Because comics do exactly this sort of thing better than any other medium, and this sort of thing is at the heart of what makes Batman: Year One seminal.
“The television——still hasn’t hit the street——”
Here’s a sequence from this week’s Streets of Gotham written by Mike Benson and drawn by Dustin Nyugen, in which Batman tortures an innocent man to get some information:
(And yes, Frank Miller’s snappy line about rights from The Dark Knight Returns is a great bit of black comedy in the middle of a raucous satire. It is not a basis for How Batman Is.)
It’s important to note that the differences between that scene and this one are myriad: The Joker is an intelligent, cunning psychopath and Roland Davis is a bog-standard Gotham City heavy on which they have no evidence at all. Batman’s actions against The Joker are a last-ditch effort in The Dark Knight whereas torture is presented here as the first option. Gordon’s complicity in a warehouse interrogation in which a suspect is beaten is just as wildly out-of-character for him as Batman’s brutality against a man they’ve not even properly questioned is for the Dark Knight.
Maybe DC has something like this in its future, but that feels kind of doubtful right now.
(Also, yes, I know that’s Dick Grayson as Batman. The guy raised by Bruce Wayne is certainly going to follow in Bruce Wayne’s shoes when it comes to these things, isn’t he?)
While I really don’t care about the direct-to-DVD DC animated movies, the opening credits of Superman/Batman: Public Enemies are pretty gorgeous.
OK, here’s what I’ve been reading, with extremely brief notes.
1.
The new edition of Avengers Forever is a beautiful thing with larger trimsize giving Carlos Pacheco’s artwork the room it needs to really hit you. There’s a lot of cute throwaway details, but unless you’re a massive fan of The Avengers and excited about Kurt Busiek’s sometimes-too-neat superhero storytelling being wrapped around a near-incoherent plot involving time travel, Kang vs Immortus (who is also Kang) and something called the destiny force, I don’t actually recommend it.
2.
The praise I’d heard for Pluto: Urasawa x Tezuka is very justified. While the quick-and-dirty pitch is “Watchmen for Astro Boy,” Urasawa’s storytelling (which has grown by leaps since Monster, another series I’m catching up on) is nuanced and willing to let the reader work a bit and the emotional beats he hits are a bit stunning, especially considering how much of this work revolves around robots.
3.
Yotsuba&! #6 is likely the comic I’ve looked forward to the most this year, and yes, I know how creepy that makes me sound. Still, despite my inherent cynicism, there’s something so refreshingly irony-free about observing life with Yotsuba and I can’t help but get sucked in and laughing and worrying and cheering for her. It’s a bit like the Wachowskis’ Speed Racer that way — kid-friendly material that works on every level because it’s not aiming at anyone in particular.
4.
Boy, Philip Tan is not the artist I would have followed Frank Quitely with on Morrison’s Batman and Robin fourth issue. He certainly makes some game attempts to match Morrison’s scripting, but they come off as forced versus the effortless way that Quitely packs creatively-laid-out panels with detail and still manages to be readable. There’s a scene where a card is falling from the air and the camera tracks it into Batman’s hands and it lacked a certain kind of alchemy that Morrison manages to do with his best collaborators.
All of this aside, I absolutely love how these comics are scripted and how they play with conventions like titles and credits. It’s sort of the less-formalized version of All Star Superman and it makes each chapter’s inertia play out a certain way.
5.
I’m just going to presume Jeff Parker writes Agents Of Atlas for me and Chris Sims and the rest of you are lucky enough to be along for the ride. The latest issue has a terrific gag centering around a personality implant for M11 just identified as “The Greatest.” I won’t spoil it, but I’ll say it’s a perfect example of how to slip neat asides into your superhero comics without getting bogged down in the too-cute-oh-hey-here’s-a-meme syndrome that some writers fall into.
6.
You’re reading my new comic, right? OK, good.
I have looked on Wikipedia, scoured Google and even pawed through these strange objects called “library books” to find out if this is in any way, shape, form or fashion an authentic fact used to edify young minds who might be reading Batman Annual #3. It is not. Unless this story took place on Earth-2, then it’s totally OK because I got no idea what the hell Aborigines did with their headgear there.
1.
Seaguy: Slaves Of Mickey Eye #2 featured more of exactly what I like about the Seaguy universe: straight-faced surrealism that celebrates the superhero. I’ve heard people complain about the opacity of this work, but I figure they’re overthinking the whole thing. While symbolism is rife and Morrison’s scratching his usual meta-fiction itch, the story and events are presented in an extremely straightforward manner. Cameron Stewart’s art is, as usual, too good for mere words. I’ll just gesticulate for a while instead, making cooing sounds.
2.
One of the main reasons I love reading Jeff Parker’s Agents Of Atlas month to month is how it is that rarest of things: the single issue that feels like a proper dose of story. Combined with Parker’s whip-smart dialogue and way it effectively makes use of the Marvel Universe’s history without requiring a degree in Continuitology, this is easily my favorite ongoing Marvel title of the moment.
3.
I really did enjoy Fing Fang 4 Return, but that’s a comic that you were either already looking forward to or that you shoved aside in your haste to pick up whatever Marvel’s telling you is important this week, so there’s not much to add. It’s great that Langridge is getting so much well-deserved attention lately.
4.
The scene in which burglars are exiting police headquarters carrying the Batsignal is not the stupidest moment in the latest DC Comics Classics Library installment, The Batman Annuals, but it may be the funniest. I understand the rending of cloth that has accompanied the $40 price point on these, but if you’re paying that much you’re not much of a shopper, are you?
I am going to try to do these more often because I’ve totally sucked on the talking-about-shit-I’ve-read front.
1.
I bought the the first installment of the mangafied, not-your-Father’s-Wolverine book published by Del Rey, Prodigal Son, for a bit of a laugh but it turned out to be a pleasant surprise that was well-paced and engaging. Anthony Johnston’s script doesn’t break any new storytelling ground, but it hits every beat it’s supposed to just so while Wilson Tortosa’s art manages to capture fight scenes and talking head sequences equally well. I could quibble about too many speed lines, but I think that’d be me missing the point more than usual.
2.
Batman: Joker’s Asylum is just about worth the $10 it costs on Amazon. Every story is a little slice of Gotham City psychopathy, with Jason Aaron’s magnificently cruel Penguin story featuring pitch-perfect art by Jason Pearson, Andy Clarke’s art in the Two Face piece and Arvid Nelson’s tight little script for the Joker making up for missteps like the bland-as-hell Poison Ivy feature. I was also glad to see Juan Doe do some DC work and would not mind seeing a lot more.
3.
I’ve been reading A Drifting Life slowly over the past two weeks and it’s well worth savoring. I fell in love with Tatsumi’s work with Drawn and Quarterly’s reprint of The Push Man And Other Stories and am starting to think of him in the same terms as I do guys like Kurosawa and Kirby. His ability to dissect the mundane and pull back the veil of normality to show life’s underbelly has made me pause more than a once.
4.
Speaking of life, Paul Pope’s 100% is so full of it that I really didn’t want it to end. This series of interrelated stories is vividly realized and serves as a treatise on why the man is so revered with its sci-fi backdrop and organically-written characters that may be eclectic but never feel created. I’m normally fine with creators moving on from their works, but if Pope ever wanted to revisit his future New York, I wouldn’t complain.
5.
Oh, and it’s a couple of weeks old, but Birdie did a bangup review of the final issue of 100 Bullets that says everything I would have if I’d ever bothered to write more than just a couple of reviews for CBR, but all smart and stuff.
Thanks to Dave for reminding me about this.
Push #1
The writing team of Adam Freeman and Marc Bernardin do a passable job on Push, yet another Wildstorm tie-in comic, this time serving as a marketing leader on a movie that I didn’t even know was coming out. As a prequel, I have no idea how it relates to the source material, but as a comic on its own, it’s actually fairly well put together. Character bits buoy up the slightly-clichéd government-agency-with-hidden-motives plot and the visuals by new-to-me Spanish penciller Bruno Redondo (with inks from established erotic cartoonist Sergio Arino) has hints of several other artists whose work I’ve enjoyed while still hewing to what’s become a sort of house style for the DC imprint. Inoffensive and readable, but I forgot about it almost immediately.
Batman: Cacophony #1
Boy, Kevin Smith’s not a very good superhero comic book writer, is he? Characters chatter on and on; Batman’s wildly out-of-voice in his narration, which is saying something, considering how many interpretations of the character are out there and worst of all, there’s no reason to care unless you think Onomatopoeia was the great character find of 2002, as the execution leaves so much to be desired. Smith seems to be aiming squarely at the arrested development cases that ensured that Clerks 2 paid for itself: there’s a painfully extended anal sex joke and Batman calls Zsasz’s slaughter of two people an “unholy briss [sic]” because – get this – he used a scalpel! Even some nifty technobabble involving Deadshot’s costume and a Joker who somehow manages to recall the classic Englehart take on the character can’t save this sloppy mess that smacks of an inside joke (note artist Walt Flanagan‘s presence) that somehow went a bit too far up the editorial chain.
A quasi-sequel to The Dark Knight and existing in the sort of continuity-free area that it needs, the Joker graphic novel is much more successful than most of writer Brian Azzarello’s previous work with superheroes and a notch above his previous archvillain-related material with artist Lee Bermejo, Lex Luthor: Man of Steel. The script (thankfully) leaves behind a few of the quirks that defined his 100 Bullets (narrative counterpoints to the visual, oblique dialogue) and provides a relatively straightforward ground-level look at crime and inevitability in Gotham City through the eyes of a thug that’s aligned himself with a fresh-out-of-Arkham Joker.
This isn’t to say that the work is the least bit generic: Azzarello’s new takes on familiar villains such as Killer Croc and The Riddler are infused with his sensibilities, with Bermejo’s designs providing a level of grit and believability that will make the book accessible to readers both casual and indoctrinated. Engrossing and capable of eliciting genuine shock from a character that is commonly thought of as well and truly played out, Joker is highly recommended.
The book is due to hit shelves on October 29th, and Amazon has it available to pre-order for $13.59, a significant savings over the $20 retail price.
