The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 536: Batman Incorporated #13, September 2013

Apologies again. Read this, will blog tomorrow - and I'll do yesterday's comic. A busy couple of days getting back into the Calgary swing of things.

That cover really says it all, doesn't it? The constant repetition, refraction, eternity of the Bat myth, not just in the context of the shared fictional universe, but in our own fictional universe. Bruce and Talia battle as the remaining members of Batman Incorporated defuse a series of bombs designed to destabilize completely the world, leaving the League of Assassins in control. Though the banner at the top of the cover reads "The Epic Conclusion!", in the best tradition of comics, Morrison leaves openings for those who will inevitably follow him. The revelation of Kathy Kane's role in Spyral is interesting, and hints at a larger universe unfolding, one that could have been very cool if DC hadn't cleaved to Geoff Johns', and only Geoff Johns', version of the New 52. Putting a single person in charge of that sort of things seems to me to be a terrible idea. The universe is chronicled jointly. Surely the direction of the meta-narrative should be done in just such a way as well.

I'm happy to leave the story here. Bruce returns to his roots, so to speak, doling out justice to the evil-doers of Gotham. This entire run has been about him dealing with a mistake made years ago, in the arms of Talia al Ghul.  Damian is, of course, not dead for very long. And this is as it should be. Morrison's addition of Damian Wayne to the Bat-Family is one of the great additions (along with Rucka's Batwoman) of the last few decades. Though Batman continues, and, likely, always will, these fresh infusions into the mythos allow new vantage points and new story possibilities, which in turn leads to new interpretive possibilities.

We will, briefly, return to the world of Batman Incorporated at a later date. Chris Burnham takes over writing duties on issue #11 of volume 2, telling a lovely little story of the Batman of Japan. And there's an anthology-style one-shot featuring members of the extended team that, having now finished this run, I'm curious to have a look at. But, tomorrow, we'll move on to, in the immortal words of John Cleese, "something completely different." Thanks for tagging along on my Bat-read. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 535: Batman Incorporated #12, August 2013

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.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 533: Batman Incorporated #10, June 2013

What seems like lifetimes ago, we saw what happened when Bruce Wayne was, unwillingly, stripped out of Batman: the Batman of Zur-En-Arrh, a back-up personality created to deal with a dire situation and reinstall, so to speak, Bruce's personality. What we see in this issue is something quite different. There is a remarkable calm over Bruce in this issue, in his recruitments and business dealings at Wayne Enterprises (BTW, Lucius Fox plays the "I don't know you're Batman" role so frickin' well). Considering the last page of the last issue, the scream that we did not need to hear in the depths of the Bat Cave, we could almost be forgiven for thinking that this icy persona is another iteration of Batman without Bruce. But it's not. Bruce Wayne is, at heart, a strategist, and he understands that, before he does what he's about to do, before he's incapable of planning for contingencies, he has to place everything in play. And then he chooses to remove Bruce Wayne from the equation, and, truly, become a bat, thanks to the Man-Bat serum of Kirk Langstrom. That cover up there? Not hyperbolic or metaphoric. It's literal. As Talia sees him soaring vengefully toward her, she utters the words "He wouldn't." He has done what she thinks he never would, and removed the strategist, removed the thinking part of the World's Greatest Detective. The Batman of Zur-En-Arrh was Batman the detective. What we see at the end of this issue is Batman the monster.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 532: Batman Incorporated #9, May 2013

Short one today. I'm on holiday, and there's much to do.

A sad comic. And Bruce gives Alfred a chilly reception, which makes you realize just how dire things are. Truly a requiem comic, in that the action that happens is secondary. This is about the devastating aftermath of Leviathan's strike.

But now it's time for Batman to strike back.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 531: Batman Incorporated #8, April 2013

I've been dreading this issue.

I didn't like Damian in the beginning. It was like reading a little tiny Wolverine, and I've never really liked the character of Wolverine. But somewhere along the way, he became a human being, albeit a sometimes annoying one. Like any 11-year old, I suppose.

There's a beautiful sequence in this comic where Damian and Dick are about to leap over a wall and into the fray. Damian calls him "Richard," and tells him that no matter what anyone says, they were the best. I think I've been saying that all along, too.

This was a touching comic. In the middle of what Nightwing describes as a warzone, there are some really human moments of connection. But if the cover up there didn't give it away, this issue ends in tragedy. We saw in Bruce's own "R.I.P." story line what happened when the Bruce side of things is stripped out of the Batman. For the next four issues, we'll see what happens when all of the rage of Bruce Wayne is channeled through this atavistic persona he adopts. It's going to be brutal and awful.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 530: Batman Incorporated #7, March 2013

I wanna read the next issue! I wanna read the next issue!

We start this volume of Batman Incorporated at the end, and then flash back to a month earlier, and the series really does move quickly enough that you believe this is all happening in a remarkably short period of time. It makes sense. Having had the build up for the last few years, once Talia's plan kicks into gear, it kicks in hard, leaving little chance for our heroes to catch their breath and figure things out.

The titular character actually only appears on two pages of this issue, the rest being dedicated to the Bat-team scrambling to get control of the situation. There's a nice bit of the three Robins (Dick, Jason, Tim), and Dick taking charge, as he really ought to be, and a really lovely interaction between Alfred and Damian that reminds us, yet again, of the integral role the faithful butler plays in this tale of superheroes and villains.

The Knight is dead, which is tragic, and though brief, the treatment we see of it, of Squire's reaction, is moving. Superhero comics are often deceptive in their attempts at tragedy, because we know, even if a character is killed off, that the status quo will remain, that, more often than not, the character will return from the dead. But this series is doing a really nice job of making it seem like things might actually fall apart, that the heroes might not win. And The Knight's death makes that feeling all the more palpable. The Hood's betrayal, though perhaps inevitable, was one I'd forgotten. I kind of hoped he'd made the change of allegiances to Batman, Inc., but I guess not. We'll see how that plays out in the next few issues. What gets me is that there's 5 issues left, and I think that they're going to depict probably an hour or so of action. It makes leaving a day between reads hard because the pace is break-neck and exciting. Once I'm done with this title, and with Morrison's Bat-Opus, I think I'm going to have to find some single-issue comics to read, just to get my equilibrium back. But this is the joy of the superhero comic, right? A really well-told story can throw off your equilibrium like this, it can insert itself into your life and inform your day. Especially when you have to wait a month (or two) between issues. At least I just have to suffer with Bruce trapped in a safe at the bottom of a swimming pool for 24 hours. Do you think he can hold his breath that long?

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 529: Batman Incorporated #6, February 2013

I've noted before that there's an interesting scopic arc to Morrison's run on the Bat-titles, and with the metaphor of the spi(y)ral firmly in place, things circle and circle and circle to the focal point, the young man standing between his parents in that picture up above. In a lot of ways, Morrison's story has never been about any of the primary characters we've come to know over the last almost-century, but about Damian Wayne, and our understanding of him as not only a character in this story, but a cipher for those of us who grow up reading comics and idolizing not only the heroes, but the villains too. While we may not always want to be the Joker in the same way we might want to be Batman or Superman, we acknowledge the coolness of those characters. But then we see the disparity that has to happen with our heroes, that their calling automatically makes them have to think more broadly about human kind. Much as Batman might care about us (or about Damian), the choice Talia forces him into, the truth she broadcasts to the Bat-sons in the cave (and it's no mistake that it is all the Robins gathered and listening) is that, in the end, Bruce will always choose the needs of the many over the needs of the one, even if that one is his son. But Damian is an 11 year old boy who needs his father in a way that Dick, Jason, and Tim don't. Talia shows him that the love that his father feels has always to be subordinate to the mission. And she's showing this to Bruce, too, revealing to him a truth that he may not have openly acknowledged himself. To show someone for whom family has been the defining feature of his life that, really, family comes second. Talia's evil. Remember when I was asking if we should be feeling pity for her? I think I've got my answer.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 528: Batman Incorporated #5, January 2013

I'm having trouble blogging this morning, because my Mum won't stop talking to me. Which is kind of lovely.

We finally see the vision of Gotham's future that has driven Bruce to create Batman, Inc. And the heartbreaking decision he has to make. Everything, everything,  he has done is to stop both Gotham and his son from self-destructing. For the man who lost his parents, a loss that has driven everything he's ever done, to have to give up his son is devastating. It's a testament to how well Talia knows him that she knows this is how she can break him.

I've loved seeing the Damian Batman in the little bits and pieces we've been given. He's a conflicted character in ways that his father is not, and compelling all on his own. But his story is told, and this is the brilliance of it - rather than the typical possible future that we see in comics much of the time, this possible future has a finitude to it, enticing and exciting as it may be. It cannot come to pass, or Batman's mission, everything he's ever worked for, is for nothing.

And so he returns Damian to his mother.

This was definitely one of those comics that I finished and wanted to pick up the rest of the series and read it immediately. Damn.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 527: Batman Incorporated #4, December 2012

There's a great moment in this comic where Matches Malone pulls a plastic bag off his head and proclaims that he has just set a new world record for holding his breath. I have to read this as a little tiny jab at the interruption of the zero issue from yesterday. Funny guy, that Malone.

As I near the end of the Batman run, I'm getting less and less enthusiastic about reading each comic. It's not because I'm tired of them, or because they're not good. It's because they're so good, because I love these characters so much, that I just don't want it to end. Which is an odd thing to say about superheroes and their..ongoingness. But as Morrison's run winds down, this particular version of Batman and his allies is about to end, to shift into something else. As I've suggested, the Batman Incorporated run in the New 52 is really a final holdover from the pre-Flashpoint universe, one for which I have a great deal of affection. I'll admit, up front, that I haven't looked into any of the "Rebirth" stuff yet, but that's because I've been so let down by DC's treatment of its various properties across most of its media (with the exception of the TV universe, which I love). I've been told that the "Rebirth" stuff is good, but I just haven't taken the plunge yet. There's a lot of comics I'm following that haven't taken a 5 year hiatus on being good that have far more of my attention than DC does right now.

At the end of this issue, there is a truly heartfelt moment. Bruce tells Damian that in order to stop Talia's mad rampage across the globe, he will have to return to his mother. "Son, I wish it wasn't true.." he says, and if I'm not mistaken this is the first time we've heard Bruce call Damian "son." It's a single moment in a 7-year opus, a single word in a comic full of many different kinds of language, but it's a word that says so much in three little letters. How much does Bruce miss his own father calling him "son?" To use that word himself encompasses in this character a remarkable range of joy and sorrow, and tells us, really, everything we'll ever need to know about Batman.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 526: Batman Incorporated #0, November 2012

The cynic in me would say that 1 year later, DC decided to do these zero issues to try to fix some of the clusterfuck of continuity errors and questions that came out of the New 52, or that they'd planned only a year in advance, and had no idea what to do next.

But let's put the cynic away for today. Batman Incorporated #0 is really cool. The characters who have been introduced in this global undertaking over the last few years are great characters. I'd read an El Gaucho comic all day. And I've already waxed lyrical about Knight and Squire (and Beryl's hologramatic appearance in this issue is great). I'm desperately curious about France's Nightrunner, enough so that I'm going to have to track down the Batman Incorporated special that I avoided at the time because it wasn't Morrison-penned, and because it was part of the New 52.

Last night I was fortunate enough to find a copy of the Chris Burnham-penned BI #11, and I really enjoyed the story about the Batman of Japan. Burnham plots today's comic, with dialogue by Morrison, and art by Frazer Irving, so it's a really great example of the collaborative nature of comics. We get a wonderful look at how Bruce went about recruiting, who was willing right off the bat and who took some convincing. We also get our first (and only?) look, at least in this title, at the Batman of Russia who, predictably, looks like a cross between a robot, a bat, and a bear. Let's see some more of him in the future please. Although this issue was published during the second volume of the series, it fits nicely just before Batman: The Return, and Bruce's public unveiling of the brand. Maybe next time through, that's where I'll put it.

(Next time through? Let's wait a decade or so, shall we?)

Anyway, a nice break, a nice reminder of the optimism that accompanies the founding of Batman Incorporated, before Talia's plans come to light, before the darkness that we're about to witness. These are four year old comics. You know what's coming, right?

Oh. You don't. Uh-oh.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 525: Batman Incorporated #3, September 2012

We've had only a few instances of Bruce demonstrating his propensity for disguise, but I think probably his most beloved alter ego must be Matches Malone. The reason for this is that he's just about the most developed character that the Bat has created. Now, if I want to jump into theoretical realms, we're reading a fiction about a created character who has created a character that he has brought out of fiction and into his "real" world, which, of course, is still fiction.

But enough of that.

As I noted yesterday, there's 10 issues or so left, and we can see the concurrent traps and webs of both Bruce and Talia closing and closing. Bruce tries to gather intelligence in his Matches guise, but first we're shown a brief glimpse of how Leviathan, aka Talia, has infiltrated various levels, and, really, all levels, of Gotham society. I'm finding it interesting that she's targeting children specifically as her pawns in the game, which makes me realize more and more that this whole thing could really be put down not just to a woman spurned by her lover, as I suggested yesterday, but to a mother spurned by her child. Talia just takes a more proactive stance on dealing with these rejections than most.

And why don't I rave about Chris Burnham's art for a bit? In the beginning, I saw him as aping Quitely just a little bit too much, until I realized that FQ is so good at what he does that he's inspired a wave of artists to take in his style and create their own styles out of it. Burham's characters are more robust than Quitely's. A Frank Quitely-drawn comic features numerous willowy characters, looking both fragile and steely all at once. Burnham's characters are firmly rooted - they have girth and weight. Unlike a lot of artists, he's not afraid of putting action into the backgrounds, and he's very good at designing that action so that it gives movement to a setting, but doesn't take away from the main action of a sequence. And if I was near a scanner, I'd put up pictures of his sequence of Redbird (Damian's "disguise") taking out Leviathan agents. The chopped pacing of the panels, and the off-panel beat-downs, give a wonderful feel of how this young man moves swiftly and deftly through the night. Truly the scion of Batman.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 524: Batman Incorporated #2, August 2012

I'm not sure what the point of this issue is. Don't get me wrong in thinking that I mean that I don't like it. It's an excellent piece of writing, and the parallels that are drawn between members of the al Ghul family (R'as, Talia, Damian) are fascinating. The issue focuses mostly on Talia, on her birth and childhood, and on her relationship with her father. As one might expect, it's an unusual relationship, but it ultimately revolves around the notion of a daughter wanting to spend more time with her dad, and her dad having to work. Talia's dad's work involves trying to commit mass murder and occasionally dying, but work is work, and we've all felt like committing mass murder at our workplaces every now and again. So the fact that Bruce brings his son to work, spends time with him even if that time is spent leaping from tall buildings and beating the hell out of mentally ill super-criminals, reflects nicely on Talia and her sociopathic development. But where I don't know what do with this issue is how I'm supposed to feel about Talia. Are we seeing her relationship with R'as as an excuse for her behaviour? Should we pity the little girl whose dad is the Demon's head? Probably, but should we excuse her genocidal behaviour as an adult as an inevitability of her upbringing? Is this what the issue is asking us, or asking us to do? Talia overthrows her father's control in this issue. She has set up most, if not all (with the exception, I suppose, of that whole Darkseid bit), of the challenges that Morrison's Bat-run has seen the Dark Knight facing. She's driven and purposeful, much like her father, but unlike R'as, Talia's vendetta is solely against Bruce Wayne. R'as, at the very least, believes that the actions he takes will strengthen the human race. Talia is just annoyed that a boy doesn't like her back. Witness moments in this issue where R'as buys Talia a horse...and then an airship. He says himself that he always gives her what she wants, so when she's told she can't have Batman, she flips out.

So do we feel sorry for her? R'as was not a great dad. He did some damage there, both by giving her everything she wanted and by not being around all that much. He gave her what he could, which, homicidal villainy aside, is really all that a parent can do. I don't have an answer for the question, I don't think. What the comic does do very nicely is bridge the mythic superhero realm and the world of lived experience. We might be able to see ourselves in either Talia or R'as in this parent-offspring relationship, but the scope of their function and dysfunction is one that, hopefully, none of us can imagine. Only 10 issues to go. Is Damian actually dead? Why is Bruce faking the deaths of his Bat-colleagues? And why was Commissioner Gordon arresting Bruce 1 month later at the beginning of yesterday's comic? The answers are forthcoming, but we may not like them.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 523: Batman Incorporated #1, July 2012

That "The New 52" up in the corner there is a mark of shame to so many people. It's a testament to Grant Morrison's importance as a creator that his Bat-continuity was allowed to continue it's existence into the revised DCU, and though Dick Grayson has gone back to being Nightwing, his time as a partner to Damian is mentioned. And here's where the New 52 gets weird. Because all of that stuff that happened to Bruce in order for all of this to happen still happened, right? He still slept with Talia, Damian was still born, Dick was Robin, and then Nightwing, and then Batman, and now Nightwing again. But Barbara Gordon was not shot in the spine by The Joker? And Stephanie Brown's role in yesterday's comic is completely removed from continuity? How long has Bruce been Batman for in the new continuity, 5 years? But Damian is, what? Eleven?

And those aren't even the most egregious errors that the New 52 produced. There seems to be in comics these days a propensity for the quick fix. As, sadly, there appears to be in most things. But for a move like the New 52 to have any weight, there needs to be a long plan, like a 10 year plan, something that gives direction and structure to such a chaotic and paradigm-shifting event. We can only hope that someone at DC has put a lot more thought into Rebirth.

The best thing to do for this series is ignore the fact that it's happening in a new continuity, and just read it as a continuation of the previous story. Burnham's art allows for a nice continuity, and there's enough nods to the previous bits of Morrison's Bat-run that it almost feels like this is a story that, like the small caption in yesterday's comic states, takes place before the events of Flashpoint and the New 52. Things start to come into focus, and it's interesting to see how Morrison's run has gone from story about Father, Mother, and Son to huge, time-spanning cosmic wars and events, right back to the family tales. There's even after the family bits earlier, globe-trotting adventure, similar to what happens in the first volume of Batman, Inc. This provides a neat arc from the intimate to the cosmic and back, and adds for us another level of the idea of the arc in serialized comics storytelling. It's great to see Bruce and Damian working together and actually working together, even with the shocking conclusion of this issue. And there's some really lovely moments. Talia's Bat-Men drop a reluctant criminal partner from a great height right in front of the Dynamic Duo, and Bruce notes that Damian's mother is trying to get his attention again - after which the two share a rather comical look. And the fate of the Outsiders, last seen about to be blown up on Leviathan's satellite, is revealed in a callback to one of Morrison's best-known DCU runs, JLA. But did Morrison's JLA actually happen in the New 52? No one knows. So let's continue under the aegis of this being a tale of the pre-Flashpoint universe. I'm not sure why they didn't just market it that way.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 522: Batman, Inc: Leviathan Strikes!, February 2012

From this point, we move forward trepidatiously. There are two reasons for this. First, Batman and his allies are moving into the final phase of war with Talia al'Ghul and the League of Assassins. As the second section of today's comic demonstrates, this will be a war fought on levels within levels. Bruce will have to become a general in a far different way than he was in "No Man's Land," this time fighting not with guerilla tactics, but with an almost 4-dimensional (perhaps 5-dimensional, if we remember Might's last words to him) way of moving, thinking ahead to all of the possibilities until the wave front collapses into the most likely. And, knowing superhero comics, it'll see like he hasn't prepared for this, and then he will have. Maybe.

The other reason for trepidation is that the second volume of Batman Incorporated takes place after Flashpoint, and thus well inside the new continuity of the New 52. I have to give DC credit where it's due that they let this story continue through the reality shift, but as of next issue, Dick is no longer Batman but Nightwing, and the timeline of Bruce's adventures is...tough to pin down. Today's comic is very interesting as a historical artifact, as there's a palpable sense of excitement over the changes that the New 52 will bring, the possibilities that are presented by this kind of large-scale embrace of the revision wave (see Supreme). And, I have to admit, I was right there going along with it at the beginning. They brought back Animal Man, and it was amazing. Morrison wrote Action Comics, and it was amazing. China Mieville's Dial H ranks as one of the best comics I've seen DC produce. Of course, as history has shown, the experiment was a failure, hence the current Rebirth initiative.

But what about today's comic? Can I just say that I love Stephanie Brown as Batgirl? She's another of the casualties of the New 52, as Barbara Gordon is returned to that role - and here we see just one of the many glaring cracks in the shiny skein of this post-Flashpoint world. If Steph is not, and never was, Batgirl, where does this first part of the comic fit? If Barbara Gordon is still the physical Batgirl, and not Oracle, who is the protector of Internet 3.0? It's questions like this that the editorial staff really should have been dealing with, especially knowing comics fans and their propensity for pointing out continuity errors. Still, nice to see Spoiler/Robin/Batgirl have one last little pre-Flashpoint hurrah.

I could go on about this issue for a lot longer, but I've often been told not to make daily blog posts any longer than a single page. And I break that rule on a fairly regular basis. 12 issues to go and then Morrison's Batman is finished (well, sort of. There's still the Gothic series, and his work with Batman in JLA). Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 521: Batman, Inc. #8, October 2011

Some connectivity problems and some jet lag are going to make for a shortish post today. This is a cool issue, though, projecting as it does the notion of the superheroic world into the virtual world. It's hard for anything that takes place inside a computer simulation to not be compared to Tron or the holodeck, but Morrison's notion of "Internet 3.0" offers some thoughts on problems of tactility, how one might deal with phobias inside a virtual world, and how we might actually become superheroes in a world where the only limits are 1s and 0s.

There's a nice nod, in the title of the third chapter of this story, to one of the very first all-digital graphic novels, a Batman book called Digital Justice from 1990. It's a meta-callback, really, in that the actual graphic novel is meant to take place in a nebulous "future," and has very little to do with the story in Batman, Inc. itself. But those in the know (which is all of us now!) will see that Morrison isn't just calling upon the stories from the 50s and 60s that were reprinted in The Black Casebook for this iteration of his Bat myths, but all of the interesting and innovative comics that have come out of Batman over the course of his history.

And that's all for today. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 520: Batman, Inc. #7, July 2011

"So America's been invaded?
You need any advice on how to live through that, you came to the right place."

Red Raven has this to say to Batman after Bruce reveals that Leviathan has infiltrated the United States. Though Raven's offer is genuine, there's something pointed in his offer. Similarly, when Batman offers all kinds of Waynetech to help stem the infiltration, Raven lays out exactly how things work for the Native American Bat people:

"We have 80% unemployment. Teenage suicide is four times the national average, and life expectancy is the lowest in the country. We have no train, no bus, no theater. No clothing stores, no barbers, restaurants, garages, or even a mailman 'round here. We don't need Batmobiles. I mean, if you got any we'll take 'em, but whatever you give to him, he's gonna give back to the people."

And before you interpret this as hyperbolic writing, as a way of making the situation of Man of Bats and Red Raven as grim 'n' gritty as Gotham, consider that "[t]he longest running water advisory is in the Neskantaga First Nation in Ontario, where residents have been boiling their water for 20 years," as noted in this CBC article. We can look at Gotham and see it as a reflection/depiction of the kind of slide into decadence and ruin of major North American cities, but it's always worse somehow than reality. Not so with Red Raven's description of the living conditions of many Native North Americans. This is actually how things are.

Events of the last few months have had me thinking about depictions in major comics of populations that are, problematically, still called minorities. I'm putting together a series of posts on African American and Canadian comics writers and artists right now. Part of being a good comrade in the struggle these communities are undergoing is enhancing visibility, doing what we can to combat the racist erasure/appropriation of particular groups from our cultural lexicon. To be dead honest, I can't name one Native American comics creator in the major companies off the top of my head. Nor any Latinx creators, a community that was desperately wounded in Orlando some weeks ago. So I'll make it my aim over the next few years (hell, all of them if I have to) to highlight these contributions to comics, which I love, and I think maybe you love too. We have a remarkably diverse range of creators out there currently - maybe if we delve deep enough into the collection, we'll see that they've always been there.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 519: Batman, Inc. #6, June 2011

As is becoming apparent, the battle against the global conspiracy of Leviathan (does this echo Secret Warriors, or vice versa?) is the overarching theme of Batman, Inc. As with any half-decent action series, we're shown, initially, only the consequences of Leviathan's actions, rather than the inception of them. But on the other hand, we're treated, in this issue, to a behind the scenes-esque look at the Bat organization, and the deployment against this threat of Bruce's assets. In much the same way that the "No Man's Land" crossover placed Batman into the role of general commanding troops on a ruined and desolate Gotham-shaped Risk board, here he's the arch-conspirator, or arch-anti-conspirator (that's a lot of hyphens), assembling and placing his peices in defensive positions against an enemy whose actual moves he can only speculate about. Sometimes I wonder if there's too much of an assumption that just because Batman is a world-class detective that he is also a world-class strategist. I'm not sure that the two necessarily go hand in hand, though in the case of Bruce Wayne, they appear to. Not that I'm complaining - the story is fascinating, and what's wonderful is the anticipation of all of these measures seeming to fail, of Leviathan thinking it's got the upper hand, only to realize that no one but no one out-strategizes Batman. As I've said before, he's given a good deal of praise because of the fact that he's, ostensibly, not super-powered, but if you can think of another way of describing the inhuman level he's managed to achieve in a ridiculous amount of disciplines, you're more savvy than I.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 518: Batman, Inc. #5, May 2011

A few weeks back I reviewed MangaMan as part of my weekly graphic novels. There's a fairly vibrant conversation to be had about the cross-pollination of North American comics and manga. But every now and again a writer comes along who tries to perform a similar feat with comics of a different cultural background. Because they're written in English, and, quite often, by the same group of people, British comics can often seem very similar to their North American counterparts. But they're not. I haven't quite been able to put my finger on the exact differences, but they're there. Morrison has done this previously in the first volume of The Invisibles, and the Edginton/Adlard written The Establishment does something similar. With the introduction of The Hood, a British super secret agent, Batman, Inc. takes on something of a (not-so) United Kingdom cast.

There's a couple of really great moments in this comic. First, Morrison and company poke at the still-festering wound of the Falkland Islands war in the early 80s. There was certainly something very "last gasp-y" about this "war," the final throes of a prime minister who wanted to return to the British Empire. The more I think about it, the more Trump-y Thatcher's Britain seems. The other good bit is when Batwoman meets Bruce for the first time, having only had the pleasure of meeting Dick and Damian earlier. She treats him like a revered general, calls him "Sir." It's a nice touch. Kate Kane's cleaving to the military side of life is a fantastic part of her character. That she can believe in it so whole-heartedly and disagree with it fundamentally all at the same time speaks to the facility of the creators involved in her stories. I really ought to pick those up again...

Batwoman does offer us a great focal moment in this comic as well when she ponders aloud "How many twists and turns can one case take?" - Morrison is plying something common in his writing here by not giving us every single piece of story and evidence - we have to trust that there are detectives who are far more intelligent than we, or at least far better at what they do, and we're simply along for the exciting bits of the ride.

And what a ride. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 517: Batman, Inc. #4, April 2011

I had forgotten what a large role Batwoman plays in the Batman, Inc. story. And when I refer to it that way, it's because I've come to realize that all of Batman, Inc., both volumes, are one large story, far more explicitly than the previous tales in Morrison's Bat-narrative. That said, this globe-spanning tale is weaving in aspects of every single facet of Morrison's run, which should surprise no one that's familiar with his writing.

We get a bit more Chris Burnham in this issue, an artist whose style is just enough Quitely and just enough himself to make him fantastic. There's something cleanly and brashly rugged about his depictions of these characters, and his attention to making Batwoman look like the J.H. Williams III version is quite lovely.

So we have a strange man on an island in the South Atlantic (probably a Falkland), who may be an unrepentant Nazi war criminal, may be the first Batwoman's dad, and who seems to be in the process of springing a death trap that encircles the globe. Here's the thing about Batman, Inc.: you have to pay attention. Much like the spiral that Bruce and company are plummeting into (a reference that'll make sense in about a week!), there's a simultaneous expansion and contraction of the story that makes things occasionally challenging to follow. Which is a good thing; being challenged by our entertainment media is not something that happens very often. We should cherish it when it does.

Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 516: Batman, Inc. #3, March 2011

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