Created by Matt Zoller Seitz
Directed by Judith Carter
“If you only read the books that everyone else is reading, you can only think what everyone else is thinking.”
Haruki Murakami
BATMAN: WAR GAMES BOOK TWO collects for the first time the complete epic conclusion of the “War Games” saga that changed the criminal underworld of Gotham City forever!
Stephanie Brown, also known as the vigilante Spoiler, has made her former partner Batman’s training scenario a chilling reality. The various crime families are leaderless…the soldiers running for their lives while trying to grab a piece of the underworld pie for themselves. Batman is stunned to learn that the wave of terror and death threatening his beloved Gotham City originated closer to home than he ever imagined, and that someone he once trusted is responsible for the carnage. Now the streets are safe for no one.
One master criminal emerges from the shadows, taking full advantage of the chaos, and he begins to consolidate the underworld in his grip. The Dark Knight and his allies have failed to contain the violence threatening Gotham City’s citizenry. The media have exploited the situation so people think Batman is acting against their best interests. Worse, he has lost the trust and support of Police Commissioner Akins, just when he needs it the most.
Collects BATGIRL #56-57, BATMAN #632-634,642-644, BATMAN LEGENDS OF THE DARK KNIGHT #183-184, BATMAN GOTHAM KNIGHTS #57-58, BATMAN SECRET FILES AND ORIGINS ALLIES 2005, BATMAN SECRET FILES AND ORIGINS VILLIANS 2005,CATWOMAN #35-36, DETECTIVE COMICS #798-800, #809-810, NIGHTWING #97-98, and ROBIN #130-131
Chuck Dixon has more than 25 years of experience in the graphic novel field as an editor, writer and publisher. He has contributed well over a thousand scripts to publishers like DC Comics, Marvel, Dark Horse, Hyperion and others, featuring a range of characters from Batman to the Simpsons. Considered to be one of the most prolific writers in his field, this award-winning storyteller currently writes G.I. Joe and A-Team for IDW, The Good, the Bad and the Ugly for Dynamite, The Simpsons for Bongo Comics, along with many creator-owned projects for various publishers.
MZS.Press is the online arts bookstore founded by author, critic, and filmmaker Matt Zoller Seitz and directed by Judith Carter. It offers new, used, signed, collectible, and rare books on film, TV, music, photography, and the visual arts. The store was launched in 2019 on a different platform and has expanded to incorporate arts books published by MZSPress's private imprint: titles currently include Seitz's The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon and Dreams of Deadwood, about the HBO Western, and Walter Chaw's A Walter Hill Film.
Our deepest wish is to promote, encourage, and distribute work by small presses, academic presses, and individuals. Extraordinary work tends to get swallowed up on giant platforms like Amazon and Barnes & Noble. The store's inventory of nearly 1000 volumes is currently in the process of being reconstructed after its relocation from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Dallas, Texas. The titles featured here are personally selected by a group of curators and advisors, including Seitz, Carter, and an array of critics, artists, journalists, educators, publishers, and arts mavens who are known for their ability to suss out what Seitz's jazz musician dad liked to call "the good sh*t."
"She thinks I'm a fascist? I don't control the railways or the flow of commerce!" —Margot Robbie as Barbie in Barbie (2023)
Matt Zoller Seitz
Critic, Author, Filmmaker, MZS Press Creator
Matt Zoller Seitz is the Editor at Large and film critic of RogerEbert.com; Features Writer for New York Magazine and Vulture.com, Contributing Writer for D Magazine and Texas Highways as well as finalist for the Pulitzer Prize in criticism. His writing on film and TV has appeared in Sight and Sound, The New York Times, Salon.com, The New Republic and Rolling Stone. Seitz is the founder and original editor of the influential film blog The House Next Door, now a part of Slant Magazine.
Seitz has written, narrated, edited or produced over a hundred hours’ worth of video essays about cinema history and style for The Museum of the Moving Image, Salon.com and Vulture, among other outlets such as Texas Highways and AARP. His five-part 2009 video essay Wes Anderson: The Substance of Style was spun off into the hardcover book The Wes Anderson Collection. This book and its follow-up, The Wes Anderson Collection: Grand Budapest Hotel were New York Times bestsellers.
Other Seitz books include the New York Times bestellers The Sopranos Sessions and Mad Men Carousel; TV (The Book), The Deadwood Bible: A Lie Agreed Upon, and The Wes Anderson Collection: The French Dispatch. He is also an interviewer, moderator, and film programmer who has curated and hosted film and TV presentations for the Museum of the Moving Image, IFC Center, San Francisco's Roxie Cinema, and other venues. He is currently launching a Dallas extension of his MZS Film Series at the historic Texas Theater.
Judith is quoted as saying "his hobbies include exotic dancing, moonwalking, and affixing masking tape labels to every food item in the refrigerator, including eggs. Oh and he has the attention span of a gnat." MZS agreed to it all except the moonwalking.