NML Crossing, Episode 010 – Batman: Shadow of the Bat #74 (1998)
NML Crossing, Episode Ten
Batman: Shadow of the Bat #74 (May, 1998)
“Cataclysm, Part Nine: The Naked City”
Writer – Alan Grant
Pencils – Mark Buckingham
Inks – Wayne Faucher
Colors – Pam Rambo & Android Images
Letters – Bill Oakley
Edits – Gorfinkel & O’Neil
Cover Price: $1.95
As Gotham City continues to crumble, Batman realizes that times of crisis sometimes call for strange bedfellows to come together. Also: Meet the… err… Quakemaster?!
Plus – Some “fun” Bat-chat outta Wizard Magazine, and your comments!
Hey Chris,
A few thoughts in response to this episode and Monday’s Batman Chronicles episode:
1) I’m a fan of the Wizard stuff you brought into this episode. I like having the context of how it was viewed, presented, and reported at the time (which was one of the things I liked most about your Claremont to Claremont series). That being said, I don’t think you need to or should add a bunch of this stuff, just something like the couple minutes per episode (at most) you added here. I’m not sure if you group the Denny essay from the beginning of this project as the same type of thing, but I found that very interesting and a nice additional focus for the project as a whole.
2) I know all too well the comic collecting as addiction metaphor and the impulse to buy things to have them (not sell them, but have them) instead of to buying fewer comics that I’m more likely to actually read. I go through constant cluttering and decluttering cycles, depending on how far into this “addiction” I’ve slipped (and how much space pr money I have). Reggie’s series of podcasts on comics collecting that he did shortly before he died explored some of these ideas very well, something I related to all to well (not sure if that’s a good thing or not!).
3) I get your take on anthologies, and I do also agree that they’re hit or miss and often less consequential stories, but I like how anthologies give creative teams (maybe newer creators) the chance to try out an interesting idea without having to commit to a full comic, especially if the idea’s interesting but doesn’t have enough legs for a full comic. The experimental nature of this does lead to a lot of misses, agreed, but I like seeing something different. I also get the take that these stories matter less in terms of continuity, but that’s more something that bothers me now than when I was a kid. When I was a kid, I still liked FF/Spider-Man/X-men Unlimited (even if I would not put them in my top titles for those families).
Hey CJ!
Thank you so much for this comment, it facilitated a wonderfully fun discussion (and trip down pod-memory lane) for me, which is included at the end of Wednesday’s Episode 13!
I’m lmao. Everytime I hear “Quakemaster” I think “Shockmaster” too.
The reading order is starting to veer into the territory of the unimportant books not fitting in with the important ones. The last time we saw Batman before the Blackgate one shot he had just surfaced from the underground river and seen destroyed Gotham for the first time. At the start of this issue Batman pulls himself from the river, yet the reading order list had his adventures at Backgate happening in between his surfacing and getting out of the water. Just goes to show that reading order lists don’t always fallow the logical order of the story. I’m sure the lists were just composed from the dates the issues were originally on sale and not with the through line of the story in mind. I blame editorial.