It can be hard to keep up with all the comics you love. But it’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the comics you’re interested in.
Retcon Punch got you covered.
This is one we’ve wanted to put together for a long time. If you only read one or two of these series and you want to get the skinny on what else happened – we’ve got the video for you. Here’s the whole Night of the Owls presented chronologically.
Today, Drew and Peter are discussing Batman Annual 1 originally released May 30th, 2012. This issue is part of the Night of the Owls crossover event. Click here for complete NotO coverage.
Drew: Let’s talk about baggage. Comics (especially comics with 70+ year histories) have a lot of fictional history that fans have long demanded that creators adhere to. DC’s relaunch promised to shake that status quo up a bit, freeing up editors, writers, and artists to keep what works and jettison anything that doesn’t. Of course, Batman being Batman, damn near everything about him worked. Writer Scott Snyder has revealed a lot of new information, largely by focusing on things that aren’t Bruce (or his core relationships), but much of what we knew about Batman has remained true. This makes any changes that are made — like those revealed towards the end of Batman Annual 1 — particularly effective; especially when they play so brilliantly against what we expect. Continue reading
It can be hard to keep up with all the comics you love. But it’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the comics you’re interested in.
Retcon Punch got you covered.
We read a lot of good Batman books. We also read a lot of bad Batman books. This series falls firmly in the latter camp. It’s aggressively goofy and has more cameo appearances than a Robert Rodriguez movie. The Night of Owls issue was unremarkable, but not a total disaster. Catching up on the eight issues that came before it is totally unnecessary as there’s almost no over-lap in the characters, and a huge writer shake-up between issues 8 and 9. Still, there’s something charmingly dumb about this series, so it’s hard not to pay attention to it.
Today, Patrick and Peter are discussing All-Star Western 9 originally released May 23rd, 2012. This issue is part of the Night of the Owls crossover event. Click here for complete NotO coverage. Not caught up on All-Star Western? No problem! Get up to speed with our video Cram Session.
Patrick: Because it persistently employs back-up stories, All Star Western frequently feels like an anthology of stories from Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray’s vast 1880s wild west universe. Never mind that most of these stories have taken place in either Gotham City or New Orleans (which can’t even generously be referred to as ‘western’) or that the pair of Jonah Hex and Amadeus Arkham center every issues, All-Western is not bound to a single location or a single character. Issue number 9 (waving the Night of the Owls banner) takes this mission to heart and delivers four loosely (or not-so-loosely) connected tales.
It can be hard to keep up with all the comics you love. But it’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the comics you’re interested in.
Retcon Punch got you covered.
All Star Western may never actually venture west of the Mississippi River, but this is the only place where you can read about the adventures of heroes in DC Universe’s 19th century. Grizzled bounty hunter Jonah Hex teams up with aspiring psychoanalyst Amadeus Arkham, and the mis-matched pair has to fight crime together! More than a buddy cop story set in old timey Gotham, All Star is a reliably fun yarn anchored by two of the most interesting characters of the New 52. Catch up on their pre-Owls adventure here:
Today, Shelby and Drew are discussing Batman: The Dark Knight 9, originally released May 23rd, 2012. This issue is part of the Night of the Owls crossover event. Click here for complete NotO coverage.
Shelby: I’m not a regular reader of Dark Knight; like Catwoman I just picked it up for our Night of the Owls coverage. My esteemed colleague Patrick told me that I didn’t need to bother reading issues 1-8 because a) Issue 9 is so insulated from the rest of the story it’s basically a one-off, and b) Issues 1-8 really are not very good. Since I don’t like people telling me what to do, I read all nine issues anyway, and Patrick was completely and totally right on both points.
Continue reading
It can be hard to keep up with all the comics you love. But it’s damn near impossible to keep up with all the comics you’re interested in.
Retcon Punch got you covered.
Being so immersed in the Night of the Owls event makes it kinda hard to imagine that there are fans of the Gotham-verse not reading Nightwing. The series was quick to find a voice, and while it stumbled a bit with some vamping-for-time issues, Kyle Higgins’ Nightwing boldly directs the mood and action of the cross-over with almost as much authority as Batman. If you haven’t been following Dick’s you-can’t-go-home-again story, catch up with our video recap!
Today, Patrick and Shelby are discussing Catwoman 9 originally released May 16th, 2012. This issue is part of the Night of the Owls crossover event. Click here for complete NotO coverage. Not caught up on Catwoman? No problem! Get up to speed with our video Cram Session.
Patrick: Judd Winick’s Catwoman is a morally dubious character that makes poor decisions all the time. And not just poor life decisions (like dressing up like a cat to steal things, or hate-fucking Batman), but tactically shitty decisions that put her life and the lives of her friends in danger. She will occasionally – arbitrarily – grow a heart, and do something nice for someone, as she does in her Night of the Owls adventure. But there’s nothing under her mask that supports any of this kind of behavior, and no amount of teased backstory is going to change that. Continue reading
Today, Drew and Patrick are discussing Birds of Prey 9 originally released May 16th, 2012. This issue is part of the Night of the Owls crossover event. Click here for complete NotO coverage. Not caught up on Birds of Prey? No problem! Get up to speed with our video Cram Session.
Drew: Serialization is in. There have always been long-form narratives that have relied on dense mythologies to build-up stories over time, but until recently, they have always been balanced by more episodic works; for every Days of Our Lives, there was a Law and Order. Both approaches have their advantages and disadvantages, but with the popularity of DVD collections for television and trade paperback collections for comics (and the availability of individual episodes or issues online) have made, dense, long-form narratives are easier than ever to gain access to. It’s understandable why serialization is so appealing to both creators and audience alike — characters have a chance to develop over longer scales than single chapters, and don’t have to jockey as much for space against the actual plot. Continue reading
Today, Patrick and Peter are discussing Red Hood and the Outlaws 9 originally released May 16th, 2012. This issue is part of the Night of the Owls crossover event. Click here for complete NotO coverage. Not caught up on Red Hood and the Outlaws? No problem! Get up to speed with our video Cram Session.
Patrick: Being that the Retcon Punchers and obsessive-nerd-completionists, we feel the need to know as much as we can about a subject. The Night of the Owls presents an interesting challenge to us – and to many comic readers: what do you read and what do you ignore? I suppose it’s a question we all face every day, and it applies to a far broader band than “what comic books should I read?” We decide which foods we eat, which concerts we attend, which causes we champion, which people we befriend. There’s literally no way to shake the nagging feeling that (no matter what choices we’re making) we’re missing something. This is compounded by the all-too-frequent experience of discovering something that you had previously blown off is really good. That has been my experience with Red Hood and the Outlaws. Continue reading
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