Batman General Discussion

Being Bruce's jackass rival and weird friend, apparently.

All while being a knock-off Batman who wants everything Batman has.

Hell we have confirmation from new character Angel-Breaker (an agent of Talia) that Ghosty wanted to make her his Catwoman before.

The Batman franchise already had loads of characters. Guess many writers want to make their own characters for it.

Clown-Hunter, Ghost-Maker, Angel-Breaker...

Lotta jokes have been made on how every noun character name is a combination of a noun and a phrase.

Nail on the head. The Batfam is overloaded with too many characters but instead of using the already existing characters, writers instead contribute to the bloat with even more new characters cause they wanna leave their mark.

Ghost-Maker origins aside, his execution is simply just an uber-Batman clone with a frat-bro douchebag personality. So his character is basically just bragging about how he has a 300 IQ and comes up with all his battle plans while having orgies cause he's "so cool".

Edited by slimcoder on May 29th 2022 at 5:24:01 AM

Ghost maker was supposed to be Bruce's vegeta aka a shounen rival who loves to upstage bruce. But we never actually see how Bruce is better

I'm assuming that the writers wanted to let the 75 years of media speak for itself on that matter. Personally I find potential in Ghost-Maker as a concept, someone who covets Batman's life and is someone inclined to Heroism/Vigilantism for selfish reasons.

BTW I checked out the third issue of Beyond the White Knight Terry is still working for Powers, who had manipulated him into think Bruce killed his parents. We get some Bruce/Harley drama that I think is a lateral move form the DCAU's Bruce/Barbara implications, and Bruce is seemingly haunted by the ghost of Napier. Also he seems to be trying to avoid the Batman identity to the point of paining over the bat sigil on its prototype prototype suit

Kinda wonder if Tim's fate would be altered in this continuity.

It should be noted that Marvel has a character who uses the name Ghost Maker as well.

https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki/Grigori_Sovchenko_(Earth-616)

Yeah the problem with Ghost is that they refuse to lean into that and instead play him straight as a legitimate badass.

Like how the start of Tynion's Ghost back-up had stuff like Ghost coming out of a threesome where he brags that sex is his meditation, tells his AI he programmed him with fear because he is unable to feel fear, and just generally being an invincible hero.

As said he is played as an Uber Batman with a frat-bro personality without a hunt of irony or humor. We're supposed to take thos jack,off seriously.

Ghost-Maker is explicitly not meant to be a better character than Batman. Tynion makes that abundantly clear.

If you're not seeing that, I think maybe you're missing the point.

The trailer for Chip Zdarsky's first Batman arc "Failsafe" got a trailer:

Uhhhh, did anyone else see three Jokers or was it just me? Maybe just a hallucination?

And the official announcement for the new Batman Inc series

Still, has he fallen on his face for his attitude or gotten a beatdown Bruce has had to save his ass from? With how Bruce seems to be constantly taking a beating lately, it becomes an important thing.

Not really no. Barring his first appearance where Batman calls him out for screwing up his investigations and beating him combat, it was still incredibly lenient on Ghost with Bruce offering him the hand of peace, calling him his friend and that he misses him, and wants to work alongside him despite Ghost being a murderous scoundrel.

Otherwise he's been played completely straight as this uber badass with the Ghost backup by Tynion portrays him as God, and then afterwards Batman trusting him with the care of Clown-Hunter because he's apparently trustworthy and capable of raising a traumatized teenager who has brutally murdered people before. He has never needed any saving from Bruce, instead always being there to bail Bruce out whenever he's in trouble.

Even when he introduces his own Batcave the Haunt where basically everything in it is designed to one-up Bruce in someway (guy as a Spinosaurus statue to beat his T-Rex one) in an attempt to make Harley his Catwoman, the narrative never really makes fun of him for his obsessive one-sided dick-measuring contest with Bruce.

Edited by slimcoder on May 30th 2022 at 8:25:16 AM

He is designed to be the Gary Oak to Batman’s Ash Ketchum.

Ghost Maker is alright in my opinion, mostly because I feel he sort of crosses the line twice with how much of a douchebro he is.

the problem is no one in universe treats him like that. they all act like omg its ghost maker he is so cool and awesome never thought I would see him in action?

Well that would be overkill.

The narrative makes it clear that the things he sees as his strengths (lack of fear, lack of attachments) are actually his flaws. Lack of fear means no empathy, and lack of attachments means no friends, both of which Batman has in spades.

Him having lots of sex is...a mixed bag. On the one hand, he's queer which is nice to see, but on the other hand his affection for his lovers lasts for about a few hours. That's tricky because there's nothing wrong with being aromantic, but the general audience would probably say the fact that Bruce can fall in love is a point in his favor.

Ghost-Maker is also Good Representation 101 because none of his strengths or flaws are tied to his ethnicity and sexuality. He's South Asian and Bi but he's not written as "Bruce Wayne, but queer and Asian."

...You could maybe argue his being bisexual is tied to his hedonism (again a point for Batman because most of the time Batman is depicted as a disciplined Straight Edge type), but the narrative makes it clear his hedonism comes from psychopathy.

On the surface, Ghost-Maker might seem cool, but once you go deeper than that, you realize that's all he has. Which is the whole point-psychopaths are often superficially charming.

Granted having threesomes with people of both gender is a bit of stereotype for bisexuals but granted Tynion himself is bisexual so thats a half and half type of deal.

It wouldn't be so bad if Batman wasn't so lenient with the guy. Like being a murderer aside, he's not even reliable, he constantly bails and fails to pick up most of Oracle's calls so he can't be bothered to be trusted most of the time.

The fact he was made CEO of Batman Inc over literally anyone else is entirely unearned and nonsensical as there is nothing about Ghost-Maker that indicates he is a capable leader.

Which again ties into the overall narrative surrounding him not being as harsh as it should be. Batman is far more harsh on Jason than he is on Ghost simply because they are "old friends" despite Ghost being nothing but abusive and mocking to Bruce.

Edited by slimcoder on May 30th 2022 at 10:28:29 AM

Really wish they would not write Bruce as a terrible parent.

Oh man, Ghost Maker is Singaporean?

TIL I guess.

Yeah, going by his name, he's probably South Asian, possibly of Indian descent. It's a hard call to make otherwise because "Singaporean" as an ethnicity is kind of vague.

What would be a good plan if Batman ended up in a different universe and needed to establish if there is a good or evil superman?

Well Shadow War is over

Geo-Force gets arrested, Talia turns herself in, Slade gets resurrected in a Lazarus pit that turns black and hypes up his role for Dark Crisis, and Batman and Damian make-up for until the upcoming Batman vs Robin series.

Anyone else feel Geo-Force wasn't in the wrong at all? This is probablly one of the more irritating use of "heroes don't kill" because Brion has very justified grievances against Talia and Slade but Damian and Batman have to defend Talia because the former is her son and to the latter she gets his dick wet on occasion.

Like Talia getting the final hit on Brion and yelling for her father was really fucked up and undeserved.

I just can't get over what a dumb name "Ghost-Maker" is. It's just a synonym for "killer", but more clunky. It'd be like if you had a knife and you called it "Stab Wound-Maker".

I don't imagine Poochie characters like this will stick around long.

I remembered the last Batman annual, the 2021 one was also a Ghost-Maker one. It was the finale to the Ghost-Maker back-up by Tynion in December which actually sold really really well. So that prolly helped motivate them into giving him his own ongoing.

Of course an ongoing is a different beast than a one-shot annual. Jace Fox's ongoing I Am Batman sells like shit once it got past the obligatory high sales by speculators in the first couple issues, and retool to New York City did not bump it up an inch.

So the Batman name does have its limits. We'll see whats Ghost-Maker's is.

Edited by slimcoder on Jun 1st 2022 at 10:12:43 AM