#Gotham war spoilers

[aleksiej]

gotham war spoilers

jason todd died again?!?!!

during pride?!?!!!

[goatsghost]

this is being added to my repository of “the batfamily purposefully fucking up each other’s happiness” scenes, because what the fuck bruce. just because you’re not happy doesn’t mean everyone else deserves to be equally as unhappy. especially if you’re the one to rip it away from them

batman/catwoman: scorched earth #1

[concyclic]

Saw what happened w Jason in Gotham War or whatever and I’m frothing at the mouth.

Panic attacks, hallucinations of past trauma and sudden, all consuming paranoia??? Hell yeah, that’s PTSD induced psychosis, baby!

And I love that! Accidental representation on a character who is not killing people during their psychotic episodes because of it?? Never seen it before! And I will be taking advantage to write fanfic about it!!

[fortanuvasyama]

If we're taking Bruce at his word here (and if we consider that "it's not me" to be Zur agreeing) essentially that means that everything Bruce has done thus far was his own choice. Attacking his kids, poisoning Jason, abandoning Damian, those were Bruce's decisions, not Zur's.

Bruce decided he knew best, and he has no remorse for how the people he apparently loves have suffered for it.

[dc-himbo]

So Bruce really did just cause a mess and traumatize his children to hell and back then say my bad I'm leaving Dick and Babs you're their mom and dad now Bruce Wayne out.

[rezhood]

I hate Batman author logic like yeah Bruce has some crazy shit that makes someone have uncontrollable fear whenever they’re experiencing adrenaline and instead of using that on villains who are consistently murdering and terrorizing the city he uses it on his son who is annoying him

[oifaaa]

At least the first time Bruce dumped all his parental responsibilities onto Dick it was because he died this time he literally just decided to peace out with the "you'd do it better then me" excuse

[ihatechosingnames]

This post will be short.

After seeing Bruce skip town to be Batman full-time and alone, I say he needs to see a therapist, an exorcist (for Zur and every version of Zur he created by jumping dimensions), and a second therapist. In this exact order.

This man has not heard of "burnout syndrome" which he probably has since he did Zur, Red Mask, Insomnia, whatever and Gotham War one after the other without rest. His mind needs as much rest as his body, he doesn't need to push it till he dies.

The thing is I was hoping that this arc would have lead to some kind of revelation for Bruce to change to became a better man, but it's since the golden times of Robin-Dick that this man has made questionable decisions, and I'm not talking about letting an underage grieving child to go out and fight adult criminals. I'm talking about Zur, that he created to protect himself from "psychological attacks". I'm talking about the machine he created to "cure" Jason of his murderous way, which I theorized he created for the Joker. It is heavily implied (by the bold characters) he created both Zur and the machine around the same time.

Which makes me ask: for who he created originally this machine?

Dick, asking what happened to Jason, before disconnecting Bruce is a good move, I haven't read a lot about Dick (I mean, the last thing I've read about Dick was Vampire King Dick) but it seems that until the last minute he was conflicted, knowing what happened snapped him

the argument Bruce tries to use on Dick, about saving Jason's future victims, reeks about hypocrisy. He could have used to "cure" the Joker from his murderous insanity. Bruce truly thinks this is a cure and Jason's violence is a sickness

I don't think Dick would have been so calm in the last conversation with Bruce if he knows this.

I'm not exactly happy that Bruce has left behind his family by telling Dick and Barbara to be the parents. First of all, a group of family is not defined by traditional roles. Dick and Barbara can lead their family of brothers and sisters by still being their siblings, not their parents. Second, how dare he leave his children. In good and in bad, especially in the bad, he is their father and he just leaves. What about Damian? What about Tim? Steph? Cass? Duke? Jason?

In my opinion, at that point, Dick should have decked him again.

Bruce has a moral responsibility towards all of them, for being not only their mentor, but also being a father figure for them. Being a parent is not a job you can decide to pass on to the next person.

On the other side, I think it was much needed. Bruce was literally at the bottom and was digging even deeper, he now needs to climb up from the grave he dug. Hopefully, the next arc is going to be exactly this, Bruce getting better, in his own time. The chances he actually goes to a therapist are very low, near the impossible, but someone can hope.

[neptunesenceladus]

the funniest cliff hanger

[evasive-anon]

Can’t believe Gotham War just got me seething in my room like an idiot. Nothing was addressed, they tease character deaths and never follow through, Bruce still doesn’t make any fucking sense. I’m not convinced this wasn’t storyboarded by an AI bot that’s never heard of endings at this point.

I wish Jason did die at the end because at least that would have worked narratively but on the flip side I don’t know if that moment alone would have carried the rest of the inconsistencies.

Tim looked good and Cass had some sick looking bat knives and I think those are the only positives I can come up with for the last issue. Oh and they remembered Duke existed for a couple panels.

[goatsghost]

batman/catwoman: scorched earth #1

i do enjoy the writers remembering duke has powers and also exists as a character (why they didn’t include this fun little move when they were fighting bruce three issues ago, the world may never know)

[aingeal98]

Do we think Zdarsky is going to actually acknowledge the end of Gotham war or are we just going to pick back up with the DTD squad trying to save Bruce with no mention that Bruce has already sort of given up and talked to Dick calmly and made all the younger ones Dick and Barbara's responsibility. How do you even bring up the fact that Jason flew into a meteor exploded and then respawned with no explanation. Literally what are the editors doing how have they not been fired yet

[fortanuvasyama]

side note, this

is making me very nervous for this

[zahri-melitor]

Some more coherent thoughts about Gotham War, now it's settled on me.

(Spoilers below cut, for length and as it's still only Wednesday)

It's not a huge surprise, but Selina's whole 'train henches to steal from the rich non-violently!' ended up being a complete side issue that only existed to get the plot moving. Nobody's conception of this plot, in two years time, will really include this detail, despite the thousands of words spent arguing how ridiculous it was.

Yes it remains a poorly thought out plan on Selina's part (she's never heard of earning money legally) but the narrative also frames it as long term ineffective from the very first issue and knocks it down on multiple occasions.

DC editorial definitely tried to dress this up as a full family event, but realistically it was a Bruce, Selina and Jason event, written by their three current writers, with solid bit parts played by Tim and Dick.

Vandal Savage remains ridiculous and ready to sacrifice anyone and I appreciate that about him. As a villain he was just the right level of stakes for this event.

I enjoyed getting to see Scandal, even if her fans would say she got done dirty here. Scandal usually has enough sense not to believe anything Vandal says, and I admit I was somewhat waiting for some level of twist here as to why Scandal was all for immortality at this point in time, but it never came.

I still agree it felt a lot like three separate plotlines intersecting, but I think they managed to land the event successfully (while leaving some nice loose threads). I actually appreciate they didn't overreach in their goals.

It still finished out with two separate plotlines: Bruce and Selina and Jason; and Dick and Tim and the rest of the family. Structurally this again reminded me as much of Resurrection of Ra's Al Ghul as Batman #138 did; the main plot and then the far more interesting Dick & Tim sideplot which is what I go back to reread. (Chip Zdarsky is clearly also a fan)

Also promisingly for an event yes, it did actually shake up the status quo and push the participants off in new directions.

So Bruce is now doing the Loner Batman thing (in that he's locked out of the fam computers/comm lines), Selina is officially 'dead' (what is with all these fake dead people with titles, Penguin is too right now), and Jason has what's effectively permanent fear toxin response to stressful situations. Also, apparently, we are getting Dick and Barbara back 'running' the Batfam while Bruce is on the outs.

As far as Bruce goes, what has been really notable in this event is how much Chip Zdarsky loves early 2000s Bat comics and their dynamics, and particularly Joker's Last Laugh. There's a lot of structural things about how this event was shaped, what specific characters did, and emotional beats that feel very JLL as someone who's read it at least half a dozen times. It's not the only influence, but it's a pretty prominent one.

Bruce ending the event in a position where he's effectively not working with most of the other Bats actually tracks reasonably well over to Batman & Robin, to my surprise. It makes sense that it's just Bruce and Damian and they're focusing on homelife and domestic relationship details between the two. It gives Bruce an excuse for why he's closely focused on Damian there.

I will admit I have not been reading Catwoman, but from the event it seems they're spinning her off to keep moving her back into a more antihero position. Tini Howard clearly has a direction she wants to take Selina.

I actually think this has pretty interesting storytelling potential for Jason. It means that he has to stay calm, or has to overcome his own fear to achieve things. It gives him a goal? Matthew Rosenberg clearly seems interested in using it for his Jason storytelling and he's got Jason right now, so...

I'm personally delighted by how much Tim Zdarsky wrote into this storyline. He used the space more to show off Dick and Tim's brotherhood and what Tim is good at, rather than push the Tim side of the Zur story we're all expecting to occur (there's that waiting Zur-Robin costume). Means he's planning it for Batman as a title itself rather than getting it tangled up here.

"It was the only way to become the second-best Robin". Yes, this is Tim getting to show off his core competencies - he probably is the only Bat other than Bruce who would have extensively studied all the trophies. Dick would remember a lot of them simply because a lot of the trophies are from old adventures, but pretty much all the others are not particularly retrospective, respect the past sort of members of the group, while Tim has always been surrounded by the shadows of the past. I loved this note.

I haven't talked about Babs yet! She's in green, in glasses, sitting down at her computers with a novelty mug, directing everyone, answering to Oracle. That's her! That's my Oracle!

I do think Bruce expecting Dick to take over running the Batfam right now is a big ask, given he's also running the Titans as the main superhero team on the planet and handling Bludhaven, but Tom Taylor's writing both those books so I don't expect to see the stress catching up with Dick there. Benefits of writer choice right now, I guess. Also personally 'Babs and Dick organise everyone while Bruce has a breakdown elsewhere' is one of my favourite Batfam dynamics so you know, I'm pretty excited if we actually get to see this play out.

New Lazarus Pit in Gotham! This won't be a problem at all.

[panakina]

So Gotham War really just was ‘a bunch of stuff happens then the book stops,’ huh?

[windamp]

well i guess we've finally sidestepped the awkwardness of having three jokers be technically canon but the book that addressed it being noncanon