You might not think a bona fide superhero would ever need to be told not to be a miserly asshole, but Lee Bermejo’s Batman: Noël is a good reminder that the Dark Knight prefers to injure criminals rather than use his money to combat the reasons people commit crimes. This time, he lurks outside the squalid apartment of an impoverished father, a bagman for the Joker, and his disabled son, waiting for his archenemy to collect some money. Instead, the pneumonia-racked Dark Knight examines his past with Catwoman, gets taken by Superman to peep on various Gotham families preparing for Christmas, and, after falling unconscious, gets tossed in an open grave by the Joker, where he has a vision of how grim things will get if he doesn’t lighten up a little. In the end, Batman gives the bagman a cushy job at Wayne Enterprises and Christmas is saved for two people.
