BatChat With Matt & Will: A Batman Ranking Podcast

For the first time in a very long time, this week was supposed to see the publication of a collection of Marvel and DC collaborations, so Will and I decided that this would be a good time to read some of that. But these are big omnibuses, so as is often the case, they have been delayed. But we here at BatChat aren't following suit. We planned this weird episode, and we're doing it. This week, it's...

Gotham is a city of shadows. A city where good and evil blend together. It's a city made for Noir storytelling. And while some Batman stories have some elements of a Noir, most are very much superhero stories. But to tie-in with the 40s themed animated series, Batman: The Caped Crusader, debuting this week, and because Will has wanted to do this episode since somewhere around episode 3, we're read...

Over his thirty plus year career in comics, Archie Goodwin racked up a lot of accomplishments. He wrote horror stories for lots of Warren Publishing's anthologies. At DC, he wrote Detective Comics, Manhunter (more on both of those later), and was the editor behind Batman: Black and White, the early issues of Legends of the Dark Knight and James Robinson's Starman. At Marvel, he co-created The New...

Generally speaking, the episodes we do here are carefully curated. We try to take a theme, a character, and thoroughly dig through the 85 years of Batman stories to find the ones that best fit that theme. But then there are the weeks where Will just picks three random books off his bookshelf and wants to cover them, and Matt just says sure. Batman '66 V.1 (Batman '66 # 1-5) A New Dawn/King Tut's T...

We've all seen the memes and the jokes: Batman's real super power is his wallet. Batman has, historically, been from the moneyed class, and that's how he gets all those wonderful toys. But what happens when Batman doesn't have all that cash? That's what friend of the show, Patreon backer, and financial adviser Abigale Heartbalm wanted to look into in this week's episode. We have a charming Golden...

Batman works outside the law pretty much all the time. And while he often runs afoul of civic authorities in Gotham City, it's surprising how rarely he winds up in the crosshairs of the feds (well, we're just starting Absolute Power in the main line, but again, exception that proves the rule). But it has happened a few times, and since this episode is going to drop to on July 4th, we thought this...

There are some stories that read a very different ways after certain events. Who would have thought that these innocent little stories about Batman involved with plagues would read so differently after a global pandemic. Patreon backer and friend of the show John Wickham joins us to talk about the 90s crossover "Contagion," a fun little 80s one off and an arc from the Rebirth era Birds of Prey, al...

Friend of the show and Patreon backer Josh Weil decided to take up a challenge: come up with three stories that he thought could make the top 50 of the Big Board. And gotta, say, with no spoilers, he did a pretty good job. We see Bruce Wayne mourning the loss of his son, Batman and Catwoman taking a post-engagement trip and Nightwing taking fight. Undone (Batman & Robin V.2 # 18) Rules of Engageme...

We’re in the heart of June, which is Pride Month, so BatChat is joined by the hosts of the Gotham Outsiders podcast to talk about three stories featuring the queer residents of Gotham. Kate Kane’s origin is revealed, Tim Drake comes out, and animated Harley and Ivy go on a road trip. Oh, and towards the end, Will does his Matt impression, something that editor Matt couldn’t bring himself to cut. A...

We're joined this week by our newest Dick Grayson tier backer, Matt McThorn, who wanted to talk about series released under DC's mature readers (mostly) super-hero imprint, Black Label. We have the infamous debit book of the line, where Batman goes full frontal, a story of the Joker driving his therapist insane (not that therapist, another one), and a journey through a dark mirror Gotham. And yes,...

I was going to try to come up with something funny and misleading to make it seem like we were talking about the Marvel character Venom for this intro, but my brain isn't coming up with anything. This week's episode is about Bane, the man who broke the Bat, and does indeed spend a lot of time interrogating his relationship with the drug that powered him at the beginning of his life: Venom. We read...

The Joker has wreaked unspeakable trauma on Batman over the years of their rivalry. But there is one man who he has possibly hurt as much, if not more: Jim Gordon. The Joker and Gordon's relationship goes back as far and Joker and Batman's, and Joker has often focused on Gordon. This week, we look at three of the encounters between Gotham's top cop and the Clown Prince of Crime. We witness a flash...

For those of you out there who back the BatChat Patreon, you have heard Matt & will talk about all manner of Batman media: movies, episodes of animated series and live action TV, narrative podcasts. And this week, we're taking that energy, but swapping it around so we can talk about the comic adaptations of three of the highest ranked stories on the Bonus Episode Little Board: Batman '89, Mask of...

Matt here, and I am going to be writing in the first person for this one. When I started this podcast, I don't know what I was expecting. Will and I had been writing the BatChat column for a while. Dan Grote and I had been recording the ComicsXF Interview Podcast (then WMQ&A) for quite a bit longer. I just wanted to talk Batman some more. I didn't know if it would work, and if it did if it would l...

Having multiple heroic identities is not something unique in the Bat family. Pretty much everyone has had more than one except for, well, Bruce Wayne. But Stephanie Brown has had three very distinct identities that all very much signify different things about the character. And as we have covered some of the worst stories about her, we only thought it fair to cover some better ones. So this week,...

It's time to celebrate! Matt's other show, The ComicsXF Interview Podcast, reached episode 300 this week. And so for that celebration, that show's co-host, the first ever BatChat guest, Matt's best friend of over 30 years, ComicsXF editor-in-chief Dan Grote is joining BatChat again. We are talking stories from three creators who have been interviewed on the podcast formerly known and WMQ&A (find o...

This week, one of the defining writers of DC Comics in the 80s and early 90s will turn 75 years old. John Ostrander has a storied career over more than 40 years. He created an indy hit with his creator owned mercenary, Grimjack, and wrote some of the best received Star Wars comics ever. His work at DC includes The Suicide Squad, the Spectre, Martian Manhunter, Hawkworld, Manhunter and The Kents. B...

It's been a while, but we're back reading the three series/runs that we have been following (mostly) in order. In No Man's Land, both Batman and Jim Gordon make some choices that definitely won't come back to bite them on the butt. In the Morrison run, they investigate ethics in vigilantism and Jason Todd's hair color. And in Injustice, well, things still find a way to get worse. Content warning:...

The law of diminishing returns is often true. It's like that movie with Michael Keaton, Multiplicity (see, already brought it around to Batman!), the more times you tell a story, the more diluted or off it becomes. We have seen this proven wrong a few times: the newest versions of the Monk, the Monster Men, and the first Batman/Joker confrontation are ranked highest. Sadly, the same can not be sai...

Josh Weil is back, and he's bringing his favorite character with him. It's time for Batman to team up again with Ollie Queen, Green Arrow. We're reading the classic Haney/Adams story where Ollie grows his signature facial hair, a team up that also includes the Question, and some questionable content involving Poison Ivy. And just to be clear, the proposed episode title of "Flipper Penis" would hav...

Comic books are, by their very nature, a blended medium. They are a synthesis of words and pictures, and the best ones exist in a space where the two are speaking the same language. Podcasting is an aural medium, told entirely through words and sounds. That is all to say that it's not always easy to blend the more visual nature of comics with podcasting. And this week, well, we're discussing three...

We've read a lot of great comics for this podcast. Tonight? We are not doing that. Tonight we are reading three stories that were on the document of possible episode topics marked as "Three Stories that Matt Remembers Hating." And Matt's taste has apparently has not changed much since he first read these, because this is, far and away, the lowest ranked episode on average of any we have done. See...

"Jason Todd was dead. There is no doubt whatever about that." Sorry, now that I have used that expensive English degree to paraphrase Dickens, we can get on with this intro. This week, we're returning to stories featuring Jason Todd, including one of the biggest Batman stories that we haven't covered yet. See Post-Crisis Jason meet Dick Grayson for the first time, wonder what might have been with...

It's winter here in the US, and it is cold (well, it should be anyway. Damn climate change). And who is colder than Victor Fries, the villain known as Dr. Freeze. Wait, it's Mr. Freeze? Isn't he at least a Ph. D if not an MD? So Dr. Doom can call himself a doctor with his honorary degree from Latveria U, but Freeze is just a mister? Well, that's something. Anyway, Freeze was a pretty generic cold...

Of all of Jack Kirby's creations at DC, the Fourth World is probably the most well known, the most expansive, and the most ill used by other creators over the years. Some really get the wild cosmic and Shakespearean vibe the King of Comics was putting down. Some don't and just try to make the New Gods just any other team of super heroes. And because of the high cosmic of the Fourth World, Batman u...