Between the Panels

Batman . I mean, hands down one of the coolest characters ever created. Some would argue he’s the greatest superhero of all time (they are obviously mistaken, Superman is the OG). But if you’ve been reading some of the more recent Batman comics, you’ll know that ol’ Brucie’s not doing so hot these days. It all kinda started when his bride to be, Selina Kyle (better known to some as Catwoman ) left him at the alter. What had, to that point, been something of an upward trend for the Dark Knight suddenly took a hard pivot into the awful and the poor guy has not been able to catch a break since. Now, sure, some of these things have been factors well outside of his control. Like being trapped thousands of miles away while Bane killed Alfred , his belov'd mentor and adoptive father. Or having Penguin fake his own death and framing him for it triggering a robotic failsafe that Batman had, unbeknownst even to himself, designed to stop himself were he ever to violate his own code and go ...

SPOILER ALERT ! If you haven’t had a chance to watch the most recent season of My Hero Academia, but intend to and you don’t want spoilers, you may want to stop reading now. For years there has been suspicion of a traitor within UA. We now know this was, in fact, the case. And the traitor was none other than Mr. Can’t Stop Twinkling himself, Aoyama . To this point little more than a source of awkward comic relief, Aoyama’s betrayal of his fellow classmates hits like an emotional freight train, particularly in understanding all the nuances of what led to it in the first place, which I will not spoil here. But what hits even harder is the immediate love, grace, and forgiveness the rest of Class 1A show their troubled comrade almost instantaneously. Their willingness to move past the betrayal and still embrace him as their comrade and fellow hero is a display so stunning as to almost come off as unrealistic. Who could ever look past such devastating betrayal so quickly and with such pat...