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 505: Batman and Robin #16, January 2011

Though they all seem to be unflappable homicidal maniacs, the villains in this issue have to take at least a slight pause when faced with two Batmen and a Robin. Even the hardest of villains would have to take just a moment to consider the life choices that led them into the path of two Batmen.

Which is to say, there's two Batmen in this issue. Yes, Bruce has returned, stepping from the shadows of time and the Omega Effect to stand next to Dick and Damian and face the immortal and mad Thomas Wayne/Dr. Hurt one more time. Oh, and The Joker is, sort of, working with them. I think once the smoke has cleared, Dick and Damian have some explaining to do to the elder Bat.

The problem of the two Bats is handled rather nicely by artist Cameron Stewart, whose depiction of Bruce and Dick are different enough, given that they're wearing identical costumes, that one never becomes lost trying to suss out who's fighting who. Aside from more obvious devices like Dick's batons, Stewart gives them different chins and very different builds. It's nice to see this kind of detail paid attention to. One of the mainstays of the secret identity is the idea that it could be anyone under the cowl, but this ignores the obvious fact that everyone has a different body and will wear clothing, form-fitting spandex or not, differently. Dick is a more slight Batman, whereas Bruce is more barrel-chested.

One last little taste of Morrison's Bat-universe tomorrow in The Return, and then I'll have to take a break from the Bat. But it'll only be a short one, and then we'll jump back into the grand experiment that is Batman Incorporated. Onward!

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 490: Batman and Robin #9, April 2010

Sorry. Got nothing to say this morning. Found out yesterday that the contract position I have that ends at the end of this week is not being renewed, and I'm freaking out about not having a job.

In brief, Batwoman proves what a badass she is, Dick is the best Batman ever, and I really have to track down the Knight and Squire mini-series, because I think I love them.

I'll try to be more on the ball tomorrow.

Onward.

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 489: Batman and Robin #8, April 2010

I have to wonder if there's something a bit snarky going on in this story line. Morrison is using the title and premise of a current DCU crossover, while certainly not contributing explicitly to that crossover, as an epilogue of sorts to his Final Crisis series, which wasn't given, IMHO, the crossover treatment it could have had. This in response to the fact that the crossovers that both preceded and followed FC were written by Geoff Johns. Who is one of the architects of DC's horrendous slide into mediocrity and irrelevance, along with Jim Lee and whoever the hell their Editor-in-Chief is these days.

That aside, a follow-up story to Final Crisis is great, mainly because there very rarely seems to be fallout from such crossovers in the continuing series that constitute their parts. In fact, Morrison's first major DC work in Animal Man was an attempt at dealing with the fallout of Crisis on Infinite Earths, and remains one of the best pieces of superhero fiction I've ever read. In terms of dealing with the ripples such cosmic events can cause, I'd have to say Marvel is better at dealing with it in their universes, but only because their heroes operate on a more grounded, political level than the DC heroes, and as such their crises operate on a similar level. There is always the consideration of law, human law, in the Marvel crossovers (with the exception, perhaps, of the recent Secret Wars), but with DC, it is very often reality itself that is threatened, a concern that supersedes human law.

There's something interesting there. That'll need more thought.

Did I mention how much I love the fact that Batwoman is in this arc? Yeah, I did. You should go and read the Rucka/Williams III run of Detective Comics. It'll blow your mind.

Onward. 

The 40 Years of Comics Project - Day 488: Batman and Robin #7, March 2010

I have opinions on Geoff Johns. First and foremost, I think he's one of the people responsible for the utter lack of innovation and backslide that DC Comics has taken over the last few years. The New 52 was probably one of the most ill-considered moves in comics, and the current back-pedalling "Rebirth" has all the hallmarks of yet another disaster. That said, his work on Green Lantern in the early 2000s is really amongst the best stories of that character that I've had the pleasure to read. I was dubious about the return of Hal Jordan, but Johns has a love for that character that shines through in his writing. One of the highest points of his run was the "Blackest Night" crossover, a comic that managed at the same time to reach the heights of superheroic storytelling that I love while simultaneously delving into the grimmest depths of the genre - a bit like Bendis' Age of Ultron.

Anyway, all this is prologue to the storyline upon which we embark today, "Blackest Knight." In the wake of the resurrections around the planet, the world is, as DC Earth does, moving on. But Dick Grayson has discovered a lost Lazarus Pit, and intends to resurrect Bruce Wayne. And things will go smoothly, of course.

One of the absolute, 100% best things about this issue is the background information that is casually dropped in the dialogue. The DCU is ridiculously North American, and really U.S., -centric, but Morrison, in just two or three speech bubbles, provides us with the notion that the United Kingdom (not so united anymore) has its own rich and varied superheroic history. I've already noted my appreciation for Knight and Squire, but the villains sound amazing: The Morris Men (as someone who's attended a few Morris Dancing festivals, I'd looooove to see them as super-baddies), The Radio Ghost, and even a nod to Brit Simon Furman and his acclaimed run on the U.S. and U.K. Transformers titles, the "Metalek Xenoformer," looking much like a steam shovel when we encounter it. And all this information provided in the voice of a super-Beefeater in the U.K.'s super-prison, Basement 101.

This is something that Morrison appreciates in a way that I don't see in a lot of other writers. Warren Ellis is perhaps one of the few others to realize that there's this insane disparity between the richness of imaginary U.S. superhero culture and that of the rest of the world. And, of course, we're not going to see all of these hole filled in. Popular audiences are, understandably, skewed toward stories that reflect their own experiences somehow, and despite a shared language, there's a lot of differences between North American and Europea....oops, sorry, English culture. However, such small acknowledgments as we see in this one little descriptive passage fill in not only names and locations, but also story potentials. One of McCloud's notions is the idea of "closure," that we fill in the gaps between the panels in a comic. From a narrative perspective, situated in a shared narrative universe, the bits and pieces we receive of other countries' super-histories allows us to perform a similar function with those histories. Knight and Squire, legacy heroes in the U.K., a super-prison guarded by a super-Beefeater, a slew of colourful villains. Enough information to demonstrate difference and commonality of fictional history.

Oh, the other 100% absolute best thing about this comic is that it co-stars the amazing Kate Kane, Batwoman. The more I'm reading her these days, the more I want to go and track down all of her appearances, even the New 52 stuff. *sigh* I told myself I wasn't going to do this...

Onward.