Batman #103

[cyberghostface]

Comments

[donnblake]

Hmm. To break this down- Ghost-Maker contends that he will be capable of doing more to fight crime in Gotham than Batman. As evidence for this he presents

A) His superior abilities as a detective, vis-à-vis his list of things he accomplished from his plane. Batman partially refutes this, by suggesting that at least some of what Ghost-Maker accomplished was duplicating or even counteracting Bruce's own crimefighting efforts.

B) His superior abilities as a combatant. That final page would seem to support Ghost-Maker's claim here, although Batman was somewhat handicapped by the need to protect a third party. We'll have to see how the inevitable rematch goes.

C) His as-yet ill-defined willingness to do what needs to be done. This is the one I'm watching with some interest. Both his name and the general pattern of this sort of conflict suggests that "permanent action," is a euphemism for vigilante killing, which veers into the "All murderers of murderers must be murdered Murder! Murder! ." nonsense discussed before.

I am holding out a little hope for a more interesting option, though. Maybe a private prison, or some Doc Savage style rogue brain surgery.

[thanekos]

This run is really presuming on the reader's desire to buy into it without doing anything to stoke that, other than " .. you like Batman stuff, right? "

[janegray]

Given that the 24 people the kid killed were in the process of attacking Gotham under Joker's banner, and thus presumably kill citizens (and we do see at least one instance where intervenes in the nick of time to stop the clowns from murdering some civilians), I wonder what the total body count would have been if he had done nothing. I'm guessing more than 24.

He's a scrawny kid with no equipment and no training too, so non-lethal takedowns are not an option, if they get back up they are gonna hand his ass to him.

Of course, the self-defence issue flies out of the window when he continues to hunt them down after they put the clown mask in storage. He should have taken Batman's offer to quit then.

Frankly, though, I can't find it in my heart to feel sorry for a bunch that enthusiastically jumped at the chance to go The Purge on their neighbors and then went "welp, that was fun, nothing like raping and pillaging, but it's time to go back to my comfortable life knowing that I'll never, ever suffer the slightest bit of consequences for my actions!"

Unrelated, but isn't Bao a black kid? I could have sworn he was black in the reveal issue, but since then he's been drawn with white skin.

[donnblake]

Purely from the name, I'd been assuming Southeast Asian.

[cyberghostface]

I thought he was Asian.

[icon_uk]

His full name is Bao Pham and he's of Vietnamese descent.

[janegray]

Also, call me cynical, but given that they just revealed that Lindsey Graham attempted to bribe Georgia's secretary of state into throwing out ballots from black counties, and absolutely nothing is being done about this, I don't buy that leaking criminal activities would actually result into any arrests of powerful rich people.

[icon_uk]

That did seem a tad optimistic.

[tripodeca113]

Look Ghost-Maker, thinks he's made progress in Gotham. Soon he'll be overwhelmed by the constant stream of villain's and corruption. No doubt he'll give up and give the city back to Batman.

[dan_ingram]

I don't know why, but baggy pants like that just destroy my suspension of disbelief. He can't be that agile wearing that.

[mastermahan]

Look, how else is Ghost-Maker going to dance to his favorite MC Hammer tracks?

[lbd_nytetrayn]

It's weird. This series of panels feels like they flow from one to the next (like you tend to do in comics), but we go from "Run, Bao!" to him AND Harley knocked out together.

Just curious what happened in between. I'm guessing this wasn't a continuous conversation.

[superfangirl1]

I really hope Ghost-Maker has an interesting story. We got little information about him in issue #102.

[john_wyatt]

This issue shows a lot more of his history with Bruce Wayne, going back several years.

[lordultimus]

I can't help but think that Ghost-Maker would work a lot better if Batman Incorporated was still a thing.

[leahandillyana]

Ghostmaker looks like a crusader who became a fan of hip hop. Also, I really prefer when JT4 writes Batman over almost all other writers. JT4's Batman has empathy. He understands killing to protect self and others. He understands how people may become twisted by their experiences. Other Batmen are hardcore on protecting villains from vegentful civilians, but much less on protecting civilians from villains.