New Year, New Comics — ‘Batman: The War of Jokes & Riddles’ Powered by Fanhome: Legends Of Batman

 

Welcome to the table,

2025 was a brutal year. I’ve had some time to reflect over the last two weeks and start to rebuild in the process of pushing forward into what is now the first full week of 2026. As a creature of habit, I tend to seek comfort and quiet in the places where I know, or at least have some confidence, I can find sanctuary. When it comes to media, the sanctuary tends to be Primal (the animated series), horror movies, the works of Mike Mignola, and the library of tabletop role-playing games, with which I surround myself.

Heading into 2026, though, I have unearthed some old comforts thanks to Fanhome’s Legend of Batman collection. While a lot of my favorite stories are in this massive library of collected Batman stories, I have found myself reaching for stories I never had a chance to read as they were coming out.

This leads me to today’s New Year’s, New Comics — Batman: The War of Jokes & Riddles by Tom King, Mikel Janin, Clay Mann, Seth Mann, June Chung, Danny Miki, Livesay, Gabe Eltaeb and Clayton Cowles.

I liked Batman as a kid. Memorable stories being mostly Elseworlds adventures, Batman: The Animated Series, Batman Beyond, The Dark Knight Returns, and the Knightfall run. My real understanding and love for the character came with the introduction of Batman New 52, though. That title hooked me in a way I was not expecting, and while it was coming out served as one of my most anticipated comics week to week.

I started to drift away again from superhero books after the age of New 52 ended, meaning I missed out on some really cool stories from the next age of modern Batman titles. Batman: The War of Jokes & Riddles being one of those story arcs that fell into my time away from Gotham. Thanks to the Fanhome subscription, though, I have had a chance to visit not only stories I loved, but I have the opportunity to explore stories I missed out on and that has been pretty rad when I need to muffle out the world and focus on the panels as they move from page to page.

 

The story kicks off with an unknown narrator bringing the reader up to speed on The Joker and The Riddler as they twist their way through events in Gotham City, bringing themselves closer and closer to each other until they eventually meet. The Joker is full of melancholy, unable to laugh, and seemingly on a self-destructive rampage. The Riddler, after being used as a think tank for Gotham P.D. (Ed. Note: In Batman: Year Zero, I believe), escapes, having knowledge of family and sensitive spots of the various police who have been using him, all worried The Riddler may harm them, so they do not give chase.

 

 

When the two meet towards the last bit of the first issue of this arc, The Riddler offers The Joker an opportunity to finally “get Batman”, and The Joker shoots The Riddler with little pomp or circumstance, takes his bombs, and leaves him bleeding out. Batman arrives and gives chase to The Joker, assuming The Riddler is past saving, and somehow The Riddler pulls himself together, gets up, and slinks away.

We then find out Batman has been the narrator this whole time, sitting in bed, recounting these happenings to Catwoman about a city-wide war that broke out between two of his most well-known villains and a veritable who’s who rogue’s gallery.

 

 

The second issue goes down an interesting path, feeling less like a Batman story and more like a continuation of a very prologue-like tone further pushed in that direction by Batman’s narrative voice over the various events we are seeing.

Those events are horrific, mind you, with The Joker, unlaughing, murdering people in some cryptic pattern unknown to Batman at this point, while building his forces, and The Riddler, holding council with Poison Ivy, and amassing his own forces in what seems to be some kinda messed-up missed opportunity for DC Comics to do a version of Gotham RISK. I seriously mean that by the way, they could have done bits of plastic with factions from this book, and then repackaged it and done it for No Man’s Land and sold thousands of units for the holidays.

 

 

If you stick with it, though, the third chapter of this ordeal gets really wild. Honestly, it’s some really fun, grim dark, and horrible, but fun storytelling. Batman bullies a guy named Charles Brown, no. .. not the kid with the football, though he is about to come into a lot of grief.

Batman pushes him to make a meeting with The Joker so Batman can ambush him. The Riddler figures out Batman wants this to happen, so he meets with Charles to figure out what the hell Batman wanted. The Joker also meets with Charles to figure out what Batman wanted. Basically, everyone is ahead of Batman on this, and because of it, Charles’ kid gets poisoned by a kite string, and Charles decides to become a kite-themed villain.

Yeah… this is how we get Kite Man.

We are going to take a beat here to enjoy just how absurd this is. I think frankly, this is one of the most brilliant moments, if not the most brilliant moment in this whole run. Because up and to this point, I have not laughed. I have not chuckled, I have not smiled. I do not enjoy this story up to this point, save for the fact that I really like Batman’s villains, and I like seeing The Joker and The Riddler prepping for this whole war that is coming.

Batman, in his underwear, talking to Catwoman, feels weird to me. It does not ring true in the sense that it feels like Batman, at least the Batman I have followed across my lifetime, would do this. However, I know I have missed a ton of Batman over the years, so this is not “my Batman” because no Batman is actually “mine” until I write him or somehow take over DC Comics. Both things that frankly don’t seem to be in the cards for me in this lifetime.

So this introduction of Kite Man in a weird origin story, complete with The Joker flopping down sadly on a couch next to him and then him showing up in a stupid, Stupid, stupid, costume at The Joker’s door to announce he is Kite Man, is so absurd and comic book level nonsense that I cackled uncontrollably with the page turn reveal of this.

 

 

The Kite Man introduction feels like a wild tonal shift in the story. It works so well for this whole thing that looking back, if it had not happened, I would have switched up what I was talking about because I was so melancholy reading it I felt like The Joker not laughing as the news cycle showed all manner of horrors around me while I tried to read through these pages.

The lines get drawn in the fourth chapter. The Riddler and The Joker have their various villains assembled and start pitting them against each other like a fighting game from the makers of Mortal Kombat. With the city wired with bombs by The Joker and The Riddler, threatening citizens left and right with his army of goons, Batman finally snaps and gets to being the swift-kicking, head-smashing, “this is an operating room, and I’m the surgeon” version of Batman because in a bleak city taken over by monsters in the form of men, Batman, also a villain but a rant for another time, is the force of reckoning the city has to return things to some sense of normality.

 

 

I don’t want to spoil the rest of the story for you. It stays melancholy, and Kite Man plays a way bigger role than I was expecting.

Batman proposes to Catwoman at the end, but that is not even the payoff for me, as I’m telling you that here. This big moment, this thing that sells a “billion books,” or alternative covers or what have you, feels so small compared to the emotional turmoil of this story.

 

 

I think The War of Jokes and Riddles is a good story. I think it is crafted well. I think the art is good. I don’t enjoy it. I don’t know if I will read it again. In the same way that some movies are to hard for me to experience again. In the same way, some albums, soundtracks, hell, in the way some places are so uncomfortable for me I will never go back to them … The War of Jokes and Riddles is hard on the mind and even harder on the soul.

Is it worth your time? Hell yes, emphatically if you like Batman, if you like Gotham City, if you like something that is going to make you feel and question yourself, just kinda have an emotional experience that is not full of delight or joy … this book is going to give it to you.

 

 

I’m going to review the rest of these Fanhome Batman books for you, but as a bit of a preview, the Court of Owls run has a rising moment towards the end that feels like one of the most cathartic, empowering bits of media I have ever absorbed.

What King does as he pens this story, this war of Jokes & Riddles, is hard. There is nothing soft about it. There is nothing fun save for the bit with Kite Man’s introduction. There is nothing that feels good when this comes to a close, other than we get some kinda human happiness between Batman and Catwoman, but the cost to get from that first panel to that last one feels like such an emotional slog that I, as I have done countless times over the last year, question if I am cut out to do the things my companions here at Comicon.com do.

Life is so freaking hard all the time, and when confronted by these kinds of heavy heavy stories, this one in particular, at least complete with dead kids and all … I just don’t know if I have the objective prowess to give you the breakdowns like Tony or Scott or Benjamin or Austin can. Those guys wax on about comics like teachers at the board. They make up the panels that tell a hell of a story, and the work they do is good comic journalism. I’m the SFX on the page that bleeds over the gutters and calls out the hits, biff,s and blams as they happen with glee because I don’t read the stuff I don’t like.

I like Batman so so much, and I think The War of Jokes & Riddles was very very well done, but the only closing thoughts I can offer you on it, dear readers, is that it’s worth your time to read if you have the fortitude to read it and something along the lines of…

 

Until next time, I will read something more delightful next, but I need you to understand that this book is not bad. It’s really well done, it’s just not enjoyable for me because it is such a heavy, emotionally charged bit of work, and frankly, I am not built for my fiction to be as hard as the reality we live in most of the time.

Also, this Fanhome DC Comics: The Legend of Batman is amazing, and if you can get yourself a collection and you love Batman, do it. It’s worth it.