In the mid 1980's DC decided to clear up fifty years of continuity in their universe by putting out a series called A Crisis On Infinite Earths. As someone who didn't know too much about DC characters and storylines when I initially read it, I found it a confusion of huge events involving too many characters. My opinion of that title has changed over the years, but I still think it would be a terrible place to start reading comic books.
What followed Crisis was the rebooting of several of DC's most popular characters. The most successful of these was Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli's Batman: Year One. The story opens with Lieutenant James Gordon moving to Gotham and joining their police force, while Bruce Wayne returns to Wayne Manor after twelve years abroad. And it follows the two as Gordon fights Gotham City Police Corruption, and Bruce Wayne dons the cowl for the first time. We also see a prostitute named Selina Kyle transform herself into Catwoman. And when the Gotham Police Department goes under investigation, District Attorney Harvey Dent is called on to the case. If this storyline sounds a bit familiar, it's because Year One was one of the main sources for Christopher Nolan's Batman Begins. The story also involves The Falcone crime family's attempt to keep a tight grip on Gotham, mostly by controlling police commissioner Loeb (no relation to Jeph , as far as I can tell). Mindy Newell and JJ Birch's Catwoman: Her Sister's Keeper is a companion piece to "Year One", which focuses on the Selina Kyle storyline. I recommend reading it just after Year One while the story is still fresh in your mind. There are a couple of scenes that appear in both books. And it's always interesting to see a scene drawn by two very different artists. Mazzucchelli employing a very comic-noir style while Birch's work looks like it would be at home in early Sandman comics. It's also interesting to see how the two handle dialog. Miller has a "gritty" cop drama style with characters speaking with no flash or style. There's no sense of him trying to be witty, it reads like real people in a real situation. Newell, on the other hand, employs a lot of 80s snappy patter that, much like old paper, has yellowed a bit over the years. It's not bad writing, it just includes the occasional pop culture reference that is no longer in the vernacular. "You're a better nun than I am Gunga Din" is a "Where's The Beef" for movie nerds. It's still a solid story, and an important character study of Selina Kyle. So this was the easy entry. Where to begin. How to become familiar with the early characters. We've established Bruce as the Batman, Selina as Catwoman, James Gordon as a flawed but well intentioned police officer, The Falcones as the family you least want to fuck with, and we've met Harvey Dent. We also have Gordon mentioning that there are more Falcones back in Chicago that he has a history with. And, as the story comes to a close, he stands on the roof, waiting for Batman, so he can tell him about a new criminal in Gotham; The Joker. Batman Year One: Story 5/5, Art 5/5 with some back matter by Mazzucchelli. Catwoman Her Sister's Keeper: Story 4/5, Art 3/5
2 Comments
While the character of Bruce Wayne the Batman is one of the most revered, and interesting in all of comics, my favorite Batman stories are the ones where we see how others react to The Dark Knight.
Batman And The Monster Men, originally a mini-series written and drawn by Matt Wagner, introduces us to modern age versions of Batman characters, and shows how they are changed by their first encounters with him. In a roundabout way the center of this story is Sal Maroni, one of the top men in the Falcone Crime family. He joins together the two subplots of the story by 1.) bankrolling and extorting a scientist named Hugo Strange, and 2.) bankrolling and extorting prominent businessman, Norman Madison, whose daughter happens to be dating Bruce Wayne. Hugo Strange is your typical mad scientist bent on changing the world. He uses Falcone money to create a series of mutants (the eponymous Monster Men). When Maroni sends musclemen to pressure Strange into paying his debt, Strange unleashes his Monster Men on one of Maroni's underground card games, thus stealing Maroni's money, and using it to pay Maroni back. When Batman gets involved, Strange fixates on what a perfect specimen he is, and vows to either capture or kill him. When things don't go according to plan, he decides, rather than hiding from Batman underground, to become a public expert on Batman, going on television and tlaking about how disturbed he is. Norman Madison's tale is a little different. As a prominent businessman from the Gotham elite, he believes himself superior to Maroni and his thugs, and refuses to see them as a threat until they threaten his daughter, Julie. To protect her, he asks her to find a place to hide, and not tell him where it is. He demands the Falcone thugs take him to Maroni directly. While there, the Falcone compound is attacked by Strange's Monster Men. He is ultimately rescued by Batman who addresses him by name, and tells him to leave. The issue ends with Norman sitting in front of the TV, watching Hugo Strange tell a reporter that Batman is a relentless, insane vigilante. He is visibly sweating, thinking to himself "He knows my name." There's also a neat panel about halfway through the trade, where we Norman Madison's face shrouded by the Gotham skyline, suggesting that Wagner is using Norman as a metaphor for Gotham City's troubled relationship with both crime and Batman. When her father asks her to go into hiding, Julie Madison rushes to Wayne Manor to tell Bruce, who responds by drugging her (Wayne is easily one of the worst superhero boyfriends in comics. I once saw Hank Pym shaking his head at Wayne, muttering "At least when I hit Janet, she knew that I loved her."). When she wakes up, a day and a half later with a Roofie hangover, Bruce tells her that her father's debts are taken care of, and she continues to be all starry-eyed over her mysterious playboy lover. She doesn't know that (dun dun dun) her life is soon to be completely altered by her involvement with Batman. We also get to see Lieutenant James Gordon come into conflict with the new police commissioner, Grogan, over Gordon's alleged connection with Batman. Even Alfred gets some face time in this book, when he lays his eyes on Bruce's new crimefighting car and quips "I'm actually surprised that you didn't add winged fins to the rear fenders and make it a true 'Batmobile!' Oh good lord! You're actually considering it!" DC has placed a #1 on the spine of this book, and a #2 on Wagner's follow-up story "Batman And The Mad Monk". While the two stories are related, there are definitely a number of Batman stories that take place between the two collections. It's actually odd that DC has numbered them at all, as they rarely put any sort of label on any trade paperback that isn't part of some giant crossover. I've seen other reading lists that place The Joker: The Man Who Laughs as the book that immediately follows Year One, as it features The Joker who LT. Gordon mentions on the final page of Year One. While I do think that Miller intended the next story to feature the joker, and Brubaker certainly intends for The Man Who Laughs as the first Joker story, I think the chronology works better if we get to know Batman better before introducing his greatest villain. There's also the issue that Gordon has grown comfortable enough in Gotham to call it "my city" early on in The Man Who Laughs, and he has not arrived at that point in his life at the end of Year One. Story: 5/5, Art 5/5 As you will learn through the course of this blog, I have a very love/hate relationship with Grant Morrison's Batman. And while my recent feelings towards his Caped Crusader usually involve me blacking out with rage, I'm a huge fan of his 80s and 90s work.
One of the things I find most intriguing/frustrating about Morrison's Batman is how he plays with time and dreams. In stories such as Gothic (Legends Of The Dark Knight 6-10), Morrison gives us his signature coded dreams that tie into Bruce Wayne's real life. Whereas in recent years, I've felt his dream sequences and time fluctuations detract from the stories he tries to tell, in Gothic the dreams are placed in context almost immediately. This story also gives us a rare glimpse into Bruce's childhood. Most writers seem to think there was nothing to his youth other than the night his parents were shot. Morrison presents us with a trauma of a different sort, as Bruce is nearly the victim of a serial killer who moonlights as the headmaster of the Bruce's very creepy alma mater. The killer, Mr. Whisper (no relation to Hush, though it's interesting that the two villains connected to Bruce Wayne's childhood both have names with a quiet theme), returns during Batman's early days to take down a group of criminals who had tried to kill him shortly after Bruce was pulled out of school. These sort of chronological coincidences usually rankle me the wrong way. All the characters and subplots of the story wrap up a little neatly for my taste. I do appreciate that there's a misdirect early on in the story when a young nun shows up, looking very similar to Selina Kyle's sister from Year One, and My Sister's Keeper. While it's probably due more to editorial reasons than Morrison's shortcomings as a writer, it is disappointing that we don't see any other continuity characters in this arc. The criminals don't appear to have any connections to the Falcones, and there's no mention of James Gordon. We do have the first use of a, not the, a Bat-Signal in this issue, when the nervous criminals attach an upside-down Bat logo to a spotlight to get the caped crusader's attention. Story 3/5, Art 3/5 Everyone has that friend. The one who watches a lot of standup comedians and reports the jokes they heard as their own. I can't tell you the amount of times I've heard the whole Scooby Doo stoner theories. The snickering moron who wonders aloud about Smurf sex lives. That person will always give you a little elbow to the ribcage and make some remark about Batman's "inappropriate relationship" with Robin.
Of course, that person doesn't know that there have been several Robins, and that one of them is his son. That person has no idea about Batman at all, apart from possibly having seen the 90's movie franchise and a few scattered episodes of The Animated Series. But most importantly, that person doesn't know how both Batman and Bruce Wayne are defined by the women in their lives. It's no mistake that, in the modern era retelling of Batman's first few years, Catwoman appears several times before we get our first glimpse of The Joker. While The Joker is often regarded as Batman's nemesis, it's his relationship with Selina Kyle's alter ego that gives us a feeling for who Bruce is under the cowl. Batman And The Mad Monk opens with Bruce standing up his current girlfriend, Julie Madison, to capture Catwoman. He sends Alfred to send his "sincerest regrets" to her, and to let her know "his scheduling problems won't be changing any time soon." Another thing not changing anytime soon is Jim Gordon's problems with the hierarchy of the Gotham City Police Department. The new Commisioner, Grogan, appears as corrupt as Loeb was, and has sent some officers to deliver a message to Gordon, just as Gordon is awaiting Batman on the roof (he calls him with a Batpager...still no signal yet) At the end of the first chapter of the story, we're introduced to the villains: vampires! In particular, a cultish vampire leader named The Monk. While he's not known as one of the front-runners of Batman's rogues, he goes all the way back to Detective Comics #43. In fact, this entire trade is a reimagining of the very early adventures of Batman. It's not long before The Monk's cult kidnaps Julie Madison. While the Batman is off rescuing her, her father, Norman Madison, mistakenly thinking Batman is stalking him, decides he must permanently erase his connection to organized crime by killing Sal Maroni. It doesn't go well. Neither does Julie's rescue from The Monk Cult. She manages to survive and, in the process becomes the first non-butler to discover that Bruce Wayne is Batman. But Batman's dangerous life, plus his role in her father's death leaves Julie unable to cope with Bruce's night life, so she takes off for Africa. Also during the course of the action, Jim Gordon decides his interactions with Batman are too risky, so at the end of this story Bruce is left only Alfred as an ally, but as he Spider-Mans his way into the Gotham skyline, he goes directly past a billboard for The Haly Circus featuring The Flying Graysons. Story 4/5, Art 5/5 Galactus and The Dark Phoenix eat planets and suns. The Red Skull cashed paychecks directly from Hitler himself. But ask your average person who the scariest villain in comics is and they'll choose either Lex Luthor, Magneto, or The Joker. Lex is a MENSA level billionairre who hates aliens and poor people. Magneto is a Holocaust survivor with the power of magnetism (he's not so much a fan of Red Skull). But The Joker is perhaps the most terrifying of all. He has no super powers, no millions of dollars, he's merely a sociopath with a sense of humor, and a very complicated relationship with Batman.
But where does The Joker come from? What set him on his life of crime? Who was he before he showed up in Batman's rogue gallery? What's his real name? What makes The Joker an effective villain is that those questions have never really been answered. There's no Holocaust in his background. There's no absuive parents. No orphanned when your parents threw you out of an airplane before they were enslaved by aliens. The Joker occasionally offers a piece of his past, but will later contradict it. A gag that's used beautifully in The Dark Knight. So, given The Joker's muddled history, it's not much of a surprise that, even by comic book standards, his continuity is an erratic mess. Several writers have written origins or first appearances for The Clown Prince Of Crime. Most notably in recent years, Ed Brubaker and Michael Green. Lovers and Madmen by Michael Green serves as a possible origin story. An expert thief gets bored of how perfectly he executes his crimes and contemplates getting out of the business when he runs across Batman, and becomes obsessed. (There's a fun little scene in a bar where "Jack" discusses his boredom at work with a blonde psychology student who calls him Mr. J.) During "Jack"'s crime spree, Bruce Wayne meets a woman named Lorna. The introduction of a love interest in a story involving The Joker can only mean one thing. She gonna die. And, of course, Batman has to watch. With Lorna bleeding in his arms, he decides he can't go after Jack, so he tosses his baterang after him, marking his face into a permanent smile. Now willing to do whatever it takes to pursue Jack, he calls in a favor from the mob, and consults a Gotham psychiatrist named Jonathan Crane, who labels Jack's methods insane. While the mob is holding him, Jack escapes and gets in a gun/fist/lead pipe fight with his captors, and ends up falling into a vat of anti-psychotics. Voila, Joker. Whose first two acts are a crime spree, and an act of altruism (paying all of the future Miss Harley Quinn's college expenses). Also, it turns out that Lorna doesn't die, but decides Gotham isn't safe, and Julie Madisons out of town. Story: 4/5, Art 3/5 The Man Who Laughs doesn't bother with The Joker's past, but focuses on his first crime spree in Gotham. It could almost be a follow-up to Lovers And Madmen, except that Gordon and Batman are unfamiliar with The Joker, despite having arrested him at the close of Lovers And Madmen. The whole story is pretty much a three issue summation of a Joker story. There's gas, there's the relationship between Batman and Gordon, and Batman blaming himself from creating The Joker. This story also outs Gordon as being associated with Batman, allowing him to create The Bat Signal. Story 3/5. Art 4/5 The Man Who Laughs trade paperback also features a backup story,with pencils by Patrick Zircher, called "Made Of Wood". If you're reading this for chronological sake, put the book down as this story comes waaaaaaay later in The Batman mythos. One of the things that I find super jarring in many of the 80s and early 90s comics, is how committed they are to making the stories feel "fresh" by including pop culture references that cement them in an era. They are always clunky, and make the stories feel prematurely dated.
Batman: Dead To Rights is rife with references to Gray's Anatomy and Gnarls Barkley. It's not even a decade after this title came out, and it already feels archaic. The idea is that this story picks up directly after The Joker is arrested for the first time (which could be after The Man Who Laughs or Lovers And Madmen). Instead of focusing on how The Joker is a dangerous criminal, it focuses on how The Joker is a dangerous prisoner. It's an interesting concept, hampered by the dialogue. You can tell Andrew Kreisberg is a television writer (he went on to create and write for Arrow), as some of his dialog would work better on the small screen. I didn't know Kreisberg wrote Arrow until I was composing this blog entry but it does make sense to me, as I think both Arrow and this storyarc are well-conceived ideas that creatively rewrite a major DC character's backstory. I also believe they bot fall victim to trying to do too much with characters that I don't think he and I understand the same way. This version of The Joker is too snappy standup comedian for me, similarly in the way Kreisberg's Oliver Queen is too dark and broody for me. (All that said, I adore Kreisberg's take on The Flash universe, and find it superior to almost every issue of The Flash I've ever read.) We get some cameos of future GCPD characters, as well as one of the greatest one page uses of The Riddler that I've seen. We also get the first appearance of Matches Malone (Bruce Wayne's alter alter ego) but in a very unsatisfying scene that makes it appear that Gotham Police don't even bother a gentle pat-down of incoming prisoners, as Matches has the entire Batman outfit, including the utility belt in his possession when The Joker see through the Malone identity. Scott McDaniel's artwork is very busy with quite a bit of panel busting, but that makes sense for a Joker story. I'm not in love with some of his repeated facial expressions, but I also think that may be a purposeful statement on some of the characters. Story 2/5. Art 4/5. How I Read Batman 6: Four Of A Kind. The Collected Legends Of The Dark Knight, and Dark Legends6/11/2014 You'll have to excuse me, I'm terrible with remembering names. I once spent four hours calling my ex only "Hey...you." until I remembered it. Of course, we'd only dated for about a year, so he's really lucky that I recognized him at all.
If you want me to remember you, you really have to make an impact. Strangle a hamster with its own intestines, show me The Green Lantern tattoo on your ass. So far in this continuity we've been introduced to a variety of Batman's rogues: The Joker, Catwoman, The Monk, and, Hugo Strange. We've also seen a few cameos of future villains: Harvey Dent, Harley Quinn, and The Scarecrow. But, apart from The Joker, we haven't had a major supervillain crime spree yet. The Long Halloween is on the horizon, though, and that involves a bunch of supervillains, so it's time to get to know as many of them as possible. In Batman: Four Of A Kind we witness Batman's first encounters with Poison Ivy, The Riddler, Scarecrow, and Man-Bat. It's not an ideal way to introduce them. I'd love to list trades that fully flesh out their origins or first appearances, but this is a decent primer to characters who will shortly become very important to the Batman Universe. Also, although we don't see why or how, halfway through this trade Jim Gordon gets promoted from Lieutenant to Captain. Alan Grant opens up the collection with the introduction of Poison Ivy who first poisons Bruce Wayne, and then poisons Batman, informing him that both he and Wayne will die that night because the only antidote to Poison Ivy's kiss is a second kiss. The art is very Vertigo 90s style, except for Batman's cowl which looks a bit like Matt Wagner's and a lot out of place with the rest of the art. But Brian Apthorp's one and two page spreads are gorgeous. And there are several very well drawn humorous facial expressions. Story 4/5, Art 4/5 Chuck Dixon handles The Riddler story. He's one of my all-time favorite Bat scribes, but his Riddler story is your basic "my parents didn't love me, I felt invisible, so I turned to a life of crime" origin, which seems inadequate for someone as clever as The Riddler. There's a lot of silver-age craziness to this version of Edward Nigma that we don't really get in the modern age. The art by Kieron Dwyer is very noirish. His Riddler outfit seems lazy (just penciled question marks with no dimension, design, or color to them), but everything else works. Story 3/5, Art 4/5 Doug Moench's Scarecrow tale is very telly. "Yeah -- You sure look like a scarecrow!" "He also looks like a different crane -- Ichabod Crane!" Eeeks, zero subtlety or trust in the reader's ability to notice Crane's physique or notice the Crane/throwing pumpkins connection. The writing made slogging through this chapter very difficult. The flashbacks, in particular, are absolutely terrible. But you do end getting the full origin story. Story 1/5, Art 3/5 Chuck Dixon returns to wrap things up with the origin of Man-Bat. The meek Kirk Langstrom is getting ready to marry his beautiful fiance, but he's incredibly wrapped up with his genetic research. And when his research project is rejected, he takes drastic measures and turns himself into the Man-Bat. It's not a life changingly fantastic story, but after the mediocre Riddler tale and the awful Scarecrow, it seems fantastic. Quique Alcatena's artwork is very consistent with the style of the mid to late 90s Batman. Story 4/5, Art 4/5 Overall Rating for Four Of A Kind: Story 2/5, Art 4/5 Collected Legends Of The Dark Knight has three stories of very different styles from the Legends Of The Dark Knight series from the early 90s. James Robinson and Tim Sale open the book with Blades, the story of Gotham's second vigilante, a swordsman, The Cavalier. The swashbuckling hero becomes a more public face than Batman, and the public adores him...until they discover that he's been leading a double life as a jewel thief. What Batman doesn't know (he's busy solving the murders of elderly Gothamites by a killer named Mr Lime.) is that The Cavelier is stealing jewels for Mr. Salt (apparently James Robinson likes tequila) to protect the love of his life from being outed as a murderess. Alas, his plans go awry when he decides he can't trust Mr. Salt anymore, and he kills him with his sword. Batman tracks him down almost immediately, and the two engage in a swordfight to the death, and The Cavelier wins! But he's a good guy at heart, so instead of killing Batman, he draws a gun and walks outside where he is gunned down by the police. This is one of my favorite lesser-known Bat stories. And, it alone is worth the price of this book. Story 5/5, Art 5/5 Alan Grant and Kevin O'Neill show up to do the second story, The Legend Of The Dark Mite. And while I can't say for certain that either of these men have done hallucinogens, all signs point to a very colorful yes. This is the origin of Bat-Mite, and as it proclaims on the very fist page "This is NOT an imaginary story." It's the story of a drug addict who sees the error of his ways when confronted with a tiny Batman-like creature who shows him what his life would be like if he contnued his life of crime. We see this story as he tells it to Batman from his cell at Arkham. It also involes a neat two spage pread of assorted DC characters as mites. Story 4/5, Art 4/5 John Francis Moore and P Craig Russell close out the book with Hothouse, the story of Batman's second run in with Poison Ivy. The story uses the familiar Batman trope of rehabilitated Bat-rogue turns out to be not so rehabilitated, as Poison Ivy gets involved with a drug ring that makes hallucinogenics from plant pheromones. Story 4/5, Art 5/5 Overall Review For Collected legends Of The Dark Knight: Story 4/5, Art 5/5 Did you ever see that episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer where Buffy believes she's actually in a mental hospital, and that her entire slayer life has been a series of psychotic episodes? Well, it's possible that Joss Whedon read Bryan Talbot (who does double duty as writer and artist here)'s Mask, the first story in Dark Legends. After stopping a crime Batman wakes up in a hospital where he's addressed as Bruce Wayne. Terrified that he's been found out, he soon realizes that he's not a billionaire playboy, but a drunken homeless person with delusions of a superhero life. Story 4/5, Art 4/5 Dennis O'Neil and Bret Blevins come up next with Images, yet another "first encounter with The Joker" story. It is very similar to The Man Who Laughs, in that it retells the Joker's origin. Joker chemicals, Batman blames himself for turning The Red Hood into The Joker, rich people die, Alfred tells Bruce to stop blaming himself. If you've not read any of the other Joker origin stories, it's okay, but it does not hold up against many of the other versions of the tale. The art is ok, but Batman's physique shifts a little from page to page. Story 3/5, Art 3/5 Batman goes to Chinatown for Tao by Alan Grant and Arthur Ranson. It's an interesting change of pace from the usual Gotham supervillains and mobsters, but it really reads like a white Western guy writing about Eastern culture. And the art is very much a product of its era, having a very early nineties almost Vertigo style. Story 2/5, Art 3/5 The gem of this collection is the Dan Raspler and Mike Mignola scribed story: Sactuary. If you've ever wondered what Hellboy would look like if it starred Batman, you'll find the answer here. The story's locale alternates between a graveyard and a gothic afterlife, so it's perfect for Mignola's art. Story 4/5. Art 5/5 Overall Review for Dark Legends: Story 3/5, Art 4/5 In 1993, DC comics asked Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale to create a Halloween special issue for their Legend Of The Dark Knight series. The pairing of this creative team would go on to create The Long Halloween and Dark Victory, two of my favorite Batman stories. Haunted Knight is a precursor to those storylines. While it's not as tight a narrative as the other two collections, it does feature some plot points that will come up later.
The major problem I have about this collection is that it's set up in the order that the specials were released, which doesn't appear to be the order that the stories take place. So, while I don't suggest reading the collection manga style, I do recommend reading the third chapter in this collection, Ghosts, first. My reason being that I believe this collection should be read as 48 hours in the life of Batman, not three different years on Halloween. Ghosts starts the night before at a banquet where The Penguin makes his first appearance, interrupting one of Bruce Wayne's shindigs. Batman captures the villain, retrieving a medallion Penguin stole from Lucius Fox. The medallion features either an exact mock up of the Wayne family door knockers, or else Bruce's father's face. Either way, the charm induces a sort of hypnosis on Bruce, and the story turns into a Halloween retelling of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol, with Thomas Wayne as Jacob Marley, Poison Ivy as The Ghost Of Christmas Past, The Joker as The Ghost Of Christmas Present, and a grim reaper as The Ghost Of Christmas Future. Among the memories is a primer as to how Lucius Fox got into Wayne's life, as well as unintentional foreshadowing to Final Crisis and Blackest Night. Next up is chapter two: Madness. In it, The Mad Hatter kidnaps Jim Gordon's niece, Barbara, who he's just adopted. Adoption is a bit of a theme in this book, as we are also introduced to Leslie Thompkins, a doctor who helped Alfred raise Bruce after (brace yourselves, new info here) his parents were killed. (Note: If you want to turn this website into a drinking game, sip a beer every time I make a joke at the expense of Grant Morrison, and a shot every time I have to mention that (spoiler alert) Bruce's parents were killed.) This story also injects Alice In Wonderland into the Batman mythos. I grew up loving the book, but I find its saturation in comics, particularly Batman, a bit overwrought. This story is not one of the finest examples of working the book in subtly. The "through the looking glass" line hurt to read, but the rest of the story is pretty solid. The first chapter, Fears, takes us back to another Wayne Halloween party. While Ghosts and Madness could happen in the same timeframe, this party and the party from Ghosts can't really be the same party, so let's say, for argument's sake, Wayne scheduled a second party due to his guilt over the first one being crashed by The Penguin. This party is slightly more successful, as none of the rogues gallery interrupts, but a woman named Jillian Maxwell attempts to seduce Bruce, much to the disdain of Alfred. Alfred does his own detective work while Batman is off dealing with The Scarecrow, and discovers Jillian is a black widow who serially marries and then murders rich husbands under a variety of names. While all three of these stories are very good, the highlight of this collection is Tim Sale and Gregory Wright's art. The panel layouts are effortlessly complex. Despite their nontraditional placement, there's never any doubt where the eye should go next. And Wright's colors are an integral part of the story. I especially love his greyscaled pages with the lightly colored narrative boxes. Story 4/5, Art 5/5 Blame it on the Infinite Final Crisis On Infinite Multiple Earths. Blame it on Superman's tendency to spin the globe around whenever someone he loves dies. Blame it on the rain (that's what's fallin' fallin'). One of the major problems with a giant universe written and edited by hundreds of creators is that there's a whole mess of contradictions in comic timelines. Unfortunately for Year Two: Fear The Reaper, most of the stories it contradicts are more appealing.
This collection opens with Jim Gordon being named Commissioner of Gotham (don't get used to it Jim, you'll be back playing Captain? Lieutenant? Head groundskeeper? in the next collection), and publicly revealing (drum roll, please) The Bat Signal! Which, of course, we've already seen. There's a lot of familiar tropes in Mike Barr's story: Bruce Wayne falls in love with a girl whose father's life is intertwined with Batman's (see Batman & The Monster Men), her father turns out to be another vigilante in Gotham (see Blades), but this is a vigilante who's not afraid to kill (that hasn't come up yet, but it's not far off on the horizon), and the villain is connected to Batman's past. In fact, to take down The Reaper, Batman must cross Leslie Thompkins, Alfred, Commisioner (for the moment) Gordon, the Gotham City Police Department, and his past by teaming up with small time thug Joe Chill who (spoiler alert) KILLED HIS PARENTS. Bruce's love interest, Rachel Caspian,'s mother was killed by a masked murderer on the family's way home from the circus, which mirrors Bruce's childhood trauma in an almost aggressively forced way. By the end, of course, everyone realizes that Batman only teamed up with villains to take down a larger villain, and they forgive him. But the girl, of course, is traumatized by her father's death (see Batman & The Mad Monk), and decides to become a nun, instead of marrying Bruce. I realize this entry sounds a bit harsh. Some of the stories that I've referenced were written AFTER Year Two: Fear The Reaper, so I'm not trying to imply that Barr's work is derivative,it just doesn't hold up as well as the other stories. The writing is fine for a book written in 1987, but Frank Miller's Year One was written the same year, and it still holds up. There's also the issue of this collection being heavy handed with the family theme. Bruce's family in relation to other characters' families comes up again and again, and it's tough to make it feel fresh, but many writers did. Barr does not. The art here is also very telling of its era. The penciling duty goes back and forth between Alan Davis and Todd Macfarlane. There's a lot of eighties hair and some inconsistent experimentation with cross hatching in the Macfarlane issues. But while the art certainly screams 80s, it screams it in a good way. The follow-up story, Full Circle, also appears in this collection. This story is set a year or so later, and I recommend skipping it for now. I actually own Full Circle as its own collection, and have it placed in the appropriate chronological location on my bookshelf. But that's because I'm OCD. You can just come back to this book later. Story 2/5, Art 4/5 In 2009, Chris Claremont began the odd alternate timeline series in the Marvel Universe called X-Men Forever. The series picks up from Claremont's 1991 X-Men run, and presents the timeline as he would have written it, had he not jumped ship to Image comics. While it's completely ridiculous, it's a focused examination of the X-Men by one of the series's premiere writers. Batman Confidential is a DC series that focuses on stories from early on in Batman's career. It's written by several long-time DC writers like Peter Milligan, Sam Kieth, and Royal McGraw. I included one of the story arcs, Lovers and Madmen in a previous entry, but Rules Of Engagement helped clinch my decision to not include any more of the Batman Confidential series as part of this project. If something contradicts the chronology it needs to be at least fun, and this series seems more an exercise in frustration.
Rules Of Engagement is about Bruce Wayne/Batman's first encounter with Superman's nemesis, Lex Luthor. The plot outline: Lex Luthor sets up WayneTech to look dangerously inept in front of a group of defense contractors, all in the name of world domination! The evil, hand rubbing, mwa-ha-ha-ing bald guy attempts to take over the world because he doesn't like superheroes. Batman, of course, takes him down in the end. While the story is fun, the dialog is...questionable, and Whilce Portacio 's art is trapped forever in 1991. This was the first book that I had to struggle to finish. Story: 2/5, Art: 2/5 If Nancy Reagan was as devout a Batman reader as Barack Obama is a Spider-Man fan, her favorite collection would probably be Venom. It's the first time in continuity that we encounter the designer drug, Venom, a pill (and later inoculant) that shows up repeatedly in Gotham. After failing to save a little girl from drowning in the sewer (a girl who's father happens to be the creator of Venom), and then tearing a deltoid muscle during a workout, Batman gives into temptation and begins taking Venom to bulk himself. It's not long before the now super-strong Batman has his senses dulled and starts making dubious decisions. He goes so far as to drive Alfred away, and is then asked to kill Jim Gordon. The conversation around taking Gordon down has one of my favorite continuity nerd jokes when Batman refers to Gordon as "Lieutenant or Captain or whatever he is". Spoiler alert : Batman doesn't kill Gordon. But every character introduced in this story dies by the end. The curious omission in this story is that it feels like it should be the origin of Bane. Venom is the drug that enables this future villain to bulk up and battle Batman. And the island that the villains retreat to is Santa Priscia, which is where Bane grows up. This is a well-told introduction to Batman's relationship with drugs. Story: 4/5, Art 4/5 J H Williams III is one of my favorite Batman Universe artists of all time. His work on Detective Comics is one of the most beautifully rendered pieces of art I've seen in comics. But before he ever laid a pencil to page in Detective, he wrote a story arc for Legends Of The Dark Knight along with Dan Curtis Johnson that's collected as Batman: Snow. The story focuses on two important events: Batman's first foray into working with sidekicks, and the origin of Mr. Freeze. Much like the much maligned movie, Batman and Robin, the author chooses to borrow Freeze's origin from The Animated Series (the episode, Heart Of Ice, won one of the series's two Emmys). The Freeze origin is the most tragic of the villain origins in Batman's rogues gallery. But this story intersects with the fascinating story of Batman assembling a team of experts to help him fight crime. After Jim Gordon declines to assist Batman on an investigation, he recruits an awkward technology expert, an unsatisfied FBI investigator, a journalist famous for profiling criminals, and two rehabilitated criminals to serve as the brawn. His strategy to get the team to bond is to turn them against him, which is a terrible strategy utilized by angry middled aged losers guilted into coaching Little League Teams, and antagonistic old men. It is sort of working when Mr. Freeze (sans terrible puns about the cold) gets involved. By the end of the issue the team has decided to disassociate with Batman (but hint that they may continue on their own), and Batman tells Alfred he is thinking of trying another strategy. On his kitchen table is a newspaper mentioning a circus featuring The Flying Graysons. The Robin is coming soon teaser is used in several different books, including Year One, and The Long Halloween. The way I choose to fit it into chronology is that he misses the circus when it comes to town during Year One, but that this story, as well as Rules Of Engagement and Venom, coincides with The Long Halloween. There are several references in each of the stories about working with Harvey Dent (who doesn't actually get any face time, just gets his name dropped), who is a major player in The Long Halloween, after which, well, he doesn't work with Batman anymore. Story: 4/5, Art 5/5 One of my friends majored in Media Studies. His homework included watching as much popular television as he could find time for and study how it worked its way into the lexicon. He already had experience with a lot of the shows that make up today's established pop culture: Lost, 24, Battlestar Galactica, Futurama, The Office, Scrubs, American Gladiators 2007. But, surprisingly, he had no experience with Buffy/Angel or Doctor Who.
That's not entirely true, he'd seen parts of a few Buffy episodes when we were roommates. He'd scoffed at scenes that he had no context for, and after a few months, he treated walking into the room while I was watching Buffy with the horror most people would reserve for walking in on their grandmother naked with a jar of banana marmalade and an underage squirrel monkey. Two years later, he would call me to discuss the finer points of season six, and how much he appreciated Jonathan's story arc. When he realized it was time to tackle Doctor Who, he didn't just pick up with Christopher Eccleston, he went all the way back to the pilot episode and watched the entire series. When discussing the Russel T Davies era Dr. Who, he talked about how, whenever there was an event, Mr. Davies "throws a lot of Daleks at the plot until it cowers in fear at the corner of the episode". A lot of lesser comic writers, when they are asked to helm an event "throw a lot of Daleks at the plot." Super-villain team ups are generally a nifty idea that doesn't pan out. Villains don't work well together, they're villains. And often their schemes cross purposes. In The Long Halloween, Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale manage to include a majority of the major villains in the Batman pantheon without making them feel superfluous. It helps that the costumed villains aren't the focus of the book, rather this is a return to the crime families from Frank Miller's Year One. The story opens at a wedding ceremony for one of the members of the Falcone family. Bruce Wayne has been invited, in hopes that he will help them in their quest to be financially supported by Gotham City Bank, which Bruce is a trustee for. He declines. Meanwhile nosey district attorney, Harvey Dent, is in the event's parking garage taking down license plate numbers. He gets jumped by Falcone's men. Later on in the evening Batman interrupts Catwoman breaking into Falcone's safe while Harvey Dent and Jim Gordon discuss their differing methods in gathering evidence. A lot of what makes The Long Halloween work as a story is that it's one of the few modern era Batman stories that's actually a self-contained mystery. In 2010, Grant Morrison has been writing Batman and Detective as a long running mystery but it, if not requires, is greatly assisted by knowing all seventy years of Batman continuity. The Long Halloween requires only that you read The Long Halloween. Tim Sale litters the book with clues that you can piece together to solve the core mystery: Who is Holiday? At the end of the first chapter, two members of The Falcone family are killed by an unseen assassin. Harvey Dent is also targeted, and he and his wife are believed dead. Chapter two throws Solomon Grundy (born on a Monday) into the mix, and a whole nother mess of Falcone men are slaughtered at a Thanksgiving dinner. The third issue focuses on an insanely jealous Joker who feels that Holiday is stealing his spotlight, and he pursues Holiday's identity as vigorously as Batman, Gordon, and Dent (albeit with very different methods). And while Batman is foiling Joker's New Year's Eve Massacre plans, Falcone's own son is murdered by Holiday. The fourth chapter opens with Gordon and Dent going after their prime suspect in the Holiday case: Bruce Wayne. There's an excellent scene where the two of them are turned away by a deftly devious Alfred who politely inquires as to whether they've remembered to get their wives Valentine's Day presents. Holiday wreaks absolute havok on Falcone's business while Poison Ivy gets thrown into the mix. Ivy has had a tryst or two with Batman before, but this time she's targeting Bruce Wayne for the Falcones. Their plot is foiled when Catwoman comes to Bruce's rescue. Catwoman's dubious relationship with Batman (mirrored by Selina Kyle's relationship with Bruce Wayne) is one of the intricacies that makes this story work. This isn't just a hodgepodge of villains gathered to take down Batman. Villains are working purely for their own selfish reasons, they just happen to occasionally overlap. The exchanges between The Scarecrow and The Mad Hatter that take place in chapters nine and ten, where The Scarecrow speaks only in nursery rhyme, and The Mad Hatter speaks only in Lewis Carrol verse are fantastic. By the time we get to chapter eleven, Roman Holiday, we've seen The Riddler, The Scarecrow, Mad Hatter, and The Calendar Man join the fray. More Falcones keep dying, and both Batman and The Riddler are forced to throw out theory after theory as to who Hoilday is. After his own father is killed, Sal Maroni, Falcone's chief rival turns himself in to Harvey Dent under the ruse of bringing down Falcone. But when it comes to give his testimony he throws acid at Dent's face, and, voila, we have the origin of Two Face. Two Face rounds up all the villains from the story (plus The Penguin) to confront, and ultimately kill Falcone, thereby ending the old school mob rule in Gotham, and bring forth an age of super villains. In the end we have a couple of surprise reveals regarding Holiday. Both of them much cooler than the usual suspects (sorry Grant Morrison fans, it's not The Joker). Often when you get a last chapter reveal it's either glaringly obvious or else it contradicts an important aspect of a character. Both reveals regarding Holiday caught me by surprise the first time I read the book, despite one of them being telegraphed by both Loeb's dialog and several panel clues by Tim Sale. The art in any Batman story is as important a character as any villain. Whether it's Miller's television paneled layouts in The Dark Knight Returns or Dave McKean's creepily shadowed Arkham Asylum. Gregory Wright's muted colors are a key player in The Long Halloween. Apart from some vibrant reds when The Joker is involved, the art is intentionally flat, and occasionally just grays. Whenever I see the art from this book I think of Boyz II Men videos. Their director always tweaked the colors, sometimes washing out their bright red suit jackets, other times shooting in black and white, and then coloring in blue jeans. I doubt it's an intentional metaphor, but the lack of backgrounds throughout most of the panels really drew me into the action. Sometimes a busy background distracts me from the story as my eyes vacuum in all the extraneous details. Everything Sale has drawn into this story is purposeful. It provides the perfect pacing for Loeb's story. There isn't really a flaw anywhere in this collection. The only drawback to it from the perspective of putting together this Bat-chronology, is that it's a year long story. Each chapter taking place on a holiday (Halloween bookending the year). A lot of the books that will follow take place during The Long Halloween. Were I attempting the absolutely insane project of trying to do the chronology by issues instead of trades, I would space this collection out amongst some of the other stories. Story 5/5, Art 5/5 It's been teased at the end of several collections. Ads for The Flying Graysons in newspapers, Circus billboards, Bruce discussing taking dates to the circus. Finally, in Dark Victory, Dick Grayson debuts. But, uh, not just yet.
The volume opens with the new DA (who replaces Harvey "Don't Call Me Harvey Anymore I'm Two Face Now" Dent) catching us up with one of the villains from The Long Halloween (which was also created by Jeph Loeb, Tim Sale, and Gregory Wright): Holiday. The crux of this story is the rise and fall of the next generation of Maronis and Falcones, Carmine Falcone and Sal Maroni having been killed during The Long Halloween. Carmine's daughter, Sofia, who was paralyzed after plunging out of a building makes a deal with Sal's sons to go after Harvey Dent. The plan is to cause chaos at Arkham Asylum by freeing assorted villains, including Solomon Grundy (born on a Monday), Calendar Man, and Poison Ivy. Holiday, Alberto Falcone, chooses to stay behind, earning him an early release with the help of the new DA. But during the madness, instead of killing Two Face, they allow him to escape. The main theme of this book is improving reputations. Mario Falcone returns from Italy to try and clean up his family business, going as far as locking out Sofia when he learns of her criminal plans. Jim Gordon tries to get back together with his wife Barbara who left him and took custody of his children. Bruce Wayne tries to establish a solid romantic relationship with Selina Kyle. Catwoman tries to earn Batman's trust. And Two Face tries to clear his name when a new serial killer, The Hangman tries to improve The Gotham City Police Department's reputation by killing a corrupt cop on every major holiday. Once again, Loeb and Sale throw in pretty much every major villain that's been introduced: the Joker, The Penguin, Poison Ivy, Mr. Freeze, The Mad Hatter, and The Scarecrow all end up in the mix. But, as in The Long Halloween, their individual motives flow logically into the story. In the midst of the story, Bruce finally ends up at the much teased circus, and watches as The Flying Graysons plummet to their deaths when a Maroni underling named Anthony Zucco frays the wires for their trapeze act. Bruce Wayne adopts Dick Grayson, but it's Batman who sees Grayson outside one night, prowling for clues. Batman and Grayson run into each other again when Grayson goes to the circus to research his parents' killer. The boy is badly beaten, and Batman takes him to the Batcave to care for him, and reveals that Batman and Bruce Wayne are the same person. I don't want to ruin the end of this for you. Yes, you do get to see Grayson don the original, short pants Robin outfit. You also get a great wrap up of a storyline that began with Year One. but there are still some loose ends, including the fact that Two Face is still missing. I can't stress enough that Sale's pencils and inks, and Wright's colors are an integral part of Loeb's script. The combination of visual narrative and dialog is what takes the Loeb/Sale/Wright trilogy from great Batman story to Classic Work Of Art. Story 5/5, Art 5/5 Chuck Dixon picks up the dangling threads from Dark Victory for Robin: Year One. We get to see how Robin is perceived by a befuddled Jim Gordon, an ambivalent Batman, a loyal Alfred, and the angry criminals of Gotham. There's honor in being taken down by the Dark Knight, but a little kid in pixie boots, short pants, and a yellow cape? That's gotta hurt. After busting some small time criminals, Robin finds himself entwined with The Mad Hatter's scheme to kidnap and brainwash some young girls (his usual M.O.) and sell them to a diplomat named The Generalissimo. In a startling development for a Batman story, it turns out Robin knows one of the victims from school (Jenny Noblesse), and she has a crush on him. Robin ends up saving the day with some help from bumbling millionaire Bruce Wayne, who happens to be on The Generalissimo's yacht for a cruise. The next villain up to be taken down by The Boy Wonder is The Killer Moth, whose story takes up a whopping seven pages before Robin takes him down. There's also a three page battle with Blockbuster (who will end up being one of Dick Grayson's major villains years later) before we get to the main villain in the story: Two Face, who's been on the run since the end of Dark Victory. Two Face has decided that the easiest way to bring down Batman is to take out his new sidekick. He also decides to enact revenge on the judge who presided over his trial during The Long Halloween. While Batman and Robin are on the case, Jim Gordon expresses his concern that Batman has taken on such a young sidekick. And when Two-Face later tells Gordon that he's killed Robin (Spoiler alert: he hasn't. After taking a beating, Batman takes him to Leslie Thompkins's clinic to heal.), Gordon convinces Batman to retire him. Grayson isn't too keen on retiring from being Robin (poor kid got forty years in pre-Crisis continuity, and he's barely five comic issues into being Robin in modern continuity, and he's already being let go), and when Mr. Freeze steals the blood supply from the hospital where Grayson is being rehabilitated, he throws on his mask (but not the rest of the outfit) and goes out to take Mr. Freeze down. Once Grayson foils the Freeze plot, he sees a TV report that Two Face has escaped from police custody, and debates how to handle it when he's jumped by a group of junior assassins run by one of Ra's Al Ghul's assassins, Shrike. Grayson decides to infiltrate the gang to get back on Batman's good sign, as well as learn new fighting techniques. After a successful mission to determine Robin's loyalty, the junior assassins are sent to kill Two Face. Given the opportunity, Robin opts to let Two Face live, and ends up battling Shrike, who falls on his sword and dies. During the battle, Two Face escapes. One of the details Dixon works into this collection is the relationship between Alfred and Grayson. Alfred taking care of Bruce after his parents died was noble, but could be attributed to his loyalty to the Wayne family. There are a couple of occasions in Robin Year One, and will be many more in the future where Alfred puts Grayson's health and feelings over his loyalty to Bruce. Dixon will revisit the importance of this relationship several times in the Robin ongoing series, and even Nightwing. Story 5/5, Art 4/5 I've never been a fan of Superman stories. There's something about the silver age goofiness that no one notices it's just Clark Kent with his glasses off that never sits well with me. He's also too powerful. And, I'm still baffled by how the most powerful superhero in the DC universe was killed in a seven issue fistfight with a villain who, at the time, had no back story. One of the few times Superman interests me is when he's shown in the context of other heroes, particularly Batman.
If there is a modern era retelling of the first meeting of Batman and Superman collected in trades, I haven't read it yet. But Trinity by Matt Wagner (not to be confused with the Kurt Busiek weekly series from 2009) not only gives us a great Superman and Batman interaction, it also serves as an introduction to Wonder Woman, another character who I only enjoy amongst other heroes. Her inclusion in this story gives us an outsider's view to the odd relationship between Batman and Superman. In the Golden and Silver Ages, DC continuity had established their two main heroes as best buddies who played sports together and never had more than the occasional mild dispute. In 1986, Frank Miller changed all that with The Dark Knight Returns (which, for this chronological project, is considered an Elseworld tale), and John Byrne made it canon with The Man Of Steel. This story presents us with bumbling Clark Kent missing his train to work. When the conductor of the train he missed is shot by a sharpshooter, Clark goes all Superman and rescues the train, but doesn't have time to go after the men who caused this act of terror. Luckily for him, Bruce Wayne was in town, and Batman hogtied the criminals for the police. The terrorist group is called Purge, and is run by Ra's Al Ghul. Ra's is an immortal eco-terrorist whose schemes usually involve purging the Earth of humanity. This time he frees Bizarro, a Superman clone with severe mental limitations, and uses him to obtain a cache of nuclear missiles from a Russian Submarine. He also hires an Amazonian assassin named Diana to train members of The Purge. During Bizarro's mission, he accidentally releases one of the non-nuclear missiles near the island of Themyscira, home to a sect of Amazon warriors. The sect believes Superman to be responsible, and sends Wonder Woman to Metropolis to investigate. Wagner fills this book with a bunch of plot misdirects. The young Amazon punk named Diana turns out to not be Wonder Woman, and then he sets up an obvious battle between Wonder Woman and Superman over identity confusion, only to have Wonder Woman act very sensibly and work everything out on her own. It's Batman who causes friction by roughly interrogating a member of The Purge, despite Wonder Woman aiding him with her Lasso Of Truth. The relationships between the three characters for the rest of the book is fantastic. Wagner plays them off each other flawlessly, giving them a depth I haven't seen in any other book. We get to see all three of them exceed the call of duty in their own way. Each of them adheres to their morals, and apart from their first meeting, and after an unfortunate dip in a Lazarus Pit for Wonder Woman, the three do so without bickering. As with Batman And The Monster Men, and Batman And The Mad Monk, Wagner pulls double duty as writer and artist. And with the exception of one oddly sketch-faced panel of Ra's Al Ghul, the book is gorgeous. Wagner is really up there with Tim Sale as one of my favorite Batman artists. The story also features a few little cameos, including Dick Grayson as Robin, and this chronology's debut of Aquaman. We really get to see the DC Universe starting to take shape outside of Gotham, without having to go too in-depth to the other characters. JLA Year One by Mark Waid comes right after this on my bookshelf. There's not a lot of Batman in it, so I won't be including it on this website, but this story is in some ways a precursor to it. And it's a decent read. As for Wagner's Trinity, it should be no surprise that I give it Story 5/5, Art 5/5 There's something nearly poetic about how many of the books that portray Batman as being a bad guy are, themselves, terrible. I lumped Batman Deadman and Teen Titans Year One together mostly to get them out of the way.
Batman Deadman is by James Robinson, who has done a lot of work for DC, and is best known for Starman. While I highly recommend the Starman series (currently being released in omnibus hardcovers), none of his mainstream character work really stands out to me as good. So, while I read this blind for the first few pages, I quickly flipped to the cover to see who was killing my post-Trinity Batman buzz and was not surprised to see Robinson's name on the cover. Robinson's writing, like Grant Morrison's, tends to stray from typical stories. And while I applaud him for that initiative, I don't tend to connect with his characters. And if I don't feel something for the characters, no amount of interesting plot concepts is going to win me over. What did win me over was John Estes's art, which looks like early 90s Vertigo, if it were made using colored pencils and watercolors. The details in the background and props make up for the, at best, mediocre dialog. The basic premise of the story is that while pursuing The Joker, Batman seems to black out and when he wakes up, he is believed to have killed police officers, and is holding an innocent woman at knife point. The story descends into magic and possession and demons, which are not my favorite aspects of comics. Most of the focus on this book is on characters involved with Deadman, although we do have some Alfred and Jim Gordon moments. (a biased against possession) Story: 2/5, Art: 5/5 While the two stories aren't supposed to be intertwined, and have two different demons, possession of Batman, and other members of the JLA is also at the core of Amy Wolfram's Teen: Titans Year One. This time we see Batman's possession through the eyes of Robin. Batman is behaving as though he was in Frank Miller's All Star Batman And Robin, but with less rat eating and cursing. Batman isn't the only one behaving strangely, though. The entire JLA is possessed by a demon called Antithesis. Robin rounds up a few of his sidekick friends in order to discover why the heroes are behaving strangely. So this collection features the chronological debut of Kid Flash, Aqua Lad, Speedy, and Wonder Girl. This collection is intended for children, and so the voice of the characters is skewed from how they're written in other books. But The Teen Titans are an important part of the Batman mythos, so I felt their origin story needed to be included. It's cartoony style is a little out of place in the chronology, but as the debut of the sidekicks as heroes, it's brightness in both art and storytelling can be seen as metaphorical. And it makes what happens to the team down the line seem all the darker. Story: 3/5, Art: 4/5 I'm going to add Full Circle to this entry, though it doesn't contain a possessed Batman, but it does continue the theme of characters written in an odd voice. Batman Full Circle features a very silver-agey Dick Grayson as Robin. Lots of cheesy one liners, and the classic Batman benches Robin storyline. Much like the book that this is a direct sequel to, Fear The Reaper, this book has a lot of tropes, and suffers because the tropes are not used as well as they are in other collections. The concept behind this story is the next generation of the families from Fear The Reaper. Joe Chill's son and grandson, Rachel Caspian's relationship to The Reaper, and, of course, Batman and Robin. We also have another appearance by Leslie Thompkins, and your requisite hookers and nuns. Todd Mcfarlane drew this book, and it's not his best work. He seems not to know quite how to draw The Reaper. His proportions linger somewhere on the border of inconsistent and awful. And Batman and Robin look too golden agey when presented against the designs of the other characters. Story: 2/5, Art: 2/5 The Full Circle Story is also included in the Year Two: Fear The Reaper Trade. I would say "I wouldn't waste my money buying this collection on its own." but clearly I not only would, but did. For six months, my graphic novels sat lonely in a basement in Cambridge, Massachusetts, while my cats and I wandered around New England doing very non-comic booky things. I let my websites lapse, stopped reading comics every week, and yet, somehow, still did not end up being a productive member of society. So I now have a new apartment, with many places to store my immense graphic novel collection. Arranging my graphic novels always proves difficult, but I thought it would be fun to turn one of my closets into a Batcave filled with only the graphic novels for this Batchronology, plus the Elseworld books. Step two was getting back into reading comics. I first punished myself by reading the complete run of Jim Valentino's Shadowhawk. I then washed the taste out of my brain with the complete run of Warren Ellis's Transmetroplitan. You should read that, if you're into non superhero comics that are amazing. (Please note, I did not link to Amazon for Shadowhawk. No sin you've committed can possibly warrant you having to read that terrible, terrible series. Stay away. Stay far...far...far away.) Starman came next. And then, I decided I was ready to immerse myself in some comic book themed cartoons. A friend of mine just got me into Young Justice, a DC Universe cartoon that doesn't involve Bruce Timm, yet manages to be equally amazing as his work. It's a reimagining of a Teen Titans-esque team of super sidekicks set in a universe different from the Teen Titans cartoon. It's fun, filled with running gags, and excellent character design and artwork. And it got me feeling all nostalgic for the Teen Titans. So, imagine my joy at realizing that the next two books for the Chronology project were the two most famous Teen Titan collections of all time. I am not including every issue/collection of Teen Titans as part of The Batman Chronology. Teen Titans Year One was in the last entry, and you'll just have to imagine that in the time that you read that the team lineup has changed to include Dick Grayson Robin, Kid Flash, Cyborg, Starfire, Raven, and Changeling (a.k.a Beast Boy from the cartoon). I've never read the first 25 issues of the series, so I can't tell you of their quality, but for an early 80s comic (this run starts in 1982) the storytelling is excellent, and the art is damned fine. Marv Wolfman does an excellent job of introducing the Titans as they enter the story. Unlike the happy-go-lucky (sort of) child glee of the animated series, these Titans are in their mid teens and bristling with hormones. Changeling/Beast Boy uses all the swagger he can muster to win over the villainess Terra and convert her to the Titans team. Hormonewhile, Robin and Starfire have lots of feeling for each other that they converse about between make out sessions. And Raven tells Kid Flash that she would love him but that being in love will release the Trigon portion of her (man, the back story sounds so intriguing that I may go out and buy the Teen Titans Omnibus). While this collection is a complete and insular story, it's clear that it's also part of a larger story arc involving the villains Brother Blood, and a separate, and opposing, set of villains called The Brotherhood of Evil (no relation to Magneto. Wolfman (no relation to Jack) is a master of making each issue feel complete in and of itself, while making it a small piece of an overarching story. This collection is so dense with plot and interpersonal drama, to try and recount all of it would be a disservice. The major themes of the collection are the struggle of the Titans to control their powers and to master their interpersonal relationships. Each of them have a major love life issue that has them thinking whether or not they should remain on the team. And Wolfman makes very salient points about the eighties that you wouldn't think would have been noticed as the 80s unfolded. It almost reads like a really well written mocking love note to the 80s, complete with snappy patter, faux commercials, preppy humor, and lots of references to the lawsuit happy culture that was beginning to unfold. As an important Batman note, we learn in this volume that Bruce Wayne has taken on a new ward, Jason Todd. There aren't many Jason Todd era Batman comics collected in graphic novel, so it's a shame we have to learn about it in such an offhand fashion, but, get out your hankies, Dick Grayson ceases to be Robin in this volume, and his replacement isn't nearly as cool as Sarah Chalke. There are also a different set of villains in nearly every issue. While the large drama unfolds, the Titans are distracted by Thunder and Lightning, the death of Trident, a mobster named Scarapelli, and Deathstroke The Terminator (who appears to be part of a new unfolding drama). We also witness the debut (and not just in this chronology, but in the entire DC Universe) of The Vigilante. I'm tempted to say that this collection is right up there with Year One and The Long Halloween, but really this is an entirely different creature. This is not just a solid run of a few issues but part of dense continuity that is above and beyond what most people are doing now, certainly above and beyond the other comics of 1982/3. Story: Perhaps a 6, but we'll call it 5, Art: 5 |
April 2024
Subjects
All
|