On Batman: Damned #1

Batman: Damned #1
Written by Brian Azzarello, art by Lee Bermejo
$6.99; 46 pages

*So, has anyone heard anything about this book yet...?

*I like the fact that Batman's name is the same size and font as that of Azzarello's and Bermejo's. It makes it look a little like maybe Batman inked this comic or something.

*The first page of the book is a nine-panel grid featuring a close-up of the electronic monitor of Batman's pulse in an ambulance, bleeding into an image of his eyes in the bottom tier of panels, the only words being narration. The narrator is Alan Moore's co-creation Jonh Constanine, and he references a line from the climax of the Alan Moore-written Batman: The Killing Joke and my heart sank immediately, as I feared this could turn into a game of Alan Moore Allusion Bingo. Thankfully, it does not, although it's a rare week indeed when the publisher is able to ship a slate of books that doesn't refer to or depend upon the relatively small amount of work Moore did for them in the 1980s.

*The Enchantress in her Suicide Squad design appears, which was unexpected...but she talks in a supernatural font/lettering style, so maybe she's not the actual Enchantress, but a different character with that design...? In addition to she and Constantine and Gotham City regulars Commissioner Gordon, The Joker and Batman's Mom and Dad, this issue also features appearances by Zatanna and Deadman.

*While I'm not a fan of Bermejo's style when applied to Batman and his city and cast, I did kind of like his take on Deadman. The character was an unusual one, a circus acrobat who wore a corpse-like mask and performed under that name until he was murdered, at which point he became a ghost that looked just like his disguised self. Kelley Jones' take on the character was to draw him as an actual desiccated corpse, and in Kingdom Come, Alex Ross offered his own alternate design, in which Deadman was a skeleton wearing the Deadman costume.

Bermejo's Deadman looks more-or-less like artist and creator Carmine Infantino's original design for the character, but the red of his costume is here drawn like the layer of muscle one sees in medical drawings of a human body just beneath the skin. The elevated collar of his costume is also made of what looks like red human muscle tissue. I don't know that it's necessarily a better design of the above-mentioned three--I probably like Ross', then Jones', then Infantino's, in that order--but it's definitely different.

*The bit with the penis is weird. It's there in three, maybe four panels and it's semi-shadowed, so you can see the outline of it, but not any great detail. If it were a movie, the guy playing Batman could have easily used a body double, as his face and penis are never in the same "shot." The nudity isn't erotic in any way, and doesn't seem to be meant to be titillating. It doesn't seem to be fan service of the sort that 90% of the nudity in the manga I've read is. It's not the source of in-comics jokes or dialogue, like Goku's penis in the earliest Dragonball comics.

Rather, it's completely incidental to the story. Batman strips off his costume--which he apparently doesn't wear underwear with, and given that Bermejo's Batman costume seems to be made out of leather, I have to imagine chafing is an issue; Batman should at least have on a jockstrap--and wanders around the cave and manor in the nude for a bit, having a psychotic breakdown.

That's part of what is so weird about it. I can't tell you how many times I've seen Batman take off his costume, or wander around the manner in a state of undress (he's usually wearing a bathrobe), or seen him in the shower. And yet we've never seen his penis. So it's weird that Bermejo goes to the trouble to show it here, apparently just because he can (this is on DC's brand-new "Black Label" mature readers imprint), and I suspect this is something of a publicity stunt. And one that has worked quite well.

*Because DC shipped the initial orders for this book with Batman's penis in it, and then decided to cover it up digitally and in future printings (which it is now guaranteed to get), they have created artificial demand for the un-censored edition. Retailers, please tell me when this has increased in value enough for me to sell it for enough money to order that $150 Detective Comics Before Batman set that was just solicited.

*I'm all for superhero comics in which characters get their cocks and tits out, though. Why not? It would be nice if DC having a mature readers imprint for their DCU characters now meant that Black Label will be the place for violence, gore, swearing and semi-nudity among the superheroes, and the DCU line will become more of an all-ages friendly place, but somehow I don't see that happening in the near future. Honestly, maybe Black Label needs penises in its comics; otherwise, what really differentiates Batman: Damned from, you know, any other Batman comic on the market?

*Honestly, the idea of sainted dead father Thomas Wayne conducting an affair while future World's Greatest Detective Bruce  is around was more shocking to me than the nudity--which was, as I said, just sort of weird--and the placement of the graffiti on the last page seemed like the sort of thing that would have once been considered more taboo than whether or not you can see Batman's penis in shadow or not. Like, I remember when Madonna's video for "Like a Prayer" made people all over the country completely lose their shit.

*I really like this format. It's about 8.5 inches by 10.5 inches, it has a spine and no ads, and it has more than twice as many pages as the average 20- or 22-page DC comic. And it's only two or three more dollars than those comics. Now, the fact that these are more magazine-sized than comics-sized might make finding a place to keep them in your collection a bit of a challenge, and it is for that reason I would probably recommend waiting for the hardcover collection. But this is an all-around nice package.

*Sigh...I just said "package", didn't I? Guys, it's really hard to talk about this comic without sounding like you're talking about Batman's dick, sin't it? Dammit! I just said "really hard" too...! Difficult! It's really difficult to talk about this comic without sounding like you're talking about Bamtna's dick!

"Robin War," reviewed

Janin

Gotham City–it's always something with that place.

Last December (and one week in January) it was a war on the streets between two bird-themed factions: The Robins and The Court of Owls. The conflict was called "Robin War," a six-part storyline that ran through two bookend Robin War specials and four issues of ancillary Bat-family titles, plus three inessential tie-ins in three other ancillary Bat-family titles.

Before we plunge into the storyline proper, let's review where Gotham City and many of the storyline's players were in December.

In the wake of perhaps The Joker's most ambitious attack on the city ever (in Batman story arc "Endgame"), Batman was presumed dead...and he kinda was. Bruce Wayne survived his fight with The Joker, but under still-unrevealed circumstances that resulted in Wayne not only having no memory of his time as Batman, but somehow having an entirely different brain. Also, he had a beard. And you can't trust anyone with a beard.

To replace Batman, a private/public partnership between The Powers Corporation and The Gotham City Police Department stuck former police commissioner James Gordon in a silly-looking mechanical battle-suit and deputized him (Mostly in Batman story arc "Superheavy," but Batman III has also been in Detective, Batman/Superman and elsewhere).

Meanwhile, inspired by Batman's sacrifice, a movement of Gotham-based teenagers took up the name of the original Batman's sidekicks, calling themselves Robins, and they began fighting crime on a vigilante basis (in We Are Robin).

And as for the original Robin, Dick Grayson, he was outted by The Crime Syndicate of Earth-3 on worldwide television (in Final Crisis), which resulted in his abandoning the Nightwing name and costume, faking his own death and joining the super-secret spy agency Spyral, from the pages of Grant Morrison's run on Batman, Inc. Everyone except for Batman and, I don't know, maybe Lex Luthor, thought Grayson was dead, but he had just recently returned to Gotham City to give Alfred Pennyworth, Batgirl Barbara Gordon, Red Hood Jason Todd, Red Robin Tim Drake and (Just) Robin Damian Wayne the heads-up that he was actually totally alive and a spy now.

And that's what the board and the players looked like when DC started shipping issues of "Robin War," which we'll look at chapter by chapter.

Robin War #1 ("Robin War" Part 1) by writer Tom King and artists Khary Randolph, Alain Mauricet, Jorge Corona, Andres Guinaldo and Walden Wong; 38-pages/$4.99

Throughout the first, over-sized chapter, writer Tom King uses characters declaring "I am Robin!" upon introduction as a motif, beginning with a young member of the Robin movement on the first page. This self-declared, amateur Robin, Travis, attempts to foil a liquor store robbery. It goes horribly wrong, with the perpetrator and a police officer both dead, and the inexperienced crime-fighter bleeding from a gunshot wound of his own and kneeling next to the bodies, arranged to suggest the image of young Bruce Wayne kneeling next to his dead parents.

King then engages in the laziest, most dated type of comic book exposition, the medium's equivalent of the spinning newspaper headline from old movies: Pages of TV talking heads. That's followed by Gotham City Councilwoman Noctua, eating a fancy dinner consisting of a small game bird (symbolism!) telling those seated around her fancy dinner table about the council's "Robin Laws."

These inherently unconstitutional laws basically outlaw all Robin paraphernalia, including masks, R's, Batman: The Animated Series posters on your walls and even the wearing of Robin's colors (which must be rough, as red, yellow and green aren't exactly unusual colors). Any kids with any of that stuff are subject to arrest (The outlawing of the letter R struck me as similar to the premise of a Sesame Street sketch, but the comics never go there; everyone continues to use the letter R in their speech, and we don't learn a valuable lesson about the R sound in the English language or anything).

Mauricet

This gives King (and the other writers and artists who contribute to the storyline) the opportunity to explore police profiling and even brutality (Mauricet opens a montage of zealous police enforcement with a white cop tazing a little black kid in a Robin hoodie from behind), but the opportunity is never really taken. If there's anything of politics of this storyline, it basically amounts to something along the lines of "Evil Secret Societies Are Bad." As sophisticated as superhero comic making may have gotten since 1939, the messaging can sometimes seem to have gone in the opposite direction).

Corona

The first of the "real" Robins, the ones starring in comic books, to be introduced is Batman character Duke Thomas, the head of the ensemble cast in We Are Robin. He is arrested by a (white) police officer for wearing red, an officer who also calls Thomas (who is black) "boy" and slams his head against the car. Thomas escapes custody in pretty spectacular fashion, proving there's a huge spectrum of ability within the Robin movement.

From there, we start to meet the Robins who were given their Rs by Batman himself, in rapid succession. Jason Todd is drinking in a bar when he sees Councilwoman Noctua on the news, and punches out some scrawny loudmouth next to him for talking shit on Batman. Tim Drake radios Todd to tell him that not only is the Robin movement hosting a big meeting at a high school gym, but that Damian Wayne is there and ready to crash the party.

Damian tosses calls them all frauds, tosses Duke around and tells them to all go home before he makes them. When they refuse, he starts beating them all up.

Luckily for Damian, who is outnumbered like 100 to 1 or something–or maybe luckily for the Robins, actually?–Councilwoman Noctua sends in the new Batman to arrest them all.

This is Damian's first encounter with the new Batman, whose suit Guinaldo draws as unusually small and man-sized, and it's a pretty awesome moment.

Guinaldo and Wong

That's what we all thought too, Damian!

All of the Robins scatter save Damian, who stays to fight the new Batman, and he takes that new Batman down (unfortunately for Gordon, this issue shipped the same month that Bluebird Harper Row also took him down in Batman & Robin Eternal, putting him at 0-2 when it comes to apprehending Batman's teen sidekicks).

But wait, there are still more Robins! Red Hood and Red Robin arrive, and they are soon followed by Dick Grayson. They reconvene a meeting with the Robin movement, so all 104 Robins can figure out how to respond to Gotham City declaring war on Robins.

But of course it wasn't really Gotham City, or Councilwoman Noctua, it was The Court of Owls. They have a Talon assassin kill off the Robin who started everything in the first scene, and convene their own meaning. They are apparently happy that Grayson is back in Gotham, and they say something about Nightwing rising again because...they wanted Dick Grayson to be an assassin or something back during "The Court of Owls" and "City of Owls" story arcs in Batman back in 2011-2012.

And that's how the first chapter ends, with meetings! But don't worry, these are just meetings that are about to begin. You won't have to actually sit through the meetings. At least not all of them.

Grayson #15 ("Robin War" Part 2) by writers Tom King and Tim Seeley and artist Mikel Janin; 22/$3.99

Grayson sticks out like a sore thumb among the other Robins now. Since joining Spyral, he's worn a spandex, short-sleeved gray shirt with light blue piping and a pair of cargo pants, with random straps all over. He also wears a big, blue letter "G" badge for, um, reasons. The change in colors does draw a distinction between him and every other character in the opening scene, as all of the Robins wear red, yellow, green and black.

After a long inspirational speech, Grayson tells the members of the Robin movement that he and his "brothers" (Jason, Tim and Damian) are going to try and teach them the skills they need to survive the war declared against them, and ends his speech with the words "WELCOME TO ROBIN SCHOOL."

Dick! What are you doing? This is not what Batman would want!

From there they break into smaller groups, with each of the "official" Robins training a small party in a different skill, and each finding one among those groups that excels (Not coincidentally, those that excel all happen to be from the cast of We Are Robin). In each of these scenes, there are little FLashbacks of Dick, Jason, Tim and Damian strategizing about why they're doing this.

So Tim teaches blind-folded staff-fighting, Jason teaches tire-boosting, Damian teaches kicking-the-shit-kicked-out-of-you, and Dick tries to meet with as many of them one-on-one as he can. King, Seeley and Janin dramatize his meeting with Duke which, this being a super-comic, happens while they spar. Duke uses Dick's real name, and Dick sound surprised, as if figuring out that the original Robin was Dick Grayson was all that hard after Nightwing was unmasked and named on international television.

Dick takes these stand-outs–Duke, Dre, Dax and Isabella–and pairs them up with himself and the other three, giving them all missions relating to the Robin War. He takes Duke with him, and they strike gargoyle poses atop a high building and wait "in reserve."

But! Things go wrong! The police and/or Batman were waiting for each of the teams, and there's a massive raid at "The Robin School," in which those not on the missions are all arrested.

What the hell is going on? Dick explains to Duke just before he jumps off a building to escape the police, leaving Duke to get arrested: All this while Dick was feeding intel to the new Batman, so that he could get everyone arrested, the idea being to keep all the Robins safely tucked away in jail, along with his "best men," who could keep an eye out for them. He didn't tell Jason, Tim or Damian this plan.

This almost makes a small amount of sense–it's certainly one way of keeping all the self-declared Robins from getting killed by police officers on the streets–but it's also kind of insane, as it would mean Jason, Tim and Damian would all have their secret identities revealed, which would likely mean to getting Bruce Wayne and Alfred in pretty horrible legal trouble (and/or siccing supervillains on them).

The plan is also kind of insane as it means Dick figured Jason, Tim and Damian wouldn't be able to elude a Gotham City Police Department trap, and each of them should be able to do so pretty easily, even if they were saddled with an amateur Robin to protect.

Damian, for example, is captured by Batman James Gordon–who he took out pretty easily solo in the previous chapter.

The whys of Dick's plan will make a little more sense in the next issue, but only because the GCPD behave in incredibly unlikely ways.

This chapter had particularly strong art and, being an issue of Grayson, time was made for a joke about Dick's awesome butt:

Detective Comics #47 ("Robin War" Part 3) by writer Ray Fawkes and artist Steve Pugh; 22/$3.99

The first Tom King-free issue of the crossover kicks off with Batman Jim Gordon, wearing his under-armor Batman suit and narrating old man thoughts about playing cops and robbers as a kid, while he fights with Dick Grayson for a few panels. On the third page, the narrative jumps back "one hour earlier," where things are just plain...goofy.

So it turns out that having his peers get arrested by the GCPD didn't actually compromise anyone's secret identity or anything, because once the GCPD arrested the Robins, they decided not to take off their masks. Tim and Damian have their little domino masks on, Red Hood has his helmet/mask that covers his entire head. This is, for me, the point in the story where I lost my suspension of disbelief, and while I enjoyed moments of the narrative that occurred after this point, I just couldn't get it back. This was just silly.

Based on Pugh's art, it doesn't seem like the police so much as searched the Robins either; I mean, Red Robin's still wearing his utility belt, utility harness and utility armbands, even if he never pulls out any hidden weapons...as Damian will at one point.

That's not the only weird thing about the Robin arrests, though. Not only did the police not, like, take any of their stuff, or apparently finger-print them, but they tossed them into these weird, elevated cages in pairs, with high-tech cannons pointed at them.

Harvey Bullock and Batman cluck about how fucked-up the situation is, and, yeah, it's pretty crazy that the city had put together this superhero super-max prison for a youth gang (Arkham, Blackgate, Belle Reeve...none of those places have this kind of security).

Damian pulls a stunt to get them to lower the cages, and just as the police begin to search them one by one, a guy in an owl mask comes in and dismisses them all. Behind him? A small army of Talons.

Owls versus Robins! The bird war is on now...! And by now, I mean, next issue, as that was the cliffhanger ending.

As for Grayson and Gordon, they fight for a while, with Grayson getting the best of Gordon (who is still outside his battle-suit; throughout this issue he mostly uses it as a vehicle to get from place to place), before they take a breath and decide to figure out who benefits from all this.

What's really weird about this scene is that Gordon knows exactly who Grayson is, and that Grayson used to be Robin. That should mean Gordon also knows who Batman really is, but as far as I can tell, Batman writer Scott Snyder has been pretty coy with whether or not Gordon knows Bruce Wayne and Batman are one in the same or not, never explicitly saying that Gordon does know.

Of course, that's one weird aspect of the post-Final Crisis DC Universe. Everybody knows that Dick Grayson was Batman's ally Nightwing, but no one has been able to make the leap to even suspect that Grayson's amazingly physically fit, billionaire guardian whose parents were the victims of violent crime and who was the public face of Batman, Incorporated might also be Batman (except, of course, for Lex Luthor).

We Are Robin #7 ("Robin War" Part 4) by writer Lee Bermejo and artist Carmine Di Giandomenico; 22/$3.99

Really great art from Di Giandomenico on this chapter; it's detailed but not weighted down by detail, and, as colored by Mat Lopes, the individual panels often have the look and feel of animation cels. That said, Di Giandomenico seemed to have different reference material than the other artists when it came to drawing Damian, whose costume is a little off throughout. He also draws Damian as more of a teen, which looks fine here, but undercuts the basic appeal of the character, the contrast between his age and size and his imperious attitude (and incredible fighting ability).

Bermejo has Grayson narrate the issue, which will likely grate more when these are read in trade (with narrators coming and going, and the P.O.V. constantly shifting). This means it opens with a a scene of The Flying Graysons, who, at least in this comic, wear blue, white and green, their costumes looking closer to Grayson's Grayson get-up than his Robin costume.

As for the plot, Grayson and Gordon continue their investigation of Noctua, stumbling upon her plans for "The Cage," where the Robins are being kept, and a big-ass owl statue in her apartment.

Speaking of owls, they drag Tim and Jason from their cells, and tell them they must fight to the death, with the winner becoming their new "Gray Son." They do for a while, and Di Giandomenico does a pretty great job drawing their combat.

It may shock you to learn that despite playing along for a few pages, Tim and Jason do not actually fight to the death, but at one point Tim breaks away from the fight, opens all the cages and the Robins and they rain down en masse on their Court of Owls guards. They then all escape to the roof...where some Talons are waiting for them.

Robin: Son of Batman #7 ("Robin War" Part 5) by writers Patrick Gleason and Ray Fawkes and artist Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens; 22/$3.99

It was a pleasant surprise to crack open the cover of this issue and see Scott McDaniel's artwork; he pencils this issue, while his frequent collaborator Andy Owens inks. McDaniel has done a lot of work for DC, but is probably still best known for his work as a Batman artist and what I have to imagine is the longest-running Nightwing artist, so it was a treat to see him drawing Dick Grayson again, along with so many of Dick's peers.

The Robins vs. Talons battle occupies the first seven pages, with the cast of We Are Robin joining forces with the three captured official Robins to fight the undead assassins. Damian ends the battle by setting off a pretty huge explosion.

From there, the Robins follow Riko's lead to Gotham Academy, where she had previously discovered (in the tie-in, discussed below) that the Court was "hatching" undead super-Talons. They're joined by Batman Jim Gordon, who helps them shut the operation down.

Meanwhile, Grayson has fought his way through the Court of Owls for a face-to-face with Lincoln March, who reveals that the Court is no longer interested in Grayson, as they've found a new "Gray Son," the one character Dick feels most responsible for:

McDaniel and Owens

I really like the way McDaniel draws Damian, especially in "owl mode." I kind of wish Damian had a special Court of Owls costume though, to go with that mask.

The next official chapter is the final one, but let's here pause to look at the three tie-in issues.

Gotham Academy #13 ("Robin War" tie-in) by writer Brenden Fletcher and artists Adam Archer and Sandra Hope; 20/$2.99

This seems to be the only of the three tie-ins that is necessary, or at least necessary-ish; it's mentioned or alluded to in just about all of the official chapters, albeit sometimes obliquely. Behind regular interior artist Karl Kerschl's excellent cover, featuring Maps turning in her GA badge for a Robin R, is the work of occasional guest-artist Adam Archer, inked by Sandra Hope.

The story, "Robins Vs. Zombies," opens with a Gotham Academy answer to the Robin movement–appropriately, preppily attired in a costume that includes a red, button-down vest and a tie–pursuing a criminal...into a greenhouse, where a zombie has just climbed out of the ground.

During a school assembly in which the kids are told about the Robin Laws and the school's zero-tolerance policy towards Robin-ing (which should help catch-up regular Gotham Academy readers), We Are Robin's Riko Sheridan is introduced to the regular gang: Olive, Maps, Kyle, Pomeline and Colton. Together with Riko, they investigate the recent zombie sightings and, it turns out, the zombie isn't just any undead creature shambling around campus, but is a Talon assassin for the Court of Owls...albeit a befuddled one.

Dr. Kirk Langstrom, one of the school's sometime supervillain faculty members, keeps the Talon in his lab. Riko gets arrested, in order to rejoin the rest of the Robins in the main crossover. Maps is about to rush off to help her, when Damian makes a return appearance to the title, if only briefly, in order to warn Maps to stay out of it for now.

I really dig the interplay between those two characters. I hope Maps asks Damian to Gotham Academy prom or something some time.

Fletcher does a pretty great job on this issue, as it functions pretty perfectly as just another issue of Gotham Academy, where this sort of extremely weird thing happens on a fairly regular basis, but it also ties-in to the "Robin War" storyline and, as I said, it does so more strongly than the other two tie-ins manage.

Red Hood/Arsenal #7 ("Robin War" tie-in) by writer Scott Lobdell and artist Javier Fernandez; 20/$2.99

Lobdell's tie-in, "All's Fair in Love and Robin War!", is strange in that he rather evenly divides the space allotment to the title characters, one of whom is heavily involved in "Robin War" and the other of whom has nothing to do with it. The result? Half of the comic kinda sorta has something to do with the crossover, the other half has nothing to do with it.

Set during the events of Robin War #1, the relevant portion merely involves Tim and Jason meeting up with one another, just before they called in Dick Grayson to help them stop Damian from doing anything stupid when he learned of the Robin movement and the Robin laws.

The two tell one another their origin stories, which is weird; they're explaining them for readers, of course, but Lobdell doesn't have them play out all that organically. The scene ends with the two giving one another a fist-bump.

I've never taken to this title, or the Red Hood and The Outlaws title that preceded it, mainly because of the poor craft usually involved in its creation, but also because of the fact that the characters were rebooted into unrecognizability. I loved Roy Harper, but don't know him post-New 52. I loved Tim Drake even more, but ditto. It's weird to see Roy and Tim both now being played as Jason's best friends in the whole world.

The Robin-less pages of this issue, which are many, basically involve Jason telling Roy to stay out of the Robin Wars and to keep an eye on their new partner, The Joker's Daughter (Hey, how come that face she's wearing hasn't rotted yet? It was getting pretty ripe before the end of "Death of the Family," and that was long before she even found it). So instead they go off to fight The Circus of Crime a circus-themed group of criminals.

Then some lava men capture them.

Teen Titans #15 ("Robin War" tie-in) by writers Scott Lobdell and Will Pfeifer and artists Ian Churchill, Miguel Mendonca, Norm Rapmund and Dexter Vines; 20/$2.99

Much like the issue of Red Hood/Arsenal, this one is divided between scenes featuring the involved character (Teen Titans's Red Robin) and what the rest of the team is up to while that member of the cast is busy participating in a crossover.

It's actually divided a little more neatly, as there are two art teams involved: Churchill and Rapmund handle the Teen Titans scenes, while Mendonca and Vines draw the "Robin War" scenes.

The relevant portions are set, according to the editorial boxes, between the events of Robin: Son of Batman and Robin War #2, but they actually seem to occur during the pages of Robin. Tim and Jason lead the We Are Robin Robins through the streets of Gotham to Gotham Academy. That takes up...let's see... three pages. Yes, just three pages. That is how much of this issue ties-in to "Robin War."

The rest? The current Titans line-up–Beast Boy, Bunker, Raven, Wonder Girl and Power Girl–are hanging out in a mansion that Wonder Girl rented for them in Kane County, outside of Gotham. They eventually venture into the city, where they run across a Gotham villain, Professor Pyg, who is secretly in league with a Titans villain, Brother Blood.

It's much like all of the other New 52 Titans comics I've read–nigh unreadable.

Robin War #2 ("Robin War" Part 6) by writer Tom King and artists Khary Randolph, Alvaro Martinez, Raul Fernandez, Carmine Di Giandomenico, Steve Pugh, Scott McDaniel and Andy Owens; 38/$4.99

Much like the over-sized first issue, this one has a single writer but a whole mess of artists. They are all good artists, but the changes in style make this a far from smooth read, particularly since those styles vary so much, as do the designs. Remember what I said about Di Giandomenico's Damian? Well, here his Damian is separated by just the turn of the page from the more on-model drawings of the character offered by other artists (Actually, Pugh's Damian is even more off-model, as he seems to be using early issues of Batman and Robin for reference, rather than current issues of Robin: Son of Batman, where Damian sports a new, slightly different costume).

Just as King used various formulations of "I am Robin!" throughout the first issue, here he uses formulations of "I am not Robin," beginning with an overweight member of the movement who decided to sit this one out, and stay home and play videogames instead.

Having accepted the mantle of The Gray Son, Damian orders Red Robin, Red Hood and the We Are Robin Robins to all go home, telling them he's fixed the problem for them. They, naturally, refuse, and so Damian fights them. All. He takes Red Hood down in the space of a few panels. He takes Tim, who puts his hands up and doesn't fight back, with a single punch. Two more panels take out four more Robins, until it's only Duke left standing.

Back in Owl-ville, March explains to Grayson that Damian beat him to there and, when told about the new super-Talons–a sort of Court contingency plan, should they ever lose complete control, to raze the city of Gotham–agreed to accept the mantle of The Gray Son in order to save the city.

Just as Damian debates and fights with the Robins, Dick talks and fights with March.

Remarkably, Duke holds his own against Damian for a really long time...at least compared to, like, all of the others. Using a pair of nunchucks, he fights the owled-up Damian while psychoanalyzing him, telling him that he's figured out that he's really Damian Wayne and that his father, Bruce Wayne, was really Batman, and that by sacrificing himself to the Court like this, Robin's just trying to emulate his father and, essentially, to be Batman instead of Robin.

It's actually a pretty great bit, getting to the heart of the Robin character, and tying this in rather nicely to the Batman mega-story. It works, and Damian stops fighting Duke and turns his attention to the marauding Talons, along with the rest of the Robin movement.

March's sales-pitch to Grayson also worked. Explaining that there was some kinda nano-poison something-or-other in the owl mask he gave to Damian, he tells Grayson if he doesn't become the Gray Son, he'll kill Damian. So Dick does what Batman would do, and what Damian tried to do: He agrees, sacrificing himself for everyone else.

There's a series of little epilogues after these dual climaxes, including one where everyone yells at Dick in the Batcave, and he's basically like, "Yeah, whatever, I'm just doing what Batman would do." (He does not look down at the WWBD? bracelet on his wrist at this point, although that woulda been awesome). There's another where Duke and the We Are Robin Robins gather around the grave of Travis, the Robin who kicked off the Robin War during the liquor store robbery gone wrong, and Duke essentially says that he's out, and that they're not ready to be Robins. There's a two-page sequence in which we're introduced to the international Parliament of Owls, and see Dick in an owl mask (this seems like simply a new version of what's been going on in Grayson; Dick infiltrating a sinister, international organization).

And then there's what may be my favorite part of the whole damn crossover:

Randolph

Duke and Damian...friends?

Overall, I think "Robin War" was a pretty successful crossover. If you look at the numbers, it definitely seems as if DC convinced retailers to up their orders on several of the lower-selling titles involved (like Gotham Academy, for example), although whether or not those extra issues actually sold to readers, and if many or any of them decided they liked what they saw enough to want to add Gotham Academy or Teen Titans or We Are Robin to their pull-lists will remain to be seen.

Creatively, I liked the structure, which designated the essential (the ones with "Part Something-or-Other" on the cover) from the inessential (the "tie-ins,") and how quickly it all played out...it was essentially a weekly story that all went down in a month or so, with the conclusion following the month after.

As a comic? Well, there was some pretty great art in it. I particularly liked that of Randolph, Janin, Di Giandomenico, Mauricet and, to my surprise, McDaniel.

The story, as I mentioned, had a few too many jumps in logic to be taken too seriously, even by the standards of a Batman comic. Jason, Tim and Damian all being captured by the police, the police not processing anyone, the high-tech, Marvel Universe-style super-prison...it required too many leaps of faith in the writers, which were never rewarded. I understand how King and company got there, as they likely wanted to include all of the Robins as quickly as possible, but I think a scene here or there or tweaks to the script could have achieved the same goals, without making readers have to do any cognitive gymnastics, like the fact that Damian could take out Batman James Gordon in one issue, and then get taken down by him in another.

It certainly seemed to set up plotlines for Grayson and We Are Robin, and while neither strike me as particularly promising, I don't regularly read those books anyway. Maybe the best things the story accomplished are two in number.

First, it offered a series of meetings between characters in roles that are temporary. Gordon's time as Batman is almost certainly coming to an end, so we get to see him meet Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne before he takes off his Batman suit for good, for example. We Are Robin seems to have an expiration date on it, with either sales or a change in the Batman line's status quo providing reasons to cancel it, so it was nice to see those kids interact with the other Robins. And, of course, it was interesting to see a big Batman line crossover sans Batman. I believe Lincoln March mentioned Bruce Wayne at one point, but the "real" Batman was otherwise absent, aside from, perhaps, as an abstract, inspirational force only occasionally alluded to.

Second, I thought the series went a long way toward establishing Duke Thomas as a character in the Batman universe. Diversity is an admirable goal in comics, and the Batman corner of the DC Universe has been whiter than most, having a great deal of trouble establishing any credible, cool black characters who have gained traction, despite several attempts, including Orpheus, Onyx, Azrael II and Batwings I and II. The Bat-office hasn't even created any memorable black villains, and so for a long time the most prominent black characters in the line have been Lucius Fox (who started appearing more often in The New 52, thanks in large part to the prominent role he played in Christopher Nolan's trilogy of live-action Batman films, I think) and pre-New 52 police officer Crispus Allen who was briefly The Spectre).

Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo have done a fine job of gradually integrating Duke into the cast of the Bat-family, with a brief but memorable appearance as a little kid in the "Zero Year" storyline, before appearing as a teenager in Batman (his appearances in the Futures End as a young adult, officially-sanctioned Robin partnered to Batman was cool). He's become the closest thing to a lead in the ensemble We Are Robin, and here we get to see his smarts (he figures out Dick's secret ID...as well as Damian's and Bruce Wayne's), his fighting skills and his leadership skills. His one-on-one moments with Dick and Damian were both pretty great, and could prove quite key to the character moving forward.

I'm not sure what Snyder, We Are Robin writer Lee Bermejo or DC's editors have in store for Duke. There are already too many Robins–I'm still a little annoyed that Tim isn't Robin, as much as I've grown to love Damian–and only so many good bat/bird codenames out there (Harper Row took "Bluebird;" "Blackbird" sounds cool, but probably isn't a good choice for the only black sidekick..."Redbird" is maybe a possibility, though it sounds kinda lame). Besides, given that there's never been a Robin who wasn't a black-haired white dude–with the exception of one brief stint by a blonde, white girl that's no longer continuity/canon–having a black Robin would be a greater achievement. But, again, how is Duke supposed to shoulder Damian and Tim out of the way?

I guess we'll just have to wait and see. In the meantime, that character's development is probably the most interesting and important aspect of this event, and, depending on where he goes in the future, could make "Robin War" a relevant story going forward.

Three recent DC comics of some note

1.) Detective Comics #45: This issue marks the beginning of both a new creative team and a new story arc, the second Detective story since the post-"Endgame"/Convergence change in status quo in the world of Batman, with (former) Commissioner James Gordon donning a robot battle suit and doffing his mustache to replace the amnesiac Bruce Wayne as Batman.

As the clear franchise B-title–it's no coincidence that it gets another new creative team, while A-title Batman has had the same writer, penciller and inker team since fall of 2011–Detective more often than not follows, reacts to or otherwise stays out of the way of whatever Scott Snyder and company are doing in Batman. The drastic change in direction may actually be beneficial to Tec, though; the first story arc focused on Gordon's support staff among the Gotham City Police Department, while this one introduces the new Batman to the Justice League...a move that oughta pique some interest in the title.

In that respect, the new writer demonstrates some real market savvy in his first issue. That writer, by the way, is Peter Tomasi, who has had plenty of Batman-writing experience, most recently on a 50-ish run on Batman and Robin (spanning the end of the pre-New 52 incarnation and the entirety of the post-reboot version of the title).

He's paired with a rtistMarcio Takara, his Batman and Robin partner Patrick Gleason having gone on to both write and draw new title Robin: Son of Batman. I like Takara's artwork quite a bit. The craft is quite solid, the story-telling ideal and the style flat, dynamic and just-detailed enough, never over-busy. The cover isn't by Takara, but by Andrew Robinson. If you so much as glance at it, you'll likely notice something pretty remarkable about the Justice League and, through it, the state and management of the DC Universe at this point (four years after their New 52 reboot and rebranding, and a few months after their refocusing "DCYou" initiative).

See, that is The Justice League, but you probably don't recognize them as being the exact same characters as this bunch.

After a very weird two-page opening in which what appears to be sentient water drowns a group of people and steals their eye balls, and then a page of amnesiac, bearded Bruce Wayne talking about his amnesia with the newly left-handed Alfred, there's a knock at the door, and Alfred answers it to reveal Takara's version of the League:

Going clockwise, we see Shazam, Wonder Woman in here new costume, Aquaman in his new costume, Superman in his new costume (sporting a new haircut and a new status quo in which he's been massively de-powered and now has a public identity), The Flash in what looks like a new costume but could just be a rather poor drawing of his terrible New 52 redesign (I haven't been able to force myself to read any issues of The Flash in a long time, even when I don't have to pay for 'em), and Cyborg in what is his third design since Justice League #1.

Coupled with the fact that they are here to recruit a new Batman, that means every single member of the New 52's founding Justice League has been re-designed and re-tooled, all almost simultaneously. Not present is Green Lantern Hal Jordan, who, fear not, has also been re-designed and given a new, radically different status quo.

It's a state of affairs reminiscent of the 1990s (think Superman's death and replacement and resurrection; Batman's crippling and replacement by Azrael; Wonder Woman's loss of her role and costume to Artemis; Aquaman's hook hand and bearded look, et cetera). Those changes all came after the first–the "death" of Superman–proved popular and, of course, after decades of the characters changing really rather little. Even if you look at Crisis On Infinite Earths as the start of a "new" continuity for the then 50-year-old DC Universe, it was about a decade before the publisher started redesigning their characters and trying out radical changes in direction.

All of this happened after just five years of the current continuity/status quo. (And even if a few of the ideas, like the new Batman or Superman losing his secret identity arose organically with a couple of writers, it's clear that there was a top-down decision to shake everything up heading out of the Convergence break and into "DCYou."

But back to the story, Aflred isn't exactly happy to see the Justice League on his door step...particularly since, as he had already explained to Superman, Bruce's loss of memory isn't your garden variety amnesia, but he actually came back from the dead with a brand-new brain, one completely devoid of all the skills and instincts of his years of training and Batmanning, meaning he can't be Batman, even if he finds out he used to be.

After a few pages of discussion between Alfred and various Leaguers, Bruce Wayne interrupts, learning that he used to lend his help to the League in the past (they don't tell him in what capacity, however). They are there because they desperately need him, and Wonder Woman wants to give him the magic lasso treatment to magically verify what Alfred has already scientifically verified.

Meanwhile, Tomasi introduces us to the new Batman, who is in the middle of trying to deal with fighter jets piloted by mind-controlled thralls (courtesy of The Mad Hatter), and he gets a helping hand from the visiting Leaguers. After the brief team-up, they discuss their need for Batman's detective skills, and since Gordon is both currently Batman and not all that bad a detective, they welcome him aboard.

The book ends with a very weird splash page, the sort showing a big, crazy moment not unlike those that Geoff Johns might end an issue with.

All in all, Tomasi gets quite a bit done in a single issue–he gets a whole 22-pages, as this is one of DC's new $3.99/22-page books–introducing the old Batman, the new Batman and the Justice League. It was kind of fun to see this League functioning as a team too, as their home title is currently caught up in a massive storyline ("The Darkseid War") and both Justice League books–Justice League and JLA–are both unfolding at some point in the recent past before all the changes evident here.

It's a nice, fresh start for the book, really, and nothing says more about Takara's skills than the fact that the hodge-podge visuals of this Justice League–which weren't all designed by the same guy, like they were in Justice League #1–all seem to fit together and look like they belong not only on the same world, but in the same comic book.

2.) Grayson #12: DC isn't abandoning their current direction for former Robin Dick Grayson, as a sexy super-spy working for Spyral, and perhaps there's no real reason to do so (Grayson has proven much more interesting than anything in the New 52 Nightwing, and in a rebooted universe without the Teen Titans or generations of heroes in general, there's the character lacks much juice to be anything more than a junior, cape-less Batman more prone to smiling).

That said, they are here resolving an aspect of the new direction. Grayson went into super-spying after his public identity was revealed to the world during the events of Forever Evil (and miraculously, unbelievably, no one managed to figure out that if Dick Grayson was Nightwing, then Bruce Wayne must be Batman...except for Lex Luthor). He and Batman took off their shirts, beat the living hell out of one another for, like, 18 pages, and then decided that Grayson would fake his death and join Spyral to spy on the spies for Batman.

The thing was that only Batman knew Grayson hadn't died. So everyone–Alfred, Batgirl, Red Robin Tim Drake, back-from-the-dead Damian Wayne–thought Dick was dead. The fact that Batman Bruce Wayne then "died" himself, only to come back with no memory of anything prior to his resurrection, set up some interesting possibilities for Grayson. The title character was now literally left out in the cold, his only lifeline dead.

Curious then that writers Tom King and Tim Seeley decide instead to have Dick simply return to Gotham and announce that he's not dead after all. Perhaps it was out of their control though; Grayson being back on the board in an official capacity certainly makes Batman and Robin Forever something that's, you know, possible.

To their credit, as truncated, even hurried as this issue is, they craft a fairly solid story out of it. Alfred preps Dick Grayson for a meeting with Bruce Wayne, by rather hilariously giving him a ridiculous disguise. I particularly like this panel, where he seemingly just slaps a goatee on him.

In the first instance of a repeating motif, when Dick confronts Bruce (he wants to see his amnesia/new brain for himself), artist Mikel Janin draws a background-less splash image of the character, with "samples" of dialogue that Bruce Wayne has previously spoken to Dick (from comics throughout the characters' history, not simply stopping at the beginning of the New 52-boot), appearing in tail-less, gray-on-black dialogue balloons.

This will repeat with Red Robin and Red Hood, Batgirl and Robin.

Dick tries to get out, but Spyral refuses to let him go, and essentially black mail him: If he leaves Spyral, they tell the world Bruce Wayne is–or at least was–Batman. In a typically smart fashion, one pretty clearly telegraphed in the opening pages in which Alfred talks about the differences between lying and performing (a nice echo to the pep talk Grant Morrison had Alfred give Dick at the start of his second tenure as Batman, in which he encouraged the former circus acrobat to think of Batman as a role he was playing in a performance), Dick's visits to his old allies serve a double purpose.

He announces that he's actually alive, gives them gifts and tells them how he feels about them...while also putting together a heist of sorts that all comes together in the last two pages, as he has rallied his old allies to help him turn the tables on Spyral.

It's some damn good plotting, pulled off exceptionally well.

The details are a little uncomfortable in some instances. I still don't like the way that Jason Todd is treated as Tim and Dick's "brother" after him having spent most of his post-resurrection time before the reboot actively trying to kill them, and I'm not entirely clear on what sort of relationship he actually had with Barbara Gordon (who seems so de-aged that she seems like she's maybe closer to Tim Drake than Dick Grayson in age now) is anymore.

I thought these two panels were ridiculously sweet, though:

In fact, I'm pretty sure I actually said "Aw" when I read them. I like the juxtaposition of the sweet ninja gymastic moves applied to something so human and tender as a hug.

3.) We Are Robin #4: I've been of two minds about this title for the first few issues. The idea of Gotham youth adopting Batman's teenage sidekick as a concept around which to build a movement is certainly interesting, even if it seems a little overly-evocative of a few other Batman stories and DC comics.

It doesn't seem like a terribly sustainable idea, given that there are already seemingly as many Robins as there are Green Lanterns, and the series is premised on the characters filling a void left by Batman's "death." There's also the revelation of a familiar character behind the movement, manipulating it that, if not a red (robin) herring, is fairly problematic.

That said, the interior art of those first few issues was pretty great, I liked the focus on recurring Batman character (and popular post-Damian Robin candidate, and Futures End's Robin) Duke Thomas and the mystery of who was behind it all was generally compelling.

What I didn't like, however, beyond the previously mentioned conceptual concerns, was writer Lee Bermejo's covers, which aren't my cup of tea, and very poorly telegraphed what the comic book actually looked like (Jorge Corona and company's style couldn't be further from Bermejo's; I probably wouldn't have even picked an issue of this book up if it wasn't literally put into my hands) and his usage of social media handles and conversation as constant narration. Maybe I am just very old, but I find that shit so goddam irritating.

This issue is a sort of (rather early, really) breather issue, a pause after the big event that ended the previous issue, and lead to the death of one of the Robins. It also seems positioned as a sort of jumping-on point, prominently featuring not only Batgirl, but also a two-page "Who Are The Robins?" breakdown of the half-dozen main characters in the ensemble cast...including the one who is no longer with us. (They're not bonus pages though; this is a $3.99 book, but there are only 20 story pages).

Unlike the previous issues, this one focuses on a single one of the Robins, Riko Sheridan, as she tries to cope with the aftermath of having lost an ally in the movement, tries to fight some crime on her own and meets and teams-up with her hero Batgirl.

The best part is, by far, the art. James Harvey pencils, inks and colors it, with Diana Egea sharing the inking credit and Alex Jafe the coloring credit.

I don't really have enough words to describe how good the art is, but it is fantastic. It's so good, I hardly cared what the book was about or who the character were, I just wanted to read it. Harvey's page lay-outs are gutter-less, giving every page a somewhat crowded, mosaic like feeling. It's flat, but urgent; feeling like a bedroom full of posters or a urban wall covered in show fliers.

His character designs and the way he rendered people sometimes made me think of the work of Brandon Graham, and sometimes made me think of Taiyo Masumoto (of Tekkon Kinkreet fame, which is high praise indeed).

I can't help but wonder if every issue of this book like this, inside and outside, if it wouldn't be doing better in the market...or at least with critics.

Check out Riko's tights:

Or her costume, which is infinitely cooler than the one she usually wears:

Or this panel, which also reminded me of Tekkon Kinkreet, of her and Batgirl casually sitting very high above the city streets:

Riko's battle here is a pretty simple one, amounting to basically enforcing a local ban on public burning by some juvenile delinquents, but then, it's the sort of entry-level crime one would expect a brand-new, hobbyist crime-fighter/vigilante to deal with, isn't it?

After reading this, not only did I want Harvey to take over this book–not the Ben-Day dot coloring!–but I also wanted Riko to join Batgirl as her Robin. I know Gotham already has a Batgirl, a Bluebird and a Spoiler, and Cassandra Cain and Carrie Kelly are both out there too (I think; they didn't kill off the latter, did they?), but surely there's room for one more crime-fighting girl on the streets, right...?

Wednesday Comics vs. New 52: Superman

Powerful, strange visitor from another planet Superman comes face-to-face with his own alien nature, and begins to doubt himself and his place in the world, until he reconnects with the people in his life and realizes that those relationships are what help make him the hero he is, in a story by John Arcudi and Lee Bermejo.

A powerful, strange visitor from another planet wearing a Superman-brand t-shirt and red towel cape shows up in Metropolis and all but turns the city on its head, by Grant Morrison, Rags Morales and Rick Bryant...and a heavily-armored Superman defends Metropolis from elemental threats with a connection to his home planet, by George Perez and Jesus Merino.

The worst Noel

It’s easy to see the logic behind Batman: Noel, a new original graphic novel by Lee Bermejo, who teamed with writer Brian Azzarello to deliver the well-received, rather successful Joker graphic novel (Which I didn’t like, but it’s not like something selling a lot of copies and me not liking it is all that rare an occurrence).

In addition to providing a sort of visual sequel that allows DC to put “From The Co-Creator of The New York Times Best-Selling ‘Joker’” on the cover, the new $23, 120-page hardcover probably makes a decent gift purchase for bookstore shoppers looking for something to get the comic book reader or Bat-fan on their list.

Creatively, the logic behind publishing Batman: Noel makes little to no sense to me. It’s a pretty awful comic book, of the sort that makes one feel a little embarrassed for its creator while reading.

You can’t tell from the generic title or generic cover, but this is actually the inevitable Batman version of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol…actually, it’s at least the second.

Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale did a far superior version in 1995’s Batman: Ghosts—A Legends of the Dark Knight Halloween Special (a $5, 48-page book that was later collected with the other Loeb/Sale LDK Halloween specials in the 1996 Batman: Haunted Knight, which is a better trade with more story for less money than this goofy Noel book, Christmas shoppers!).

That transposes the basic structure of Dickens’ holiday classic so that it's essentially A Halloween Carol. A young Bruce Wayne seems to be embracing his role as Batman at the expense of living and enjoying his real life as Bruce. After the Penguin attacks him and he eats some bad sea food, he sleeps fitfully the night before Halloween.

He’s visited by the ghost of his father, then Poison Ivy, The Joker, and a mysterious cloaked figure and, upon waking to discover it was all just a crazy fever dream, he decides to spend a little more time as Bruce Wayne (This was the introduction of Sale’s incredibly idiosyncratic versions of Poison Ivy and The Penguin and, I believe, his first Joker story; all three would show up in his “Year One” era series with Loeb, Long Halloween and Dark Victory).Bermejo, writing his own story, does the same "Dickens + Batman" premise, but in a very different way. First, it’s a Christmas story again.

Secondly, there’s no "it was all a dream" twist; that excused Loeb’s borrowing the plot from Dickens (Batman would be familiar with the story, and could have been dreaming along that template) and allowed for the artificiality of the plot reflecting that of the novel. The events in this story all "really" happen, although this is essentially an un-labled Elseworlds or Imaginary Tale, as Bermejo’s costume designs and continuity signifiers make clear.

Thirdly, the story arc is different. Whereas Ghosts saw Batman needing to rediscover the, um, Spirit of Bruce Wayne, Noel finds Batman needing to stop being a savage, scary asshole who never un-grits his teeth and doesn’t risk the life of an innocent boy by using him as bait to capture The Joker and, ultimately…not being that guy…? I don’t know; it’s not really clear. Bermejo basically presents Batman as a Frank Miller-inspired ‘90s-style Dark Knight, dialed up to eleventeen and, after his visitation by the “spirits,” he…well, he basically just buys Tiny Tim a Christmas tree and hires Bob Cratchit as a janitor at Wayne Enterprises. We're not privy to whether or not he's changed, as after capturing The Joker he promptly falls asleep and we don't see him conscious again in the book.

Most bizarrely, the story Bermejo tells through his images and dialogue is a Batman adventure which is parallel to certain elements of Dickens’ story...which is different from the loose adaptation of A Christmas Carol Batman: Noel offers.

For the former, Batman’s trying to catch The Joker, and is using The Joker’s bagman as bait. The bagman is the story’s Cratchit, and he has a sick little boy named Tim. Sick with fever himself and battling pneumonia, Batman thinks he sees the ghost of an unnamed dead Robin, in for Marley. Catwoman is in for the Ghost of Christmas Past (Her conversation allowing Batman to flashback in his mind to the past), Superman is in for Christmas Present (his superpowers allowing him to fly Batman around and show him stuff) and The Joker in for Christmas Future, burying Batman alive, so that our hero can hallucinate the future (Before ultimately fighting his way to the surface, as in the conclusion of "The Black Glove" storyline from Batman).

For the latter, Bermejo has the Cratchit character re-tell A Christmas Carol quite badly to Tim, updating it to modern times. This narrative, told all in prose that appears in big white text over the artwork, isn’t the Batman story, Bermejo just lines them up with one another. It’s really quite poorly told, as it’s essentially what you would get if you asked a random person on the street to summarize A Christmas Carol for you, but to set it in the 20th century instead of the 19th. And I’m confused as to why it’s even included. They already removed all reference to Dickens’ story from the title, why keep a retelling of it? With it removed, the book becomes a super-subtle adaptation—one that works remarkably well, given the care with which Bermejo chose his ghosts and the sources of the visions they give his protagonist—and it becomes somewhat more readable.

But it still has problems. My favorite part happens right after Batman jumps on the Cratchit character and screams at him for a few pages, spit literally flying out of Batman's mouth and onto the terrified bagman's. Batman tells him he's going to let him go rather than bust him, since he'll make better Joker bait than "jail bait."

I don’t think we’re meant to laugh at Batman here, but surely a smart guy like him knows what “jail bait” actually is, right? It’s not someone who goes to jail. I would imagine the most common response to this book will be along the lines of Chris Mautner’s: Terrible story, nice art.

I found it more than a little undercooked myself. Bermejo’s style isn’t to my taste, as it’s quite representational—sometimes filmic, sometimes photo-realistic—and there’s a defensiveness about the costume designs that betrays a bit of embarrassment or shame on the part of the artist in embracing them (Robin, for example, has long pants, because shorts are just silly; he also had chain-mail in his costume. Batman is wears armor that makes the Arkham Asylum game Batman and Christian Bale’s Batman look vulnerable; and his mask looks like Midnighter’s).But at the end of the day, too much of it (with “any” being “too much”) is just plain hard to read. Look at this image, with Alfred in the background and foreground simultaneously. Does Batman have twin butlers, or does Alfred have super-speed in the Noel-iverse?

That said, the costume designing was my favorite part of the book. I liked seeing how Bermejo thought through various aspects of various costumes, coming up with unique tastes that seemed like compromises between the original comic designs and what Hollywood costume designers would outfit the characters with in potential live-action films. It’s all little stuff, but I like seeing where Bermejo put the buckles, or how his Catwoman’s boots might differ from other Catwoman boots.I could find no such silver lining in the writing, however. It was just too hard to believe, from Batman being so amoral as to dangle people in front of The Joker in order to catch him, to Batman being so plain stupid about the way in which he does so (he uses the Cratchits as bait for The Joker, but then goes home to the Batcave and undresses, watching them on his Bat-computer, God knows how many miles away, while he has no idea where The Joker is), to Superman flying in to check on Batman, and not offering to help find The Joker with the amazing powers he has, or to stand guard over the kid Batman was using as bait (remember, Batman's plan is to wait for The Joker to show up to kill Bob and Tim in order to catch him).

Check out this page:Superman doesn't even look over his shoulder when the Batmobile explodes in Batman’s face (“I heard you coughing all the way from Metropolis,” Superman says when he first appears, reminding us that he has super-hearing).

And Bermejo and co-publisher Jim Lee, who writes an introduction (Oh, there’s a silver lining! There’s an introduction! I think all graphic novels of this sort should have one), are just daring people to take issue with it.

First, Lee writes that Bermejo is one of those few lucky talents whose work (Joker) is both popular and well-reviewed.

And here’s how Bermejo starts the story:No, no you’re not. But you don't have to be that honest about it.

Nice costume designs and buildings, though. This would be a pretty strong second draft, but it still needs a lot of work.

I don't know if it's art, but I know I don't really like it.

I just read Brian Azzarello, Lee Bermejo, Mick Gray and Patricia Mulvihill’s Joker this weekend. You’ll likely recall it’s the November 2008 original graphic novel (of the sort that Marvel’s EIC Joe Quesada recently said doesn’t make sense for his company, but which seems to work well for DC for some reason), the one that shares a general character design and Batman-comics-as-“realistic”-crime-drama mission statement with the previous summer’s film The Dark Knight.

It’s the one with the gross cover, and the cool Crazy Person font logo and credits.

This book was sort of a big deal last fall, or at least DC really treated it as a big deal—despite a deep catalog of solid Joker comics to draw from, they apparently commissioned this as a signature companion to the movie (in aesthetic and worldview only) and gave it a massive PR push, maybe the biggest PR push of any DC book since I’ve been paying attention, based on the number of reviews both in the comics blogosphere and in the mainstream media (It’s quite possible, of course, that the push on DC’s side wasn’t necessarily bigger than some previous books, but instead that more venues were more eager to bite, given the book-like nature of the release and the unique heat signature of The Joker at that period in time, when the movie was huge, the promising young actor who played him had passed away, and Oscar talk was earnest).

I didn’t read it last fall precisely because of the attention it was garnering; there were no shortage of reviews of it, and given the review-whatever-I-feel-like nature of my comics criticism, I didn’t feel pressed to add another. I also made the mistake of reading Jog’s review before the book’s release, and his review was so well written I couldn’t imagine trying to “compete” with it, even if I had the exact opposite reaction he did to every element of the book (Re-reading Jog’s piece now, after having read Joker, I see it that in addition to being well written, his review was also pretty damn incisive—his description of a lot of aspects are pretty much perfect).

So if you’re wondering why I’m bothering to write about Joker almost a year after it’s release, well, now you know.

Jog did seem to enjoy the work a lot more than I did, though.

Azzarello certainly put the short-ish story together with a great deal of precise craft. In length, scope and focus, this is certainly a work that earns the “novel” part of the term “graphic novel” (although maybe “novella” is more fitting? It’s only 128 pages). But because I was reading the book for pleasure instead of specifically to review it, my mind kept wandering away from concerns of the quality and back towards more behind-the-scenes ones. For example, why did this book exist, exactly? Why did DC publish it? Why did they publish it like this, instead of some other way?

Unless for some reason this is the very first post on my blog you’re reading, then you know I’m a regular comics reader, of the sort one might call a fan, or, derisively, part of “the Wednesday crowd.” I go to the shop every week, I buy somewhere between a handful and a small stack of super-comics in their stapled, 22-page format, I pay attention and keep at least casual track of the “universe” aspects of super-comics.

As such a reader, I wasn’t sure what to make of this book at first. Was it supposed to be “in continuity;” was it supposed to “count?” Was this Joker and this Gotham City supposed to be the same one most of the other thousands of Batman comics deal with, or is it an all-new one, Azzarello and Bermejo’s own, highly personalized remix of the familiar elements? Is it supposed to be all-ages, or adult?

It’s published by DC on their DC Comics imprint, instead of their Vertigo imprint; it doesn’t say “For Mature Readers” on it, as DC comics used to once upon a time, back when they published a variety of comics for a variety of different age groups, instead of choosing to focus almost exclusively on teenage boys who might conceivably get in trouble with their parents if there were F-words or nipples in their comics, but who nevertheless want to read about guys who swear and go to strip clubs and also really, really like reading about acts of violence, the more lurid the better.

Having read through it twice now, I understand this is a standalone work. It’s supposed to remind you of the movie (or at least what Azzarello, Bermejo and DC assumed the movie would be like, based on Batman Begins), but it’s a different milieu than the movie. It’s okay if it reminds you of the comics, particularly if it makes you want to read more Batman comics, but it’s not connected; it’s not in-continuity.

For us Wednesday Crowd-ers who’ve been reading DC for at least a decade, it’s an “Elseworlds” comic without the “Elseworlds” stamp. In more inclusive terminology, it’s Azzarello’s and Bermejo’s Joker story if they were allowed to reimagine the Joker how they saw fit; this is their The Dark Knight, only it’s a graphic novel instead of a film.

Looked at like that, it’s not a bad work. It’s engaging, and has new ideas to offer in terms of personalized riffs on characters and concepts that hundreds of different writers and artists have offered their riffs on already. The route it takes to its conclusion seems new, but it goes nowhere—or at least nowhere we haven’t been before.

Joker has nothing to say that The Killing Joke didn’t say about 25 years ago—The Joker and Batman are characters (in a comic book or TV show or cartoon or movie or video game), and they fight, because one’s the villain and one’s the hero, and that’s what characters do. The Joker wins for a while, and then he loses by the climax.

Azzarello chooses different words to say this than Alan Moore (and everyone else since) did, but that’s all he really has to say about the matter. What makes this at all different is the point-of-view, and the amount of time Azzarello puts off bringing Batman into the comic at all. The ending is the ending it has to be, or at least the one Azzarello acknowledges that it has to be, but some equivocal foreshadowing aside, he keeps the proceeding as Batman-free as possible.

I imagine it analogous to a kid trying to stay up as late as possible. His parents keep telling him it’s time for bed, and he knows he’s eventually gotta, but he keeps pleading “Just five more minutes,” and they give him five more minutes.

And that’s about where I start questioning aspects of the work’s very existence. If you can turn these children’s characters into hard-boiled, pulp crime characters, if you can have these action figures drinking, popping pills, and snorting lines of representationally drawn cocaine, if these cartoon characters can butcher and skin human beings, can watch strippers and rape women, why can’t the story deviate into new territory? The acknowledgement that neither the Joker nor the Batman can ever win, that their conflicts are inevitably a never-ending series of repeating sequences is a tired cliché at this point.

And hell, if you can’t tell a new story, for the love of God, can you at least show a naked lady? An upraised middle finger? The word “fuck” spelled f-u-c-k with no cute little black bars or caps lock-ed number keys? Because this comic, like so many today, walks right up to the line of what they can and can’t get away with, farther than they need to if they’re not going to cross it, as if to point out that this is the work of a big, corporation which can’t risk offending anyone.

Wouldn’t it be bad-ass if we did this?, Joker asks. You bet it would, but we might get in trouble, so let’s not, it then answers.

And then skins a dude and lets us know that the woman over there was totally just gang-raped between pages, because that’s A-OK, as long as the penetration—serrated knife through naked man’s flesh or the Joker’s penis through the victimized woman—happens off-panel.

Shit, I sure am going on a long time here. And all I really wanted to do was highlight some weird panels that threw me out of the book and had me scratching my head and experiencing sympathetic existential angst for Joker, because it’s just a bunch of words and pictures on paper and can’t experiences it’s own existential angst.

For example, there’s this picture, of the Joker stalking out of Arkham Asylum, like the scene in a movie where the character gets out of jail after years (a scene we see later in flashback, starring our point-of-view character Johnny Frost):
That is a nice drawing of the buildings in the background, and the whole image has impact (It’s a full-page splash, and Azzarello and Bermejo actually know how to use splash pages, unlike most of their peers making DC comic books rather than DC original graphic novels).

But all I could think of was the fact that the Joker was wearing a lady’s coat. I wouldn’t have even noticed, if Eddie Campbell didn’t notice last year, and write a very funny post about it:

It can happen because the artist is looking in a mirror, but the overwhelming reason in the last twenty years is that comic book artists generally speaking, though there are a few fashion plates to give exception to the rule, are the worst dressed people in the world who mostly get around in t-shirts and draw people in leotards.

On the very next page, I realized that this was going to actually be one of those juvenile comics. Not one for juveniles necessarily, but one of those that has the juvenile tendency to think things like middle fingers are provocative, but will only lift them when their parents and teachers aren’t looking, because they don’t want to get in trouble:
(I included part of the panel above the Joker saluting the city, so you can see the gutter and note how Bermejo drew an image of Joker flicking off Gotham City. And yes, the lightning bolt-as-middle-finger suggestion is pretty awesome, if it's intentional, although it's not something you would see reading the first time, as your eyes would be headed in the opposite direction, and probably stop at, "What the fuck? Why can't they draw a middle finger? Fucking pussies!").

I’m not entirely sure why, but this line of dialogue seemed incredibly wrong to me. It was at this point during the reading experience where it started to become clear to me that this book was, as Jog put it, “continuity neutral,” and that this Joker most definitely wasn’t The Joker:
For the life of me, I just can’t hear the Joker using a double negative like that. If there’s one thing that’s consistent about the Joker in all interpretations across all media, it’s that he is an eloquent, well-spoken sort of villain, the sort who never would have said “no one” instead of “anyone” in that sentence.

Here’s one of Harley Quinn’s big scenes. (I think she’s only ever referred to as “Harley,” though). The Joker and Frost’s first stop after Arkham is this club, where they start drinking and partying. There’s a woman wearing only an open jacket over her breasts standing at the edge of the bar, and, at one point, she gets up on stage:
I suppose she’s supposed to be dancing, but during the four-panel sequence, she takes her jacket off, revealing her breasts to the audience (but not the reader! Because this is an all-ages comic, after all), then puts on her Harley Quinn hat and mask and, off panel, her top. She’s more changing clothes on stage than stripping.

And then she and Joker peel all the skin off that moustache man’s body, from the neck down, so you can see his red muscle (off-panel). They apparently do a very, very good job, as his skin is removed but there’s no blood or incisions in the muscle, and he’s perfectly capable of running back into the room before dying.

That guy in the vest and hat is Killer Croc, by the way. Bermejo draws him more in line with his original conception as a big guy with a tough, scaly skin condition that makes him look vaguely crocodilian, rather than the sort of hulking mutant crocodile monster man he’s become in the comics. Bermejo gives him hoop earrings, and big, baggy pants, sagged to reveal the tops of his boxers.

His role is as muscle in Joker’s criminal operation, and he’s given a sort of hip-hop look. Croc’s men are all black, and dressed in fashions which my mid-nineties MTV viewing tell me are supposed to indicate that they are gangsters. (In a previous Azzarello-written Batman comic, Croc was given a pimp look, complete with huge gold chain and leopard print silk shirt).

Harley is something between a generic movie gangster girlfriend character (stripping, doing it with the main bad guy, doing lots of drugs with the main bad guy, holding him while he cries during a private, vulnerable moment), and a Frank Miller-style Amazon whorerior, although she gets one splendid moment at the end of a meeting between Joker and Two-Face.

Two-Face looks as if he could have come straight from the comics, particularly now that his scarred half doesn’t follow any regular style guide in the DCU comics.

The Penguin looks like the Penguin, fo the most part. He’s short, round, has a pointy nose, wears a monocle, smokes his cigarette from a cigarette holder, but he’s never referred to as “The Penguin,” or “Oswald” or “Cobblepot.” Instead, Joker calls him “Abner,” which I took to be a Joke I didn’t get, although it’s somewhat odd that he continues to call him only that and nothing else.

The most radically reimagined character, however, is The Riddler. Just look at this:
Those are question mark tattoos emanating from his belly button, and although you can’t see it in this image, the back of his coat has a weird, tribal tattoo script-looking image constructed of stylized question marks. It’s all just awful but hey, that’s part of the fun of the book, I suppose….seeing how Bermejo and company reinvent the looks of the characters.

And then there’s their Batman. He too is given a very If This Were Our Movie… design, very reminiscent of the hard, black, rubber and leather looking shells that Michael Keaton and Christain Bale found themselves encased in. Like Bale’s especially, there’s no yellow oval or visible Bat-symbol on the chest, other than perhaps a black bat over a black cape over a black chest plate (or it’s just a crease in Bermejo’s figure).

Batman doesn’t show up until page 110, and only get two lines, for a grand total of four words of dialogue. His existence is acknowledged throughout, with Joker occasionally shouting up at the buildings or mentioning a “he” who’s out there, but this Batman sure seems to take a long time getting around to giving a shit about the many, many violent crimes his archenemies are committing.

This is probably an intentional choice on Azzarello’s part, as he has Joker walk away from murdering a crime boss and then asking the rooftops, “Not enough for you, huh? Need me for more of your dirty work?” It’s as if this Batman only gets involved when crime turns its attention to the civilians, and as long as its criminal on criminal, he’s not terribly rushed to fight it.

That, or this Batman just really, really sucks at his job, as he seems unable to catch up with the Joker until Two-Face finally calls Batman on a homemade Bat-signal and asks for his help.

I think maybe Batman just didn’t think to look for The Joker in an original graphic novel. He was already fighting super-crime in Batman, Detective Comics, Batman Confidential, Superman/Batman, Trinity, Justice League of America, Batman: Gotham After Midnight and Batman: The Brave and The Bold, how was he supposed to know that The Joker and so many of his other rogues were hiding out in an original graphic novel, half-disguised as more straightforward crime fiction characters than their usual, more super-villainous selves?

Finally, here’s a horrible page to close the post out with:
Well, the content's horrible, not the construction of the page itself. That’s The Joker buttoning up his pants after apparently raping Johnny’s ex-wife, whom Two-Face had kidnapped and tried to use as leverage.

If the new management at DC leads to only a single change in DC Comics, I hope it’s some sort of outright ban on rape in their super-comics line, or at least some sort of reduction to, like, one rape/implied rape/line of dialogue expressing a desire to rape every year.