Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Legends of Justice is interesting as a mixed bag, and again it reminds me of DC’s 1990s Showcase series.

The shining star here is surely Karl Kerschl’s excellent Gotham Academy story, and uncharacteristically I’d say buy the whole book just for that (unless DC sees fit, as they should, to collect this and other Maps Mizoguchi miscellania with the newest Gotham Academy miniseries). The book has ups and downs from there — some excellent, some fair, some poor — but again, there’s a lot to like in the variety of the package as a whole.

[Review contains spoilers]

There’s a moment from James Tynion’s Detective Comics run that’s stuck with me, Bruce Wayne taking Batgirl Cassandra Cain to the ballet. As I said in that review, I think there’s conceptions of Batman in which everything Bruce does is an act and everything Batman does is real. I rather like to think of Batman as having three identities, not two — Batman, the Bruce Wayne playboy act, and then the real Bruce Wayne. This is Bruce as the utopic ideal of a child of wealth, a Bruce who grew up rich but kind, who appreciates literature and art and supports those things with his attendance and money. It’s the kind of thing we see less now than in the Golden and Silver Ages, Bruce and Robin Dick Grayson home reading until the Bat-signal lights the sky.

All of this is preface to say that some of my favorite Batman stories are in the “Year Two” model, where Bruce falls in love and considers giving up his cowl. There’s no such existential decision in “Mother’s Day,” this book’s Gotham Academy story written and drawn by Kerschl, but Bruce does date, enjoy, and then ultimately have to abandon Academy history teacher Isla MacPherson in one of those “I love you too much to endanger you” moments. Much is made here of Bruce dating a professor with a tattoo sleeve instead of a supermodel, and that indicates to me that Kerschl, too, is working in that third “real Bruce” space.

At one point, circa Robin War, Gotham Academy took place alongside current events in the Bat-titles. With “Mother’s Day” (and the stories in the recent Gotham Academy: Maps of Mystery special), it would seem DC has loosened that, if by no other indication than that this story takes place within the forward action of Gotham Academy but also that Alfred’s still alive. It gives Kerschl the opportunity among other things to incongruously draw Batman in his Bronze Age yellow oval costume, which, under Kerschl’s pen, is strongly in the running for best Batman costume ever.

Aside from the appealing Bruce, Kerschl also writes Batman well. Of particular note is the first “chapter” sequence where a Man-Bat tosses Batman into free fall, and Kerschl narrates and illustrates Batman’s “real-time” math and knowledge of his surroundings to arrive at a safe landing. Obviously Batman’s not going to hit the ground and die, and that’s all the more reason why this kind of pulse-pounding sequence is hard for so many other comics creators to do.

That’s all without mentioning the Maps of it all, who here appears to become an official Robin (and learns Batman’s identity) after dabbling in the role previously. Kerschl’s Maps is a wonderful oddball, written cleverly — some Caped Crusaders might pride themselves on only needed a few hours of sleep a night, but Maps quips that she likes to get nine hours of sleep “because its a whole hour better than eight.” And there’s a charming way in which Maps' silliness brightens Batman without robbing him of his edge — see the “official Robin business/official Bruce Wayne business” bit. A fun time all around, and what more can you want from comics?

Also good in Legends is Gabriel Hardman writing and drawing the Aquaman story “Communion.” Somewhere along the way will be a lead-in to Jeremy Adams' Aquaman series and I mistakenly thought this was that at first, and we all know my tolerance for “just so” stories is thin. But Hardman’s excellent sci-fi chops are at the fore in a delightfully weird story that includes Aquaman, the Dominators, and Gorilla City, and that’s wacky enough to work as another of the book’s big story sets.

Christos Gage’s Bat Lash and Michael W. Conrad’s Sgt. Rock stories are each fine, attractive mainly for their indication of Brave and the Bold nodding to its genre roots. I haven’t necessarily seen a depiction of Rock as a magical, immortal figure before, nor am I certain the relevance of the “Stein” identity (maybe Rock possessed him?), but PJ Holden’s art nicely evokes Kubert. Matt Harding’s Signal story gains points late for an unexpected tie to Duke Thomas' origins.

The book’s real disappointment was Deliah Dawson’s Artemis story, “The Poison Within,” if because this was a character I like and I was eager to see her used. But over four Brave and the Bold issues, Dawson spends pages upon pages narrating Artemis thoughts while nearly nothing happens within the scene, a textbook failure to differentiate the comics medium from prose writing.

At the same time, Dawson’s explanation of how Artemis came to her current insider/outsider status (see Trial of the Amazons) is so vague that I can’t imagine any uninitiated reader following it. After marking more time with a vision quest, Dawson finally gets down to Artemis fighting some boilerplate anti-Amazon soldiers for a while, and then fin. Artemis' new superpowers appear in the artwork but are notably never mentioned within the text.

“The Poison Within” is therefore a letdown within Batman: The Brave and the Bold: Legends of Justice, but still here what’s good is enough to lift the book overall. And, making the same point as with Brave and the Bold: Out of the Darkness, the expansion from Batman: Urban Legends' super-focus on the Bat-family to including now such wide-flung characters as Bat Lash and Artemis really makes a difference. I wouldn’t balk at DC’s next anthology series separating from Batman entirely, if anything can be sold that way.

[Includes original and variant covers]