#khoanalysis

Panel by panel, for maximum clarity. But mostly because I’m insane.

I can’t touch on this scene without first praising the absolutely breathtaking art by Carlo Pagulayan. His work on all of the Ghost Stories flashbacks is show-stopping, and deserves so much more recognition. I especially love his skill with expressions (most of all in the Argentina flashback) and the way that he draws Bruce.

But onto the analysis…

This opening line establishes that Bruce and Khoa have a routine. Bruce is not surprised to see him, and Khoa doesn’t need to so much as speak for Bruce to know exactly what he wants. His greeting/rejection is to-the-point, blunt, but not angry. He isn’t upset by Khoa’s arrival, he’s busy.

The first thing I want to focus on here is not Khoa’s dialogue, but his appearance. Flashback-wise, the last time we saw him (Dublin, in the previous issue) he was dressed very casually: a t-shirt, jacket, jeans, and sneakers. He and Bruce fought hand-to-hand; Khoa was unarmed. There, the only hint of the Ghost-maker we saw in present-day Gotham was a white and black mask.

Here, we’re presented with much more of a Ghost-maker in progress. The cape and the pants are clear prototypes of those eventually included in his completed suit, and more crucially, he is now wielding two katanas. He isn’t just older than he was in Dublin - he’s stronger, more experienced. Starting to properly sharpen the image of what he’s been training all this time to become.

“That’s not how this works” confirms what was first implied by Bruce’s greeting— they’ve done this before, much more than once. Khoa actively seeks Bruce out wherever he is in the world, and they spar with each other. There are unspoken rules to their game, and Khoa prods at Bruce to follow them.

I described Bruce’s previous line as a rejection before, but it isn’t, really. Bruce is delaying the fight, not turning it down. Here, he officially agrees to the duel - just again, “Not tonight.”

I adore these panels. The absence of dialogue as Khoa makes the silent decision to stay, simply in order to talk. He doesn’t put his swords away— he stands them up in between himself and Bruce. Not only disarming himself, but placing his weapons within Bruce’s reach. While he still wants to spar, he’s conceding that he can’t - or simply won’t - force Bruce into fighting tonight. The decision is left in Bruce’s hands, for him to make at his own pace.

Khoa literally lowers himself to meet Bruce where he is, sitting down beside him in the sand. It brings them to the same level; they are equal with each other, on even ground. For all that he denounces emotion, Khoa is the one who opens up the conversation to Bruce’s feelings, encouraging him to share his thoughts. Bruce’s answer is dry, but again, it isn’t hostile. The specification that Khoa almost sounds concerned makes this a deadpan, low-effort kind of teasing, playing off of the fact that Khoa doesn’t feel empathy. Bruce isn’t telling Khoa to leave again. He’s responding to him, allowing his presence, and acknowledging that Khoa will not be approaching his emotions from a place of compassion.

Ever emotionally constipated, Khoa immediately denies having any personal investment in Bruce’s wellbeing. He excuses his actions as being in pursuit of fun, and readily complains about the inconvenience that Bruce is causing him. Still, again, he encourages Bruce to explain why he’s upset. He wants to understand him.

This response is leagues away from Khoa’s gleeful mockery of Bruce in Dublin. Bruce has confirmed his preoccupation with the very trauma that Khoa tried to kill him over, and yet all Khoa gives in response to it here is a simple, monosyllabic acknowledgement. Bruce has answered the question - Khoa fully understands why he’s behaving this way now.

With this reminder, Khoa is grounding Bruce in the present, and in his goal. Bruce is there to train. He’s supposed to be practicing a form of meditation, but instead he’s dwelling on his past. On his parents.

Bruce looks at Khoa for the first time since he arrived, recognizing what Khoa has actually just admitted to him. Any pretense of Khoa having traveled to “win” a teacher - the goal of their fight in Dublin - is gone. He has long since mastered what Bruce is here to learn.

This is my favorite ghostbat panel of all time. Bruce and Khoa sit in silence as they both acknowledge why Khoa is here. Why he comes to Bruce at all, time and time again. He wants to change Bruce’s mind…for Bruce’s sake. Khoa had nothing to gain from returning to Gobi, but he values his relationship with Bruce and considers Bruce worth his time and investment. He wants Bruce to adopt his way of thinking so that he can succeed as Khoa intends to succeed. So that they can be the best, together.

And Bruce is fully conscious of that fact.

Now that he has Bruce’s attention, Khoa begins to make his case— starting with an expression of sympathy. Bruce points this out, even insinuating that Khoa is being disingenuous. But Khoa shoots him down, framing the statement firmly within his psychopathy. It is him making the choice to speak Bruce’s language, not attempting to manipulate him with an emotional appeal.

This isn’t mockery, and it certainly isn’t a threat. It’s a warning. “You are letting your emotions make you vulnerable.” Khoa considers Bruce’s weakness to be voluntary - something that Bruce would fully be able to overcome, if only he’d listen - rather than an immutable flaw.

There’s no uncertainty here. Khoa is stating a fact: Bruce understands. He knows that Khoa’s goal isn’t and has never been to defeat him, but instead to elevate him to his full potential. As he is now, Khoa doesn’t just think Bruce is susceptible to attack - he knows it, because he himself is making the active decision not to take advantage of Bruce’s weakness. Instead, Khoa is advising him as a peer, because he believes that the path Bruce is on will end with him being killed.

As Khoa delivers his thesis statement, Bruce finally initiates the duel, silently picking up the sword that Khoa set out for him. Khoa only moves to reciprocate once Bruce is already standing up. With Bruce successfully coaxed out of his own head, focused on the present instead of the past, they’re now ready to actually talk.

The wording here is everything. If Bruce was trying to intimidate Khoa, he could easily have just said something along the lines of “I’ll prove it.” Indeed, when we last saw him in Dublin, Bruce’s final line to Khoa was “Now shut up and fight me.” The focus was on the combat, not remotely on the conversation. But in Gobi, Bruce is waiting - however expectantly - for Khoa to cooperate with him. It isn’t “I will,” it’s “let me.” An invitation instead of an assertion, opening a dialogue between them— much like what we see in their final sword fight in Batman #105, which results in them getting back together.

I…love this scene. I consider it a cornerstone of ghostbat’s relationship - proof of their mutual respect for and understanding of each other, long predating the reconciliation at the end of Ghost Stories. These are two people longing to win each other over. They want to be on the same page, pursuing the same goal, and they will fight each other again and again and again if it means that they might just agree in the end.

As I continue adding to my analysis of Batman: the Knight, I’ll delve into why I find the Ghost Stories flashbacks (and Ghost Stories as a whole) to be irreconcilable with Bruce and Khoa as they appear in BtK. I didn’t initially intend to do an isolated breakdown of this singular scene, but it seemed like a good way to clarify my thoughts for easier referencing in future analyses.

Hi! Polarizing title, I know, but I’m not at all looking for a fight. None of this is intended as a dig at anyone who discovered ghostbat as a result of BtK, who prefers their dynamic (and their characterizations independently of each other) within it, or who simply enjoys the comic outside of shipping. This is just my opinion as somebody who’s loved Khoa since before his full name reveal, read BtK as it was coming out, and was genuinely excited and feral for it all the way up until the release of the final two issues.

I’m going to divide my points into separate reblogs for the sake of image limit and general organization. None of this is pre-written, so everything will be posted as I finish and polish it. Feel free to reply/reblog/rebut; I am entirely open to anybody else’s thoughts, dissenting or otherwise!

Now, without further ado…

Part One: Timeline Inconsistencies

Let’s start with the smallest, most excusable example.

The first page, from BtK #8, is the only direct reference to the flashbacks in Ghost Stories (Batman #102-105, Khoa’s first comic appearance/introductory arc) that we ever get in BtK. And…it’s out of order. As seen in the second page, from Batman #102, Bruce is only as angry as he is in Dublin because of Khoa killing Ouahbi in Morocco. Yet BtK presents Dublin as having happened first. Why? You could argue that Bruce is listing their encounters randomly here, not chronologically (even though he only lists three total), but is it not strange that the established connection between these two events isn’t so much as acknowledged, let alone explored in further detail? From a writing standpoint, it seems like a needlessly confusing choice. But whatever— the flashback gets included, it’s visually consistent with what was shown in Ghost Stories, and we’re given a placement for it within the broader story of BtK. I brushed it off in 2022, and on its own, I could still brush it off now.

But how about a “smaller” inconsistency that I can’t brush off?

In Batman #102, we’re given a specific reference to Khoa’s age when Bruce first made fun of the pseudonym “Ghost-maker.” He was fifteen - or at the very least Bruce believes that he was fifteen. But either way, Tynion tells us that Khoa has been entertaining or outright using “Ghost-maker” as a name for himself since he was a teenager. So why does it never come up in BtK?

Zdarsky teases the hell out of it, don’t get me wrong. The most notable cases are both in BtK #8:

But these coy references are treating “Ghost-maker” as if it’s Khoa’s equivalent to “Batman”— a persona he’ll eventually adopt, but hasn’t just yet. In fact, when given the glaring opportunity to start referring to Khoa by “Ghost-maker” in the comic, BtK doubles down on “Anton,” even with Bruce directly acknowledging it as a fake name:

I have more gripes in this vein that I’m choosing to save for later, because I think they’d be best addressed within my other designated Problem Categories (one being the exclusive privileges of knowing/using Khoa’s birth name and being allowed to see his face, neither of which were communicated in BtK). Here, I just want to focus on concrete events that got mixed up or bypassed in the comic. So let’s move onto the big ones.

The breakup.

This is the explanation we get from Bruce in Batman #104 as to why he and Khoa stopped training together. Let’s compare it to what we see in BtK, starting small and working up to the largest inconsistencies.

From BtK #5:

Instead of Bruce himself, it is Avery who reveals Bruce’s identity/REAL FIRST NAME(!!!!) in Khoa’s presence. And Khoa is completely unaffected by the information. There is no place anywhere in BtK that Bruce lays out the reason behind his mission - and therefore his trauma - to Khoa; I don’t have panels to draw a contrast, because it just straight up never happens. Baffling, again, because all three of the Ghost Stories flashback scenes are centered around Khoa taking issue with Bruce’s motivations. His parents come up in every single one:

In BtK, their breakup has a different catalyst altogether, as well as a specific setting. We all know this one. Canada, Luka, blood in the snow-

For a long time, I really, really liked this scene. I’d always recognized it as a deviation from the breakup established in Ghost Stories, but I didn’t mind, because I considered it to be an improvement.

I…don’t feel that way anymore. I’ll explore my reasons in a later segment, whenever I cover the problems I have with Bruce’s characterization and ghostbat’s dynamic in BtK. Regardless of my opinion, though, this is objectively different and incompatible with pre-established canon. It muddles Khoa’s character backstory, making his story harder to follow and/or summarize in future comic appearances. If you’re a newer fan, I can only assume that you’ve had that exact, confusing experience, especially if you read BtK before reading Ghost Stories. It’s a choice that makes Khoa a more difficult character for DC writers to utilize moving forward, because he has so little content, and yet so much contradiction in his history.

Now for my absolute biggest timeline gripe— the centering of “final boss” Ra’s Al Ghul, to the complete exclusion of the Argentina divorce and ghostbat’s big agreement.

This is the agreement itself, first as it is clinically described by Bruce to Dick in Batman #104, and then shown in context of the divorce scene at the start of Batman #105:

It’s a straightforward, in-universe explanation for why Ghost-maker never showed up in Batman canon before Joker War. In real life, obviously, it’s because he hadn’t been created yet. But Tynion used what could have been a discrepancy as an opportunity to write delicious, devastating, queercoded angst, consuming my entire brain and taking over my life for the last five years.

Instead of that, in BtK #10, we get this:

I cannot forgive this choice. I hate everything about it. For now, I’ve yet to touch on my problems with the framing of Khoa’s psychopathy in BtK - in particular, Bruce’s view and treatment of him once he learns Khoa is “““insane””” - so again, we’ll just focus on the contradictions.

The conversation we see here is not a mutual agreement. In BtK, Khoa never gives any indication that he’ll stay out of Bruce’s city once Bruce goes home. To the contrary, he expresses full intent to “bring justice” to Gotham once he’s “done with the world”. It’s still technically an explanation for his absence in Batman canon - albeit a far weaker one - but beyond that, it just doesn’t align with the present-time events that take place in Ghost Stories. Setting aside more abstract elements like Khoa’s behavior, why would Bruce need to convince him to stay and help in Gotham, if Bruce was never the one who forced them apart?

BtK Khoa is last shown teasing, smiling, and eager to have “fun” with Bruce again in the future. He chooses to ride off into the sunset by himself, leaving Bruce in the dust.

That is not what we see in Batman #105.

Khoa wanted Bruce to stay with him. He wanted them to change the world together, not just on his own. The only reason he finally stopped trying to change Bruce’s mind was because Bruce destroyed everything they had just to keep Khoa away.

It is my interpretation that Bruce never viewed Khoa as “broken,” and does not take issue with his psychopathy— only with him committing murder. Given his emotional concession to Dick that he still missed Khoa, his initial rejected attempt to reconcile (when he asked Khoa to help run the og Batman Inc.), and his lighthearted references to Khoa’s lack of empathy later on, I think the text supports my assertion that “you’re sick” was something that Bruce never genuinely believed about his friend. Instead, it was said as a means to an end. He knew that Khoa would keep following him and ultimately hinder his mission in Gotham, so to cut him out of his life, he had to nullify the foundation for their entire relationship— equality.

This, from the same comic issue, is Bruce fully taking back what he said to hurt Khoa. It is the complete opposite of “Now get out of my way. I never want to see you again.” Bruce is asking Khoa to stay in Gotham, his city, his home. Asking him to share a goal, a life with him again, even when Khoa literally just stabbed/kidnapped him, stuck his hand in Gotham’s crime without permission, and encouraged a teenager to murder Harley in front of him. It is an incredibly meaningful decision that speaks to just how much Bruce still trusts Khoa, even years and years after they split up—

And it is rendered completely insignificant within the context of Batman: the Knight.

As I’ve been mentioning throughout this segment, I have a lot more to say about BtK and the ways I believe it has negatively impacted Ghost-maker as a character. I don’t know how soon any further analysis will be added to this post, but in the meantime, I am absolutely up for further discussion in replies/comments.

Hello again! This segment took way longer simply because I have a job (booo) and have been writing fic rather than writing essays in my free time. Whoops.

Better late than never, though, here comes…

Part Four: Sunglasses and Pseudonyms

To start, let’s all just read The Panel. From Batman #109:

Okay then. “There are fewer than five people alive who have seen my entire face.” That’s quite a statement! But what does it mean, exactly?

In Batman #104, during the flashback-within-a-flashback, we see Khoa’s full face while he and Bruce are first training together:

Then later, in Batman #113, we get more maskless baby Khoa in his memory of meeting Jonathan (ft. left-handed Khoa confirmation 🥰):

So Khoa can’t literally mean that less than five people have seen his face - he didn’t come out of the womb with that mask on, after all. Instead, I’ve always taken this to mean that less than five people have seen his face— with the knowledge that they’re looking at the Ghost-maker.

Subsequently, I don’t have any issue with Anton being maskless in his introduction, or with him being maskless in most anything set before the Dublin flashback, really. The problems only arise once Anton does start wearing the Ghost-maker mask, as it’s never given so much as a line’s worth of significance. Not even upon appearing.

Speaking of which, when does it appear in BtK?

The first we see of the mask is in issue #8 - very, very late in the game. Aaaaand Anton isn’t even the one wearing it.

This is a baffling choice to me. Qiu mentions being targeted by the police - a potential reason to want to conceal her face, and therefore her identity - but anonymity is far from her actual shtick. I don’t even know what her actual shtick is (at least not in any real detail) because she’s only in the comic for two damn pages. Zdarsky did not take any time to flesh her out; she’s a throwaway character in BtK who only got actual plot relevance in Batman Inc. We never even see her and Anton interact. So why is she the origin of Ghost-maker’s mask?

Bruce and Anton spent an entire issue training with Avery, someone whose whole thing is hiding her identity. If any trainer should have served as Ghost-maker’s guide to covering his face, it easily should have been her. Anton is even shown having an immediate, specific interest in her masks— a detail I genuinely really like that I wish had served as actual foreshadowing:

I mean, think about it. Khoa would need access to a kind of fabric that would provide full coverage with only one-way visibility, resist sweat/moisture, and be comfortably/safely worn for extended periods of time. Of all people, would a disguise artist not be the most reasonable person to ask for pointers? Avery could have been the source of the fabric, and then Khoa could have done the actual designing himself. We know that Tynion intended for him to have crafted his own suits, from this panel in Batman Annual 2021:

So again, I ask: why Skyspider? Why the Arkham-games-line-launcher trainer and not the mask lady?

Well, because Zdarsky doesn’t treat Ghost-maker’s mask as a mask. Its purpose in BtK isn’t to hide anything - certainly not his identity. Instead, it functions as an accessory. And rather a specific one, once you draw the comparison…

Yeah. That thing is just Anton’s Advanced Sunglasses. Seriously, just look at this from issue #9:

These guys are fully surrounded by strangers - enemies! - and the kid who I’m supposed to believe is Ghost-maker is out here pushing his mask up to rest on his head like it’s a pair of shades. That is a piece of fabric to him, and absolutely nothing more.

The mask isn’t even reflective of Anton’s personal tastes or fashion sense, because he never commits to the Ghost-maker aesthetic! In the entirety of BtK, there is literally only ONE (1) appearance of Anton in Ghost-maker’s actual suit - specifically as it was shown in the Gobi Desert flashback (albeit with sleeves). It’s in issue #8:

But no matter how hard I try, I can never process this panel as Anton. The Ghost-maker suit - with all its gradual, meticulous adjustments and improvements - is so at odds with Anton’s blasé, coolguy attitude that I just cannot make the connection. I cannot imagine Anton hunched over that sewing machine. I cannot imagine him making and remaking a cape, a belt, a sheath, a chestpiece, over and over and over again until he’s finally satisfied with it. I cannot imagine him crafting the Ghost-maker helmet, or building the Ghost Stream, or seeing any need to program Icon. I cannot see him doing what Khoa does in Batman #109 - resolving to toss the latest Ghost Racer into the industrial furnace once he’s judged it to be inferior to the Batmobile. Because Anton does not have Khoa’s perfectionism, or Khoa’s determination, or Khoa’s patience.

I’m going to further indulge in the tangent I’ve gone on to complain about this, from BtK #6:

Like what the fuck are you talking about, “what could I learn from a nomadic tribe?” Khoa got on Bruce’s case for not being locked into a meditation exercise where you have to be conscious of every grain of sand in the goddamn Gobi Desert. If Bruce told him about a trainer he’d missed, Ghost-maker would seek that trainer out himself, or immediately demand that Bruce pass on their knowledge to him.

But Anton is not, and will never become, Ghost-maker. Anton doesn’t have or wear Ghost-maker’s suit because he would find it superfluous and tedious to maintain. Anton’s mask had to be handed to him by Skyspider because he is not innovative enough to have designed it on its own. And Anton’s flippant usage of said mask is indicative of exactly how uninterested he is in keeping his face a secret.

But why is this so wrong? Why is Ghost-maker’s mask meant to be important?

…Well, for the same reason as his name. So we should probably get into that first.

Despite being the subject of all these bajillion analyses, the Knight isn’t remotely the singular target of my Name Blame. The significance of Khoa’s name has been missed by almost every other writer who’s briefly handled him, not just Zdarsky. From Robin (2021) #14 and DC Pride 2023, respectively:

My opinion on whether Khoa would share his name with the likes of Angel Breaker and Catman is my own; both relationships are almost entirely unelaborated on, and thus leave ample room for theorization. In Catman’s case, I balk at the idea that Khoa would entrust his name to someone who he would sooner kill than trust with his face. Between the two, his name has the definitive, lower number of people who know it - three in the entire world. I highly doubt that one of the remaining two (once we account for Bruce) is a casual hookup, regardless of how well he and Catman get along. As for Angel Breaker, Khoa doesn’t even seem to respect her, much less trust her. I fully believe that they worked together, and especially that they’ve had sex. However, I am far less inclined to believe that their relationship had remotely the amount of depth necessary to warrant Khoa telling her his name.

Again, though, those are just my opinions. Where I fully draw the line is Bruce telling Rhea Khoa’s name (SPELLED INCORRECTLY. IN AN OFFICIAL COMIC) upon meeting her in Batman: Urban Legends #11:

That last instance actually pisses me off about the same amount as the Minhkhoa Situation in BtK— which is to say, quite a lot. But I’ll save my thoughts on Ram V’s mishandling of Ghost-maker for a later essay. Let’s get back on topic.

This is how Anton’s name reveal goes down in the Knight, from issue #9:

First, I will say that Ra’s is a character who I could totally see learning Khoa’s name without Khoa’s permission. He has the time and the resources, and if Ghost-maker ever challenged him, he’d have the motivation, too.

But I don’t think he and Khoa should have crossed paths remotely this early on, if at all.

Ra’s was set up as the “final boss” of BtK simply because he is an established, recognizable Batman villain who readers understand as posing a serious threat; his inclusion in a pre-Batman story doesn’t actually make any sense. Bruce never trained with Ra’s in the comics! That was something Christopher Nolan made up for the Dark Knight trilogy— it had no precedence beyond those films.

I have plenty of problems with Ra’s appearing prematurely in Bruce’s life, particularly in relation to Talia, brutalia, and Damian’s conception. But that’s not the subject of this essay. The subject of this essay is Ghost-maker, and Ghost-maker would not stand for his birth name being dropped to a room full of people.

Khoa does not murder in excess, but I fully believe that if Ra’s pulled this stunt, Khoa would at the absolute least attempt to kill him, Talia, the Still, and BtK Bruce (actual Bruce is another matter)— if not immediately, then the instant he deemed himself ready to face them. It would be unspeakably violating to him.

I rambled a bit about the many, many problems I have with Batman Inc. in another post, but I stand by my statement that Brisson wrote Khoa fully in-character. One thing he absolutely got right was the name/face significance, a notable (and relevant) example of which is in this scene from Batman Incorporated #5:

Phantom-One is inflicting the most effective means of psychological torture he has access to by trying to remove Khoa’s mask here. It is, like I said before, a violation. Phantom-One was kept around as Ghost-maker’s test-Robin for three years, and was still never allowed to see his face or learn his name. It was a privilege that Phantom-One could not earn, regardless of his performance in the field, regardless of clearly being able to emulate Ghost-maker’s (BATMAN-LEVEL) skill to at least a functional degree. And as such, he has a deeper understanding than most of just how important Khoa’s name and face are to him. He knows how upset it would make Khoa to have either/both revealed against his will.

It’s about time I connected this all back to Argentina, as I am bound to do in any analysis and in my life in general. I never shut up about that scene.

When BtK #10 first came out, I drew the following contrast (on Twitter, because it didn’t suck so bad back then) between these two panels:

It’s a meme, yeah, but it’s an effective enough way to introduce my point.

In BtK, Bruce’s mocking, fight-provoking use of Anton’s birth name gets this reaction:

That is, no reaction at all. Anton just smirks and delivers an overconfident taunt bragging that he beat Bruce in Canada (which is barely true. A tree beat Bruce in Canada - Injustice Nightwing rock death style - because he tripped on a root and sucked at catching his balance. Like father like Elseworlds son I guess).

Meanwhile, this is how Khoa reacts to Bruce starting to habitually use his nickname, after Bruce has just torn up their relationship:

Take a guess at which one I vastly prefer.

In my Gobi Desert flashback breakdown, I mentioned Carlo Pagulayan’s skill with expressions, and I think the above panel of Khoa yelling is the prime example of that skill. You can practically hear him, the feelings are so visceral. And that’s important, because this is easily the most emotional that we ever see Khoa act in front of another person.

I know the phrasing is pretty straightforward, given the emphasis, but I’m still going to point it out:

“You don’t get to say my name again. You don’t get to see my face.”

These are privileges. If someone is saying Khoa’s name or seeing his face, it is because Khoa is allowing them to.

In my previous segment, I said that Khoa was conceived as a psychopath “to provide a point of comparison to accentuate the traits that are often overshadowed/overlooked in Batman’s character.” And the same concept applies to Khoa’s relationship with his name/face. Where Khoa’s psychopathy highlights Bruce’s emotionality, Khoa’s complete rejection of his identity highlights how significantly Bruce maintains his self image outside of Batman. Ghost-maker is what Batman could look like if he really was just the cape, cowl, and crimefighting— something that Khoa himself believes Bruce would be genuinely better off as:

But (Tynion’s) Bruce isn’t just Batman. He engages with crime, both its victims and its perpetrators, not as an unfeeling, efficient weapon, but as a fellow person.

Meanwhile, Khoa is always the Ghost-maker. He refuses to let himself be anything else - refuses to let himself be a full human being, to be Minhkhoa Khan, the boy from Singapore - because he equates the attachments of identity with weakness. For as long as Ghost-maker is inhuman, he is invulnerable. From the backer of Batman #107:

When Bruce destroys their relationship in Argentina, Khoa revokes the privileges Bruce was once allowed (even throughout all their disagreement and conflict) to deny Bruce access to his weak points. His humanity. The damage has already been done, but Khoa is pulling all his shields back up to keep Bruce from ever having so much as the chance to hurt him again.

This is why it’s so significant that Bruce is able to earn those privileges back. I can’t even express how this exchange made me feel when Batman Annual 2021 first came out:

This is exactly why Khoa hides!!! He’s just shared this long, dramatic tale painting himself as a hyper-competent, larger-than-life hero. But because he’s let Bruce in close enough to see the real him, Bruce is able to use that intimate knowledge to ground the story back in Khoa’s personhood. The emotions behind his actions. The reason why he cares. And despite being covered head to toe by that damn suit, Khoa still turns away as though to hide his expression! Because Bruce can see right through him, and he knows it.

And yet when Bruce calls him “Khoa,” the Ghost-maker doesn’t complain. He immediately changes the subject, avoiding inviting any further insight from Bruce, but it’s with a proposal to spend more time together. To lightheartedly compete, as friends, just like they used to.

A part of Khoa will always be allergic to vulnerability. But because Bruce earned (and then re-earned) his trust, he’s willing to subject himself to the mortifying ordeal of being known. He’s willing to be Minhkhoa Khan when he’s with Bruce, because Bruce has proven that he understands exactly who that is, and exactly what it means to be allowed to hold that knowledge in the first place.

This is not the case with Anton.

I complained about the full page that these panels are from in my last segment, but this interaction is something I find very telling, when it comes to Anton:

I gotta say that at this point, Bruce really should have already known Khoa’s real name. “Khoa” needed to be an established nickname by the end of Bruce’s training, and I agree with Brisson (based on the Batman Annual 2022 opening flashback) that it should have gone at least as far back as sometime before/around the Dublin flashback, i.e. when Bruce and Khoa could still both be realistically referred to as “teenagers” by Tommy Tivane. But BtK isn’t compliant with the Argentina flashback. So all the way through to issue #10, when he’s literally right about to return to Gotham, BtK Bruce’s first instinct is still to use the pseudonym “Anton”.

But from this scene, it looks like Anton honestly wants Bruce to use his real name. The last time they interacted, BtK Bruce treated him like hot garbage— lest we forget, “You’re hollow! There’s nothing to you! There’s nothing there!” And yet Anton still saves his life and tries to get him to call him “Minhkhoa”. It speaks to a self-acknowledgement of his own loneliness, and a fully conscious, intentional push to connect with other people as himself, even when that makes for some pretty damn unavoidable vulnerability. Anton outright admitting “I thought I was alone in the world” to Bruce, completely unprompted, is easily the best example of that.

But for all that this makes for a compelling, multifaceted character, the character in question just isn’t Ghost-maker. Sure, yeah, Anton is young and has plenty of time to change. But we don’t see Khoa behave anything like Anton in his younger years, even in the Dublin flashback, which is the youngest we ever see him speaking (excluding when he was a little kid. Where he still doesn’t behave anything like Anton).

Anton doesn’t wear his heart on his sleeve - at least in comparison to Ghost-maker - due to youth, then, or because he’s yet to develop as a character. He simply doesn’t have the same hangups as Khoa when it comes to personhood being a weakness. Anton’s Big Thing is that he hates being beaten, and therefore pitiable (which relates to his pride being a weakness, unlike Khoa’s, which I got into more in this post about Icon). From BtK #4 and #10, respectively:

In the end, it all just comes down to Anton being a completely different character to Khoa, as I keep saying. He’s incompatible with Ghost-maker’s history, and fails as his stand-in even when ignoring all the timeline inconsistencies, because he’s just straight up a different guy. That’s why Ghost-maker’s face and name don’t matter in Batman: the Knight. Because Ghost-maker is only present for a single panel in issue #8.

If you want to see how I, together with @bellandeano, would go about fixing BtK, consider checking out The Knight Rewrite on ao3. As of posting this, only the first installment (reworking BtK #4) is up, but we’re already over 7k words into writing the next one. It’s set to be a lot longer than the first, so don’t expect it too soon, but do keep an eye out if you’re interested!

KHOA AND JASON.

Yeah, I know, very original. But I want to delve into exactly why I believe their dynamic would be so compelling, and just what they’d have to gain from interacting with each other.

First, though, I’ll let myself go on a tangent to say how much it SUCKS that we barely got any Khoa & batkid interactions to begin with. Khoa is sooooo committed to understanding the aspects of Bruce that don’t make sense to him, and Bruce’s weirdass family is such a huge part of his life. He’d want to see what all the fuss is about. He’s curious like that.

In particular, I think there was untapped potential in Robin era Dick’s one-sided competition with Ghost-maker, if only because it was already specifically established, and because I find it to be conceptually hilarious:

I mean, we got a taste of animosity between them in Batman Inc., which I do find funny in isolation. But within the actual comic, it’s just the groundwork for Khoa’s ultimate decision to leave, which makes me sad 😕 From Batman Incorporated #7:

I’d have liked these two to butt heads beyond Dick just disliking Khoa the way that most of Batman Inc. already disliked him. As things are in this scene, it’s very impersonal, like Khoa’s just failed his initial vibe check, so Dick’s decided he’s an asshole to avoid in the future. Instead, I’d have enjoyed a kind of situation where maybe Dick and Khoa are in combat together, and Dick is subconsciously or otherwise trying to prove he’s the better crimefighter. Khoa could pick up on it, see the similarity to his competitions with Bruce, and get a kick out of it. Maybe even find out about Dick wanting to beat him up, despite only personally having seen him from a distance. It’d be fun to revisit and potentially resolve, otherwise it could work as a sporadic, running bit.

That being said, I’m not all that interested in a Nightwing & Ghost-maker team up. As is the case with most of the batfamily, I think that Khoa would only care to address Dick with catty remarks and barely-constructive criticism. He doesn’t have much to dig into and pick apart with the majority of the batkids; he wouldn’t pursue any deeper understanding of them the way he did with Harley. The motivation will always lie entirely in his own curiosity. From Batman #107:

In order to poke and prod at someone, he needs some basis for fascination. Khoa can absolutely see the way that Bruce has imposed his will onto all of his kids, and in contrast to his own decision to follow Bruce’s rule, he doesn’t see most of them as having chosen it for themselves. He doesn’t respect them following Bruce’s lead. They’re good little soldiers that Khoa can write off as simple, docile, and therefore uninteresting.

But Jason is different.

He’s the black sheep, the murderer who chooses to use lethal violence because he considers it the best way to go about stopping criminals. Jason stands out as the only batkid who has properly challenged Bruce, the way that Khoa so firmly believes that he needs to be challenged. Khoa also loves a good revenge story, and Jason’s is pretty damn difficult to beat. From the backer of Batman #109, said by Khoa to Brainstorm:

Despite all of the, y’know. Gang violence. Jason’s ultimate goal has never actually changed since he gave up his initial revenge quest. I don’t think that Khoa would approve of Jason’s fight-fire-with-fire approach to the mob, but it’d be less in a “Gangs Are Bad” way and more just him like, “if you want this done, why aren’t you doing it yourself?” He’d view it as inefficient and messy - a bad approach to crimefighting that Jason has ample potential to improve from.

Any resistance, then, would come from Jason’s end. Khoa is soooooo fucking annoying, I love him dearly, but it’s simply true. In order for them to get to a point of civil conversation, to say nothing of teamwork, Jason would kind of need to be cornered into it. I think Jason could be injured in some serious way, and Khoa could spot him in Gotham, recognize him, and decide to take him back to the Stream for treatment. Jason could be all confused and pissed at apparently being kidnapped by some weird, chatty asshole, while Khoa just keeps dropping more and more hints about just how well he knows Bruce, and for just how long.

Once Khoa establishes himself enough for Jason to start being properly curious in return, I think they could get to talking, and Jason could eventually leave the Stream feeling bewildered, but tentatively open to interacting with Khoa again in the future. Some threat or conundrum could then lead to them needing to work together, and boom! Team up achieved.

Whatever the logistics, the purpose of introducing them to each other would be to compare and contrast their respective relationships to crimefighting, to killing, and to Bruce. Khoa would provide an example that Jason has never seen before - someone who agrees with him that killing is necessary, but who has compromised with Bruce specifically just to have Bruce in his life again after a long period of resentment. No moral argument for once, no harping on Jason continuing the cycle of violence, or being unwilling to heal, or being stubborn for the sake of anger. Instead, just the simple recognition of, “Bruce Wayne is never going to change his mind on this, and that’s always going to be frustrating. But maybe it’s worth it to do things his way, if it means fighting alongside him instead of fighting against him.”

Anyway, Khoa should also get a special with John Constantine, both for Fellow Canon Bisexual reasons and simply because every DC character of significance ends up encountering Constantine at one point or another. It’s a rite of passage.

I posted Part Two of this manifesto as a reblog to my original post, and was advised to separate each segment out for higher visibility. Upon further reflection, I agree that that would make the most sense. If I keep writing essays upon essays, the least I can do is not force people to scroll through all of them at once just to read a new update.

Now…

Let’s get nuts.

Part Three: You’re Insane!

Minhkhoa “Ghost-maker” Khan was introduced as a nuanced and generally positive-leaning representation of a person who does not experience empathy. Despite killing people as he deems necessary, he is not depicted as bloodthirsty or sadistic. To the contrary, he strives to leave a positive impact on the world, and is thoroughly invested in improving human life to the definitive best of his ability. In Batman Annual 2021, this is how Bruce first confronts the idea of Khoa’s psychopathy rendering his motivations “uncaring”:

People being helped is the metric of success in stopping crime. If the Ghost-maker is “the world’s greatest crime-fighter,” it is because he is catching as many killers/predators/corrupt leaders, rescuing as many victims, and encouraging as much lasting systematic change as he possibly can.

Here is how he lays out his diagnosis and his goal to Harley in Batman #109:

Khoa wants to fix the world. And not in a warped, supervillain-y way. If that was the case, Bruce would not trust him to roam free, much less to operate alongside him in Gotham, and eventually become the leader of Batman Inc. I’m not going to delve too much into Brisson’s take on Khoa (despite me finding it entirely in-character), but this fact is repeatedly brought up in Batman Annual 2022 and Batman Incorporated, by Bruce and between members of the team:

Batman and Ghost-maker genuinely share the same values, even when they practice different methodology. From the backer of Batman #110:

In a strictly emotional sense, Khoa does not “care” about other people. But life is valuable to him. Like Bruce, he wants to minimize death— it just so happens that doing so on an exclusively logical/mathematical basis and not an ethical one requires killing perpetrators who will continue murdering innocents if left alive. Khoa does not remotely treat death as the one solution to stopping criminals. This is Barbara’s summary of his initial crime-fighting spree in Gotham, from Batman #104:

Khoa is not evil. He’s a crime-fighting vigilante - someone who works outside the law, just like Batman does - whose primary concern is efficiency. Even then, though, he shows a willingness to allow people second chances, long before he agrees to follow Bruce’s rule.

This, from the backer of Batman #108, is my absolute favorite example:

Khoa being conceived as a “psychopath” was never about sneaking a deranged murderer into Batman’s group of trusted allies. It was to provide a point of comparison to accentuate the traits that are often overshadowed/overlooked in Batman’s character. People love to call Batman unemotional; I’m sure I don’t have to tell you that. With Ghost-maker, Tynion introduced a rival whose whole critique of Bruce is that he is too emotional, serving to exhibit how Batman would function if he actually didn’t “care”.

Anyway.

Batman: the Knight forgoes all of the aforementioned nuance in favor of tired stereotypes and ableist fear-mongering about the inherent danger and immorality of people who can’t feel empathy. And BtK Bruce is more often than not the uncritical mouthpiece of that very ableism.

Let’s take a moment to revisit issue #5.

In my last segment, I went over the events at the embassy and immediately afterward. But I intentionally left out one crucial piece. It begins with this sequence—

—and concludes with this dRaMaTiC rEvEaL of what Anton apparently did behind that door:

I despise it.

Similarly to the dRaMaTiC rEvEaL at the end of issue #4, the sole purpose of this inclusion is to frame Anton as deceitful and concealing of his true, evil nature: that of an apathetic psychopath.

Yes, Minhkhoa Khan lacks empathy. No, that does not make him a bloodthirsty, indiscriminate murderer! There are no circumstances under which he would do this. The people Anton killed were civilians. They weren’t even threatening him, just doing their jobs as security personnel and trying to herd any loose attendees back to the main event.

If the character in this scene was actually Minhkhoa Khan, he would have simply kept playing the role of the persistent young man who’d been about to suck off an old creep. The whole point of working under Avery was to master deception and espionage; in training, Khoa was always concerned first and foremost with skill. He would take the clear opportunity to continue practicing what he came there to learn, not go “crazy” and leave a mess of bodies that would undoubtedly be reported and linked back to him - if not by the authorities, then certainly by Avery or Bruce.

BtK #6 is when Anton’s psychopathy stops being heavy-handedly teased and finally gets properly revealed. And boy oh boy is Anton’s lack of empathy framed as the reason that he kills people. It’s an impulse that he can’t control. An innate darkness that he has and hides in order to appear normal and good, like our upstanding hero Bruce Wayne.

It would be one thing if it was just Luka who treats Anton’s psychopathy this way. But BtK Bruce takes very, very little convincing to reach the same conclusion that he and Anton are not alike.

Here, Anton goes over his reasoning - Khoa’s actual, unchanging reasoning for pursuing crime-fighting:

It’s very straightforward. It’s pretty much exactly how Khoa explains it in Ghost Stories. But BtK Bruce responds to it - not Anton having killed people, just the simple concept of fighting crime as a psychopath - with this:

You’re insane.

…Whatever, though! Tensions are high, right? There’s a corpse on the ground, Bruce is neck deep in PTSD, and they’re in the middle of combat. Not to mention we’re only halfway through the story— Bruce has plenty of time to come around and at least try to understand Anton’s perspective! He’ll need to, if Batman and Ghost-maker are eventually going to function as allies.

So does he?

Here is a page from BtK #8 that viscerally upsets me:

All of this— ALL of it, is so deeply, horribly wrong. It’s in direct conflict with everything foundational to ghostbat’s relationship, romantic or otherwise.

The persisting conflict between Batman and Ghost-maker is not and cannot be that Khoa is a ~psycho killer~, especially not one that Bruce is afraid will kill him (see my Gobi flashback breakdown). The one whose mind needed to be changed between them wasn’t even Bruce’s— and he certainly wasn’t trying to convince Khoa to magically stop being a psychopath.

The persisting conflict between Batman and Ghost-maker is “would Bruce Wayne, specifically, be better off dedicating his life to protecting Gotham City, or letting go of his past to stop crime on a wider, international and impersonal level?” That is it. That is the entire thing. When they argue about methodology, it is always just about the two of them - about whether Khoa should “let” Bruce go back home to Gotham and only make use of his training there. It isn’t about Khoa being a psychopath. It isn’t even about whether or not killing is essential to successful crime-fighting. It’s about Bruce choosing Gotham over Khoa, and Khoa being unwilling to accept that choice.

That is why Bruce breaks his heart in Argentina. Because it is the only way to force Khoa to accept it— to accept that Bruce is entirely committed to Gotham, and will never, never change his mind. Even if that means never seeing Khoa again.

I want to focus in on Bruce’s big line here, because on the surface, it might seem similar to the sentiments expressed in BtK Bruce’s tirade from issue #10:

…Before I delve into the irreconcilable differences between these two versions of Bruce, I want to say that this page doesn’t just viscerally upset me - it infuriates me. This is the page that first solidified BtK to me as being incompatible with ghostbat canon. I hate it. I loathe it. If I had physically purchased BtK #10 before I read it, I would have burned my copy rather than add it to my comic collection, if only because of this scene.

So. Why do I find it so unbearably bad? What makes it so different from what Bruce says in Batman #105?

Well, first of all, BtK Bruce actually believes the things he’s saying about Anton. It isn’t a means to an end; he’s just putting Anton down and building himself up because he honestly thinks he is the better one between them. He straight up tells us this on the very next page:

There is no room for doubt here. No room for interpretation. This is the undeniable, indisputable text: BtK Bruce thinks that Anton is beneath him, and that he has surpassed any need for him moving forward.

Holy shit.

And I’m supposed to believe that Minhkhoa Khan goes out of the way to save his sorry ass after all that?

No. Absolutely not.

Let’s go back to Argentina.

After Bruce drops his line, Khoa immediately retaliates.

It’s so crucial that Bruce doesn’t defend himself here. He doesn’t dodge or block or counter the punch; he doesn’t fight back at all, because this isn’t a duel. He’s already dealt the killing blow.

“You’re sick. There’s a part of you that’s broken and you’re angry that it’s not broken in me.”

Why is this one line enough to stop Khoa from ever trying to change Bruce’s mind again? Why does he not give any argument against it, but instead simply demand that Bruce take it back?

Because this isn’t Bruce saying Khoa is evil or disgusting for being a psychopath. It’s not him comparing their abilities, disputing Khoa’s right to criticize him based on a difference in skill.

It is, as it has always been, about the two of them being the same. Equals, in everything they do, everything they are. Bruce is not calling Khoa deranged, he is calling him damaged. Something unfixable, faulty from the start. If it were a simple matter of Bruce being the “better” crime-fighter, then Khoa could practice, improve, and come back to prove Bruce wrong. But Bruce is talking about what Khoa can’t fix. He’s saying that they will never be on even ground, because Khoa is fundamentally broken where Bruce is whole.

This is devastating to Khoa. Bruce is someone he’s spent years upon years of his life trying to understand, trying to convince, because all he wanted was for them to stay together. Work together, and change the world. But Bruce is so determined to return to Gotham that he’ll tell the only person he’s ever met who “thinks like him” that they are unequal in a way that can never be changed.

Now compare that to this:

No fun.

That’s all. That is the substanceless substitute that Chip Zdarsky gives me for the dynamic I have never seen anywhere else in Batman media. The dynamic that compels me to no end, that I could expand upon and analyze forever because it is simply that unexplored in canon.

I wish it had been explored in Batman: the Knight. If only Bruce Wayne and Minhkhoa Khan had been in that comic…

In my next segment, I will go into the significance of Ghost-maker’s mask, and the exclusive privileges of seeing his face and especially knowing/using his name.

I’m at work rn so this is an unstructured stream of consciousness rant written between ringing up customers at the grocery store. Someday I will write a proper essay but not today. Anyway,

BATMAN INC DRIVES ME CRAZY BECAUSE KHOA IS ENTIRELY IN CHARACTER THE ENTIRE TIME AND YET THE COMIC ITSELF WAS A VEHICLE TO GET RID OF HIM!!!!!!

Brisson has such a clear understanding of Ghost-maker’s character and of Bruce and Khoa’s dynamic, and they used him to kick Khoa out of comics for the foreseeable future 🥹 it bums me out to no end. I would pay ungodly amounts of money to see a version of Batman: the Knight written by Brisson— I LOVE the flashback at the beginning of Batman Annual 2022, and Batman Annual 2022 as a whole.

There is no (PLOT/CHARACTER, as opposed to capitalist) reason that Batman Inc. should have been limited to 12 issues. It should have been way longer.

To start, I think we should have gotten serialized adventures of Khoa and the squad completing low stakes missions, where the point would be to show Khoa’s competence as a leader and the team’s gradual acceptance of him beyond just El Guacho and Gray Wolf. The overarching purpose of the comic should have been Khoa basically learning the power of friendship and seeing the merit in teamwork and the benefits of not working alone. Very very simple straightforward character development but INCREDIBLY necessary for Khoa’s lonely ass.

The Phantom 1 arc should have only happened after Khoa had been firmly established as the absolute correct choice to lead Batman Inc., and imo Phantom 1 should have needed to be killed by Bao to save Khoa’s life at the end. He’s an interesting character but the ultimate conclusion of his arc was something we already knew - that Khoa is dedicated to his promise to Bruce. I know he went on to be in Stormwatch or something but he just feels like a crazy loose end to have running around to me. He’s too closely linked to Ghost-maker to be reasonably developed completely independently of him. Regardless though, Khoa and Bao should have reached a begrudging truce that eventually develops into a mutual understanding where Bao genuinely trusts Khoa in a way that he simply cannot trust Bruce, due to Bruce’s rule.

Batman Inc. shouldn’t have gone to Gotham in the first place, but if they did, Bruce should have been there and Khoa should have been able to talk about his experiences with the team, giving some insight into his thoughts that he would neeever share with anybody else. I would have also liked him to be casually maskless around Bruce again - like he was in his face reveal in Batman #106 - bc Brisson fully understood the significance of Khoa’s name/face, and reinforcing Bruce’s privilege of knowing both would further highlight the difference in Khoa’s behavior when he’s with somebody who he completely trusts. If absolutely nothing else, the two of them should have had a private video call under the pretense of a mission report, where they’d banter with each other and Khoa would get to decompress. We never see him drop the Ghost-maker persona in Batman Inc; he’s always on edge. He should have gotten a break, and it should have been via ghostbat interactions.

THE JOKER INCORPORATED ARC SHOULD NOT HAVE HAPPENED. FULL STOP. It was engineered to be the perfect catalyst for Ghost-maker to voluntarily leave Batman Inc., and obviously it worked. But the entire premise hinges on Joker having a depth of understanding of Khoa that he could not realistically have. Joker treats Khoa as if he’s a former Rogue - like all the Batman villains knew him before he and Bruce reconciled. But the BATFAMILY didn’t even know about Khoa!!! Dick was the only one who was aware of his existence, and even he could only find information about Khoa’s crimefighting exploits, nothing to do with his motivations or personality. I hate when Joker is written as this kind of omniscient and omnipotent mastermind and I hate that Bruce wasn’t even present for Khoa’s decision to leave.

This is a conspiracy theory I guess but I think DC pushed Brisson to write Khoa (and Bao) out of mainline comics, and I think it was to further distance everything from the direction Tynion was trying to take Batman. Essentially eliminating all the new characters he introduced and resetting back to where Tom King left things at the end of City of Bane. We can see this with Zdarsky’s Batman run starting with him behaving as though Alfred has only just died, and still being hung up on Selina. I think they just wanted to return to the status quo and keep Bruce from developing in any meaningful way. And now we’ve got the Fraction run where Alfred is essentially still present and Damian is back to being 14. And I’m tired. I’m so tired of the same shit over and over again. I want Batman to go through meaningful change and I wish Ghost-maker had been allowed to continue being a supporter of that change.

Alas, post Batman Inc., I cannot see DC comics bringing Khoa back without another hard reset. I have no idea what it would do to his canon and I doubt that he would be characterized in accordance with Tynion’s vision, though. Sooooo I just sit here and I write my fanfiction.

Thanks for the ask! I’ll be posting the next segment of my BtK analysis asap 😁👍🏼 just have to y’know. Finish it. Which is what I will be working towards for the rest of my slacking off time this shift. Bellandeano and I are also completely rewriting BtK, so keep an eye out for that too ig. Issue #4 is already fully (re)written, it just has to be edited.

Bye!

Khoa’s POV!!!

It’s so crazy that all we have ever gotten - and will likely ever get - of Ghost-maker’s first person thoughts was him waxing poetic about his Catman thirst in DC Pride 2023:

As a Ghost-maker story, for the most part, I do like “The Dance” (aside from Thomas knowing Khoa’s name and, more nitpick-ily, Khoa letting him use one of his swords. It’s just way too much implicit trust that Thomas has absolutely not earned), but the narration feels very…scripted to me. Khoa’s mental lines don’t read as real-time reactions. They don’t function as a proper internal monologue. Rather than thinking to himself, he’s just giving a little speech to us, the audience. And that doesn’t result in any genuine insight into his thoughts.

I want Khoa’s proper perspective. I want to know what he’s thinking while he’s solving a case, or having a conversation, or just…bored out of his mind. I want a writer to really get in his head.

The closest I think we’ve gotten to a real stream of consciousness from Khoa is, a bit surprisingly, verbalized in the opening rant of Batman #102:

The cop is really, really funny for asking why Khoa’s saying all that shit, because like. He’s right. Khoa doesn’t have any good reason to be sharing his thoughts with a random civilian. He’s just feeling a lot of big emotions upon returning to Bruce’s city for the first time since Bruce went back (i.e. since Bruce chose Gotham over him), so he’s venting to some poor bastard he’s got tied up and unable to get away. These kinds of things are bound to happen when you never go to therapy.

But even once he’s reconciled with Bruce, we don’t really get any more of this from Khoa. The Ghost-maker backers, and subsequently Batman Annual 2021, tell us so much about who he is as a character, but they do so through other people, rather than through Khoa himself. Which…is the best way to have done it, given how reluctant Khoa is to be perceived. But I still want more.

I don’t think that a Ghost-maker solo run written by Tynion would include much, if any, internal monologue. He prefers implication. Ambiguity. Silent panels, dialogue with room for interpretation. Off the top of my head, the only non-expository internal monologue I can remember getting from his Bruce (in mainline Batman) was when he was being tortured by Scarecrow. Like here, in Batman #106:

But even that still reads like a conversation. For the most part, what we learn about Tynion’s Bruce comes from his own words.

I think the clearest insight Tynion gives us into Bruce’s thoughts is his hallucinated conversation with Alfred, in Batman #98:

While I dislike Joker War, I reeeaaaally like this sequence and just…how Tynion characterizes Bruce overall. I love an openly, unapologetically caring Batman - far more than I’ve ever vibed with a monosyllabic, “emotionless” Batman. I think Bruce is best developed/explored through his interactions with other characters, and I think the way that he and Khoa play off of each other works very naturally to reveal both of their truest selves. My ideal Ghost-maker solo run would heavily feature Bruce for exactly this reason; Khoa’s trust in him and his intimate knowledge of Khoa makes Bruce the most effective means of exposing and challenging Khoa to fit him more squarely in the role of a protagonist.

This, from Batman #105, is one of my favorite ghostbat scenes because of how clearly yet concisely it lays out their different-yet-ultimately-compatible viewpoints:

In my opinion, the best Ghost-maker solo run would put him in situations similar to this. Present him with conflicts that don’t serve to prove him right and/or to piss him off (cough cough Batman Inc.) but instead ones that challenge him to rethink his mindset!! I don’t just want to see Khoa’s perspective - I want to see Khoa’s perspective change. I want him to learn. To grow, make connections, develop his existing relationships further, and get a little more comfortable being a human being. And I want him to do it with Bruce at his side, because I love them and I miss them and if there’s one thing they’re good at, it’s pushing each other to be better.

Also I want to see Kimiko again. Or Else.

Yeah, this is presumably what you’re referring to, from the backer of Batman #107:

I definitely think Icon was made out of unacknowledged/subconscious loneliness on Khoa’s part, though only partially. Khoa loooooves a captivated audience of one, and as much as speaking with Icon is just talking to a program (albeit in a more legitimate, respectable way than Ghost-maker whipping out character.ai to brag about his latest mission. God fucking forbid), she provides insight that genuinely does challenge and inform him, as opposed to just telling him whatever he wants to hear. Her presence helps to fill the empty space left by Bruce - that is, it provides Khoa with someone (or. Thing. Hey girl I mean they) willing to disagree with him, who exists on a level where he’s willing to recognize that disagreement as worthy of his consideration. He won’t necessarily change his mind because of it, but he’ll at least give it a chance, because he knows that it is concern rooted in rationale as well as emotion.

But I believe an important distinction between her and a proper - however synthesized/approximated - Alfred figure in Khoa’s life, is that Icon was specifically programmed to be Ghost-maker’s inferior. I cannot imagine Khoa ever viewing her as his friend (or his family, like Alfred); she is his “assistant”, and that is an intentional, professional distance that reflects Khoa’s unwillingness to acknowledge how much he craves human connection. Alfred’s “If I may, sir-” is not the same as Icon’s “Ghost-maker, sir!” While neither of them view themselves as having enough sway over their respective nutjobs to keep them out of trouble, Alfred expects to be rejected the way a parent gets dismissed by a rebellious teenager, while Icon accepts being rejected the way a corporate underling weathers being shot down by an enigmatic boss.

For that reason, I don’t think Khoa programmed Icon to be his “caretaker”. He’s too emotionally constipated to admit that’s something he needs, much less something he wants. He prides himself on being hyper-competent and self sufficient, and while he allows Icon to assist him, he doesn’t consider himself as requiring her in remotely the same way that Bruce requires Alfred. She is a tool that he is entirely capable of working without. And she knows that.

Icon’s true purpose, in my opinion, is a little more of a meta one. It’s in line with this admittance by Khoa, in Batman #113:

Icon exists to further disprove the idea that Khoa’s ego is baseless or unearned. His psychopathy is not something he exclusively views as a strength; he doesn’t at all believe he is without weaknesses, which we know for a fact, because he willingly compensates for them! I think it’s an absolutely essential facet of his character, and yet another thing that is tangibly absent in Anton, whose pride is a weakness— something that Zdarsky doubled down on with his goofyass AU Khoa, Ghost-breaker. From Batman #134:

But I digress.