COMICS PORTAL: Was 2023 ‘Year of the Bat?’

Numbers for sales during 2023 are coming in, and they seem to justify DC’s focus on Batman!

Several websites that keep track of comics sales during the year have been publishing their “end of year” numbers, and the Dark Knight sure seems to be a big hit!

In fact, in one top 10 list, Batman took home a whopping seven entries! That included the very top spot with Batman #131, and the next five issues are all in that top 10. The other books included Batman: Knight Terrors #1 as well as two issues of Amazing Spider-Man and the debut issue of Void Rivals from Robert Kirkman and Image.

What intrigues me most about this list is that it is based on in-store sales from 144 shops, not overall order numbers. This didn’t include digital sales, bookstore sales, book fair sales, or crowdfunding figures. It primarily looked at distribution through Diamond, Diamond UK, Lunar, Penguin Random House, and Universal into LCS’s.

That’s quite an accomplishment!

I know it’s become pretty popular to rag on DC for putting out so many Bat-titles each month, but with numbers like these, who can really blame them?

If memory serves, I believe Chip Zdarsky left Marvel’s Daredevil monthly book behind last year as well. He also has worked on Howard the Duck from Marvel and Newburn from Image. I have got to catch up on that latter comic!

The current Failsafe storyline hasn’t even begun to conclude yet! In fact, it seems like Zdarsky is going to re-visit the origin of the Joker in the next several issues of the monthly Batman title.

For those who haven’t been buying Batman each month, the Failsafe saga has focused on Bruce Wayne’s attempt to make sure that, if the Dark Knight were to stray from his main path of combatting crime, there would be a mechanical replacement that knows him even better than he knows himself! Needless to say, things haven’t gone according to plan, so Bruce is in big trouble!

One of the things that has made Batman so appealing to me and other fans is that, if you give him enough time and resources before he faces a challenge, he can most often conquer the strongest of foes. (Anyone remember his taking on Superman in The Dark Knight Returns? Yeah, that was a GREAT example!)

Now, it’s terrific if you have superpowers like invulnerability and super-speed to face the baddies or the goodies gone bad, but personally I’d rather have my wits about me and be able to outsmart some villain rather than always depend on my fists. Maybe that’s just me.

Batman has always been very good at strategy, much like Dick Grayson as Robin/Nightwing has been. One of the best Justice League stories was written by Mark Waid when the Dark Knight planned out what to do should his comrades turn to evil. He knew exactly how to take each one down. When that information fell into the hands of Ra’s Al Ghul, well, things went completely downhill for the JLA.

Bruce just has to be prepared, much like the Boy Scouts’ motto. He has to think ahead, to examine each situation prior to encountering it, then be ready to implement the plan that will help him win.

It’s when he doesn’t have a plan already in place that he has to improvise, and that is much less of a good place for the Dark Knight to be in.

The notion that Batman has already planned ahead to take himself down if things should fall apart for him is a good idea. The solution, though, is where I have problems.

All this whole robotic/computeristic version of the Dark Knight harkens too much back to the 1950s stories of Batman when he faced a lot of aliens and sci-fi situations. It feels much more like a Superman story than a Batman one to me. Maybe it’s that kind of “fish-out-of-water” tale that really seems to be appealing to the Bat-fans right now.

That doesn’t work for me, though.

I really prefer detective stories, puzzles that require the Dark Knight using his wits and knowledge to take on a more human adversary than an android programmed to think as he would. Again, this feels like something the JLA itself would need to be involved with.

In fact, the whole point of Batman himself (along with his Bat-family, granted) having to take on Failsafe just doesn’t seem like something the Dark Knight would do. He knows he can call on Superman and other high-powered allies to take down Failsafe. The fact that he doesn’t at least try to go that route bothers me.

Then, too, the whole Zur-En-Arhh business doesn’t work for me (Didn’t we first see him in an episode of Batman: The Brave and the Bold?). He’s a more brutal personality in Bruce’s head along with all these other Batmen (including an “Adam West” one and a “Frank Miller” one as examples). I don’t see Bruce as having multiple personalities depending on how the creative team portrays him. I hope this is all Failsafe mucking with his head.

And it really gets to me that the Joker seems to know all of Batman’s secrets, including his true identity. I realize that it gives the Clown Prince of Crime an advantage over Bruce, but that’s something that Zdarsky is going to level the playing field about in the coming issues, it seems like.

I always prefer Batman to take on villains purely when it comes to being evenly matched along the lines of challenges. Yes, the Riddler sets up a complex puzzle to solve, but Batman can figure out what needs to be done to take that down. If the Riddler could chase Bruce Wayne around before he can turn into Batman, well, that doesn’t seem quite fair to me. It’s something like a jousting match in my mind, with the two contestants having similar tools and abilities to content with. This just doesn’t feel like it is a true Batman opponent to me.

Still, we haven’t quite gotten to the end of the story yet (I hope we do sometime in 2024!), and Mr. Zdarsky just might have an appropriate Bat-move or two up his sleeve for the Dark Knight to employ. At least, I hope that’s what will happen, anyway!

I still worry that Batman will get overexposed to the place where he was years ago when DC nearly cancelled Detective Comics due to poor sales. Let’s not return to that place again, okay?

What do you think? Is Batman the hero for this time? What do you hope will NOT happen with Failsafe? What suggestions do you have for Mr. Zdarsky and the folks at DC so the Dark Knight doesn’t go the way of Wolverine at Marvel? Whatever your opinion, feel free to share it in the space below!

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