Azrael • Batgirl • Batman • Batman and Robin • Batman Beyond • Batman Confidential • Batman Incorporated • Batman: Dark Knight • Batman: Streets of Gotham • Birds of Prey • Justice League of America • Outsiders • Red Robin • Superman/Batman Josh: Yeah, the lift here is quite apparent, but I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing. This is definitely where you see a tonal shift within the story. At this point, I think the element that makes the sequences actually work are the interviews with Gotham citizens. Josh: I agree with you all here. I got a sense of “the ends justify the means” but I also got a sense of “there’s nothing I can do.” I think there could have been a better outcome, and I’d almost be willing to bet that the team probably considered having Batman save the woman…but then you’d have to figure out what to do with her afterwards since they go directly into the sewer.

Batman: The Cult Review - IGN

In the mid-1970s, Starlin contributed a cache of stories to the independently published science-fiction anthology Star Reach. Here he developed his ideas of God, death, and infinity, free of the restrictions of mainstream comics publishers' self-censorship arm, the Comics Code Authority. Starlin also drew "The Secret of Skull River", inked by frequent collaborator Al Milgrom, for Savage Tales #5 (July 1974). To be fair, there are some interesting aspects of The Cult. It is easy to see how it could have inspired Christopher Nolan. In some respects, The Dark Knight Rises owes as much to The Cult as it does to No Man’s Land, with Bane using an almost religious fervour to raise an army of the dispossessed to claim Gotham as their own. Even the iconography is similar – the bodies strung up on the street lamps here evoke the bodies dangling from the bridge in The Dark Knight Rises. ( The Cult also provides the inspiration for that lovely “Batman visits Gordon in hospital, vows to return” scene.)

Gotham City has many legends, and you can bet that many of those aren’t something good, and this one isn’t the exception… When this series came out in 1988 I was newly married, finishing college and working two jobs. I had made a half-hearted decision to stop buying comics. When I read this Jim Starlin series, I hated it. It was the catalyst for me to stop buying comics. Josh: Uh, yeah… “Losing focus,” is probably the best way of putting it. I was going to say the ending is rushed, and I feel like it is rushed, but just saying that didn’t feel like a complete assessment of the problem. Good call on that. You know that you’re about to get a thrill, when Jim Starlin is writing and even more if it’s something for DC, and even more and more if it’s about Batman.

Batman: The Cult is The Darkest Batman Story EVER - Screen Rant

Casper: I like it for the most part, but my favorite bits aren’t the bits with the homeless. I like the scenes where Batman’s basically tripped out of his gourd, and I like the bit where he’s in Central Park a lot. But the homeless stuff…you know, at the start of the story it’s all right, it works well enough. But then we get to a point where the National Guard comes in, and they are unable to stop homeless people who behave like a bunch of wild, out-of-control animals rather than actual people. I really can’t take that seriously. Why can’t the army stop the homeless? It just becomes unintentionally hilarious! What is this? An episode of South Park? Look at any natural disaster that occurs within the U.S. Whether it is wildfires, hurricanes, etc, when people are told to evacuate, many of them don’t. When asked why they didn’t leave, they often cite these two reasons, and ultimately end up needing to be rescued. Batman: The Cult is a four-issue comic book miniseries. It was published by DC Comics in their Prestige Format and released in 1988. It was written by Jim Starlin, illustrated by Bernie Wrightson, colored by Bill Wray and edited by Denny O'Neil. Love Interests • Origins • Other Media • Publication History • Recommended Reading • Storylines • Video Games • Batman Family My problems with this book are many: Batman gets captured by the brainwashed homeless. Ok, so apparently homeless people become highly effective fighters once brainwashed. Batman gets caught in the most banal way, a situation he's been in countless times, but somehow falls victim to this time. Then he undergoes brainwashing which includes torture, starvation and hallucinatory drugs - he couldn't escape in the days he was chained up? It was literally a pair of handcuffs around a metal pipe, surely he could've escaped? It’s yet another situation Batman's been in before countless times which he could've easily gotten out of. But then there wouldn't be a book if he escaped- it's so contrived and out of character.Michael : I can’t say Batman: The Cult is a bad book, but I don’t think it’s the type of story for me. I was totally on board in the first half. I love a compromised Batman and the idea of him being entwined in a cult that does his job “better” than him is ripe for drama. I just have to admit that the level of carnage was not just unsettling to me, but worse so, unengaging. He has a tank, he has a gun that shoots tranquilizer darts, he leaves people behind for dead, and by the end it felt less and less like a Batman book I want to read. Wrightson and Wray’s artistic efforts are stunning to behold, though, and I can see myself revisiting the story for purely aesthetic reasons. The reason the homeless - or “Underworlders” as they're referred to - are able to take over the city is mostly due to incompetence from everyone in the book, Batman included. They use the sewers as their base of operations and everyone knows this but nobody goes down there to take them out, they just allow them to skulk around and pop up. Nobody has the wherewithal to throw down tear gas and then go in guns blazing - riot police could have this situation sorted no problem. Much like Batman: Ego, this story starts by throwing us right into the middle of a conflict. Missing person reports are spilling into the GCPD, and with them is the confirmation that Batman is missing as well. In fact, he’s been missing for about a week.

Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham - Common Sense Media Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham - Common Sense Media

Interestingly, The Cult also features Jason Todd as Robin and is most likely the only Todd trade outside of A Death in the Family. For once he's not annoying. This is certainly his strongest performance, one last hoorah before death.Since then, always trying to hurt Gotham City, and each time, bigger and bigger his ambitions and the scope of his plans…

Batman – The Cult (Review/Retrospective) | the m0vie blog Batman – The Cult (Review/Retrospective) | the m0vie blog

I had heard about Batman: The Cult but I hadn’t a clear idea of what was about, but I knew that if I have the chance to get it, I haven’t to hesitate about it.

Did we miss something on diversity?

When Marvel Comics wished to use the name of Captain Marvel for a new, different character,[citation needed] Starlin was given the rare opportunity to produce a one-shot story in which to kill off a main character. The Death of Captain Marvel became the first graphic novel published by the company itself. ( Michael: I do feel that after a while, the book loses focus and becomes ridiculously large scale in a manner I had no idea was coming. It’s also an incredibly mean book and maybe the current state of the world that created this book club in the first place made me a little less endeared to its plot. Matina: Yeah, unfortunately I found myself skimming many of the “talking heads” scenes, after a while they’re simply not engaging anymore. The Others: Not sure about this one. It seemed to hold together as a story while I was reading it, but on analysis the holes are… maddening. Maybe they were supposed to be. The next issue features a note indicating that Todd Klein was incorrectly credited as the letterer of this issue. The actual letterer was John Costanza.