Batman #63 (2019) - "Knightmares, Part 3: Smoke and Mirrors"

[laughing_tree]

Knightmares. Epic arc scraping at the soul of Batman. -- Tom King

Comments

[obsidianwolf]

My biggest problem with these stories is that they are ultimately pointless. Batman because of what he is (a massively popular corporate asset) will always reset to status quo so no matter how well a story exploring how broken he is may be (and this is not one of those stories) it will never stick.

Stuff like this belongs in fanfic or in non canon what if imprints not the main book. Where it is ultimately pointless and just feels like yet another cycle of misery that will be glossed over later.

I mean like lucean said this Batman doesn't fit his place in the DC universe. A story like this might work in a out of continuity story where he was just a street level vigilante in a corrupt city but in the wider dc universe it just detracts from the character.

[thanekos]

You're assuming modern writers particularly expect their work to stick.

This is work-for-hire with long-ongoing intellectual properties. Someone comes on, they do what they want as much as they can, and they leave when they have and/or want to - with their work in trade, the occasional royalty check in the future, and some parenthetical credits for the next time they get mentioned in a press release.

There's no reason they should have any consideration for the character's place in the shared universe/overall myth beyond what they already have. Any standard like that is the same arbitrary " this is how I think things should work ", just enshrined as general belief.

Given a choice between that kind of standard, typically upheld by fandom, and their own, it's honestly better that they pursue the latter - sure, it's just as likely to reiterate clichés for the concept they're working on, but there's usually something new and interesting in there that there isn't in the former's tendencies to satisfy its proponents only in terms of things that they already know.

[jlbarnett]

that's an insult to fans and other writers, because then they either have to ignore what you wrote or spend part of the time fixing what you broke

[obsidianwolf]

Oh they know and accept that the bulk of their work isn't going to stick but you can clearly see many modern writers shooting for something to stick. A Modern classic story line, an epic event or even just a reinvention of one or two characters that becomes the new normal for them.

And sorry but I disagree on not considering a characters place in the wider universe. When dealing with a shared universe being aware of how characters fit into it is iportant. And even if writers think you can ignore it sooner or later they can't because working for the big two means that sooner or later their comic is going to get dragged into a wider universe event and if you not aware of how they fit into the wider universe it is going to derail or destroy your in progress story.

Frankly I don't actually see that much innovation in these the writers don't care storylines. Everything Tom King is doing in his run has been done before in fact it is in many ways more of a retread IMO than just standard vigilante fare. Because he is clearly aiming to tell stories in the vain of the big story lines that he personally liked. It is far more fanboyish and author projecting to me than say Marv Wolfman's run on Batman.