#batman: black mirror

[ask-cloverfield]

Is this about Arkham Asylum or Black Mirror? Who can say

[dick-nightwing-grayson]

My hottake today is that James Gordon Jr is a cautionary tale of what happens when society allows cops to have kids

[danny-chase]

ngl this dialogue from Tim to Dick is banger and i think about it all the time

Detective Comics (1937-) #874

A series of comic panels. The first shows water pouring down a drain. Tim: “You’re fooling yourself again.” The next panel shows a rat looking on as water pours down into the sewers. Tim: “You know it, and I know it. And it’s a dangerous hole you’re headed down.” The water flows through the sewers past a “Gotham City Department of Environmental Protection Waste management Plant No.5″ sign. Tim: “Because you can pretend the poison’s gone.” The water rushes through the sewer bars at the end of a tunnel. Tim: “Pretend it’s been cleaned out. But deep down you and I know it’s still there circulating through.” 

[asongofstarkandtargaryen]

Barbara pulls the disappearing act on police:

Batgirls issue #11

She learned from the best these manners ( or the lack of them xD). From the bat himself:

Swamp Thing issue #7

Meanwhile Dick Grayson didn't get the memo:

Batman:The Black Mirror

[spinecutter]

look at this dood

[alphacomicsvol2]

Detective Comics #872 by Jock

[enigmamuse]

“And I remember... you gave me this... this look. Like you saw me. Really saw me.” x

[djrenard]

My Pull List (11/16/22):

Stargirl: The Lost Children #1

Nightwing #98

DCeased: War of the Undead Gods #4

Batman/Superman: World’s Finest #9

The Flash #788

Black Adam #6

Titans United: Bloodpact #3

Dark Crisis: Young Justice #6

Dark Crisis: Worlds without a Justice League: Batman #1

[gigachad-joker]

do you have a favorite joker storyline? which one and why!

Hello anon! I was hoping for a question like this because now it gives me a chance to regale you all with…

JOKER 2021 ISSUES #1-15

Facing retirement Jim Gordon is offered a large amount of money from an individual who works with the court of owls to hunt down and kill the Joker. The reason for the courts involvement, and for other crime families involvement (The cannibal Sampson family and followers of Bane), is because of Jokers supposed attack on Arkham which led to the death of hundreds of inmates. (Ah, ah, ah, No spoilers!)

I love Jim Gordon's characterization in this comic series it’s so old man with unresolved trauma takes money to hunt down an aging clown. If you enjoy Bruce’s occasional self monologues in comics this one is chock full of them, but there all from Gordon’s perspective and….. I truly appreciate that. I feel like we never get to know what Gordon thinks about everything that has happened to him. Imo, comics always keep Gordon as this guy that reacts either with awe, sensationalism or frustration at Batman or they treat him like a dismissive informant and this ends up leaving his character feeling very 2D. This comic truly broke that mold for me.

I haven’t talked much about Jim Gordon and his family on here but I loved Black Mirror and deeply enjoyed the decision to make Gordon’s son, James Jr, a burgeoning psychopath who found The Joker as someone to look up to. A psychopathic male role model for an equally psychopathic kid. After what happened in the events of The Killing Joke and Barbara’s subsequent injuries making Jim’s son also suffer in such an unfortunate way truly felt like the right final kick in Jim Gordon’s balls. That’s also why I believe he was the perfect candidate to kill the Joker and we do see him struggle with that decision several times throughout the comic.

There's a lot of references going on here too from past comics such as The Killing Joke, Black Mirror and The Joker War which makes reading this comic kind of feel like an insider only exclusive.

While this comic isn’t as flashy as Endgame or Europa or Death of The Family it really had me taken by surprise and explored incredibly interesting sociological aspects about cillian organizations both in and out of Gotham. If you got the time I certainly recommend reading this!

[ao3-anonymous]

Fastest Growing Fandoms on AO3 This Week (03/28/2022)

Every week I pull data on how many fics are in each fandom and compare to the previous week, then calculate the percentage increase to determine fastest growing fandoms.  Since this naturally skews towards smaller fandoms, I have included the same data filtered to Over 1k, 5k, & 10k fics.

Overall:

Over 1,000 Fics:

Over 5,000 Fics:

Over 10,000 Fics:

Source: AO3 Fandom Dashboard

[paneldumping]

[mshedgehog117]

I’ve been reading Batman: the black mirror and I love how Francesco Francavilla draws Batman, his whole art style is so cool and clean. I love it so much.

[danny-chase]

two questions because i trust your batfam comic knowledge - 1) there was no remaining bad blood between tim and dick preboot right? like they'd already reconciled and back to being best bros?? 2) do you think tim should've started to return to civilian life and wind down as red robin after reconciling with batfam?

1) I'll cop to not having read all of Red Robin carefully (i'm sorry i've tried, i get second hand embarrassment reading it) but i did go through and skim what I haven't read in preparation to this. And I'd say yeah by the end of preboot they were officially on good terms with one another

Blackest Night: Batman #3

Red Robin #11

Red Robin #12

As soon as Tim tells Dick about what he found, Dick follows up on it:

Batman & Robin (2009) #10

By issue #13 of Red Robin, Tim's pretty much accepted that Damian's Robin, and although he doesn't like Damian, he and Dick are still cool with one another

Red Robin #14

And Dick helps him out on the occasional case

Red Robin #23

And in the last issue of the run Dick's the one to praise him for not killing Boomerang at the end, which mirrors what he said in the Resurrection of Ra's al Ghul

Red Robin #26

And after this encounter, Bruce chastises Tim for what he did, which I find really interesting. Tim spends the whole first half looking for Bruce and almost like convinced Bruce coming back will fix everything and disregarding everyone else... meanwhile in the very last scene Dick's the one who's praising his actions and offering support

They also team up in the final arc of Detective Comics, Batman: Black Mirror

Detective Comics #874

And Batman: Gates of Gotham had them working together with Damian and Cass, but I've hit the image limit, so I don't have any panels to show. But yeah, they made up fairly quickly. It's less of what fandom makes it out to be and more like, Tim was angry and pushing everyone away in his breakdown and Dick was ready, waiting to pick up whenever Tim called. He pretty much was never mad and always trusted Tim throughout Red Robin (as seen in Red Robin #4 when he just let's Tim leave after Tim physically attacked him, because Tim asked him to trust him). I've also noted on my blog that in preboot, Alfred was the one to give Damian the Robin costume which is something that's generally forgotten, but also the reason why Dick never like officially apologized for it. He can't apologize for something he didn't do. But I would say by the end of Blackest Night, they're on neutral terms and by Red Robin 12 they're on good terms again.

2) I think it could reasonably have gone that way. I think Tim could have decided that he wanted to work more through the Wayne Enterprises side of things, or he could have stayed on as Red Robin like he did in the comic. In Robin 1993, when Tim was younger (and less traumatized), he viewed Robin as something temporary, and made a couple comments here and there about giving up the mantle when his time was done. However, that eventually changed as newer writers were trying to set Tim up as someone who would stay in the game (via making a lot of comparisons to Bruce, having Bruce being like he'll be better than me someday, etc.). So like it's hard for me to say if it was a part of Tim growing up and changing or if it was because editorial needed Tim to change. Especially because his personality changed a lot after the One Year Later event. I think a path that I personally would have taken is to set him up as more of a supporting role in the batfamily, having him go to college, filling in on missions in a pinch, and helping out Alfred and Barbara. Tim's kinda had like a "I'll do whatever I think is the best way to help people" and if the best way for him to help people is retiring or filling in another roll (in the comics he considered joining the army because of this mentality)... it makes sense for his character in my eyes

Edit: i had more thoughts. I think if they hadn't done all the weirdness with Leslie and Steph, Leslie would actually have a good shot at talking Tim out of vigilantism

[asongofstarkandtargaryen]

Day 25: Panel of Dick being BAMF

Batman: The Black Mirror

James Gordon Jr was a great villain for Dick's Batman because his whole personality was so anti-Dick Grayson. He liked to play sadistic games with members of his family( on the panel above he paid an unwanted visit to his sister, Barbara). So, I really liked the moment Dick asked him if he could also participate on the game and then proceeded to punch him. So badass!

[batbitchandthefam]

This scene really sums up Dick’s Batman.

Detective Comics (1937) #877

[machinesuper]

The black mirror batman

And now Wayne is back but doing something else. Also, apparently Wayne’s son from Son of the Demon (which I did read back when it was released) is Robin now - or maybe was Robin because he doesn’t appear in The Black Mirror. I believe Identity Crisis was about to begin when I last entered a comic book store on a Wednesday, but since then I’ve been tangentially aware that somewhere along the line Bruce Wayne “died” (comic book scare quotes in full effect) and Dick Grayson took over in his place. As well, though I’m not a regular reader, I am familiar with some of the changes to the title over the last several years. I’m familiar with Batman and his mythos but I don’t read his books save for special occasions - books or stories that come highly recommended or hyped. It’s not the salvation of the genre and it does stumble awkwardly in places, but simultaneously, it does get some things right and those things are worth the time of the superhero enthusiast.Īt this point, I should mention that the caveats from Batwoman apply here as well. And in some ways, The Black Mirror vindicates his sentiment. He’s proven himself to have great taste in the past and it was on his recommendation that I gave Big Questions a shot against a warehouse of reservations and came out quite pleased.

Book critic Dan Goodman, knowing my reluctance to heartily endorse the superhero genre, gave the book a pretty nice recommendation and said he thought it was one of the best examples of the genre in years (I’m paraphrasing from memory here, but I think I’m doing him justice). I mean, think how many enemies I’ve made by saying that Batwoman: Elegy was mostly awful and that All-Star Superman fell flat to me partly because Frank Quitely’s people drive me crazy.) So my general rule for this sort of thing is that I won’t review a superhero book unless 1) I really found something special in it (and I really need to do more of this) or 2) the book was recommended to me. On average, even the better books will only be able to rate an OK rating by the measures I use. And that’s why, for the most part, I don’t really review a lot of superhero books. Sometimes we just want to turn our brains off and take in an unbelievable story. I read and loved The Hunger Games, even though it wasn’t anything particularly special. We don’t expect romance novels or westerns or Elizabeth George mysteries to be Remains of the Day or Cloud Atlas. There are Good books that find themselves nestled in the genre that has been Marvel and DC’s bread and butter since the ‘60s, but they’re rare and all the more special for it.Īnd that’s fine.

Rather, the problem is that so much of superhero fiction doesn’t actually succeed. It’s not that a superhero story can’t succeed and rank among the best of the medium that would be like saying The Long Goodbye isn’t great American literature. Because there are standards of good storytelling that sort of just exist over and above genre concerns, I’m not often kind (or perhaps better: generous) to superhero fiction. The same awkwardness exists here on Good Ok Bad. But we shouldn’t expect a neck-and-neck race. Certainly, a critic might make note of Twilight's purpose and express some evaluation of how well it succeeds on its own terms. On a site that reviewed both books side-by-side, we’d expect reviewers to use at least most of the inches on the same yardstick to measure out their respective values. While it may seem unfair to compare the two books, one is entertaining trash and the other is awestriking and thoughtfully composed (at least according to most everyone who’s read it and isn’t thirteen). See? They’re both great because they both succeed within their unique contexts! After all, how far could you trust someone who rated Twilight and Brothers Karamazov as being Great Books because Twilight succeeds at its goal of being a mindless-but-amusing supernatural romance/thriller and Brothers Karamazov succeeds at its goal of being kick-ass, world-class literature that people will be talking about for hundreds of years or more. I try to extend some graces to the contexts in which these books operate, but completely divorcing genres from the general expectations of the medium would perpetrate some pretty wild discrepancies. One of the weird things about this site is that I rate genre books alongside, quote-unquote, more serious fare.