Upcoming Comics February 5, 2025

Welcome back to Upcoming Comics! I've been watching the new season of Harley Quinn and it feels like a major improvement on the last couple. Ever since Harley and Ivy got together at the end of season 2, there's been a real sense that the show didn't really know what to do with them. It would come up with scenarios to put them or their relationship in conflict, but it never felt quite right for the characters. The new storyline with them in Metropolis is far more organic and plays off of their personalities really well. The fact that Dean Lorey returns as showrunner from the first two season certainly helps in that regard. In fact, the sudden change in leadership is made apparent in a really funny way by having the whole Gotham City Sirens premise that was teased at the end of season 4 be mockingly dismissed in a 2 minute flashback. Hopefully it can continue being good for the rest of the season.

Upcoming Comics

Batman #157

With the Court of Owls’ plan revealed and the city in chaos, Batman must find the strength to fight a war on multiple fronts and save Gotham from disaster. The fates of Jim Gordon, the Riddler, and all of Gotham rest in the hands of the Dark Knight in a climactic issue so big it takes two superstar artists to bring it to life!

Written By: Chip Zdarsky
Art By: Jorge Jimenez, Tony S. Daniel

Thoughts: And now Chip Zdarsky's run on Batman officially comes to an end. After two years, what is there to say except I'm hopeful for whatever might be coming next.

Batman News Critic: Jackson

Two-Face #3

When Scarface is kidnapped, Gotham’s underworld is thrown into chaos. Is this an isolated incident or the work of the “Shadow Hand” that Harvey’s been tracking of late? Only Two-Face can bring order to the proceedings, but the culprit isn’t another mob boss or criminal mastermind—it’s a once-famous actor? And she’s not after money or revenge, she’s after love?! It’s a trial of tribulation and romance, and Good Harvey must get to the bottom of it before Bad Harvey takes over.

Written By: Christian Ward
Art By: Fabio Veras

Thoughts: Correct me if I'm wrong, but I think this is the first time Baby Doll has ever been brought into comic continuity. Her episode from BTAS is one of my favorites, so I hope this can do her story justice.

Batman News Critic: Aaron

Birds of Prey #18

When Oracle intercepts chatter about Sin from the ninja clan long bent on acquiring her, Dinah, Sin, and Megaera decide to set a trap instead of waiting for an ambush. Meanwhile, Constantine reaches out to Oracle for last-minute help moving a tricky demon across a dimensional plane, but Oracle only has the skeleton crew of Big Barda and Cass Cain on hand…and they might not be the best fit for this particular mission.

Written By: Kelly Thompson
Art By: Juann Cabal

Thoughts: I'm not sure splitting the gang up into two totally separate plots is the best move, but Kelly Thompson knows more about writing comics than I do.

Batman News Critic: Jeremy

Batgirl #4

As Batgirl grapples with the unlikely allies Lady Shiva has assembled to combat the Unburied, a surprise attack derails their burgeoning plans. Suddenly, it’s all-out war with Cassandra Cain caught in the middle of the deadliest hands in the DC Universe! Will she stand and fight alongside the enemies of her enemy? Or will she take them all on herself?

Written By: Tate Brombal
Art By: Takeshi Miyazawa

Thoughts: I'm finishing this out through at least the first arc, but so far it's fallen well short of my hopes for the return of Cass's solo series.

Batman News Critic: Chris

Poison Ivy #30

Grievously injured after her encounter with the Order of the Green Knight’s master, Poison Ivy finds herself wandering a strange liminal zone inhabited by The Grey. Meanwhile, Janet, on a search for answers about the mysterious town of Marshview, finds herself lost amongst The Green. As the two friends attempt to find their way home to each other, they’re confronted by strange forces beyond either of their reckoning. Across their journeys, the question begins to shift from can they return to each other to who will they each be by the time they find one another again. Things will never be quite the same for poor, poor Janet after this.

Written By: G. Willow Wilson
Art By: Marcio Takara

Thoughts: I know, I know I've let you down. I've been a fool to myself. I thought that I could live for no one else...

Batman News Critic: Andru

Batman: Off-World #6

Batman is ready to return to Gotham City to apply all that he's learned from his unbelievable adventure in the farthest reaches of the cosmos—but unfortunately, the Blakksun Twins still have one last lesson for him… a lesson in exploring the final frontiers of pain! It's the brutal, surprising finale to Jason Aaron and Doug Mahnke's Batman epic!

Written By: Jason Aaron
Art By: Doug Mahnke

Thoughts: Oh yeah, this exists. It's easy to forget that fact when the last issue was over 3 months ago.

Batman News Critic: Chris

Beyond the Bat

Welcome to Beyond the Bat, where we take a quick look at the rest of DC’s comics coming out this week.

Gallery

Graphic Novel Watch

Sometimes you need more than floppies. Sometimes you want something that can sit nicely on your shelf that proudly displays your favorite stories. That’s when you turn to graphic novels. Let’s see what bat collections are coming out this week:

Gallery

Ratings

Most Excited: Two-Face #3- This has easily been one of the best series that DC has put out in a while. More people should be reading it.

Least Excited: Batman: Off-World #6- A better comic might have survived the enthusiasm gap of the hiatus, but this wasn't exactly the breakout hit to begin with.

Wild Card: Poison Ivy #30- This series definitely fluctuates for me regarding how interesting its ideas seem.

Well that’s it for this week! Let us know in the comments what comics you’re looking forward to.

26 comments

Madeleine

February 1, 2025

Yes more people should certainly be reading Two-Face...

The finale of Zdarsky's horrendous run outselling this... Ye gods. If comics sold on their real merits it would be a revolution.

Yesterday I read Amy Chu's Poison Ivy: The Cycle of Life and Death. It contained some ideas I might have wanted to see developed by another writer but it wasn't very good... Chu, saddled with Mann, couldn't find a voice and tone for Ivy like Wilson, in stride with Takara and Haining, has from the very first panel. I feel that Ward and Veras' approach to Harvey Dent as different as it is has many of the same virtues albeit it's had to take another form for the bifurcated mind. Ward's grounding in visual arts suits him to the task and Veras has accomplished the building of a mindscape. This comic deserves a larger audience.

Kaingerc

February 1, 2025

Baby Doll made cameo appearances in comics here and there in alternate continuities (like Sean Murphy's 'White Knight'-verse), but as far as I know she only made ONE appearance in the MAIN DC continuity, as a random unexplained cameo in Harley Quinn's 30th anniversary special (where else?! in a story written by her creator, Paul Dini) 3 years ago

https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Gaggy-Baby-Doll-Harley-Quinn-DC-Comics.jpg

Kaingerc

February 1, 2025

even with the delays, you can't argue that there is quality writing in Batman: Off-World,
on the other hand, I'm SO done with the Batman vs evil soviet Captain America story.

Berkley

February 1, 2025

Hopefully that ridiculous cover with Baby Doll will bring some much deserved attention to Ward's series. People passing over quality smaller books like this while running out to buy trash, and then complaining that DC is publishing nothing worth reading, is why our nice things are so few and far between.

On that note, Zdarsky's run will not be missed.

Raphael Howard
February 1, 2025
I think the Two Face is making a virtue of its limited initial order by blending a Case-of-the-week format with the wider arc…

Raphael Howard

February 1, 2025

It can be pretty annoying to see Jackson complain about Batgirl whilst Chris gives it solid reviews, but this opening arc is one that seems to be depending too much on the climax, which is still an issue or two away. Cass and Shiva are both getting some excellent material imo, and the five-page train carriage fight in the last issue was fantastic, but I can see why there are critics….

Kaingerc
February 1, 2025
I think the main problem with the Batgirl comic's pacing is that there is too much focus on "emotions" and not enough on plot or actual character work.
there was some decent enough action, but nothing that really made me go WOW.
1. Raphael Howard
  February 1, 2025
  I’m grateful to see Cass and Shiva get worthwhile material, so I’m pretty patient, but issues 5 and 6 will have to be truly spectacular to win over the sceptics…
Jackson Luken
February 1, 2025
Chris and I definitely have different opinions of the current Batgirl run, but that's fine. Each reviewer will give their own interpretation of the book they're reviewing. If I wanted every score to reflect my views, then I would have to review every comic.

Sara

February 1, 2025

Two-Face is my Most Excited for healthy reasons. The soliciting of issue #4 two months in a row is worrisome, however.

Zdarsky leaving is my Most Excited for pain reasons. He made every single thing about the comics worse. I've never seen that before. There are things I've hated about other runs, but there hasn't been another run where every... damn... thing got worse.

I don't know. I'm not hopeful for what comes next because I haven't seen any evidence yet that the way they write major Batman stories will get better. Hush was a stupid comic with a stupid title villain. As far as I'm concerned, the only good it accomplished was to start the process of bringing Jason back.

Sara
February 1, 2025
Here, have a concrete example of how Hush was a stupid comic: Compare how Ward is handling Two-Face to how Loeb cured him off-panel, effectively ending him as a character in the canon for several years, so that his derivative, dumb villain could climb the ranks. Some writers feel a responsibility to the characters in their care and some just want to leave their mark. DC trying to scrub away any evidence that Harvey was involved in that shitshow is a tacit admission that it WAS a shitshow.
1. Madeleine
  February 2, 2025
  I won't defend that comic but based on some dialogue I think Loeb assumed Harvey would resume his function as DA and serve as an ally again. Sidelining him was probably an editor's choice against Loeb's wishes.
  That said I think Harvey being cured or DA again is an unbearably stupid idea and I wish DC would drop it.

Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)

February 1, 2025

Zdarsky's run was a catastrophe. Jimenez deserved a better writer for this character, hands-down. They begrudgingly gave Bruce his money back in ridiculous deus ex machina fashion but they inexplicably think they don't need Alfred back. The character needs to go back to basics and Gotham needs to be more sustainable on a monthly basis, instead of constant near apocalyptic upheaval. In the 90s it was more narratively stable, with shorter arcs and way more appearances from fan favourite villains per year. The city was so large no one villain could take it over ( i.e. Tom King's version of Bane, Joker, even Catwoman in that dumb Gotham War or yet another psycho toaster like Failsafe). They need to the lean into the kinds of monthly stories they told that you can see in the fantastic Caped Crusader/ Dark Knight Detective Trades, with faster pacing, less deconstruction while CELEBRATING the fan stuff about Batman fans like.

Jackson Luken
February 2, 2025
I don't know if I'd use the 90s as your example of pre-"apocalyptic" storytelling, given that it had Knightfall and then Contagion and then Legacy and then Cataclysm and then No Man's Land
1. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
  February 2, 2025
  Yes that's true but I was more thinking about the stories and the Caped Crusader Dash Dark Knight detective trades which you should read if you haven't already. These were late 80s to the early 90s before Bane.
Madeleine
February 2, 2025
This... is a very rosey view of the 1990s even if we disregard the events Jackson mentions and their evolution into demi events like Hush as m.rodrigues mentions. By the late 1970s it was already standard to have a single overarching narrative as a setting for individual arcs that could re-emerge at any time. Stories that are commonly read excerpted from the Bronze, Copper, and earlier Modern runs suffer badly from misunderstandings. People think the stories can be read alone but they really shouldn't be any more than episodes from Tom King or Ram V should be.
Criticism and deconstruction of Bruce or the Batman and Robin identities is also not new. It just used to be more varied and thoughtful.
1. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
  February 2, 2025
  I was specifically referencing the stories from the Caped Crusader and Dark Knight Detective trades which actually turn out to be more post--crisis and before Bane. To be honest there were storylines and periods in the early 2000s as well where they didn't do this kind of stuff.
  1. Madeleine
    February 2, 2025
    I know these anthologies and I place a high value on them. But even focusing on the first six to eight years of post-Crisis stories I'm not sure this view holds up. A Death in the Family is a badly written story under any honest examination but knowing its context makes a significant difference in how it's read. (I don't only mean the vote for Jason to live or die but everything going back to all the "Robin dies!" stories of the early 1970s. If you don't know the Bronze Age you would not guess how common these were.)
    Loss of context is a much more significant problem for reading older stories than I think people realize...
    1. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
      February 2, 2025
      I'm not too familiar with the robin dies story lines of the 1970s. In terms of context I would think though that there seems to be more of an understanding of where the fan base was which is that Jason Todd was nowhere near as popular as Dick Grayson had been. I have a copy of that trade and I need to take a look at that again. I do think that there was some decent buildup to that storyline with Jason Todd embracing more of the darker more Reckless side of Robin so it wasn't some kind of left field stunt per se.. and it did create an iconic moment that underscored Batman stories for literally decades and added some consequences to being a Soldier in Batman's War.
    2. Madeleine
      February 3, 2025
      At the manifest and meta levels Jason's possible death is a major theme of his stories.
      Yet the reputation he has today as a hellion without the chops to be Robin is not borne out by his stories. He was a good Robin most of the time, even in Starlin's run.
      Editorial's intentions to him were not friendly and the comics fandom is infamous for its intolerance of morally gray characters.
      Whether it was right or wrong or just interesting to kill Jason isn't what I'm questioning. It's how things reached that point that's unsettling. By the end it has all the qualities of an unethical social-psychological experiment. Editorial could have dealt with Jason many ways but they set him up, involved fans in killing him, and replaced him soon after with anodyne Tim Drake...
    3. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
      February 4, 2025
      And yet, it was the fans themselves who read the books who voted to kill him...not saying that one arc was golden or well conceived ( I had no qualms with JT in the trades I read and I was never a huge fan of TD as Robin tbh) but it seemed to not be reviled by fans in retrospect....
    4. Madeleine
      February 4, 2025
      Sorry in advance for a long reply. As a topic problems in continuity and fan perceptions/conceptions have become two of my driving reasons to keep reading the comics... This is really me working out my thoughts, feel free to ignore it...
      The reason I took the example of ADitF because it's a very famous story that's usually read in isolation by fans today, is much debated at this site, and is surrounded by its own lore that has had deleterious effects on multiple characters (Jason most obviously but I'd argue that Bruce and Joker have also been hurt by it). Fans at the time had their own reasons to vote as they did--though as m.rodrigues says, voting per se isn't proof of sound judgment. (This is parodied in a story from the Red Hood/Arsenal run from late New 52 where the internet votes to kill Roy Harper for very bad reasons indeed.)
      Mike Barr's run on Detective Comics was designed to counter Starlin's run on Batman, Barr advocating for and Starlin against Jason Todd. Barr's run, which feels very dated next to Starlin's, was terminated while Starlin's continued. Grant's run repaced Barr's and never makes any mention of Jason that I can remember even though Jason was still alive when it began. Starlin, who openly disliked Jason, had full control over how Jason would be portrayed by that point. The closest Jason comes to making an appearance in Grant's run is ads for ADitF with the number to call to decide Jason's fate. Grant's run is the Copper/Modern Batman-without-Robin run par excellence.
      (I first encountered several of Jason's stories by Moench, Collins, and Barr in Two-Face anthologies. This was before I read ADitF. He was a capable, likable Robin in these smaller tales. I have always been dumbfounded by the belief that Jason was a bad Robin, even after reading ADitF. Reading Starlin's full run is the only way I could understand how that idea came to exist. Nothing but the fandom's selective memory and DC's penchant for retconning Jason's stories could explain to me how it's persisted.)
      A less contentious example I could have used would be the way pre-Crisis runs by Englehart, Wein, and Moench that have a very strong internal sense of continuity are read chopped to pieces in anthologies, losing too much of their meaning in the process.
      The continuity, or maybe better put the real history that gets lost in discussions is something that extends beyond what's in the panels and comes down to editorial influence in many cases. Why is the Batman/Catwoman date issue from Moench's run canon when almost nothing about Jason, more important to the run than Catwoman (as the run was more important to him than to her), has been allowed to survive?
    5. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
      February 5, 2025
      I don't agree with you on all of this but I respect your passion for the history of the character. Todd was long dead by the time I started reading cape books so there are some gaps in how things were in my memory. I remember in my Caped Crusader Vol 1 the story where Todd was so enraged at a violent drug dealing diplomat's son who got away with his crimes that it was strongly implied that he killed him by tossing him off ahigh rise balcony. Batman didn't pursue it further with JT but it set off a chain of events that nearly got him and Commissioner Gordon killed ( Batman 424/425). That said, it was literally the issue before DITF started so it is def possible that it was a quick attempt to make JT look somewhat unstable or unfit before killing him off. It is a curiosity as to why readers voted to kill him or why people seemed to flock to his replacement in an unprecedented way ( Tim got his own book for years).
      I think while ill-concieved DTIF solidified Joker as a threat beyond the others in the Rogues Gallery, that and what he did with Babs. That said I think Joker has been taken to almost ridiculous mythical status these days and he's been overdone, especially in recent years. The less of Joker we get the better IMO.
    6. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
      February 5, 2025
      Very fair point on elections. I see what you did there. Yeah, my reference for JT becoming darker and more violent was 'The Diplomat's Son' but that issue was literally before DITF so perhaps they were rushing to make him look more reckless than other Robins. As I said before it is curious why fans were fine with him being gone ( if there was a collective outrage I would think they would have considered undoing it)and gravitated to Tim Drake ( who seemed more straightlaced with a cooler suit)
      Despite this example I still think they had a better handle on Batman around those years than they do now. Hands down.

Robin MB

February 2, 2025

I'll probably get Two-Face in trade. Just don't have the space for mini series in floppy format anymore. I will say Hush 2 Electric Boogaloo does has me a little curious. Loeb & Lee were brought on to try and fix the bloat of the early 2000s. Now 20 years later here we are again. I will say this. I'm glad it's not starting over with a new number #1. While DC does them sometimes they're not as crazy as Marvel with it.

Shazam #20
Sonic #76
Ultimates #9

Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
February 2, 2025
I'm very tired of new number ones. It takes away the feeling of the history of these characters. I enjoyed hush as once in a while kind of thing though I believe originally it was supposed to be a series like long Halloween.

Madeleine
February 1, 2025
Yes more people should certainly be reading Two-Face...
The finale of Zdarsky's horrendous run outselling this... Ye gods. If comics sold on their real merits it would be a revolution.
Yesterday I read Amy Chu's Poison Ivy: The Cycle of Life and Death. It contained some ideas I might have wanted to see developed by another writer but it wasn't very good... Chu, saddled with Mann, couldn't find a voice and tone for Ivy like Wilson, in stride with Takara and Haining, has from the very first panel. I feel that Ward and Veras' approach to Harvey Dent as different as it is has many of the same virtues albeit it's had to take another form for the bifurcated mind. Ward's grounding in visual arts suits him to the task and Veras has accomplished the building of a mindscape. This comic deserves a larger audience.
Kaingerc
February 1, 2025
Baby Doll made cameo appearances in comics here and there in alternate continuities (like Sean Murphy's 'White Knight'-verse), but as far as I know she only made ONE appearance in the MAIN DC continuity, as a random unexplained cameo in Harley Quinn's 30th anniversary special (where else?! in a story written by her creator, Paul Dini) 3 years ago
https://static1.srcdn.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2022/09/Gaggy-Baby-Doll-Harley-Quinn-DC-Comics.jpg
Kaingerc
February 1, 2025
even with the delays, you can't argue that there is quality writing in Batman: Off-World,
on the other hand, I'm SO done with the Batman vs evil soviet Captain America story.
Berkley
February 1, 2025
Hopefully that ridiculous cover with Baby Doll will bring some much deserved attention to Ward's series. People passing over quality smaller books like this while running out to buy trash, and then complaining that DC is publishing nothing worth reading, is why our nice things are so few and far between.
On that note, Zdarsky's run will not be missed.
1. Raphael Howard
  February 1, 2025
  I think the Two Face is making a virtue of its limited initial order by blending a Case-of-the-week format with the wider arc…
Raphael Howard
February 1, 2025
It can be pretty annoying to see Jackson complain about Batgirl whilst Chris gives it solid reviews, but this opening arc is one that seems to be depending too much on the climax, which is still an issue or two away. Cass and Shiva are both getting some excellent material imo, and the five-page train carriage fight in the last issue was fantastic, but I can see why there are critics….
1. Kaingerc
  February 1, 2025
  I think the main problem with the Batgirl comic's pacing is that there is too much focus on "emotions" and not enough on plot or actual character work.
  there was some decent enough action, but nothing that really made me go WOW.
  1. Raphael Howard
    February 1, 2025
    I’m grateful to see Cass and Shiva get worthwhile material, so I’m pretty patient, but issues 5 and 6 will have to be truly spectacular to win over the sceptics…
2. Jackson Luken
  February 1, 2025
  Chris and I definitely have different opinions of the current Batgirl run, but that's fine. Each reviewer will give their own interpretation of the book they're reviewing. If I wanted every score to reflect my views, then I would have to review every comic.
Sara
February 1, 2025
Two-Face is my Most Excited for healthy reasons. The soliciting of issue #4 two months in a row is worrisome, however.
Zdarsky leaving is my Most Excited for pain reasons. He made every single thing about the comics worse. I've never seen that before. There are things I've hated about other runs, but there hasn't been another run where every... damn... thing got worse.
I don't know. I'm not hopeful for what comes next because I haven't seen any evidence yet that the way they write major Batman stories will get better. Hush was a stupid comic with a stupid title villain. As far as I'm concerned, the only good it accomplished was to start the process of bringing Jason back.
1. Sara
  February 1, 2025
  Here, have a concrete example of how Hush was a stupid comic: Compare how Ward is handling Two-Face to how Loeb cured him off-panel, effectively ending him as a character in the canon for several years, so that his derivative, dumb villain could climb the ranks. Some writers feel a responsibility to the characters in their care and some just want to leave their mark. DC trying to scrub away any evidence that Harvey was involved in that shitshow is a tacit admission that it WAS a shitshow.
  1. Madeleine
    February 2, 2025
    I won't defend that comic but based on some dialogue I think Loeb assumed Harvey would resume his function as DA and serve as an ally again. Sidelining him was probably an editor's choice against Loeb's wishes.
    That said I think Harvey being cured or DA again is an unbearably stupid idea and I wish DC would drop it.
Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
February 1, 2025
Zdarsky's run was a catastrophe. Jimenez deserved a better writer for this character, hands-down. They begrudgingly gave Bruce his money back in ridiculous deus ex machina fashion but they inexplicably think they don't need Alfred back. The character needs to go back to basics and Gotham needs to be more sustainable on a monthly basis, instead of constant near apocalyptic upheaval. In the 90s it was more narratively stable, with shorter arcs and way more appearances from fan favourite villains per year. The city was so large no one villain could take it over ( i.e. Tom King's version of Bane, Joker, even Catwoman in that dumb Gotham War or yet another psycho toaster like Failsafe). They need to the lean into the kinds of monthly stories they told that you can see in the fantastic Caped Crusader/ Dark Knight Detective Trades, with faster pacing, less deconstruction while CELEBRATING the fan stuff about Batman fans like.
1. Jackson Luken
  February 2, 2025
  I don't know if I'd use the 90s as your example of pre-"apocalyptic" storytelling, given that it had Knightfall and then Contagion and then Legacy and then Cataclysm and then No Man's Land
  1. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
    February 2, 2025
    Yes that's true but I was more thinking about the stories and the Caped Crusader Dash Dark Knight detective trades which you should read if you haven't already. These were late 80s to the early 90s before Bane.
2. Madeleine
  February 2, 2025
  This... is a very rosey view of the 1990s even if we disregard the events Jackson mentions and their evolution into demi events like Hush as m.rodrigues mentions. By the late 1970s it was already standard to have a single overarching narrative as a setting for individual arcs that could re-emerge at any time. Stories that are commonly read excerpted from the Bronze, Copper, and earlier Modern runs suffer badly from misunderstandings. People think the stories can be read alone but they really shouldn't be any more than episodes from Tom King or Ram V should be.
  Criticism and deconstruction of Bruce or the Batman and Robin identities is also not new. It just used to be more varied and thoughtful.
  1. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
    February 2, 2025
    I was specifically referencing the stories from the Caped Crusader and Dark Knight Detective trades which actually turn out to be more post--crisis and before Bane. To be honest there were storylines and periods in the early 2000s as well where they didn't do this kind of stuff.
    1. Madeleine
      February 2, 2025
      I know these anthologies and I place a high value on them. But even focusing on the first six to eight years of post-Crisis stories I'm not sure this view holds up. A Death in the Family is a badly written story under any honest examination but knowing its context makes a significant difference in how it's read. (I don't only mean the vote for Jason to live or die but everything going back to all the "Robin dies!" stories of the early 1970s. If you don't know the Bronze Age you would not guess how common these were.)
      Loss of context is a much more significant problem for reading older stories than I think people realize...
      1. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
        February 2, 2025
        I'm not too familiar with the robin dies story lines of the 1970s. In terms of context I would think though that there seems to be more of an understanding of where the fan base was which is that Jason Todd was nowhere near as popular as Dick Grayson had been. I have a copy of that trade and I need to take a look at that again. I do think that there was some decent buildup to that storyline with Jason Todd embracing more of the darker more Reckless side of Robin so it wasn't some kind of left field stunt per se.. and it did create an iconic moment that underscored Batman stories for literally decades and added some consequences to being a Soldier in Batman's War.
      2. Madeleine
        February 3, 2025
        At the manifest and meta levels Jason's possible death is a major theme of his stories.
        Yet the reputation he has today as a hellion without the chops to be Robin is not borne out by his stories. He was a good Robin most of the time, even in Starlin's run.
        Editorial's intentions to him were not friendly and the comics fandom is infamous for its intolerance of morally gray characters.
        Whether it was right or wrong or just interesting to kill Jason isn't what I'm questioning. It's how things reached that point that's unsettling. By the end it has all the qualities of an unethical social-psychological experiment. Editorial could have dealt with Jason many ways but they set him up, involved fans in killing him, and replaced him soon after with anodyne Tim Drake...
      3. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
        February 4, 2025
        And yet, it was the fans themselves who read the books who voted to kill him...not saying that one arc was golden or well conceived ( I had no qualms with JT in the trades I read and I was never a huge fan of TD as Robin tbh) but it seemed to not be reviled by fans in retrospect....
      4. Madeleine
        February 4, 2025
        Sorry in advance for a long reply. As a topic problems in continuity and fan perceptions/conceptions have become two of my driving reasons to keep reading the comics... This is really me working out my thoughts, feel free to ignore it...
        The reason I took the example of ADitF because it's a very famous story that's usually read in isolation by fans today, is much debated at this site, and is surrounded by its own lore that has had deleterious effects on multiple characters (Jason most obviously but I'd argue that Bruce and Joker have also been hurt by it). Fans at the time had their own reasons to vote as they did--though as m.rodrigues says, voting per se isn't proof of sound judgment. (This is parodied in a story from the Red Hood/Arsenal run from late New 52 where the internet votes to kill Roy Harper for very bad reasons indeed.)
        Mike Barr's run on Detective Comics was designed to counter Starlin's run on Batman, Barr advocating for and Starlin against Jason Todd. Barr's run, which feels very dated next to Starlin's, was terminated while Starlin's continued. Grant's run repaced Barr's and never makes any mention of Jason that I can remember even though Jason was still alive when it began. Starlin, who openly disliked Jason, had full control over how Jason would be portrayed by that point. The closest Jason comes to making an appearance in Grant's run is ads for ADitF with the number to call to decide Jason's fate. Grant's run is the Copper/Modern Batman-without-Robin run par excellence.
        (I first encountered several of Jason's stories by Moench, Collins, and Barr in Two-Face anthologies. This was before I read ADitF. He was a capable, likable Robin in these smaller tales. I have always been dumbfounded by the belief that Jason was a bad Robin, even after reading ADitF. Reading Starlin's full run is the only way I could understand how that idea came to exist. Nothing but the fandom's selective memory and DC's penchant for retconning Jason's stories could explain to me how it's persisted.)
        A less contentious example I could have used would be the way pre-Crisis runs by Englehart, Wein, and Moench that have a very strong internal sense of continuity are read chopped to pieces in anthologies, losing too much of their meaning in the process.
        The continuity, or maybe better put the real history that gets lost in discussions is something that extends beyond what's in the panels and comes down to editorial influence in many cases. Why is the Batman/Catwoman date issue from Moench's run canon when almost nothing about Jason, more important to the run than Catwoman (as the run was more important to him than to her), has been allowed to survive?
      5. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
        February 5, 2025
        I don't agree with you on all of this but I respect your passion for the history of the character. Todd was long dead by the time I started reading cape books so there are some gaps in how things were in my memory. I remember in my Caped Crusader Vol 1 the story where Todd was so enraged at a violent drug dealing diplomat's son who got away with his crimes that it was strongly implied that he killed him by tossing him off ahigh rise balcony. Batman didn't pursue it further with JT but it set off a chain of events that nearly got him and Commissioner Gordon killed ( Batman 424/425). That said, it was literally the issue before DITF started so it is def possible that it was a quick attempt to make JT look somewhat unstable or unfit before killing him off. It is a curiosity as to why readers voted to kill him or why people seemed to flock to his replacement in an unprecedented way ( Tim got his own book for years).
        I think while ill-concieved DTIF solidified Joker as a threat beyond the others in the Rogues Gallery, that and what he did with Babs. That said I think Joker has been taken to almost ridiculous mythical status these days and he's been overdone, especially in recent years. The less of Joker we get the better IMO.
      6. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
        February 5, 2025
        Very fair point on elections. I see what you did there. Yeah, my reference for JT becoming darker and more violent was 'The Diplomat's Son' but that issue was literally before DITF so perhaps they were rushing to make him look more reckless than other Robins. As I said before it is curious why fans were fine with him being gone ( if there was a collective outrage I would think they would have considered undoing it)and gravitated to Tim Drake ( who seemed more straightlaced with a cooler suit)
        Despite this example I still think they had a better handle on Batman around those years than they do now. Hands down.
Robin MB
February 2, 2025
I'll probably get Two-Face in trade. Just don't have the space for mini series in floppy format anymore. I will say Hush 2 Electric Boogaloo does has me a little curious. Loeb & Lee were brought on to try and fix the bloat of the early 2000s. Now 20 years later here we are again. I will say this. I'm glad it's not starting over with a new number #1. While DC does them sometimes they're not as crazy as Marvel with it.
Shazam #20
Sonic #76
Ultimates #9
1. Papa Grande ( formerly deevo)
  February 2, 2025
  I'm very tired of new number ones. It takes away the feeling of the history of these characters. I enjoyed hush as once in a while kind of thing though I believe originally it was supposed to be a series like long Halloween.

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