BATMAN #9 Backup Story

[superfangirl1]

Comments

[darkknightjrk]

"Time for us all to venture out of the nest?"

Hmm...Martha's wording there is quite suspect. I wonder if she means an OWL'S nest? :O

[espanolbot]

Probably just a coincidence.

[darkknightjrk]

I doubt it--Snyder's been VERY literal with his owl references.

[shadowpsykie]

eep! Martha! oooh this seems like all sides of this story are going to be good. (loving the art)

[nightauditguy]

Jarvis?

[superfangirl1]

He is alfred pennyworth father.

[nightauditguy]

I realize that, but has Alfred's father always been named Jarvis or is this a recent thing since another billionare, playboy philanthropist has a butler and/or AI named Jarvis

[superfangirl1]

Going by wiki. It looks like Alfred Pennyworth dad always been named Jarvis Pennyworth.

But miles may vary on accuracy. :)

[eyz]

Now I know!
Always something new to learn 'round here :P

[riddler13]

And now you know... and knowing is half the battle! :D

[eyz]

[riddler13]

Hahahahah loved it! :D

[avantre]

I must be hallucinating - Martha Wayne getting panel time, and she's not wearing joker makeup?

[xammax]

She also got some in Streets of Gotham. Martha has become more and more interesting in the last few years.

[mastermahan]

She really has. It used to be that Thomas was the doctor who was colleagues with Leslie Tompkins and once wore a Batman costume, whereas Martha was sort of there. Heck, the narration in Year One had Bruce narrating specifically to his father rather than both of them, though that was probably a Frank Miller thing.

It's a refreshing change.

[espanolbot]

What they said. She also played a part in the Batman: Family mini series, which was about a former friend of her's coming back to Gotham after about twenty or so years... who them promptly told Bruce that his mother had been stealing from the charities that she'd been devoting all her time towards. The rest of the series consisted of Bruce investigating his mother and finding out more about her in the process.

She played a mini part in Death and the Maidens, though she was a hallucination/ghost that apparently Bruce only remembers as a woman with half her face blown off (his dad's ghost isn't injured when he appears), who berates him for wasting his life on revenge when he could have used his intelligence and drive to come president or the like.

She was also responsible for the plot in the anti-child sex trade story "the Ultimate Evil" where it was suggested, if not outright stated, that Martha's attempts to stop the child sex trade in Gotham was responsible for getting her and her husband killed.

It kind of seemed to be a theme in a lot of series' (outside of the Streets of Gotham story) that Martha's attempts to help the city either got her hated by her peers or outright resulted in her death.

[espanolbot]

Although I have enjoyed the majority of the Court of Owls stuff, I'm kind of bemused that they'd be so keen to make Gotham such a crap place to live. You'd think that if they had such a sense of ownership in the city they'd attempt to make it greater at the cost of the citizenry or other cities, rather than making it a mess of a place with no schools, high crime and the like.

[mastermahan]

I don't think the Court of Owls care much about making Gotham greater so much as they care about making themselves greater. Some people try to improve the world, and some only try to improve their own lives, and folks who keep dozens of undead assassins in cold storage don't tend to be philanthropists.

[mrstatham]

This. I think, as Martha implies by saying 'the schools can't pay the mayor off' that the Court basically thrives on crime and the proceeds, and that they're basically happy with Gotham the way it is. Of course, I do remember there being implications that they haven't been active in some time, and only came back together in the light of Bruce's efforts to clean up Gotham - which is quite clearly echoed here.

[icon_uk]

They seem to have been active enough to keep recruiting kids from the Haly Circus.

[mrstatham]

True, but they don't seem like an incredibly proactive group anyway. Also, I was under the impression that Haly's Circus did most of the work, there, and merely presented them to the Court when the time was right. Plus, it is just one kid a generation who becomes their new Talon.

[mastermahan]

Later on, Jarvis says he's responsible for "what happened to the Waynes."

So, does this mean that Alfred never actually worked for Bruce's parents? That seems like a big change.

[icon_uk]

Depends when he died I suppose, and it would be a change BACK, technically speaking. Back in the 1940's Alfred only joined the Wayne household some time after Dick became Robin, though mention is made that his father had indeed worked for Thomas and Martha.

It's the "New 52", so who knows I suppose.

[blackruzsa]

Jarvis.
That is so mind boggling.

I like this art in an odd way. Weird, but expressive.

[icon_uk]

I do worry that tying EVERYTHING into the ruddy Court of Owls is going to come back to bite future writers on the bum, because it's putting all their eggs in this basket and it'd be a bugger to retcon.

[mrstatham]

Or, on the other hand, it gives a consistent piece of ground for everything in the reboot related to Batman. The concept's clearly successful, and not everything is tied into them. But giving a handful of characters some common ground can't hurt, and I don't see why they'd want to retcon it - it isn't drastically changing the nature of these characters.

[icon_uk]

I agree it's been popular, though I think it's too early to say it's been succesful until we get the actual finale and see how it ends.

And in the case of Nightwing, it really has changed rather a lot. His childhood home is now not a happy place of good memorys, but was a three ring hell on earth that has been abusing children and selling them into slavery for centuries, with the people he trusted most at the time actually plotting his becoming a Talon. And giving Dick Grayson ancestral ties to Gotham City seems overly contrived even for the Batverse.

[espanolbot]

*Implying that all batwriters care about the work of previous writers like Dini and Snyder* LOL

Sorry, chances are that even before Snyder finishes his run someone'll butcher the characters or the story so that the entire thing suddenly doesn't even more a lick of sense any more.

Precedent: The addition of James Jr. to the current Batgirl run in an attempt to tie Barbara more into the new storyline just resulted in the original story suddenly not making any sense, as for the Batgirl reedit to work Black Mirror can't have happened like it did in the story.

[mrstatham]

The attempt to shoehorn in additional importance to Barbara's role in TKJ is what gets me more than Black Mirror being butchered. As much as I dislike the treatment of her character, it was never intended to be canon, and I don't see why DC have kept it now, even after Flashpoint could've erased it. But Simone seemed to be trying to big up Barbara's role in the story, when, as much as I hate to say it, she's not meant to have a big role in the story. She's a victim of the war between Batman and the Joker, and that's it.

But Simone's attempts to bring Barbara to prominence are just weird anyway. It's like she's trying to establish how important she was in the past when she should just be focusing on what makes Barbara Gordon as Batgirl a vital and important enough character to sweep away two other great characters for the time being. But then this is quickly becoming an argument for another thread.

[benuben]

I would be really angry, if they would just erase it. Yeah, it was not meant to be canon. So what? It was and it was fantastic.

[mrstatham]

Yeah, it's a great story. It's also basically pointless and whatever cool recovery Barbara had post TKJ in the old DCU is now invalidated. To remove the story from continuity WOULDN'T mean the story's pointless. You can still enjoy it just like any of the other stories DC has seen fit to shit on and get rid of. There's nothing that makes TKJ incredibly special save for the fact DC know it's a story that makes money and that some fans are so obsessive over continuity.

And ask yourself is it really necessary? Do we need a Batgirl series that takes place in such a close proximity to TKJ, timeline-wise? All it's resulted in is an utterly, utterly miserable Batgirl series so far. It would've been so much better if it was erased and we just had a cool, happy Barbara Gordon.

[kraesil]

oo, this seems good. I'm all eyes and ears!

[drmcninja]

I can't be the only one sick of the Wayne's being made utterly perfect. They have no actual flaws, its just a long parade of "wow, look how amazing Batman's parents are! Its so sad they got killed before their time!" It was already sad, they don't need to be perfect to make it better.

[r0b666]

ZOMG the Court of Owls killed teh Waynes, Alfred's Dad *and* Graysons! They R the greatest VILLIANS EVAH.

Next thing you know they'll show that they paid off the Joker to shoot Babs in the spine, Killed Abin Sir, made Hippolyta have sex with Zeus (ugh) *and* blew up Krypton to boot.

And here I thought only movies had to link the hero's origin to the villain directly. *head desk*

The story isn't bad but can't they just be a fucking secret society that's been lying dormant for awhile. Do we have to make Joe Chill a fucking Owl???