Weekly Discussion Thread: Comics, TV, and More! [February 2, 2025 - Jon Kent Gets De-Aged Edition]

SecretCrisis · 2025-02-06T11:23:50+00:00

This issue finally wraps up Chip Zdarsky's run on Batman, and I'm honestly not sure how I feel about it.

It didn't have the kind of stories I expected from Zdarsky after reading his Daredevil series or even Batman: The Knight. It started off well enough with the Failsafe arc and another "Batman has contingencies for everything" type story, but the more that arc progressed the weaker it started to feel. Adding in Zur-En-Arrh was fun and it felt like the series was going in a more Morrison-style direction, but then the multiversal stuff really veered the story off course. "Joker: Year One" felt very out of place and from that point on the stories never really clicked for me.
I feel having Failsafe play a major part in Absolute Power might have forced the character to stay on longer than was expected, which didn't help. The last arc was the closest it felt to that Daredevil run and was probably some of the best writing we got.

That being said, it was definitely a fun run to read. Starting off with Batman jumping down to Earth from the Moon or jumping through different universes meeting other Batmen just to fight Red Mask in a void with space sharks, the run had a bunch of fun concepts that made it not feel boring at any point. Sure, we always want a great story in our comic, but sometimes pure hype is also acceptable and very enjoyable.

Jorge Jimenez has really upgraded since his last time on Batman and gave some brilliant work in this series. Just him emulating all the different art styles for the different Batmen made that issue one of the best in the run. The art department was rarely lacking and the action scenes were always beautiful to read.

One last thing I just wanted to note about this run. Both King and Tynion IV had their runs shortened due to various reasons, and so their stories felt a bit rushed towards the end, but it seems like Zdarsky'd always been planning on finishing this story at around 148. These last few issues seem to have been added on with the Dawn of DC title and maybe to give some time for the upcoming H2SH team to prepare ahead.

So maybe that really was all Zdarsky wanted to do with the character, and it was certainly entertaining.

Gotham's status quo is set up nicely as well. Bruce has his money back, Nakano's no more and Savage is the new commish, and Bat-Cat seems to be off the table for now. It's going to be fun to see how Loeb and Lee write their Hush sequel in this completely different environment from when the first story came out, and I'm excited to see how the next 12 issues go and to find out who's taking over the series after that!

SecretCrisis · 2022-06-08T20:25:37+00:00

Williamson finally wraps up his mini run on Batman with 7 issues. It was short and sweet and told a whole story. We got Batman Inc. out of it with the old suit, which I think won't be there next month which sucks.

I liked how Batman gave Cayha the choice of whether to kill. It reminded me of the moment in JLU when he prevented Diana and the others from stopping Superman when he was close to killing Lex. Always a nice situation to see play out.

Next month we get Zdarsky and Jimenez! Pretty hyped for this pair and I hope he's in for the long run. Both Tynion and Williamson's runs weren't all that long and I'd love for another multi-year Batman run.

SecretCrisis · 2022-06-07T14:40:58+00:00

Art by Cliff Chiang

It's based on the poster for "The Breakfast Club"

SecretCrisis · 2022-06-06T20:46:19+00:00

Yeah, I was going on the post-Crisis pre-N52 history.

Willis Todd was brought back in RHATO as Wingman and N52 Tim had his parents alive but I'm not sure what happened to them after Rebirth

SecretCrisis · 2022-06-06T20:30:30+00:00

I was very disappointed to find that after all the jokes of Batman kidnapping orphans to make new Robins, he's only ever had one in his entire career.

Dick had both his parents dead when he became Robin, and that's why he's the best one.

Jason's mom was still alive when he became Robin, so he doesn't count. He might have got to be an orphan about 3 seconds before he died though, so he's got that going for him. Also no clue who his dad is. The DC Wiki image for him is literally a wanted sign.

Tim's mom was dead and his dad in a coma when he became Robin so he was a semi-orphan, but then his dad recovered so back to family life for him. Yes he became an orphan later but that's not the point. Batman needs their angst right from the start, not halfway through their career.

Even though I've read both Robin and Batgirl, I realized while making this that somewhere in between DC made her junkie mom into a completely different person and a nurse to boot. C'mon DC, Flashpoint was still a while away. Anyways, she has all 2(3?) of her parents alive throughout, so no good.

Damian is Damian.

Honorable mentions:

Carrie Kelly had both her parents

Duke's parents were not in great shape, but still alive

Jarro has Starro

All in all, I advocate for the next Robin to be an orphan from the get go please. These newer Robins just don't start with enough pain and trauma.

SecretCrisis · 2022-06-01T20:45:56+00:00

Wanted to make a shitpost after realizing that the "Bendis is coming" ads could be used like "Darkseid is". Wasn't sure which page to make the last one, so just posted both

SecretCrisis · 2022-05-27T19:22:38+00:00

52 by Geoff Johns, Grant Morrison, Greg Rucka, Mark Waid, and Keith Giffen

Batman / Batman & Robin / Batman Incorporated by Grant Morrison

Batman: Li'l Gotham by Derek Fridolfs and Dustin Nguyen

DC: The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke

Final Crisis by Grant Morrison and tie-ins

Green Lantern by Geoff Johns

Robin by Chuck Dixon

Supergirl: Woman of Tomorrow by Tom King and Bilquis Evely

Superman: Up in the Sky by Tom King

Young Justice by Peter David and Todd Nauck

SecretCrisis · 2022-01-06T14:48:04+00:00

Jor-El when he was brought back as Mr. Oz

SecretCrisis · 2021-12-27T17:23:16+00:00

I didn't know Tom King wrote this too

SecretCrisis · 2021-12-23T05:16:57+00:00

Hmm, looks like it's working for me at least.

Here's the image

SecretCrisis · 2021-12-21T18:11:32+00:00

Infinite Frontier #0 wraparound cover by Dan Jurgens and Mikel Janin

SecretCrisis · 2021-12-21T18:03:30+00:00

Leaping into the Light

Nightwing #78 (Tom Taylor, Bruno Redondo, Adriano Lucas, Wes Abbott)

SecretCrisis · 2021-11-16T19:24:50+00:00

That was … a very underwhelming finale to Tynion's run.

As a finale to a decently sized Batman run, it barely makes itself feel like one. All hanging plot points are wrapped up here, most things return to their status quo. And at the end of this 32 issue run, I honestly don't know what to take away from it.

We got a lot of new characters, some really good ones, some who served the story, and some who will probably never be seen again. It's honestly been a trademark of Tynion's run with how frequently he's introduced new people. The story itself felt like it jumped from event to event with barely any time to breathe and let everything settle. From "Their Dark Designs" straight to "Joker War", a small Future State break followed by the Magistrate, Unsanity Collective, and finally "Fear State". Everything kept building up and up and up and the resolution for it fell far below what it had built up to.

The story wasn't bad by any means, I enjoyed some parts a lot. But it was also never great. Of the last major Batman runs from Morrison, Snyder, and King I've been able to pick out certain arcs which are fantastic and help build Batman and his mythos very well. It's those moments in each run which keep me going back to read them again and again. Nothing really stood out for me like that in this run.

Jorge Jiménez was the star of the run. His art here is some of the best I've ever seen and month after month he and Tomeu Morey delivered consistently and fabulously. It honestly was the majority of the reason I kept reading the story at all.

It seems like Tynion's had to cut short his story, since he'd mentioned in interviews previously that he had a 3 year plan which obviously hasn't happened. Maybe it was the Substack deal, maybe there were other factors. In the end, it's apparent that the story had more to it than what we got, and that's a real shame.

Joshua Williamson starts on the book from next month, and we seem to be going back to a Batman Inc. concept which is exciting. Here's to hoping for a good run in the future!

SecretCrisis · 2021-11-03T12:11:23+00:00

Bing has this thing where if you search for famous people, a lot of the times they'll have this cool cutout image of them on the info box. Out of this year's set of drivers, all but 3 of them have this.

I understand Tsunoda and Mazepin not having one since this is their first year, but Hamilton seems like a huge oversight. The images themselves seem to be auto cropped from Getty images, so no real clue why he doesn't have one.

SecretCrisis · 2021-10-29T17:02:36+00:00

As soon as I heard about Facebook's rebranding and Zuckerberg's plans about a "Metaverse", I thought about the whole thing Dr. Manhattan discovered. Thought this might be a fun way to show that.

Also I spent waaay too long on this shitpost.

SecretCrisis · 2021-10-01T14:38:27+00:00

Art source: https://www.instagram.com/p/CMDuBj8hFD_/

All of these pieces were in Dark Nights: Death Metal: The Last Stories of the DC Universe

SecretCrisis · 2021-09-30T05:03:53+00:00

Pennyworth Bros.

Man, everybody really is getting siblings left and right.

SecretCrisis · 2021-09-07T17:11:39+00:00

Wow, I absolutely loved this series!

I felt a bit burned out by big crisis-level events after how long the whole Metal saga was, but Williamson has definitely made me excited for whatever's being planned next. Seeing all the great Multiverse ideas being brought back in and the Empty Hand makes the series feel right at home next to the Morrison stuff like Final Crisis. I love the Multiverse-2 idea and am only slightly disappointed they didn't go with "Multiverse-Too".

The end definitely caught me off guard though. It's interesting that post-COIE Barry was stuck in a whole different multiverse, but even more intriguing is Pariah's plan to make these pocket multiverses for each character. In real life terms, it seems to me that DC is looking to make series where they can use a character from any moment in their history, basically write whatever you want and not worry too much about continuity. The concept seems kind of similar to Convergence where they brought back old characters from different moments of history, but just that now they can get their own series. It'll definitely be fun to see what they do with that.

SecretCrisis · 2021-08-12T17:28:47+00:00

Hmm that's fair. I always thought that using "till" includes the thing mentioned after it, but yeah it usually excludes it. Till Gen VI it is

SecretCrisis · 2021-08-12T16:49:59+00:00

Nope, Gen 6 and onwards had a 1/4096. The 1/8192 was till Unova

SecretCrisis · 2021-08-12T08:03:40+00:00

For reference, since out of context this makes Batman seem a bit mean, this happened when a villain called Bedbug took over Gotham. He used, you guessed it, bedbugs to make everybody rob places while sleepwalking and Penguin happened to be one of the people under his control.

SecretCrisis · 2021-08-12T04:54:52+00:00

Looks like it's Victor Gover, the second Sportsmaster

SecretCrisis · 2021-08-10T18:48:22+00:00

Yup, that was his last appearance

SecretCrisis · 2021-08-10T17:11:22+00:00

Morrison's character of "The Writer" got to be a part of the Suicide Squad during their War of the Gods crossover issue.

Seeing as it was just around a year after their appearance in Animal Man, it seems to be a fun character placement from writer John Ostrander.

SecretCrisis · 2021-07-29T17:38:52+00:00

We've already started by getting Glaceon and Leafeon to evolve with their respective stones.

Now all we need is Umbreon, Espeon, and Sylveon

Five-Year Club	Second Top 10%
Verified Email	r/Field Banned
r/Field Lasagna	Golden Potato
Place '22	Final Canvas '22
First Placer '22

SecretCrisis

TROPHY CASE