Talia asks at the beginning of this comic "Why won't he stop?" This, fundamentally, betrays her utter lack of understanding of what it it that drives Bruce Wayne to dress as a bat (or become one, as is the case with this issue) and fight not just crime, but despair and hopelessness. In the simpler world of the superhero comic, individuals can not just figuratively, but literally, evolve into figures of myth, into creatures capable of the most superhuman of actions, regardless of powers and circumstance. Much of the time this is misunderstood as adolescent power fantasy, and, to be honest, this movement grows in some regards from the utilization of the medium as just such an outlet. But somewhere along the line, writers and artists realized that they could do away with the power fantasies and instead use these larger than life figures to demonstrate how our mythologies take stories and turn them into legends. Our job, as readers of and believers in such myths, is to recognize the simplicity of the fictional realm and to understand it as metaphoric representation of the struggles and triumphs that we experience in our own lives.
Also, the Fatherless, the Damian Wayne clone who kills his "brother," is just one of the creepiest and most off-putting Bat-villains I've come across. The moment where his helmet is shattered, as we see the face of this 11 year old boy not understanding what's happening to him, is chilling.
And then Talia blows things up, kills the Fatherless, and descends into the Bat Cave for a final confrontation. Onward.
No comments:
Post a Comment