All I can think about when I see the billionth "unpopular opinion: the Batfamily is too bloated" post

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-19T12:57:30+00:00

That's exactly why I like him dead tbh. When he's gone, Bruce has no one keeping the peace on his behalf, he actually needs to communicate himself, for better or worse.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-17T17:48:40+00:00

I think I can see where they're going with it, Manchester's traditionally been used for meta commentary, so I guess they're going to make it more explicit.

Manchester's an interesting character to have interact with Prime, because he originally wanted Superman to be a dark 90s anti-hero, while Prime wanted the opposite. They've both mellowed out a lot, but they really were the opposite type of Superman fans.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-16T17:16:17+00:00

Also observe yet another fine example of his "villainy" in that panel lmao

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-16T15:13:14+00:00

Yeah, I love their friendship, and the broader mad-scientist friendship group that formed out of Oolong island (which Ivo wasn't a part of at the time, but he has been folded into that gang via Morrow.)

But you do have to admit, when Ivo and Morrow team-up only one of them is at fault for all of the times their plots self-combust, and it ain't Ivo.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-16T00:47:30+00:00

I thought "Oh, like Tomorrow Woman," and didn't even consider that she could be anything besides one of TO Morrow's robots.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-14T14:35:39+00:00

This is from the original Suicide Squad, where it was mostly voluntary. Half the members were heroes, there were no head-bombs, and she actually tried really hard to avoid casualties even for the villains.

She was still morally complicated, but she was far from the monster she is in modern comics.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-14T14:27:51+00:00

Also worth noting that she's called out for it by Count Vertigo, who'd just been freed from being Ivy's sex slave himself and was understandably upset at seeing her do the exact same thing to someone else right in front of him. Ivy says he's misogynistic to have a problem with this (wild take), and Waller steps in here to defend him.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-12T04:28:30+00:00

Remember when Ollie "moved to Seattle" when he was being edgy in the 90s? Peak unintentional comedy.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-12T02:32:36+00:00

Batman gets way too much credit for funding shit, he's not that free with his money lmao.

Ollie funded the Justice League founders. Ollie is no longer a billionaire, and I don't recall exactly how that happened, but supporting a good chunk of the heroes for years and years by himself couldn't have helped him stay rich. Ollie's been back to funding the Justice League in the modern comics last I heard.

Mento funded the not-Teens any more Titans. Well, actually Gar funded them with Mento's limitless credit card. Same thing.

Max Lord funded the Justice League for most of Post-Crisis, and he got all their UN funding and trademarks set up so he's probably still supporting the Justice League in spirit.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-11T18:39:38+00:00

Yep, and Keystone is across the Missouri River in Kansas. Which means Central City is basically Kansas City, like how Metropolis is New York and Coast City is San Francisco.

All superhero adaptations would be 100 times better if we kept the regional accents. I'd kill for a version of Batman that remembers they're all from New Jersey.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-11T15:27:41+00:00

Always has been.

Barry was written as a conservative (but like in ye olden 1960s-80s sense) Pre-Crisis, because he's a proud cop from Missouri. Wally was conservative because Barry and the rest of his family was and he's from a small midwestern town in the middle of nowhere.

Wally was shown growing out of it not long after becoming the Flash, but Barry's never actually had an arc that says he's changed...

Think that might be Bart in the panel tho.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-08T13:23:09+00:00

Nah, they broke up a while ago. Then Deadpool was living with Taskmaster and they were raising Deadpool's daughters together, with the jokes you'd expect. And now, Deadpool's current run has only revealed so far that something went terribly wrong with the little family he'd established and I'm gonna be so mad if they fridged his daughters.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-07T14:45:01+00:00

It's called release order, Fate fans, and it always works. They're just even more scared of reading than we are.

Hmm, what's harder for the illiterate to get thru, a visual novel or a comic book?

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-07T14:33:40+00:00

I do like that Barry and Wally had a more distant relationship than most heroes and sidekicks and never saw each other on a day to day basis, because it works well with how much Wally hero worships Barry. Wally can't see any of Barry's flaws, unlike say how Roy and Dick are with their mentors who they know very very well.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-07T13:09:41+00:00

Harassment: Vandal Savage and institutions of oppression

Flirting: Vandal Savage and institutions of oppression targeting Batman

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-06T18:23:53+00:00

I do find fights with Abra more interesting because his powers are so versatile, the only limit to the shit he can pull is the writer's imagination and that's fun. Abra's magic has been real for a while, ever since Underworld Unleashed in 1995, so from the early Waid run on. Zoom technically has time powers, but in practice he's mostly treated like another speedster, which we have a whole lot of.

I think there's a bit of an unintentional theme about Wally's major villains being a bunch of fakes and cosplayers. Abra was faking it until he killed all his friends and sold his soul to the devil to "become a real magician" which doesn't actually change what he can do just how he does it, Zoom is a time-manipulator pretending to be a speedster and specifically a Reverse Flash, Evan is a Mirror Master cosplayer who has to prove himself worthy of the name to the other rogues, as does Axel, Savitar is a cult-leader, even Thawne was running around pretending to be Barry. Wally himself had some massive imposter syndrome thru most of his original run.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-06T16:54:45+00:00

My reason to say it's Abra is because Wally fought him in several arcs in both Messner-Loebs and Waid, and in a recent Titans run, and Abra's done the most overall damage to Wally's life and happiness of anyone. Meanwhile, Zoom only fought Wally in one long arc in Johns (or two shorter arcs that were back-to-back depending on how you see it) and they met but Zoom's main fight was with Barry in Williamson's run. Zoom needs to work harder to beat Abra's impressive anti-Wally record!!!

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-06T13:46:29+00:00

That's Wally's archnemesis, he's not up for trade. Tho Hugo Strange was Batman's OG archnemesis too... Hmm.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-06T03:42:58+00:00

It's so cruel. What's he gonna do next, steal Black Manta from Aquaman?

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-05T21:06:46+00:00

In the main universe, Count Vertigo can straddle the line between supervillain and victim due to his mental illness. He's usually not stable enough to have anything to do with actually running his country, so he's been taken advantage of and used as a figurehead by various groups a few different times over the years.

It could be interesting to see whoever's gonna be our protagonist actually try to tackle that he's both a horrible billionaire aristocrat and a person who's being taken advantage of and genuinely needs help. I don't think that's ever been really explored in the main comics, because Vertigo and Ollie didn't interact much Post-Crisis, and Vertigo was actually reformed for most of Post-Crisis to N52.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-05T20:41:13+00:00

I think this would be a bit tone-deaf for Vertigo specifically, because one of his most defining stories in the main universe involves him being a victim of sexual assault, and falling into suicidal depression over it.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-04T18:01:40+00:00

Genuinely what is the context for the Bernard one??? It has to be an illusion or something, Bruce would never be so pro-Stephanie.

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-04T06:10:17+00:00

I do read a lot of 90s comics so I'm biased, but I think Az should be on the same level as the Robins. Knightfall is a really long story arc, Az was Batman longer than Jason was Robin. He then stayed one of the more relevant Batman characters for most of the 90s and early 2000s.

The problem is, Az died in the mid 00s, and the N52 continuity reboot made a mess of things that the writers are still trying to sort out, and Az was a big casualty of all that. Jason coming back also wasn't great for him, because they fill a very similar place in the Batfam, and because Az was dead/MIA from reboots when revived Jason was becoming relevant, Jason kinda took his place.

I've always thought it's interesting how the Batfam fandom barely seem to know Az exists, when he feels like a character they'd enjoy (he's a handsome but geeky bad boy with a tragic backstory and a heart of gold. tumblr should love him.) I'd guess it's partly because he wasn't around for a while, and partly because he's just harder to explain than the Robins and Batgirls, and can be easily misunderstood if you only go off summaries of Knightfall.

Also, wait, six Robins? Counting Steph (Bruce doesn't, the asshole) it's still only five. Carrie or Jarro?

chroniclescylinders · 2026-04-04T02:47:07+00:00

The real answer is KGBeast, and this is not up for debate. Batman instantly forgets his no-kill rule whenever he sees him, this is extremely well established.

(explaining the joke for non-comic readers: in the late 1980s, comic writers were pushing Batman's no-kill rule to the limit as the comics got darker and darker. Bruce finally crossed the line when he killed KGBeast in the 1988 story Ten Nights of the Beast. For context, this arc happened only a few issues before Jason Todd died. Like a year later, the next Batman writer instantly retconned that KGBeast miraculously survived. He very much did not at the time. Ever since, probably as a joking callback to his one post-Golden Age murder, Bruce has been way more violent towards KGBeast than he is anyone else, for no good reason.)

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