Batman '89 (2021)

[thecolorsblend]

Characters like Robin, Nightwing, Huntress, etc are their own thing. Then we have Jace Fox come in and brazenly starts calling himself Batman. That doesn't sit well with me. Miles Morales soured my enjoyment of modern Spider-Man content for a similar reason. Miles is a seperate character but he's also not. They gave him the name and powers of an iconic and pre-existing character, which is a lazy foundation. Without the same name of the original character would anyone care about Jace or Miles?

Miles entered the scene simply because Obama became president, and now there's no shaking him off. The powers that be have doubled down on his presence to become a permanent fixture, having him and Peter on equal footing. I'm at the point where I don't care about the apparent quality of Spider-Verse movies. I just want Peter on his own in a world against the foes as it had been for decades prior. The counterpart evolves to feel like a replacement, which has been indicated with the proposed third Spider-Man game.

The ubiquity of Miles Morales has started making me wonder what anybody ever had against Ben Reilly back in the Nineties. At least with Ben, there was a good reason why his powers were the exact same as Peter's. Plus, Peter and Ben had one massive difference between the two of them that could've made for some interesting character dynamics.

Anyway, the reason why Jon Kent, Luke Fox, Miles Morales and all the rest exist at all is for copyright purposes. Bruce Wayne, Clark Kent, Peter Parker and so forth all have copyright expiration dates. And they're coming up fast.

Whereas the replacements are new and the publishers can hang onto them for a long time to come.

[Silver Nemesis]

I read the first issue of B89 Echoes. A few quick thoughts.

First thing to mention is that the art work is better than in the previous series. It's darker, the colouring is more subdued, the characters more closely resemble the actors from the movies and there's some good use of shadow. I was also pleased to see fewer Burton Easter eggs in the art work this time around, as I'd started to find them wearisome and excessive in the previous series.

Echoes seemingly retcons a couple of things from the movies. (SPOILERS) It's revealed that Gordon figured out Bruce Wayne was Batman before his death and wrote about it in his journal. Alicia is alive and well and has undergone surgery to restore her beauty. No word yet on whether or not Harleen is related to her and Joker, as in the original Batman Unchained script. (END SPOILERS) Not much has been revealed about these characters so far.

The most interesting storyline concerns Bruce's disappearance. (SPOILERS) The plot twist on the final page was predictable. Two things telegraphed it: firstly, the fact Firefly, a villain, would detonate the explosives before the police entered the house in the woods, and thus avoid harming anyone; secondly, his use of the alias Robert Lowery – Hamm wouldn't have named a villain after an actor who'd played Batman. (END SPOILERS) Even though the twist was predictable, I'm interested to see where they go with this storyline.

My main concern is that Hamm might be introducing too many characters and setting up too many different storylines, which was one of the biggest problems with the previous series. But the separate threads might yet converge in a satisfying way. We'll have to wait and see how it plays out. All in all, I was pleasantly surprised by this issue. It was better than I was expecting after the disappointment of the first series, and it makes for a decent first chapter in this new story. I'm sufficiently intrigued that I'll read issue 2 when it comes out.

[eledoremassis02]

Some new things for Vol 2

[GBglide]

So, it looks like Martin Short will be the model for the Riddler.
I can see him doing comedic parts, but I don't know about the darker stuff.
Robin Williams proved he could do both.

[Kamdan]

I can see him doing comedic parts, but I don't know about the darker stuff.
Robin Williams proved he could do both.

Watch him in Inherent Vice.