Archive for July 29th, 2007

Batman is one of the oldest comic book superheroes to still reign at the top of Comic Book popularity. Nearly 80 years in the game, with innumerable writers and artists behind the cape and cowland possessing one of the most frightening and enthralling rogues’ gallery ever concieved (and their own home to boot: A haunted Asylum named Arkham) and to top it off: No superpowers whatsoever.

And as far as I’m concerned, Batman is the only Classic DC book worth reading.

Of course, that all depends on who’s at the helm. Batman in the 1960’s and 70’s was a campy joke. The Adam West TV series immortalized that foolish, goofball take on a man who was supposed to be The Dark Knight. Everything was bat-gadgets, and excessively complicated and hoky schemes to kill him, instead of just riddling him with bullets or chopping him into pieces when he’s unconscious. (Two-Face once tied him to the back of a giant coin that he flipped with a crane. And these are the people running the Gotham City criminal empire?)

In 1986, one man restablished Batman as the once and forever Dark Knight, and that man (a comic book legend in his own rite, rising in the world of film as well) was Frank Miller. In The Dark Knight Returns, Miller’s showed us his dark future in which a 50 year old Bruce Wayne, 10 years retired as Batman returns to the cape and cowl with a new, female Robin to take on the mutant-gang menace threatened his precious city.

I personally consider Frank Miller as the comic books master of violence. Real-world violence, the stuff that results in splatters of blood, bruises that swell with pus and shattered bones that never truly heal right. Decades ago he rose above the average serial scribe (a writer who’s locked in to a regular comic book serial) and produces works that are wholly his own. The most famous, mostly due to their green-screen Hollywood adaptations are Sin City and 300.

But in the spirit of Dark Knight Returns (and the heavily hyped, and thoroughly disappointing sequel: The Dark Knight Strikes Again) Miller has returned with one of the best modern Batman artists, the genius behind Batman: Hush Jim Lee, Miller has taken on All Star Batman & Robin, which is a much more complex retelling of the origin of Robin: The pre-teen circus star Dick Grayson of The Flying Graysons whose parents are murdered in a corruption scandal.

In expanding and evolving the Robin origin, Miller has incorporated other Batman characters (the original Batgirl, Vicki Vale, socialite reporter and early Bruce Wayne love interest, and other DC heroes who discuss what is to be “done” with this troublesome Batman who possesses no powers, but has the gall to put on a costume and fight crime!)

But what makes the irritatingly late-releasing All-Star Batman & Robin such a joy is that Miller, with his penchant for blood and bruises is that he sinks himself fully, trully into the most villainous edge to Batman’s nature.

His sadism. Batman is a sadist, and has no qualms about acting on that irrepressible need to cause pain and injury. This is the vow he made on the night his parents died: not to bring an end to the criminal element that took his parents lives, but to inflict unfathomable pain and anguish and crippling injury to those who choose it. In Miller’s newest take on the Big Bad Bat, he relishes, (not unlike a serial killer) in the rush of adrenaline and endorphins he gets in mangling would-be criminals:

“I took out a trio of woud-be RAPISTS and left them with enough broken-bone pain to last them a LIFETIME.”

“I fed a drooling mugger his teeth by the dozen. He’s probably still coughing them up.”

But the line that every Batman writer is forced to walk remains intact: Bruce Wayne, as Batman- never kills.

Perfect to compliment Miller’s true-to-spirit re-telling of a piece of Batman’s past is another one of the 6 great comic writer’s who I will worship and follow until the end of my days: Grant Morrison.

(Who are the other four? Mwah-hah-hah. . . wait and learn. . .)

Morrison is not quite in the same Pantheon as Frank Miller and another elder statesman of DC comics: Alan Moore (The Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing Joke) but he writes with maniacal predictions of a near apolcalyptic future, often leaping into a Dark New World and forcing his audience to pick up on the clues he drops a dozen-to-a-frame and get a general idea at the story arc’s he’s applied to a pre-existing universe that seemed positively sleepy before Morrison grabbed hold.

His last grand evolution (entendre intended) toward a comic book universe with its own epic mythos was his run on X-men from 2000-2003, changing the title to New X-men and making the book much, much darker and science-fiction-rich than the recent writers who made it nothing more than an endless soap opera with predictable plotlines. He concludes his run with one of his classic post-apocalypse visions title: Here Comes Tomorrow
Now Morrison is taking a thoroughly Batty (oh yes, intended) idea to the Batman Universe: SURPRISE! The Son of Batman! born to and raised by Talia, daughter of Ra’s Al Ghul, he is the perfect human being: trained from childhood to be a fighter and assassin and heir to Batman’s mantle. Morrison’s run on Batman (the book title is Batman, not Detective Comics, or any of the Batman offshoots, just: Batman) has just hit #666, and the end of civilization is rich in the air.

News reports talk of a record-breaking 123 degree weather with talk about a dirty bomb detonating in Mecca, and a health epidemic in China claiming 18 million lives. Bruce Wayne is dead and Damian Wayne has taken on the cape and cowl. Problem is, he’s not the only one out there who claims to have inherited the right to wear the pointy ears. Another Batman out there claims to be the Anti-Christ and has teamed up with the new scum of Arkham Asylum (who we learn only by names and images, no powers, no origins) to bring about death and destruction. (Big surprise.)

It’s a Dark new future with a new Dark Knight. And as Damian Wayne, the new Batman lets us know early, he struggles to live up to his father’s greatness. He fears no harbinger of the devil, he has met the devil before and gave his soul to him long ago. He tells this Ant-Christ Batman, as he breaks his neck:

“If your father wants me, tell him to come and get me.”

This new Batman kills.

It’s ballsy, to introduce a son-of-a-famous character as the new heir (It worked for Spider-Girl) but if anyone can do it, it’s Morrison.

I’m very excited to see what becomes of Damian Wayne: The Batman