The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 493: Batman and Robin #12, July 2010

If I were a properly patriotic Canadian, I'd have reviewed a Captain Canuck or Alpha Flight comic today. But I find patriotism to be a far too slippery slope (and I love me some tobogganing!), as is evidenced by the state of the UK and US these days. Besides, I've been having a hard enough time reading these comics one day at a time. If I had to leave a gap, I might lose what little is left of my mind.

The wave begins to crest: "Thomas Wayne, Barbatos, Devil worship and the Underground Railroad." To which Damian replies "This is insane." "This is life in the Batcave" says Dick. Doctor Hurt is returning, slipping off his disguise as crimelord El Penitente and slipping on his Black Glove again. Oberon Sexton is revealed to be not Bruce Wayne, but his opposite - The Joker. And Alfred finds that the grounds of stately Wayne Manor are planned to function as a Bat Signal through time. I love this. This is what comics do.

Speaking of Alfred. Each time I finish writing up a comic, I copy this text into the "Notes" section for each issue in my database. When I first inputted everything into the database, it was skeleton data, so now when I go back and blog a comic, I fill all that in. One of the fields is major characters that appear in each issue. Though the comic is called Batman and Robin, Alfred has been in literally every issue - if we think back to what Bruce says about remembering Batman after he's gone, he makes reference to the people that kept him alive all this time. And that's Alfred, the hidden hero of the Bat-titles. Not that I'm arguing that he should have his own title or adventures. What Alfred reminds us of is that Batman functions best not as an individual, but as part of a team. That's what Batman Incorporated is really about, bringing that team out of the shadows of the Batcave and into the world. But we'll have to wait to see how all that turns out.

Back, briefly, to the main Batman series tomorrow. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 492: Batman and Robin #11, June 2010

I begin to see Morrison's tenure on the Bat-titles through the lens of a Sine wave metaphor. The bits between the crests and the troughs are the "normal" stories, the ones that, while well drawn and written, are fairly recognizable as Batman superhero stories. And then we have things like "R.I.P.," where the line has delved into the trough, and things are all underworld and insane. But the bits I like most are the crests, where the hallucinatory quality is every bit as intense as the troughs, but we're moving into a higher reality style of story. That's where things are heading now. Though Dick makes his way through a series of caves below Wayne Manor, there's an inverse narrative journey upward happening. He moves from a place of capital and material to a place of spirits and gods, emerging from a grave at the end of the issue, foreshadowing if I've ever seen any. It's been long enough since I've read this run of Batman that I don't remember how Batman Inc. follows this wave, but I'm excited to find out. Even within the Batman and Robin series, I think we see this wave, heading down from the 60s-inspired opening to a dark and bloody chapter, and then back up through a story of Lazarus Pits, very much a mainstay of Bat-stories, but dealing with resurrection as well, so ascending, and then continuing to move upward through the current story arc that burst open at the apex in the "Return of Bruce Wayne" crossover.

Speaking of which, here's a reading order for the crossover that I'll be following, sans issues I've either read already or that I do not own. From what I can tell, Tim Drake undertakes a search that in many ways sets up the Return storyline, and I've never really read any of his solo stuff. Maybe it's time to delve into it.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 491: Batman and Robin #10, May 2010

Sorry for the blip yesterday. Occasionally (but only occasionally) something distracts me from thinking about comics.

We're entering a phase of Morrison's run that I both love and hate. I love it because it's a great mystery story, one told across time and space, like all good Morrison stories, and it really crystallizes the Dick Grayson/Damian Wayne relationship very nicely. I hate it because it also spells the end of that partnership, and of Grayson's time as Batman. One of my Flash posts (the delays to which are, believe me, becoming increasingly embarrassing) deals in part with the idea of characters being haunted by their predecessors, and I make the argument that some superheroes are far more affecting to their universes in death than they were in life. I don't think we can make that argument for Bruce Wayne, but there's something to be said for the vitality injected into the Bat-franchise by putting someone new in the costume. The entire opening arc of this series was about reconciling Dick Grayson to the fact that it's the symbol, not the person inside it, that matters. I'm not sure why, though it's perhaps because they often evince a more convincingly mythic human personality, but I've always seemed to favour the inheritors of the ancient superhero titles. Wally West as Flash. Kyle Rayner as Green Lantern. Connor Hawke as Green Arrow. And now Dick Grayson as Batman. Actually, it may not even be the personality, but the fact that this movement of inhabitants of the identity really demonstrates nicely the mythic nature of the superheroic archetypes. They ride their disciples like Loa. To me, it seems silly to define an archetype by a single individual.

The other great part of this arc is Oberon Sexton, the Gravedigger - a novelist and detective who assists Batman and Robin in their search for the time-displaced Bruce Wayne. Batman notes that there's something familiar about him. Hmmmm.....

Onward.