Much later, I thought about this issue again, and in the end, Bruce Wayne seemingly acts like a complete ass to Matt Murdock. It could be that Batman doesn't approve of Daredevil, or doesn't think DD can cut it in Gotham, or could it be Batman doesn't believe Daredevil's blind? After all, DC's heroes don't have flaws like that; and Bruce could simply be offended that Matt would go that far to cover his secret identity. I know there's a Batman/Daredevil as well, so I might have to check it out and see if that was followed up.
Hopefully, the last one from Daredevil/Batman, "Eye for an Eye" Written by D.G. Chichester, pencils by Scott McDaniel, inks by Derek Fisher.
Chuck Dixon recently left DC Comics, but here's one from when he had a lot of books from both DC and Marvel: Punisher/Batman, with art by John Romita Jr. and Klaus Janson.
On the art front, Romita had done some great Punisher work already, but this was his first published work with DC characters. I think Janson's inks help a bit, but Romita's Joker doesn't quite work for me. Storywise, this follows up on Batman/Punisher, where Frank runs into Jean-Paul Valley, Azreal, the replacement Batman, whatever you want to call him. Unaware of the switch back, Frank gets a bit of a surprise against the real Batman, who doesn't fall for any of his crap.
There's some made-up hacker lingo in a brief, dodgy computer war between Microchip and Robin; Jigsaw and Joker team-up with predictable results (Jigsaw gets his face fixed for at least the second time, just to get it re-jiggered again), and Batman gives a variation of his usual stay out of Gotham speech. But there's also the Joker's theory on the similiarities between Batman and the Punisher: Bats lost someone he cared about as a kid, while it happened to Frank as an adult. It's pretty close to the truth, but I thought it undermines Batman as a character, making him seem broken and childish. Hmm.
Didn't get to the Incredible Hulk yet, but soon. So no spoilers!
Being the JRJR slut that I am, I felt the need to defend my man-love. But I find I can't. There's little wrong with Joker's face, but nowhere else have I seen a Joker who's been on so much Weight Gain Juice (probably tm somewhere)! He's much too fat...
ReplyDelete