Khoa’s determination, or Khoa’s patience.

I’m going to further indulge in the tangent I’ve gone on to complain about this, from BtK #6:

Like what the fuck are you talking about, “what could I learn from a nomadic tribe?” Khoa got on Bruce’s case for not being locked into a meditation exercise where you have to be conscious of every grain of sand in the goddamn Gobi Desert. If Bruce told him about a trainer he’d missed, Ghost-maker would seek that trainer out himself, or immediately demand that Bruce pass on their knowledge to him.

But Anton is not, and will never become, Ghost-maker. Anton doesn’t have or wear Ghost-maker’s suit because he would find it superfluous and tedious to maintain. Anton’s mask had to be handed to him by Skyspider because he is not innovative enough to have designed it on its own. And Anton’s flippant usage of said mask is indicative of exactly how uninterested he is in keeping his face a secret.

But why is this so wrong? Why is Ghost-maker’s mask meant to be important?

…Well, for the same reason as his name. So we should probably get into that first.

Despite being the subject of all these bajillion analyses, the Knight isn’t remotely the singular target of my Name Blame. The significance of Khoa’s name has been missed by almost every other writer who’s briefly handled him, not just Zdarsky. From Robin (2021) #14 and DC Pride 2023, respectively:

My opinion on whether Khoa would share his name with the likes of Angel Breaker and Catman is my own; both relationships are almost entirely unelaborated on, and thus leave ample room for theorization. In Catman’s case, I balk at the idea that Khoa would entrust his name to someone who he would sooner kill than trust with his face. Between the two, his name has the definitive, lower number of people who know it - three in the entire world. I highly doubt that one of the remaining two (once we account for Bruce) is a casual hookup, regardless of how well he and Catman get along. As for Angel Breaker, Khoa doesn’t even seem to respect her, much less trust her. I fully believe that they worked together, and especially that they’ve had sex. However, I am far less inclined to believe that their relationship had remotely the amount of depth necessary to warrant Khoa telling her his name.

Again, though, those are just my opinions. Where I fully draw the line is Bruce telling Rhea Khoa’s name (SPELLED INCORRECTLY. IN AN OFFICIAL COMIC) upon meeting her in Batman: Urban Legends #11:

That last instance actually pisses me off about the same amount as the Minhkhoa Situation in BtK— which is to say, quite a lot. But I’ll save my thoughts on Ram V’s mishandling of Ghost-maker for a later essay. Let’s get back on topic.

This is how Anton’s name reveal goes down in the Knight, from issue #9:

First, I will say that Ra’s is a character who I could totally see learning Khoa’s name without Khoa’s permission. He has the time and the resources, and if Ghost-maker ever challenged him, he’d have the motivation, too.

But I don’t think he and Khoa should have crossed paths remotely this early on, if at all.

Ra’s was set up as the “final boss” of BtK simply because he is an established, recognizable Batman villain who readers understand as posing a serious threat; his inclusion in a pre-Batman story doesn’t actually make any sense. Bruce never trained with Ra’s in the comics! That was something Christopher Nolan made up for the Dark Knight trilogy— it had no precedence beyond those films.

I have plenty of problems with Ra’s appearing prematurely in Bruce’s life, particularly in relation to Talia, brutalia, and Damian’s conception. But that’s not the subject of this essay. The subject of this essay is Ghost-maker, and Ghost-maker would not stand for his birth name being dropped to a room full of people.

Khoa does not murder in excess, but I fully believe that if Ra’s pulled this stunt, Khoa would at the absolute least attempt to kill him, Talia, the Still, and BtK Bruce (actual Bruce is another matter)— if not immediately, then the instant he deemed himself ready to face them. It would be unspeakably violating to him.

I rambled a bit about the many, many problems I have with Batman Inc. in another post, but I stand by my statement that Brisson wrote Khoa fully in-character. One thing he absolutely got right was the name/face significance, a notable (and relevant) example of which is in this scene from Batman Incorporated #5:

Phantom-One is inflicting the most effective means of psychological torture he has access to by trying to remove Khoa’s mask here. It is, like I said before, a violation. Phantom-One was kept around as Ghost-maker’s test-Robin for three years, and was still never allowed to see his face or learn his name. It was a privilege that Phantom-One could not earn, regardless of his performance in the field, regardless of clearly being able to emulate Ghost-maker’s (BATMAN-LEVEL) skill to at least a functional degree. And as such, he has a deeper understanding than most of just how important Khoa’s name and face are to him. He knows how upset it would make Khoa to have either/both revealed against his will.

It’s about time I connected this all back to Argentina, as I am bound to do in any analysis and in my life in general. I never shut up about that scene.

When BtK #10 first came out, I drew the following contrast (on Twitter, because it didn’t suck so bad back then) between these two panels:

It’s a meme, yeah, but it’s an effective enough way to introduce my point.

In BtK, Bruce’s mocking, fight-provoking use of Anton’s birth name gets this reaction:

That is, no reaction at all. Anton just smirks and delivers an overconfident taunt bragging that he beat Bruce in Canada (which is barely true. A tree beat Bruce in Canada - Injustice Nightwing rock death style - because he tripped on a root and sucked at catching his balance. Like father like Elseworlds son I guess).

Meanwhile, this is how Khoa reacts to Bruce starting to habitually use his nickname, after Bruce has just torn up their relationship:

Take a guess at which one I vastly prefer.

In my Gobi Desert flashback breakdown, I mentioned Carlo Pagulayan’s skill with expressions, and I think the above panel of Khoa yelling is the prime example of that skill. You can practically hear him, the feelings are so visceral. And that’s important, because this is easily the most emotional that we ever see Khoa act in front of another person.

I know the phrasing is pretty straightforward, given the emphasis, but I’m still going to point it out:

“You don’t get to say my name again. You don’t get to see my face.”

These are privileges. If someone is saying Khoa’s name or seeing his face, it is because Khoa is allowing them to.

In my previous segment, I said that Khoa was conceived as a psychopath “to provide a point of comparison to accentuate the traits that are often overshadowed/overlooked in Batman’s character.” And the same concept applies to Khoa’s relationship with his name/face. Where Khoa’s psychopathy highlights Bruce’s emotionality, Khoa’s complete rejection of his identity highlights how significantly Bruce maintains his self image outside of Batman. Ghost-maker is what Batman could look like if he really was just the cape, cowl, and crimefighting— something that Khoa himself believes Bruce would be genuinely better off as:

But (Tynion’s) Bruce isn’t just Batman. He engages with crime, both its victims and its perpetrators, not as an unfeeling, efficient weapon, but as a fellow person.

Meanwhile, Khoa is always the Ghost-maker. He refuses to let himself be anything else - refuses to let himself be a full human being, to be Minhkhoa Khan, the boy from Singapore - because he equates the attachments of identity with weakness. For as long as Ghost-maker is inhuman, he is invulnerable. From the backer of Batman #107:

When Bruce destroys their relationship in Argentina, Khoa revokes the privileges Bruce was once allowed (even throughout all their disagreement and conflict) to deny Bruce access to his weak points. His humanity. The damage has already been done, but Khoa is pulling all his shields back up to keep Bruce from ever having so much as the chance to hurt him again.

This is why it’s so significant that Bruce is able to earn those privileges back. I can’t even express how this exchange made me feel when Batman Annual 2021 first came out:

This is exactly why Khoa hides!!! He’s just shared this long, dramatic tale painting himself as a hyper-competent, larger-than-life hero. But because he’s let Bruce in close enough to see the real him, Bruce is able to use that intimate knowledge to ground the story back in Khoa’s personhood. The emotions behind his actions. The reason why he cares. And despite being covered head to toe by that damn suit, Khoa still turns away as though to hide his expression! Because Bruce can see right through him, and he knows it.

And yet when Bruce calls him “Khoa,” the Ghost-maker doesn’t complain. He immediately changes the subject, avoiding inviting any further insight from Bruce, but it’s with a proposal to spend more time together. To lightheartedly compete, as friends, just like they used to.

A part of Khoa will always be allergic to vulnerability. But because Bruce earned (and then re-earned) his trust, he’s willing to subject himself to the mortifying ordeal of being known. He’s willing to be Minhkhoa Khan when he’s with Bruce, because Bruce has proven that he understands exactly who that is, and exactly what it means to be allowed to hold that knowledge in the first place.

This is not the case with Anton.

I complained about the full page that these panels are from in my last segment, but this interaction is something I find very telling, when it comes to Anton:

I gotta say that at this point, Bruce really should have already known Khoa’s real name. “Khoa” needed to be an established nickname by the end of Bruce’s training, and I agree with Brisson (based on the Batman Annual 2022 opening flashback) that it should have gone at least as far back as sometime before/around the Dublin flashback, i.e. when Bruce and Khoa could still both be realistically referred to as “teenagers” by Tommy Tivane. But BtK isn’t compliant with the Argentina flashback. So all the way through to issue #10, when he’s literally right about to return to Gotham, BtK Bruce’s first instinct is still to use the pseudonym “Anton”.

But from this scene, it looks like Anton honestly wants Bruce to use his real name. The last time they interacted, BtK Bruce treated him like hot garbage— lest we forget, “You’re hollow! There’s nothing to you! There’s nothing there!” And yet Anton still saves his life and tries to get him to call him “Minhkhoa”. It speaks to a self-acknowledgement of his own loneliness, and a fully conscious, intentional push to connect with other people as himself, even when that makes for some pretty damn unavoidable vulnerability. Anton outright admitting “I thought I was alone in the world” to Bruce, completely unprompted, is easily the best example of that.

But for all that this makes for a compelling, multifaceted character, the character in question just isn’t Ghost-maker. Sure, yeah, Anton is young and has plenty of time to change. But we don’t see Khoa behave anything like Anton in his younger years, even in the Dublin flashback, which is the youngest we ever see him speaking (excluding when he was a little kid. Where he still doesn’t behave anything like Anton).

Anton doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve - at least in comparison to Ghost-maker - due to youth, then, or because he’s yet to develop as a character. He simply doesn’t have the same hangups as Khoa when it comes to personhood being a weakness. Anton’s Big Thing is that he hates being beaten, and therefore pitiable (which relates to his pride being a weakness, unlike Khoa’s, which I got into more in this post about Icon). From BtK #4 and #10, respectively:

In the end, it all just comes down to Anton being a completely different character to Khoa, as I keep saying. He’s incompatible with Ghost-maker’s history, and fails as his stand-in even when ignoring all the timeline inconsistencies, because he’s just straight up a different guy. That’s why Ghost-maker’s face and name don’t matter in Batman: the Knight. Because Ghost-maker is only present for a single panel in issue #8.

If you want to see how I, together with @bellandeano, would go about fixing BtK, consider checking out The Knight Rewrite on ao3. As of posting this, only the first installment (reworking BtK #4) is up, but we’re already over 7k words into writing the next one. It’s set to be a lot longer than the first, so don’t expect it too soon, but do keep an eye out if you’re interested!

The fifth segment of this analysis will focus on how Bruce is written by Tynion vs by Zdarsky, and how Batman’s characterization inevitably makes or breaks his dynamic with Ghost-maker. Thank you very much for reading! I’ll see you in the next one 🦇

[pielever]

i’m sure phantom-one has seen khoa’s face AT LEAST once. he just.. forgot!! 😼

[hanthecat9]

A healing moment for phantom-one and ghostmaker in my mind. They are a great duo🤧

[kentwvynes]

ghostmaker's only interactions w phantom one outside of training

[stillstuckinthedesert]

Jason Todd and Autonomy

I never enjoyed the "character gets brainwashed into doing bad things" trope. I personally find it dull, a cheap excuse to avoid making a character take accountability. This is especially true when it comes to Jason Todd and "pit madness".

It's important to me that everyone who reads this is aware that pit madness is a fanon thing. In the comics, it lasts for a few minutes after initial exposure/use of the Lazarus Pit, from what I can remember (I'm so sick right now). Of course, in some rare instances, it can be an interesting tool to drive a plot forward. In my opinion, though, it should never be made canon.

Jason, as a character, must have that power to make his own decisions. Autonomy is crucial to his character; Both for himself and for Bruce. Jason needs to be in control of his own life—his death, revival, and rejuvenation were all things he had no control in. He needs Bruce to make that decision to cross the line, and he needs Bruce to know what he's done.

Bruce choosing to not kill the Joker had the same effect as Ghost-Maker killing Phantom-One's "killer". Ghost-Maker, for those who are unaware (if you are one of such people, PLEASE look into him, he's so wonderful trust me), is Batman's foil. His choice to simply kill who he believed to have killed Phantom-One (Ghost-Maker's version of Jason, for lack of a better word) showed Phantom-One that he didn't matter. Ghost-Maker has killed before, and he has no problem with doing so. He didn't bother to bring justice to Phantom-One, and that showed him he meant basically nothing. Ghost-Maker didn't decide to change because of his "death".

Bruce not choosing to kill the Joker had the same effect. Bruce allowed his son's murderer to walk free, killing even more innocent people in the process. Bruce, like Ghost-Maker, didn't change.

That is why autonomy is so imporant to Jason. He needs Bruce to change, or his death was for nothing, in his mind.

Pit Madness gets rid of his autonomy. It tells the readers that none of those feelings were his own, that Bruce not making that decision really wasn't important to him, when in reality, it meant everything to Jason.

Yap sesh over, sorry if stuff didn't make sense. Again, I am sick with a fever rn and i have a headache.

here have a seal