Batman - Page Four
Batman: The Killing Joke 1988 (SC GN), 48 pgs.
Written by Alan Moore. Art by Brian Bolland.
Colours: John Higgins. Letters: Richard Starkings. Editor: Denny O'Neil.
Rating: * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 3
Mature Readers
The Joker, remembering how he was once a normal guy, driven insane by circumstances, sets out to prove it could happen to anyone. He cripples Barbara Gordon (the former Batgirl), and tries to drive her dad, Commissioner Gordon, insane with the crime. Batman eventually catches up with him.
I didn't much care for Batman: The Killing Joke, this definitely-not-for-kids story that most people revere. Firstly, it's not really a Batman story: not in the sense that Bats accomplishes much (he only finds the Joker because the Joker sends him an invitation!) or his character is explored or even that he has many lines. Essentially, it's the Joker's story.
The real problem, though, is that it's emotionally hollow. Alan Moore comes from the generation of writers (in movies, books, and comics) that equates "art" with brutality, where character and story are less important than "pushing the envelope". The Killing Joke is pretty icky...not to mention capable of being interpreted as misogynistic. The two female characters are just there to be brutalized to provide motivation for the male characters. This is particularly disturbing with Barbara Gordon, a long time DC character, whose emotional reaction to her own crippling is never even touched upon. Alan Moore (and co.) obviously consider her personal trauma irrelevant.
The story is awfully thin and never really delivers emotionally, or intellectually, and seem a little like a shaggy dog story in any event. I've never been that impressed with Moore's dialogue, but lines like "you whimpering little smear of slime" don't even warrant a comment. Alan Moore likes to play around with juxtaposition: words to images, images to images. But unlike, say, Frank Miller (at least, at the time), there's little emotional or thematic justification to them. A guy pulling the legs off his seafood dinner is juxtaposed with a doctor tugging on Barbara's paralysed legs. But what's the point, the subtext? At most it's a tasteless gag...and another indication of how Alan Moore and Brian Bolland feel about their female characters.
On the other hand, the story about the "two guys in a lunatic asylum" is memorable (though I'm not convinced it really meant anything).
Brian Bolland's art is O.K., but his "realist" figures can seem a little stiff, robbing the (overlong) action scenes of energy. And his Batman looks like just a guy in a cape...and about as intimidating as Adam West.
I would argue a better, emotionally richer (and better plotted) take on the Batman-Joker relationship, and the Joker's insanity, was J.M. DeMatteis and Joe Staton's "Going Sane" story line published a few years later in Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #65-68 (granted, writer DeMatteis had twice as many pages to play with). Definitely worth raiding the back issues bins for, if only to compare the two. It's reviewed in my They Ain't TPBs section.
I'm also a bit dismayed by the hypocrisy inherent in a comic like this. It was released as a graphic novel, with a "mature reader" warning, because it contains material inappropriate for a regular comic with its broader-based readership. Fine. Very responsible. Except...the story contains material (the crippling of Barbara Gordon) that has a direct impact on regular Batman comics, meaning, if you were a Bat-fan, you kind of had to buy it. In other words, DC comics protests and says, "Oh no, kids, this isn't for you" and then winks and says, "But if you want your collection to make sense...heh heh." Pretty sleazy. If a comic/graphic novel contains material inappropriate for younger readers, it should be self-contained, and not require younger readers to buy it. Others have been guilty of the same thing (DAREDEVIL: Love and War, for one) but the level of potentially "objectionable" material in Batman: The Killing Joke is so extreme, and the impact on continuity so major, it's the most blatant offender by far.
Original cover price: $4.50 CDN./$3.50 USA
Batman:
The Last Angel 1994 (SC GN) 96
pages
Written by Eric Lustbader. Pencils by Lee Moder. Inks
by Scott Hanna.
Colours: Lovern Kindzierski. Letters: Todd Klein. Editor: Dennis O'Neil,
Jordan B. Gorfinkel.
Rating: * * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 2
This is, I believe, the first graphic novel by suspense novelist Eric Lustbader (sometimes billed as Eric Van Lustbader). It's marketed as a Batman graphic novel, but it's equally a Catwoman story (in fact, at times, it's more a Catwoman story than it is Bats'). The plot has Catwoman out to steal a priceless Maya mask, and Batman out to stop her, both unaware that the mask has supernatural properties. It's rumoured that any who come in contact with it will be possessed by the soul of a high priest who, supposedly, destroyed the Maya civilization itself centuries before. All of this is being orchestrated by another Bat-foe, but that's a revelation later in the story, so I won't say any more.
On one hand, despite this being by a "real" novelist, there's nothing out of the ordinary. Lustbader doesn't bring any particular literary flare to the proceedings, or any edgy dialogue, or any penetrating insight into the Human Condition. And for a man who I remember as writing violent, sexually kinky thrillers, this remains fairly wholesome throughout (despite the occasional murder). Lustbader at times writes with a heavy handedness, with characters spelling out their motivations and concerns in obvious monologues, and with the story often portrayed in tight, almost too tight, scenes. Whether he's writing down to the medium, or whether this is his regular style, I can't say (it's been years since I read anything by him).
With that being said, The Last Angel's weaknesses are also its strengths. There's a kind of old fashioned, unpretentiousness to the story. It trundles along briskly and comfortably fills out its 90-some pages with enough action and twists and turns that you don't feel like there's any padding. As well, Lustbader does throw in character stuff, moreso than one might expect from another comicbook writer who might be so concerned with his style, and his "edge", that he forgets to tell a story. Lustbader sets up some character arcs with Batman and Catwoman so that when we reach the end, we feel as though we've gone somewhere emotionally, not just physically.
The story is seen by some as being almost an "Elseworlds" story (that is, apochryphal), since in some respects it plays fast and loose with Batman continuity. Catwoman has a new, striped costume and seems to have a telepathic rapport with a preternaturally intelligent leopard. As well, in her alter ego of Selina Kyle, she moves in the same High Society circles as does Batman's alter ego, Bruce Wayne, though both are ignorant of each other's secret IDs. As well, some have pointed to the fact that another recurring Bat-villain, Rupert Thorne (in a small part), seems to get killed. But looking over the scene again, there's a certain ambiguity as to whether Thorne is supposed to be dead or not (it's all in the visuals). In a sense, The Last Angel can be likened to a Batman movie in the way it doesn't stick religiously to the mythos...but it feels more truly a Batman story than any of the movies ever did. And in other ways, it's very much evocatve of the stories, including such stand bys as Batman being summoned by Commissioner Gordon via Bat-Signal, to Batman's investigative mix of analytical skill and skulking in the shadows.
When a writer from another medium is lured to comics, particularly for a one-shot deal, you can't help but wonder, is this a closet fan, or is he merely doing it for the money? Since Lustbader was one of many who contributed commemorative essays to Batman's 60th anniversary (published in the back pages of Detective Comics #598-600), I'm more inclined to lean toward a closet fan, discrepancies notwithstanding. The fact that he would even throw in Thorne (a fairly obscure foe, after all) implies some knowledge of the comics -- unless his DC editor just provided him with a list of character names he could use.
Lee Moder's art is appealingly bold and vital, with well rounded figures. Though he's a bit weak on the fight scenes -- a superhero artist who isn't so great at action! At the same time, it's conventional comicbook art and colour, nothing extraordinary as you might've expected DC to provide for their novelist writer. Moder's art, like Lustbader's script, also seems to veer in and out of regular continuity, with both his Catwoman and his Thorne not really looking like themselves -- Catwoman has brown hair, and that odd costume, and Thorne is bald and hulking. At the same time, his Batman and Commissioner Gordon are very much themselves.
This is hardly an essential read, suffering from a little too much brevity in scenes and characterization, but at least there is character stuff. Ultimately, it's a fairly fun, entertaining read and, with its large page count and accompanying plot twists, provides a satisfying adventure -- like coming across a (good) Batman moovie.
Cover price: $17.95 CDN./ $12.95 USA.
Batman: A Lonely Place of Dying 1990 (SC TPB) 120 pgs.
Written
by Marv Wolfman (co-plotter George Perez). Pencils by Jim Aparo, Tom Grummett
(layouts by Perez). Inks by Mike DeCarlo, Bob McLeod.
Colours: Adrienne Roy. Letters: John Constanza. Editors: Denny O'Neil,
Mike Carlin, Jonathan Peterson, Dan Raspler.
Reprinting: Batman #440-442, The New Titans #60-61
Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 1
This collects the storyline that introduced Tim Drake, the third character to adopt the identity of Robin. The story has Batman playing cat-and-mouse with one of his arch foes (I won't say who, since that's played as a mystery for the first chapter), while Nightwing (Dick Grayson...the original Robin) is summoned to help his old mentor by an enigmatic, precocious boy, Timothy Drake, who feels Batman hasn't been up to fighting the good fight since the death of Robin II (Jason Todd).
The story starts out well. It's moody, with a couple of shadowy figures plotting various, unknown schemes. But very quickly who the players are, and what they're variously up to, is revealed. The main adventure plot, with Batman's foe plotting to kill him, is, well, pretty lame. I mean, whatever happened to the idea of a villain with some grand scheme that only coincidentally involved the hero? It leaves little room for the sense of a plot unfolding, or for twists and surprises to arise. On the other hand, though it opens with Batman tackling a murderer, overall it's surprisingly tame. No one gets killed, allowing the death traps and machinations to have a kind of old school charm.
Marv Wolfman's writing is uneven, but sometimes genuinely effective: a chapter of Dick returning to his boyhood circus is oddly engrossing as a human drama. But it loses it with the introduction of a crime plot line because, like the main plot, the crime story is trite and dull. Wolfman (and co-plotter George Perez) really haven't strained themselves in the plot department. Also, curiously, Batman is a less-realized character than Dick, or Alfred, or even Tim. (The presence of the Teen Titans is basically in some extended cameos).
The Jim Aparo/Mike DeCarlo pairing is better than I expected given other Batman issues I'd read from that period (the same is true of Wolfman who had turned in some pretty mediocre stories around that time). Aparo's art isn't as tight as in his heyday in the '70s, but he still has an eye for composition that's hard to beat. The Perez/Grummett/McLeod team was less effective, but O.K.
And then there's Tim. I had troubled entirely getting behind Tim because he seemed a little too contrived. In the lexicon of fan fiction (specifically Star Trek fan fiction) Tim is a Mary Jane character -- someone too much intended to represennt the fans. Robin had always been acknowledged as an attempt to give the younger readers someone to identify with, but Wolfman and co. have taken that to the nth degree. Tim shows up out of the blue, knowing the intimacies of our heroes trials and tribs, acknowledges Batman and Robin are his heroes, and spouts dialogue no doubt lifted verbatim from the letters pages about how Batman needs a Robin.
Maybe if I was younger, or in a less cynical mood, I might have taken to the conceit of such a character, but all it did was distance me, as if Marv Wolfman had written himself into the story to save the day.
Bat-fans who missed it the first time around might be eager to pick up this repackaging of Robin III's origin...but, as an origin, it's kind of weak. By the end of the storyline, you know little about Tim (stuff presumably explored in later issues) and his intrusion into the story is, as I said, less organic, less of a developed introduction than had been, for instance, the original, pre-Crisis Jason Todd's, whose story unfolded over a number of issues of Batman and Detective (the "new", post-Crisis Jason's origin was pretty lame).
There's also an ethical problem, if taken too seriously. The idea of Batman having a juvenile sidekick, given the sort of nasty foes he tackles, has always been problematic. But here it's put squarely on the basis that Batman needs Robin, Batman needs a partner. To say the adult's needs supersede his responsibility to protect a minor from a dangerous lifestyle is...disquieting. But, as I said, that's if you take it too literally, which you probably shouldn't.
Ultimately, A Lonely Place of Dying, is enjoyable, though not the great drama the intention (or the pretentious title) promises. It's a bit long, a bit thin, but harmless fun and certainly worth the modest cover price of the TPB (it's printed, I assume, on newsprint paper).
It was first published as a crossover between the regular format Batman and the almost twice-as-expensive New Titans -- one of those mercenary moves that ledd so many to grow cynical about the business side of comics.
This is a review of the stories originally serialized in DC Comics comic books.
Cover price: $4.95 CDN./$3.95 USA.
Batman: The Long Halloween 1998 (HC and SC TPB) 376 pages
Written by Jeph Loeb. Art by Time Sale.
Colours: Gregory Wright. Letters: Richard Starkings & Comicraft. Editor: Archie Goodwin.
Reprinting: Batman: The Long Halloween 1-13 (1996-1997)
Rating: * * 1/2 (out of 5)
Number of readings: 2
Additional notes: intro by Loeb; behind-the-scenes notes, including outlines for "lost" scenes.
I posted this review after a first reading and, now, having read it twice, I've left the original review (more or less) as it was, but added a post-script at the end of the review.
Set early in Batman's career, this chronicles a year-long case as a killer dubbed Holiday strikes once a month, killing assorted mobsters on various holidays. Batman, Captain Jim Gordon, and DA Harvey Dent (who will become Two-Face) work to figure out who the killer is, with suspects ranging from chief mobster, Carmine "The Roman" Falcone, to Dent himself. Along the way, Batman has a flirtatious relationship with Catwoman, and various others in his rogues gallery crop up.
The Long Halloween is a highly regarded Batman saga which helped establish Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale as an IT pairing in comicdom. Mixing brooding psychological insight, with film noire archetypes of gangsters, plus various super villains, while also re-telling the tragic origin of Two-Face, The Long Halloween is regarded as something of a modern classic.
If only it were so.
In my review of Loeb's much later Batman: Hush (which I review here), I comment that it's kind of stupid, but fun on its own level. Not having read The Long Halloween first, I didn't realize how similar the two epics were in style and structure. Maybe because I read Hush first, I actually found I liked the Long Halloween less.
Why mince words? The Long Halloween is a thinly plotted, occasionally illogical, exercise in style over substance, where even the "characterization" is wanting. Stranger still, it's a mystery which, like with Hush, doesn't make a whole lot of sense, offers almost no clues, and which, when resolved, leaves you more puzzled than you were to begin with.
It's a "mystery" in which Batman and his colleagues seem to do almost no actual investigating -- there are no clues to be sifted, no alibis to be verified. Mid-way through the series the characters recap what they know -- and you realize there's been almost no progression since the first issue! As well, Loeb just seems to pick things up and drop them willy nilly. The Riddler appears in an issue and sees something, then disappears from the story. Next to nothing is said about him for the next few issues, until Batman suddenly tracks him down in a bar, determined he saw something relevant. Huh? If the Riddler had a relevant clue, why didn't Batman track him down earlier -- why wait 4 chapters (and, in Batman's time, four whole months!) before pursuing the matter? Worse...the Riddler doesn't offer much that was relevant -- save a cryptic line that, perhaps, Loeb saw as a clue. But in order for it to work, we need to believe in it, we need to understand how the Riddler knew -- or inferred -- what he knew. There's another sequence -- irrelevant to the main case -- where the Roman hires some super villains to knock over a bank and Batman instantly concludes the Roman is behind it -- but why?
Another example of illogical plotting is a sub-plot wherein Harvey Dent suspects Bruce Wayne is connected to the Roman, and pursues it to the point where Bruce is actually arrested and put on trial -- except it's never explained with what "crime" Bruce is being charged! It's preposterous!!! Of course, comics writers have long been notorious for their inability to understand the law. (And, as if Loeb himself realized it made no sense, after threading it through a number of issues, he drops it with just a single line!)
When you get to the end of the saga, I'll admit Loeb surprised me a little bit...but partly that's because Loeb, well, cheats. It's impossible to anticipate who Holiday is because even by the end it's unclear. In the final chapter, no less than three people are identified as Holiday, and it's unclear if one or more is lying, or which murders the various Holidays committed -- since even the confessions require the confessors to infer things of which they have no direct knowledge. Though maybe that was deliberate, as Loeb and Sale did a sequel mini-series, Dark Victory, and so maybe they wanted a deliberately vague ending.
If some of this sounds familiar, it's because Loeb pulled something similar in Hush. In fact, Loeb even uses a similar red herring to throw us off one of the alleged killers.
Loeb also fails to realize his reality -- which is a Gotham almost completely under the thumb of the Roman. Maybe because this was intended as a sequel to Batman: Year One, Loeb felt he didn't need to re-establish that premise. But here we see the Roman involved in very little criminal activity, making the heroes' driving obsession with bringing him down without context. In fact it's ironic that the story is meant to follow on the heels of Batman: Year One (in which the Roman was introduced), yet in other ways doesn't gel with it -- in Year One, Selina Kyle (Catwoman) was a prostitute, here she's a society debutante; in Year One, Gotham was rife with police corruption, here, there's barely a hint of that.
And as for character? Well, there's not a lot. Batman isn't a man -- a complex, three dimensional human -- in a bat suit, he's "Batman", a grim super hero, with about as many character nuances as a brick. Likewise, Jim Gordon is pretty thinly drawn, as are the mobsters (mobster Maroni's motivation is particularly inconsistent). I sort of liked Loeb's take on Catwoman as more a playful, happy-go-lucky figure (though I'm not sure that gels with the usual take on her), but even her motivation seems muddy as Batman frequently asks why she's doing what she's doing or whose side is she on and she responds with some coyly ambiguous quip. I've like Loeb's dialogue before (moreso than his plotting which is often thin and illogical) but here, some of the lines are meant to be heavy on portentousness, as the dialogue is driven by the themes and scenes, not by the characters. In fact, occasionally Loeb throws in lines that frequently hint at something to come...that never does come.
Which leaves Harvey Dent, who's transformation into Two-Face is re-told here. And even he isn't particularly well defined. He's supposed to be obsessively determined to end crime, but we get no insight into why, what drives him, nor is it even consistent (in one scene, an aide comes to him with information, and Harvey brushes him off, saying it'll wait until morning...not quite the actions of a man driving himself to the edge with his obsessive crime busting, is it?) Loeb even ignores dramatizing key scenes...like the moment Harvey starts using his coin to make decisions.
Just a few years before this, Two-Face's origin was re-imagined by Andrew Helfer in Batman Annual #14. Re-reading it recently it's a much better, much smarter, much more character driven, much more plausible story than this 360 page leviathan.
Considering the art in The Long Halloween: I've liked Sale's work before, with his eclectic use of heavy shadow, and his somewhat cartoony figures that are nonetheless vivid and expressive. And it is frequently striking and effective. But Sale loves to indulge in big panels -- frequent splash pages or two page spreads -- of Batman or Catwoman flying through the air. And, you know what? He probably shouldn't. Because I'm not sure Sale really has a firm enough grasp of anatomy to indulge in such extravagances, as his limbs can kind of seem awkward, and he crams in muscle lines that I'm not sure conform to any actual human muscle.
Of course Sale's indulgence in big panels, and Loeb's tendency to write minimally, often with just a few words per panel, results in a book that reads a lot quicker than it should. In fact, in some reviews of the series, fans gushed about how fast it flew by. Well, duh!
I haven't even commented on Loeb's tendency to throw in super villains (as in Hush) but without bothering to really write plots for them. They crop up, Batman beats them up. Period. Nor have I mentioned how Loeb likes to borrow ideas from other sources -- such as a Godfather-like opening at a mob wedding, to Batman consulting an incarcerated Calendar Man for insight into the killer ala Silence of the Lambs (though when did the Calendar Man, who I thought was just a second string villain, became yet another sinister psychopath?).
As I mentioned near the beginning of this, many of these flaws were inherent in Hush, but I still kind of liked Hush. And having conducted a (written) interview with Loeb (here) I'm reluctant to be too harsh (it's hard to diss a comic when the writer is more than just a name on a page, but an actual person). Oh, sure, I know I can be harsh after just one reading, and a second reading might soften my opinion. But when the mystery plot is thin and illogical, when the super hero adventures are barely more than occasional fight scenes, and when the characters seem poorly defined and developed, I don't know what to say.
There are some comics where I'll review it by saying it makes me glad I still read comics...unfortunately, The Long Halloween -- precisely because it's so well regarded by "serious" comics fans (even spawning the sequel, Batman: Dark Victory) and is considered the peak to which the medium should aspire -- actually makes me wonder why I still bother with comics. Ouch. Now that's harsh.
Okay: reassessment-after-a-second-reading time: As often happens, my initial snide passion has defused somewhat. This time I read it almost entirely in one day -- which on one hand, is a compliment to it, on the other hand, reinforces my point about how the big panels and frugality of words makes it a quick read, when you can breeze through a 360 page comic in just a few hours! Little of my above criticisms have changed -- some were even reinforced (even knowing the "solution", I didn't find much in the way of hidden clues or character nuances I missed the first time) -- but, as I did with Hush, if I take it as just a big, dumb, comic book extravaganza where the emphasis is more on the opulent visuals and moody colours, rather than as some serious whodunnit? or profound human drama, it can be more enjoyable. I've given it an extra half star rating and, who knows, maybe after a third or fourth reading I'll boost it again. But it remains frustratingly vapid and insubstantial.
Still, I can always re-read Batman Annual #14.
Cover price: $30.95 CDN./ $19.95 USA.
Batman: Masque
see review in Batman Elseworlds
section
Batman:
Mr. Freeze 1997 (SC GN) 48 pgs.
Written by Paul Dini. Drawn by Mark Buckingham. Inks by
Wayne Faucher.
Colours: Linda Medley. Letters: John Constanza. Editors: Scott Peterson,
Denny O'Neil.
Rating: * * * (out of 5)
Number of readings: 1
Mr. Freeze goes on a rampage through Gotham, icing everyone in his path, while reminiscing on his origin. Batman, eventually, comes after him.
With each of the Batman motion pictures (except the first, I believe), DC Comics has tried to cash in by releasing one-shot specials starring a villain featured in the then-current cinematic spectacular. With the fourth Batman feature came Batman: Poison Ivy, Batman: Bane and Batman: Mr. Freeze.
I had been curious about whether these books were real Batman adventures or, as the titles and covers implied, strictly about the villain. In the case of Batman: Mr. Freeze, Bats does appear at the beginning and end, but more as a physical presence than a character. Ultimately the story belongs to Mr. Freeze -- what there is of a story, that is. The modern sequence is just an excuse for the villain's flashbacks and the final Act fisticuffs, nothing more. In that sense, Batman: Mr. Freeze is structurally reminiscent of The Killing Joke (though minus the mature readers trappings).
The writing by Paul Dini (best known for his work on the critically acclaimed, adult-friendly Batman cartoon series) is O.K. Artist Mark Buckingham belongs to the modern school of comic book artists, with a style that leans towards too cartoony, but it was O.K. (though his Kelly Jones inspired Batman, with bunny rabbit ears that bend and fold depending on Bats' mood, leaves much to be desired). The colouring was O.K., the inking and the lettering, too. Everything was O.K... nothing more.
Since a big chunk of the story relates Mr. Freeze's origin, it'll probably be more effective if you were unfamiliar with it to begin with. Myself, I was curious to read the modern interpretation of the character (having only ever read a Mr. Freeze story from decades ago) since in both the recent animated series and the live-action motion picture, Freeze was portrayed as a more complex, poignant figure than I remembered (don't get me wrong, the motion picture still sucked, but at least there was some heart). The modern comic version, though similar, has one major change (at least in this story): in the comics, Freeze's wife is dead, not in cryogenic suspension, robbing him of any motive except blind revenge. Meaning -- and who would've thought it? -- the HHollywood version is actually a little more interesting, a little more ambivalent than the comic version.
Like a number of graphic novels on this site, I got this for cheaper than the cover price, which might influence my opinion. Batman: Mr. Freeze is nothing special -- an attempt to cash in on the motion picture, more than an artistic statement, but a moderately entertaining read for all of that. Still, it's probably best if you can find it on sale.
Cover price: $6.95 CDN./$4.95 USA
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