BatChat With Matt & Will: A Batman Ranking Podcast

It's Valentine's Day week, and I may or may not have forgotten about that when I was scheduling episodes this year. Fortunately, ComicsXF writer and friend of the show Tony Thornley picked some stories that work pretty well for Valentine's Day. You see, these are all about love: brotherly love, romantic love, and the love between best friends. We're reading three stories of Dick Grayson and the pe...

There are those creators you just come back to, whose work never ceases to amaze. Darwyn Cooke is one of those creators. Passing on too young, Cooke still left an impressive body of work, a lot of which was Batman or Batman adjacent. We're returning to his work this week with two intertwined tales of Catwoman and a one shot that follows up on New Frontier that proves even the best creator does mis...

At 120 episodes, we've covered a lot of Batman comics. A lot. But I think few have been more contentious, both in the fandom and on this podcast, as the ones this week. Because this week we're talking about the Tom King run, the creator with possibly the biggest gaps in his work on The Big Board, and specifically the stories around the not-wedding of Batman and Catwoman. We see the proposal, with...

Ah, my sweet summer children, let me tell you of a time called the early 90s. It was a time of hope. It was a time of questionable fashion. And it was a time when there were only three monthly Batman family titles, and one of them very rarely interacted with the others. This week, we're going back to those times long ago and reading three small inter-Bat title crossovers. We see Harold join the ca...

Will is so very tried. Three weeks in a row of big superhero stories. Not a single mobster or Year One era, bare bones Batman story to be found. Because this week, Dick Grayson tier Patreon backer Josh Weil is back, and we're talking Batman getting super powers! We get a Freaky Friday with the Justice League, a messy alien invasion and a Geoff Johns joint that doesn't know what it wants to be. JLA...

Last week, we talked about the Justice League International. This week, Dick Grayson Tier Patreon backer John Wickham joins us to talk about the other late 80s DC team that spun out of the Legends event, the Suicide Squad. And while the Justice League was mostly comedy, the Squad is not. We read three very different versions of the Squad in a story where Amanda Waller shows her metal, the New 52 o...

The Justice League International era of the mid-to-late 80s was a sea change for the Justice League franchise. While there were still superheroics, the book became grounded in character based humor; the series was basically a workplace sitcom. And early in the run, Batman was a regular member, basically the grouchy boss who couldn't put up with all these shenanigans. And if you've listened to this...

It's the New Year, and so here at BatChat we like to look at different versions of Batman at this time, so we're going back into Elseworlds territory. But this year, it's a very specific type of Elseworld: the historical Elseworld, ones transplanting DC heroes and concepts into bygone days. And specifically we're looking at three stories from the early 20th century: Batman as a Robin Hood-esque th...

Merry Bats-Mas to one and all! We're getting near Christmas, and so it's time to go back to the holiday stories in Gotham well (and if you think we might run out any time soon, have no fears, we've got stories for years). This year, we're reading the first Batman Christmas story, which features some weird not-really tie ins to A Christmas Carol, an animated universe Batman story by Paul Dini, so y...

I was going to start this with the Court of Owls nursery rhyme, but I believe I did that when we actually covered the original Snyder Court of Owls story, so instead you're just going to get my usual ramble. This week, Patreon backer Matt McThorn has a request, and it's stories of the Court of Owls and the sensational character find of 2012, Calvin Rose, the Talon turned hero. Who's that, you may...

Originally introduced in the 1950s, Batwoman has gone from a forgotten character to one who is a queer icon and headlined her own TV series. Kate and Kathy Kane are very distinct characters, and this week, we'll be reading stories featuring them both, thanks to a request from Sam Hopper. We see Kathy meet Bat-Mite, Kate's first solo outing and James Tynion IV's run on Detective Comics begin in a s...

The beauty of a Patreon request is you never know what you're going to get. And bless Dan Grote, co-host of WMQ&A and BatChat's first patron and guest, for coming at us with a request nobody expected. This week, we're reading three stories featuring Joe Potato, a Gotham PI who we read one story with a while back, and now we're covering all three of his other appearances. We have a story that does...

Happy Thanksgiving, everyone! As is our custom here at BatChat (and this is the third time we've done it, so that qualifies as a custom now), the Thanksgiving episode features three all ages Batman stories, and as I have pointed out in the past, for a character who is so often associated with grim stories, there are a lot of all ages Batman stories. This year, we're digging into the first volume o...

We're comics fans, so we all love a crossover, right? So why shouldn't that expand to our podcasts? It's ComicsXF podcast crossover week, so Matt is joined by Battle of the Atom host Adam Reck to talk about three Batman stories from creators whose work are favorites on BotA. John Francis Moore moves out of 2099 to Gotham in the 90s, Chris Bachalo draws a atman story released the same month as the...

While a lot of Batman's best known rogues date back to his earliest days, the 80s spawned a handful of memorable nemeses, and none moreso than Scarface, the evil dummy, and his henchman, the Ventriloquist. This week, we're reading three stories featuring Scarface, including his first appearance, his origin and the first appearance of his second handler, Sugar. Fever (Detective Comics V.1 # 583-584...

Spooky season is over, and so now it's time for some wholesome fun! We covered three of the six mini-series where Batman '66 teams up with other properties a ways back, and now we're returning to cover the other three. We have Kevin Smith writing about the team-up of Batman and the Green Hornet is possibly the most all agers thing he has ever written, references done right and art not so much when...

It's spooky time, and so this week we're covering three stories where Batman teams up with his most diabolical frenemy, the Demon Etrigan. There's lots of rhyming, most of it not very good. Be grateful I didn't try to do it for this introduction. These three stories include some charming Bob Haney nonsense, Joker deciding that sorcery and alchemy are the best hobbies and Etrigan in the world of to...

Over his 85+ years, Batman has been a member of lots of different teams. This week, fellow ComicsXF writer Austin Gorton stops by to talk about three different teams Batman has been a member of. We fill in another gap in Will's knowledge of the roots of the Morrison run, Snapper Carr is kind of the worst and once again Mike W. Barr shows his version of Batman has a bit more of a flexible version o...

Everyone knows that Batman is also billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne. But what most people outside of Batman comics fans don't know is that Batman has another alter ego: two-bit mobster Matches Malone, an identity Batman uses to infiltrate the mob. This week, we're reading three stories where Batman uses the Matches identity: an arc that brings a character in from the Animated Series universe to the...

Big Two superhero comics are an iterative process. What was conceived in the 1930s and 40s has evolved and changed over the intervening three quarters of a century. Usually? That's for the better. Characters get deeper and develop more of an internal life. Plots become more mature. Art becomes more realistic, or more stylized. And then there are the origins of the three Robins during DC's New 52....

Batman is a creature of shadow who usually eschews the light. But even the Dark Knight can be touched by that darkest of human endeavors that lives in the brightest of spotlights: politics. Dick Grayson Tier Patreon backer John Wickham joins us to talk about a very of its moment story of Catwoman getting involved with Gotham's mayoral race, Bruce Wayne going to Washington to try to stop the No Man...

James Robinson might be best known for writing the 90s classic, Starman, but he's written a bunch of Batman too. And this week, Josh Weil stops by to talk about three of Robinson's stories. We have a Pulp Heroes annual, and two tales of Two-Face. There are some unfortunate sexy corpses, questionable editing and the question of when a story really deserves a sequel. Pardon the sound on the back hal...

I kind of can't believe we made it this far, but here it is: episode 100! And for that, we're hitting one of the last legendary Batman stories we haven't touched, and one we've slowly been building towards for many of these 100 episodes, the culmination of the first act of Grant Morrison's epic run: Batman R.I.P. We're also including a couple Golden and Silver Age stories that inspired the story....

We've done episodes before that look at three versions of one story. But of there's one story that has seemingly been retold more than any other, it's the first Batman story, "The Case of the Chemical Syndicate." This week, we're reading four versions of that story over three issues, plus some other stories in an anthology. It's a wild ride, featuring hippies, supervillains and some really lazy ed...

Joker is Batman's most dedicated foe. Ra's al Ghul is the deadliest. The Penny Plunderer is the most ridiculous (that's up for debate, but he's my pick). But no criminal is more integral to the Batman mythos than Joe Chill, the man who killed the Waynes (except in Batman '89, but the point still stands). This week, we're closing out the unofficial early years trilogy with Batman: Year Two, as well...