Thread by @NerdGerhl

New volume, new thread.

Previous thread:

https://twitter.com/nerdgerhl/status/1053357785277177856?s=21

Now‘s the part where everyone starts making bad decisions and everything gets much worse.

Az-bats could have been avoided if Bruce had, in a moment of full lucidity and with the support of his family, drafted an advance directive that laid out who he wanted to be Batman after him, instead of making that decision while he was severely depressed and in physical trauma.

The first four pages of this issue are incredible. Graham Nolan nails every single one. But that fourth page 💋👌😭

The personality in the “extras” says it all, no narration or dialogue needed. Confusion. Terror. Grief. And from the “criminal” coded guy: Smirking triumph, a foreshadowing of what’s to come for Gotham.

Of course, sometimes a good one-liner does help make a killer panel.

(Fun fact: Renee had only been around in comics for a year before this, she was created for the cartoon series but introduced in comics before the show aired.)

It’s wild to me that DC was snapping Batman’ back and killing Superman in the same year, and I think it’s unfair that the Death of Superman arcs has a greater presence in The Discourse than Knightfall and its goings on.

They’re both stories with SUPER janky parts to them, but I think Knightfall reaches the same highs as Death of Superman. The stories have a weird inverse pattern of janky to epic-ness.

Bane is objectively a better villain than Doomsdsay, and the build up to the confrontation is super effective in Nightfall/super blah in Death of Supe — but the Doomsday/Superman fight is STILL iconic while the Bane/Batman fight is just a big yawn.

Reign of the Supermen is better than Knightquest on basically every front — a much larger imprint on the mythos. But Superman’s actual resurrection arc is just a bunch of punchy nonsense, where Batman’s is

Ok it’s a bunch of punchy nonsense but with NINJAS and DAD FEELINGS, so

Speaking of dad feelings we’re reaching the part of the comic where I just want to fire myself into the sun for how many emotions this stupid comic from 1993 gives me

GOd, just FUCK ME RIGHT UP

I’m torn on the Joker/Scarecrow teamup subplot in these books. Scarecrow threatening to fear gas the Joker every time they argue and the Joker going “Bitch, I wish you would.”

And I like that! But it doesn’t really reach it’s potential.

The Scarecrow, but it’s just vape gas

Which Robin is the memelord who screams WE GET IT, YOU VAPE at the Scarecrow for the first time?

I was gonna make this a poll and then I realized the answer is Steph

The real thematic importance of Knightfall/quest/end, if you’re trying to retroactively headcanon contiguous character development into Batman continuity, is the tragedy of Tim Drake realizing that Bruce is a problematic fave.

Tim my sweet summer child Bruce is about to tap an unrecovered cultist to be Batman and leave him with only you, a child, to witness and attempt to control his descent into destructive delusion

God dammit all to hell

Bruce Wayne trained for years to be good at everything except similes

We can laugh at this cover now, but 1. Brian Stelfreeze is a master painter and 2. This is what literally every ad for a video game looked like in 1993, so there’s no blaming him

Intellectually I now know that there was a period where Bruce didn’t know that Oracle was Barbara but emotionally I still cannot fathom it

IT BEGINS

Selina PLEASE

Not that it’s explicitly stated or anything, but as far as I’m concerned this is the moment Gordon first realized that Batman wasn’t Batman

Your man could NEVER

The best part of John-Paul’s costume is the double row-ed pouch garter belt.

I’ve never seen someone cosplaying Az-Bats and honestly that’s a shame.

Before I move on to Knightquest, here’s the 25-years-too-late hot take of my day off: The Az-Bats costume is good, actually.

Yes, it is everything that’s wrong with comics costume design in the early ‘90s. It’s bulky, impractical, grim, expressionless and stiff. But in practice, on the page................ that becomes the point.

Unlike a lot of its contemporaries, it didn’t represent a new wave of superheroes and costume designs, it was the opposite. It was explicitly created to represent a perversion of Batman — a betrayal of his greatest principles.

And if you’re used to the classic blue and grey that Batman was wearing at the time — I mean, shit, to go from Jim Fucking Aparo as a main Batman artist during Knightfall to this Queseda design — that’s a CRAZY transition and it happens over the course of like two issues.

The costume was supposed to make you feel uneasy, and it works.

Also I still super want to see cosplay of it come ON

Lol at almost every note on Queseda’s second draft of the Az-bats costume being “See! I made it simpler like you asked!”