Enzo991

This has been a long running tradition for Daredevil where writers deliberately end their runs with DD in a really tough situation and let the next writer resolve it. When Charles Soule came on DD he had to resolve the issue of Matt's secret identity becoming public at the end of Waid's run. So in this case at least it is being done deliberately.

In King's case though, not only is he ruining Batman with his awful writing, he does not even seem aware that he is doing so. His shitty writing has been infecting the Batman books more with every passing month, and I fear by the end of his run things will be left irrecoverably damaged. So I personally prefer the DD approach.

One of the few things that I think Marvel does a lot better than DC is coordination and world building, something that Marvel often shows with how connected their different books are where a character is treated the same across all stories they show up in. DC on the other hand still fails at basic continuity and every writer treat whatever book they are writing as some elseworlds story where they get to do whatever without any consequences. That is no way to manage a comic book universe that we are supposed to perceive as a single place where all these characters live.

Snyder has expressed his intent to remedy that issue with his JL and the few other books related to it, and now we have Bendis who is continuing to write the same way he used to at Marvel. Both are good efforts but I am hoping to see a more active attempt from DC to enforce this idea. Perhaps that way a single egotistical writer can no longer single handedly tank a character just because there is nobody who could say no to them.

Is King in love with that nine panel grid thing ? The guy clearly thinks of himself as the second coming of Alan Moore, but someone should tell him that he has been abusing the hell out of that gimmick and it only serves to make him look all the more phonier. I agree that King's last couple of issues have played it quite safe, but I trust King's idiocy will rear its head sooner or later. Perhaps he has been focusing much of his attention on HiC, which is why that ended up far more controversial that anything he has been doing in Batman lately.

Man that RHATO issue. How long has it been since we last saw Bruce written like an actual human being ? I am annoyed to see King's shitty event being referenced and acknowledged all over the place, with even Snyder tying his stuff into it, but I am glad it resulted in this issue of RHATO. While I am not sure about putting Lobdell on Nightwing, but his work on Red Hood continues to be great.

@morpheus_: Judging by recent events in comics and merchandising Slade's strongest ties are to the Batfam in general, which works out cause that includes Dick, Bruce, and Damian the three he interacts with the most. Overall Slade seems to have gotten too big to be labeled under a bigger umbrella.

He is his own brand now with the Batman brand being the only one big enough to eclipse him. I agree that Slade has outgrown the Titans long time ago but that doesn't mean he can't interact with them still, it is just that he benefits more from branching out and cultivating his reputation elsewhere.

@entropy_aegis: Damn Didio was on full on savage mode. I honestly can totally see where he is coming from. I never agreed with most of Didio's ideas but it seems that he shares my fears concerning how the fans have pretty much lost all interest in the characters and stories and all they care about anymore is seeing their favorite characters hook up.

Him telling a fan point blank that Dick and Babs are never getting back together is fantastic. Not only because I dislike Babs with Dick, but also because if seeing two characters getting together is your only motivation for reading comics then you should probably stop reading comics all together. DC brought this on themselves by constantly pandering to shippers until the integrity and quality of their stories became secondary to who is banging who.

DC clearly learned nothing though as we are in the middle of a 100+ issues Batman run that almost exclusively panders to rabid bat/cat shippers and they paid the price for that already with the wedding debacle and the shitstorm that followed.

I still don't believe DC will course correct simply because digging themselves out of the hole thy dug themselves into would take far too much effort and patience which I don't see DC dedicating to a long term goal, not when they could continue to pander to the worst parts of their readership and get momentary profit by doing so.

DC's weird hate boner for Bruce is got to be the most bizarre thing that I have ever seen from a comic book company. Batman is by a huge margin DC's best and most profitable property and yet they can't seem to be able to let the character breath for even a second. They hold on to some of the worst aspects of the character in the name of maintaining the status quo and yet they insist on continuously changing up Bruce himself and attempting to "deconstruct" him over and over with no actual idea about who the character is supposed to be.

DC can't seem to help itself from undermining Bruce's character and portraying him as superfluous and useless in his own books no less. Now they want to replace him ? Again ? Honestly this revelation puts Tom King's shit run under a whole new light. Say what you will about Snyder but at least the man shows respect to Bruce whenever he writes him. Even when Snyder had Gordon replace Bruce for a while he made it clear that Bruce was THE Batman and that he was going to reclaim the cowl in time. On the other hand King has been doing nothing but ramble on about how terrible Bruce is and how better it would be for everyone if he stopped being Batman.

King ending his run with Bruce retiring and running off with Selina while having someone else take over the Batman honestly makes so much sense now that I think about it. The writing really has been on the wall all along. It does not matter who succeeds Bruce, all that matters is that DC is allowing a hack like King ,whose only attachment to Batman seems to be through Catwoman, to destroy the character's image. I have already seen too many people calling King's Batman the "definitive" version and that is so wrong on so many levels. It really looks like King is intent on doing some lasting damage before he leaves the book. I doubt anything will manage to cut his run short at this point and that thought pisses me off.

Man that was a promising preview. It has the kind of fun attitude and look that Marvel tends to have but is lacking from DC. This is what I was hoping to see from Bendis when he made the transition to DC. The art is pretty great as well, full of colors and bold inks. Bendis is bringing a lot of the Marvel philosophy into this, with no walls placed to limit characters interacting with each other, I like that.

“I read this great quote by Frank Miller who said Batman is one of the few things in pop culture that you can throw anything at and it would still be Batman. You can make it as silly or as scary as you want and it's still Batman"

Did Frank actually say that ? Because he is damn right if he did. This is why King's failure on Batman is that much more jarring to me. Being a terrible writer is one thing, but managing to somehow make Batman not feel like Batman is quite the accomplishment. No other writer in history has managed to make feel more alienated from Batman the way King does.

Batman #55 preview.

https://www.cbr.com/preview-batman-55/

I will let you guys unpack this one.

Wow so DS has become full on Bat character at this point ? Or at least heavily associated with the characters, more so than his previous connection to the Titans and Dick. I personally believe this is a logical development for the character as Slade fits Gotham like a glove. In fact Slade might make better use of the extended Bat rogue gallery compared to Bruce himself who is stuck between Catwoman and the Joker. Although this new development will probably draw the ire of many considering how WB's original plans for a Batman movie featuring DS stirred quite a storm a couple of years ago.

Dear lord why can't this guy stick to whatever number of issues he is given ? He just has to tack on extra issues because his massive ego demands it. How much longer will DC continue to humor this hack despite his inability to produce any real results ? DC seems content with the dwindling numbers of King's Batman that cannot wait to throw more books at him. I just can't understand what is going between DC and King.