[Spoilers] Batman #83 preview and discussion.

[Tzigone]

Digital copy has been 16 pages for a while, at least - it's mentioned in a review dated Dec 2016 here. Whether it always was or whether it's different than print version, I cannot say.

[Schumiac]

Is it too much to hope Dc will allow Tynion to say everything was just one big nightmare Bruce was having and reset Batbook continuity without doing a hard-reset of Dc continuity? Surely he is not looking forward to dealing with the aftermath of all this... Maybe save poor Nightwing along the way too, where we can say both he and Batman have been drugged and having a collective nightmare for a while now... *sigh*

[CPSparkles]

This issue got a 1/10 on Batman news. It's one of the harshest reviews I've seen on that site. I know the website is not for everyone but I thought it did a really good job at highlighting some of the flaws in Kings run.




http://batman-news.com/2019/11/21/batman-83-review/

Okay this part from the review:



So, Alfred decides to record Bruce a message discussing a number of topics. The message starts out well enough, with Alfred remembering Bruce as a young child. Carefree. Happy. He remembers the way Bruce would play, and laugh, and smile. He speaks positively of the emotions. Then he recalls the death of Martha and Thomas. He remembers how it impacted Bruce, and how closed off and depressed he became. He goes on to mention that Bruce never showed any emotion from that point on, and that he didnÂ’t see emotion in him again until the day of Bruce and SelinaÂ’s wedding. That dawn, on the rooftop, when he finally saw Bruce smile again (Batman #50). He goes on to say that he finally saw Bruce as the man heÂ’d been waiting his entire life to see, and that he would forever remember him as that man, in that moment.


Bruce hasnÂ’t had a single moment of joy or happiness in AlfredÂ’s presence since before his parentsÂ’ death


This is fantastic and basically a big fat lie. Or retcons more than half the pages, storys, theme in Batman's history.

I get that King needs us to believe that Selina makes Bruce happy but is it really necessary to toss out every character take makes him happy?
Does we really have to pretend that all the times we've seen Bruce happy, emotional, human didn't happen?

Is there really no room for Selina, Batman's family and friends? It is possible to love more than one person no need to diminish other meaningful relationships and others that he cares about just to push a romantic interest.

Heck this isn't Bruce's 1st or only love.

This is just pathetic and unnecessary

[CPSparkles]

Funny enough looking back on some old comic forums.

Morrison's run was quite divisive [not as much as King's though] until Batman and Robin. In particular Damian's intro, Talia's retcon and killing Bruce.

Synder made the exact same claims as King. Big changes that will forever change the Batman world.

The more things change the more they stay the same I guess. As much as I enjoyed Morrision I've had enough of writers using his playbook

[Desmark]

Yep what the book needs is a writer willing to tell well plotted storylines rather than looking to leave a mark on the character forever.

[Ansa]

Bruce hasn’t had a single moment of joy or happiness in Alfred’s presence since before his parents’ death


This is fantastic and basically a big fat lie. Or retcons more than half the pages, storys, theme in Batman's history.

I get that King needs us to believe that Selina makes Bruce happy but is it really necessary to toss out every character take makes him happy?
Does we really have to pretend that all the times we've seen Bruce happy, emotional, human didn't happen?

Is there really no room for Selina, Batman's family and friends? It is possible to love more than one person no need to diminish other meaningful relationships and others that he cares about just to push a romantic interest.

Heck this isn't Bruce's 1st or only love.

This is just pathetic and unnecessary

I agree 100%. Dick, Alfred, Barbara, Jason, Tim, Cassandra and Damian have never made him happy? He never had a genuine smile around them? Well I guess they can take a hike then. Or better, this version of Bruce can take a hike and drop off a mountain cliff.

And looking back at issue 50: Is that smile supposed to be off-panel? Because the smile Alfred describes in 83 isn't anywhere in 50. I genuinly don't know what he's talking about. Bruce has a slight smirk in the car and that's it. I sometimes wonder if King even remembers his own writing.

[Gotham citizen]

[…]
Bruce hasn’t had a single moment of joy or happiness in Alfred’s presence since before his parents' death


This is fantastic and basically a big fat lie.
[…]

6113-07542943em-audience-applauding-in-theater.jpg

Sometime I think the "professional" of the comic industry don't read the comics they write about.

It is like the modern writers act like they were "professional fanfiction writers", rather than professional comic writers: they care only about what they want write, only about their vision of the character, without having any respect for the work of the previous writers; writers who created and built the legend of the character.
At least this is my feeling.

[Schumiac]

I sometimes wonder if King even remembers his own writing.

Not when he is in total overdramatic Bat/Cat fanboy mode.

The issue before King had Nightwing shot in the head, he spent showing Dick was there for Bruce and knew how to reach out and shake Bruce out of his funk and even make him laugh, so that the headshot would have more of an impact as a major action taking down an important piece of Bruce's support system. But when King is in "Bat/cat forevaaaa" mode, he forgets even his previous work, and ignores the fact that Bruce has many other people who he loves (and love him back) and who has brought joy to his life. It is actually rather sad that he thinks the only way for him to sell Bat/cat as some grand romance is by ignoring and undermining everyone else in Bruce's life and their meaning for him.

Dc was right to contain him to his own fanfiction title. Keeps him happy and frees the main title. Just wish they didn't take this long. Though sometimes shudder at the thought of what the rest of his run might be like to make Dc go "errr, maybe best if we shift this portion to a brand new special title just for you and your favorite couple, than the main one?".

[johnpeelgothisgun]

Sometime I think the "professional" of the comic industry don't read the comics they write about.

A lot of them today refuse to privilege canon. King's representations of the characters have about the same (un)reality to me as the versions we might find in Tumblr memes. Weak meta witticisms several times removed from the source.

Like a lot of people, I think I could have enjoyed a limited series by King: I don't mind experiments, I easily tolerate deconstruction in controlled doses, I'll happily defer my gratification if I expect a reasonable payoff. But I can't find a sufficiently strong expression for my anger over his Batman run as we have it.

[adrikito]

Urgh.

Waynes are morons, and so is the Batfamily now.

I'm so glad Ric and Jason aren't here, I can't tell you.

I heard that they are under MIND CONTROL..

REMEMBER that The Psycho Pirate is with Thomas.

What pisses ME off is the next issue is apparently 'The Secret History of Thomas Wayne', which means we won't even get a resolution for this next issue!

.

DAMNIT. I can imagine it.. We will know how is he here and about his alliance with Bane.. King will add extra content to make this the complete issue(thomas saying your gotham is worst than mine.. etc..).. As you said No resolution.

[Gotham citizen]

[…]
Like a lot of people, I think I could have enjoyed a limited series by King: I don't mind experiments.
[…]

The graphic novels exist for that purpose: a writer experiment some variation, the editors watch the reactions of the readers and then they decide if, when and how introduce that experiments in the canon.

[…]I'll happily defer my gratification if I expect a reasonable payoff. But I can't find a sufficiently strong expression for my anger over his Batman run as we have it.

Look I don't know if anyone has my same feeling, but I started to read Batman from the very first issue and now I'm reading the issues of the first middle eighties; I did the same thing with the X-men. Well I can say when I read a modern book (doesn't matter what title) I am always a little bit anxious, because I wonder if the book worth to be read, but that doesn't happen when I read the old stories: I already know the storytelling of every story will has the same quality, there will not be some cataclysm that it will upset the status quo of the character, but a slow clever and well done evolution of the character. I know in those stories there will not be what I want read, for example I am a Bruce/Selina and a Cyclops/Phoenix fan, but at the end of the books I feel more gratification than I have reading the King's Batman or the Hickman's X-men; even if stories of the eighties Selina is a character almost insignificant and Jean Grey was dead.

[johnpeelgothisgun]

The graphic novels exist for that purpose: a writer experiment some variation, the editors watch the reactions of the readers and then they decide if, when and how introduce that experiments in the canon.

Exactly. I like Paul Jenkins' dreadfully postmodern "Jekyll and Hyde," but it would never work for me in the main continuity. It's an exercise in an alternative, transparently intertextual manner of storytelling that tends to confuse and annoy people who don't get that sort of thing.

Look I don't know if anyone has my same feeling, but I started to read Batman from the very first issue and now I'm reading the issues of the first middle eighties; I did the same thing with the X-men. Well I can say when I read a modern book (doesn't matter what title) I am always a little bit anxious, because I wonder if the book worth to be read, but that doesn't happen when I read the old stories ...

I feel the same way. I only began reading Batman comics really within the past year and in a short space discovered that the periods I like best are '70s through '90s comics. There are stories I really love from the 2000s, but the writers have come to place their literary ambitions ahead of all other concerns. I'm flexible about characterization and character histories, but writers today are constantly galling me with a need to up the ante and leave a lasting mark, however ugly. With older stories, the questions for me are basic: will it be well written? will I enjoy it? will it leave me with something to think about? With newer stories, the question tends to be: will I regret reading this? will I be left mad as hell that it ever got past the editors?

[Aahz]

The graphic novels exist for that purpose: a writer experiment some variation, the editors watch the reactions of the readers and then they decide if, when and how introduce that experiments in the canon.

I'm also OK with a writer doing something experimental in one shot issue or an Annual, but when it comes to King's run I have hard time to remember when we had the last conventional Batman story arc.

[Gotham citizen]

Do what I do: change the factors of the equation!
In fact I'm starting to consider in canon the graphic novels and out of canon the regular titles; it is depressing I know.