"Everything doesn't have to be about fear. There's room in our line of work for hope, too"- Stephanie Brown, Batgirl Vol 3 #5
"Quit? Like hell I will"- Bette Kane, Beast Boy #3
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
City of Bane would have made an amazing year long event like No Man's Land.
Each month the Bat Family could have fought one super villain for a section of Gotham and the final fight would have been Bane.
I still don't understand why DC pulled the rug out from King there was so much potential and yes I know some hate his writing, but to kowtow to critics seems asinine.
Well at least he gets to finish his Bat/Cat story
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
King said he had too much work on his plate to carry on Batman.
He also said that he managed to say everything he wanted to since the remaining 15 issues he had planned villain of the week type stories featuring various Batman villain's.
It does beg the question why has he been taking on multiple assignments if he had no time to do 15 issues of Batman.
There was also the New Gods movie he was supposed to be doing with Ava but I guess that was cancelled since we didn't get a peep during fandome.
Which might explain why he has more time. Personally i feel like King wanted to move on and had his eye on TV and Movies.
Last edited by Bad Witch; 11-17-2020 at 03:02 PM.
https://twitter.com/Clay_Mann_/statu...39403141844992
Some behind the scenes from Mann in regards to Selina's past and present looks in Bat/Cat.
(I wonder if Clay's new design will replace Jones' design as the default Catwoman look?)
Last edited by Hilden B. Lade; 10-05-2020 at 09:41 AM.
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
Is that design seem slightly inspired by BTAS?
I don't buy any of these explanations. More and more, I feel like they were all cover for King's Batman fans like us and cover for King too from the embarrassment of being fired early from a pre-announced run.
King is a prolific writer and he's got so many projects going at once that I don't believe he couldn't have written 15 more issues. I also believe that he very much wanted to complete his story. (Batman/Catwoman is not a finish to his story; it's a meditation on the Bat/Cat relationship. It's not even in continuity. It's throwing fans like us a bone.)
But I get that the sales for their flagship title were down. I get why they did what they did.
My real frustration lies in the fact that, instead of getting that far along and not finishing the story, we got this purely mediocre run by Tynion.
Don't get me wrong. I like Tynion's writing a lot and I thought his Detective run was fantastic, but his run on Batman, while fine, is no great shakes and it doesn't at all justify kicking King off a title he was 85 issues into and had only 15 more to go. How much money did we each invest over 85 issues only to be robbed of the ending King had been heading toward for all that time?
And boy was that a terrible and terribly underwritten breakup between Batman and Catwoman in the last issue. This let's break up and revisit things in a year was so forced and so out of character with all that had come before, over the last 4+ years. It was that 1-2 page scene that led me back into this forum after months away and to search for this thread so I could vent my spleen about it.
Last edited by BatmanJones; 10-24-2020 at 12:54 PM.
I have to say too that I found City of Bane to be obviously truncated and, as a result, the absolute worst arc of the run. You could just feel him trying to cram in an ending, any ending, to make sense of ending his run. After all that, Batman punches out Flashpoint Batman and Bane and things are okay again?
Moreover, I think we all know by now that Alfred's death was never meant to stick. He was going to be Clayface or some other explanation. King, in his last few issues, had not planned for Alfred's death so he had to fit that in too at the last minute. And it was DC that left him holding the bag that way in the last few issues because they hadn't planned for Alfred to die either. They decided to cram that in based off of fan response.
I have a good friend who, during the pandemic, has returned after a long time to reading comics and has asked me for recommendations. I've been lending him my Deluxe volumes though the final one(s) isn't out yet. He is utterly in love with this run and, in the course of telling me that recently and freaking out about everything he loves about it, said "This is so great that I'm worried he won't stick the landing. Please tell me he does."
What was I supposed to say to that? I know his tastes and I know how disappointed he'll be about all the threads that were just dropped in favor of a real rush-job. I just told him he should finish the run and tell me what he thinks of it. And I know I'm going to have to give him the same excuse that DC gave us: well, at least there's a 12 issue series of Batman/Catwoman coming out soon.
Heavy, heavy sigh.
It makes me so angry.
Tynion's run is terrible. Generic, boring, unoriginal, unmemorable. And why on earth do they even need to break up Batman and Catwoman? There's NO reason for that. None.
I know that if say, Tom Taylor had been hired to take over Batman he would have kept Bruce and Selina as couple. He writes them great (see Injustice) and he knows how to have them be a team without making the whole thing about their relationship. It's so frustrating.