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Matt Fraction and Jorge Jiménez's Batman #1 has finally landed in comic shops around the world, and it's a certified hit. Artist Jorge Jiménez has revealed that the issue has already sold out, and DC is rushing the book back for a second printing. It's safe to say that fans are embracing this emergent era for The Dark Knight, as well as the new suit that he is sporting. 

At Rose City Comic Con 2025, writer Matt Fraction detailed the approach that he was taking with the book. If you've read Batman #1 by now, you'd know that it focuses mostly on Batman himself. Fraction said, “To me, the two leads of the book are Batman and Bruce Wayne. Not that I dislike the Bat-Family, but I didn't want to write an ensemble book. I didn't want to write a team book, and all of those characters are worthy of spotlights and attention and big stories that I just didn't feel like I had the room to serve them all in. I wanted to narrow my lens to Batman and Bruce dealing with just kind of the fundamental nature of change, and what does it look like as cycles perpetuate, and what say and control do we have over that?"

Fraction continued, "The irony is, every Bat-Kid is looking for Bat-Approval from Bat-Dad, who doesn't know what parental approval looks like. Because he is an orphan, right? Fundamentally, the thing that all of these kids want, he has never actually experienced, and doesn't know how to do. Like, Alfred's great [but] Alfred wasn't a father. When you’re on the payroll — come on, Alfred. ‘Do you really think this drawing is good, or did you just put it up on the fridge because I’m paying you?’"

I think Fraction is absolutely right in his assessment of most of the Bat-Family. Of course, one of Batman's superpowers is his ability to empathize with other people, which is why he took in kids like Dick Grayson and Jason Todd to begin with. But I think his limits as a father figure come from the fact that he can relate to his orphaned kids as a fellow orphan, not as an adult. And to me, that's a shortcoming that Batman himself isn't all that aware of. Because he dedicated his life as a young adult to studying how criminals act and think, not regular people who grew up in a more stable home environment.

So for someone Batman, even though he's incredibly knowledgeable about human behavior, he doesn't know what he doesn't know. That's part of what makes him human. Thankfully, some of the Bat-Family members, like Nightwing, have close ties to Superman, who is more forthcoming with a sense of father figure approval. 

Batman #1 is on sale wherever comics are sold. 

He is vengeance, he is the night, he is... one of Popverse's favorite subjects. Learn how to do a Dark Knight movie marathon right with our Batman movie guide, and for the true World's Greatest Detectives out there, dive deep into the heart of Gotham City by getting to know Batman with Popverse. Here are some of our latest Batman stories:

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