BatChat With Matt & Will: A Batman Ranking Podcast

Somehow, as we near 200 episodes, we still stumble across holes in our coverage. He's appeared in a lot of stories we've covered, but we have never done an episode purely focused on Penguin stories. So this week, we remedy that. We're reading Penguin's first appearance, the story that changed him from supervillain to mobster and the start of his recent maxi-series. One of the Most Perfect Frame-Up...

Superman was pretty great, huh? We wanted to keep the good times rolling this week with an episode featuring characters other than the big guy who appeared in the movie. I really wanted to do a Batman/Mr. Terrific team up, but outside team settings, there aren't really any, so we instead went with a classic Bob Haney Metamorpho story, a Batman/Guy Gardner story that doesn't end with Gardner uncons...

The birth of the new DC Cinematic Universe... DC Extended Universe... DC... ah whatever the hell they're calling it, kicks off on the big screens this week with the debut of James Gunn's Superman film, so we're obviously tying in because SEO is a powerful thing. We have three more stories of the World's Finest heroes with a delightful Bronze Age oddity and two tales from the President Lex era that...

The revolving doors of any prison or mental health facility in Gotham City are running jokes, and rightly so; they can't keep a D-lister like Ratcatcher locked up, let alone someone like the Joker. But they do keep winding up back in custody, so there has to be story potential there, right? This week's episode looks at three times Joker wound up locked up. A graphic novel from Dixon and Nolan find...

Doug Moench wrote Batman stories for about a decade over the course of his runs on the character. And while his Bat work is probably best associated with his collaboration with Kelley Jones, generally his best known collaborator is penciller Paul Gulacy, with whom he defined Shang-Chi over at Marvel. That isn't to say he didn't work wit Gulacy on Batman though. This week we read three of those tea...

The evolution of representation of queer characters in mainstream superhero comics is something that entire books can, and should, be written about. So I'm not going to wax rhapsodic about all the changes here, but it's June and thus Pride Month, and so we're back with queer Bat characters. First we wrap up Greg Rucka's run on Batwoman, next we see the first HarlIvy wedding (in the Injustice Unive...

We're getting near 200 episodes of this show, and many of those episodes have been experiences where we discover fun, fascinating comics. And then there is this week. Patreon backer and friend (?) of the show John Wickham made his pick for his return, and he decided to pick three stories related to the Joker and Joker related characters that could make it to the bottom of the Big Board. He he succ...

We're back to our three runs we're following in order. In No Man's Land, we meet a new character who will be an important part of the Bat Family moving forward. In the Morrison run, we get some side stories in the run up to The Return of Bruce Wayne. And in Injustice, Renee Montoya hits Superman with the Washington Monument. Mark of Cain (Batman V.1 #567, Detective Comics V.1 #734) Time and Batman...

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight was a title like no other at the time, with its rotating creative teams of big name creators. As the series progressed, some of the creative teams featured less well known creators, but the series always tried to do something different, even if some themes came up over and over. Patreon backer and friend of the show Josh Weil stumbled across a trade featuring thr...

Y'know, sometimes you get an episode request, and you wind up with stories better than you could have expected. Patreon backer and friend of the show Matt McThorn specifically wanted to talk about the Batman annual with the origin of Clownhunter and art by James Stokoe. So we decided, what better theme than more annuals. And not to spoil too much, but we wound up with not one, but two new stories...

Patreon backer Sam Hopper wanted to give us a nice, fun week, and we appreciate that. He requested three stories that inspired episodes of Batman '66. There are surprisingly few episodes of that show that were adaptations, but definitely enough or an episode. But these are really short stories, so we wanted to add a little something. So on top of ranking the comics on the Big Board, we are talking...

We're back with two of our favorite ladies this week: Patreon backer (and Will's wife) Abigale Heartbalm and Stephanie Brown. Abigale wanted to read three stories featuring Stephanie, and we wanted to go with something similar as the first time we did a Stephanie episode where we touch on different eras of the character, but we kinda wanted to avoid all those depressing stories where she's Robin....

People love Batman. People love Apes. So when you combine them, you're bound yo get some fun comics, right? Well, sometimes. Patreon backer Dan Grote asked us to read some Batman and apes stories, and we read a delightful Golden/Silver Age story, a 90s story that had it's fun moments and a story that is proof that the New 52 could suck the joy out of pretty much anything. And we discuss how few Ba...

This whole episode came about when Matt was looking for something else entirely, and he stumbled across an issue of Batman: Gotham Adventures, the animated series tie-in, written by Ed Brubaker. As he didn't remember that at all, he decided he had to read it, and since he has minimal time to read for pleasure, the best solution was to work it into an episode. Thus we have three stories about peopl...

We're back to the bookshelf Will keeps of random Batman trades he has picked up over the years (a shelf that for Matt is something he just calls his house). We start off as ever with a volume of Batman '66, follow that up with Batman meets The Da Vinci Code meets Last Crusade and wrap up with a mini-series that led into Final Crisis that is actually nowhere near as bad as much of those were. Batma...

There are very few characters in comics that I, Matt, truly dislike. One of them is, sadly, a character with significant ties to the Bat family: Deathstroke the Terminator. A villain turned anti-hero who I don't feel like ever should have been, I decided it was time to bit the bullet and cover three stories featuring Deathstroke. We have his first meeting with Batman, a Chuck Dixon story of duelin...

The Bat family has grown considerably over the years. What started out as Batman and Robin now contains what seems to be a dozen or more characters. And recent years have seen many attempts to add characters who would be big hits and draw massive popularity. And while this has created some good characters, none of the characters created in period of the New 52 and early Rebirth eras took off to be...

Mainstream superhero comics have been a boys' club since their invention, and while things have gotten better in recent years, it is telling how few Batman comics have women writers, outside the works of Devin Grayson and Mariko Tamaki. For the last week of March, of Women's History Month, we're reading three stories by other women who have written Bat titles. We have a fun and completely insane t...

Gotham villains seem to spend so much time fighting each other, it's a wonder they have any time to fight Batman. Friend of the show and Patreon backer John Wickham returns for three instances of villain on villain violence, with Blackgate Vs. Arkham during the Forever Evil crossover, Hush Vs. Talia in the run up to Infinite Crisis and The War of Jokes and Riddles, the Tom King story with the brea...

Friend of the show and Patreon backer Josh Weil is a busy guy these days. Josh is running in a special election as the Democratic nominee to be the new Representative for Florida's 6th District. But Josh is such a dedicated fan that he took some time off from his busy schedule to join us and talk about three Batman stories from the Golden Age of Comics: the first appearance of Dr. Death, the first...

I have a soft spot for Wildcat, the Golden Age hero, member of the JSA, and trainer of heroes. And he has a connection to the Bat family, having trained more than one member. So this week we're reading a perfectly whacky issue of Brave and the Bold as only Bob Haney could write it, and two mini-series by Chuck Dixon that feature Bat characters teaming up with Wildcat May the Best Man Die! (The Bra...

I sit and write this introduction on a February morning where it is in the mid 40s and going up to the low 50s today, but it's still winter, and so we were thinking about the snow and cold when coming up with episodes, and when you think of cold and Gotham, who else do you think about but Mr. Freeze? We feature his first appearance this week, when he was Mr. Zero, as well as an animated series tie...

I usually try to put something witty or informative here. But this week, Patreon backer Matt McThorn is back, and he asked us to read Neal Adams's mad dream, Batman: Odyssey. He didn't know what he was getting himself or us into, so we have forgiven him, but this one feels like an all-timer. We also read two Denny O'Neil/Neal Adams stories from the 70s, as well as a classic EC Comics story that we...

Lightning can strike twice. But not often. The original Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight series was a collection of classic creators doing amazing stories. DC has tried to recapture that magic multiple times, and that lightning has never quite hit again. Legends of the DC Universe was another attempt to get that magic, but this time for the entire DC Universe. Three of the arcs of that series fe...

Will wanted to talk about Paul Dini and Alex Ross's graphic album, Batman: War On Crime, so the logical episode theme was more Paul Dini stories, so this is not Matt 100% forcing more Dini on Will. And while Matt didn't do it intentionally, well, he did wind up picking a story with Zatanna, because there are so many of them. But he also picked a story with some fun characters that sadly have been...