tmp_beware_the_batman_5_cover_2014-596223868My co-Editor Amanda and I have a routine that we follow when we go to our local comic store, where they know me by name and ask me to remember that the Missionary Position might indeed be “routine,” but less so if it happens next to the spinner rack of new trade paperbacks.

The routine is that, after we get our pulls and make small talk with the owner and the other Wednesday regulars, we step off to the side and show each other the week’s take of subscribed books. This might sound redundant, since one would think that we’re aware of what subscriptions we have and what new titles are coming out. However, our local comic store owner has a, shall we say, broad definition of what our subscriptions actually are. For example, I told him that I was interested in Pete Milligan’s and Mike Allred’s X-Force back in the early 2000s (before it became X-Statix), and to this day, more than a decade later, I still get any comic with the letter “X” and the word “Force” in the title.

So there is always a surprise or two when I go through my pulls, and this week I found myself saying, “Holy shit! Look at this!”

“What?” Amanda said, “It’s Beware The Batman. You told the guy you wanted Batman pulled for you back in 2001. You’re lucky he’s not tossing in shitty copies of 90s Detective Comics in with your pulls.”

“No, this is really surprising!”

“What is? The fact that there’s a comic version of a cartoon that Cartoon Network cancelled months ago? Remember that DC Comics is the company that is still dumping out Batman: Arkham City comics three years after the game came out. And when are you gonna tell him that you’re sick of getting those comics?”

“It’s not the title, it’s the writer. Mike W. Barr wrote this!”

“…I know that name.”

“Damn right you do! He’s the guy who wrote the Son of The Demon graphic novel that introduced Damian Wayne back in the 80s. He wrote Batman And The Outsiders, which was the first new Batman title in years when it debuted. He wrote Batman: Year Two!”

Batman: Year Two? I don’t remember that one.”

“DC Comics doesn’t want you to,” I said. “The point is that this guy was huge back when we were in high school! I haven’t seen his name on a DC comic in years! God help me, this makes we want to read an adaptation of a cancelled children’s cartoon that was snuck into my pulls to dump otherwise unsellable inventory!”

All of this is a long way to go to explain that it is Wednesday, and that there are many new comics, which means that this…

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…means the end of our broadcast day.

But there are plenty of other good comics in there beyond a new Mike W. Barr Batman (or at least Batman-ish) comic. We’ve got the first issue of James Robinson’s Fantastic Four, the latest Miracleman reprint, the second issue of Serenity: Leaves on The Wind, a new issue of The Walking Dead (prediction: Negan will say “fuck” and fail to die), and a bunch of other cool stuff!

But you know how these things work; before we can talk about any of them, we need time to read them. So while we do that (and dig through longboxes for my Batman: Year Two issues so Amanda knows that I’m not hallucinating)…

…see you tomorrow, suckers!