No worries about budget means we can go full-on Clayface .
No worries about budget means we can go full-on Clayface .
"It's not my Kate." - Greg Rucka
I still don't get the point of making Jace Batman. Bruce is one of those characters that is very flexible. You can do high techy Batman, a Batman run that involves sci-fi or some fantasy, or just get back to the street level. Seems redundant to have someone else do it, when Bruce is perfectly able to do it himself.
He’s black. Bruce can’t do stories about being black. Jace differs from Bruce in other ways, he’s motivated by guilt due to being responsible for killing someone. He’s sort of a take on “What if Joe Chill became Batman?” where being Batman is a way for him to atone.
All that aside it’s also about broadening the appeal of the Bat brand. We’re entering a world of shared mantles, soon every popular character will have a legacy version of them that also uses their code name.
For when my rants on the forums just aren’t enough: https://thevindicativevordan.tumblr.com/
Doesn’t really matter. Miles has never been as strong a seller as Peter in any medium but he gets to stick around for diversity’s sake. Jace came out of 5G, which the higher ups at WB wanted, and was created with the aim of being adapted. Down the road there will likely be a Jace Fox movie or MAX show and that’s what will really establish him as a character. Besides his sales are pretty decent for DC right now, last I checked he outsold characters like Diana and Clark in their main books, and he sold better than Wally’s return to being Flash.
For when my rants on the forums just aren’t enough: https://thevindicativevordan.tumblr.com/
In bat-characters standards (even secondary bat-characters, not Batman), he's not selling too well, and that's true for his 2nd issue (not including his online sales that are low compared to every DC character).
It's likely his sales won't really improve unless DC relaunch him or push him even harder, but so far while wonder girl and Jon superman were able to generate interest and sell more or the same as WW or Clark superman, Jace doesn't even sell like Nightwing or Robin.
It's possible DC are planning an outside adaptation for him, but it's coming in timing when they're pushing different batfamily adaptations just as hard (Nightwing in Titans leading Gotham with Babs as the commissioner, Gotham Knights game as batman's successors, Batgirl as leading the DCEU instead of Batman, Batwoman TV show with her as Gotham's vigilante, Gotham knights tv series with Batman dead and his son leading Gotham). I guess he could get the "Batman Beyond" niche as a secondary and future successor to Batman.
Last edited by Lal; 01-23-2022 at 03:51 AM.
I think the main point was that in 5G main heroes would be old and we would get next generation. So they figured that instead of going with Batman Beyond (or Damian) they might as well create new black Batman since, as Vordan said, new story options will be available + they'll look nice on social media for having black Batman.
But since now we have new and old generation together we can kinda see that Jace is treated differently to other 5G characters. For example, Clark left Earth and Jon got some bits of Clark's lore (like Legion) for himself. Jackson and Jo are sharing books with their predecessors. It is not clear what is the future for Yara at the moment, but she was thrown straight into WW's lore and will be central character in WW's event. Meanwhile Jace is getting separated from Batman and Gotham.
Well, Wonder girl is a separate book from WW, so it's not like she replaced Diana.
Jon is the only one who actually sort of replaced Clark on earth.
As for Jace... Adding him to the Batman lore was sort of impossible in the first place. He's the least experienced vigilante in Gotham. He couldn't have led the batfamily, or be the main crimefighter in Gotham, and most chances are that if he interacted with other batfamily members it would have ended with him being accused of being an imposter and his short career as Batman would have ended.
Even in his book, there was an admittance that as long as he stays in Gotham he'll always be considered an imposter (not that moving to NY could really help, but at least it solves his clashes with the batfamily and him being the Batman of NY is better than claiming he's just Batman).
And while DC could easily cancel or sideline a book that sells 30k a month (superman or WW), it's less likely that they'll do that with Batman, their only series selling over 100k. Not to mention all the other bat books with Bruce.
Jace just can't compete with that. He's not even close.