Sunday, October 30, 2011

Some Bat-thoughts

If I were writing Batman, I'd bring Chief O'Hara into the New 52 continuity. There ought to be another clean cop in Gotham who isn't Harvey Bullock. Gordon's always had a few loyal/clean cops under him, and I think I'd style O'Hara as the field leader of Gordon's team, a squeaky-clean, tough-as-nails fourth-generation Irish cop who trusts Gordon implicitly and admires Batman explicitly. Bullock is great as the detective who seems like he'd be dirty but isn't, and Montoya hasn't been a factor in Gotham for awhile. It'd be nice to see the GCPD getting some development again, and I think O'Hara should be the first step.

I would pay quite a lot of money to see an Arkham City expansion DLC with the Music Meister.

While playing Arkham City, I found myself wondering if they ever thought to take Nora Fries to the Lazarus Pit. As it turns out, they had, and it sounds terrible. Lazara? Fire powers? Internalizing the Lazarus Pit's abilities? That's...that's terrible. The latter-day Batman: TAS solution, where Nora was cured but Victor had been consumed by his condition, was a much better idea.

In other "this would be a good idea oh wait it's already been done" news, I thought it'd be interesting to see Jonah Hex against Ra's al Ghul in "All-Star Western," until I remembered that the Animated Series did that once already. Still, hey, it's not a bad idea.

One thing I've recently realized is how little Batman I've actually read. Sure, I've done the big famous stories, like DKR and Year One and all the Loeb books, but I've missed out on most of the month-to-month stuff, the Greg Rucka and Chuck Dixon and Alan Grant and so forth. With the Batman mood I'm in, what are some books I should check out? What are the best Batman stories I've never read? I saw the post-No Man's Land "Evolution" trade today and thought it looked intriguing, but didn't want to gamble on it--especially having never read NML.

Speaking of Batman books I haven't read, how is this year's 80-page giant? I've passed on buying it twice now, but really considered it both times.

1 comment:

Anthony Strand said...

For me, the Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run collected in "Strange Apparitions" contains the definitive Batman comics. Other recommendations off the top of my head:

Peter Milligan & Kieron Dwyer's "Dark Knight, Dark City" (which was just collected as one of those 8-dollar "DC Comics Presents" things)

Anything from the Alan Grant/Norm Breyfogle run (including their contribution to DC Retroactive, which was one of the highlights)

Paul Dini's run on Detective, which might be recent enough that it isn't what you're talking about.