A much longer than necessary, story-by-story review of The Joker: Death of the Family

One factor in both the creative success and, I think, the reader popularity of writer Scott Snyder’s five-part “Death of the Family” arc in Batman was its context.

After a one-issue appearance in writer/artist Tony Daniel’s  2011 Detective Comics #1, in which the new, New 52 Joker appears just long enough to have his own face removed and nailed to a wall, the character disappeared for one year, both in story time and in real-time.

Thanks to remarkable restraint on the part of Snyder and the other writers of DC’s ever-growing line of Batman comics (and, one imagines, a great deal of editorial enforcement), The Joker was a non-presence in their line for that entire year (save for flashbacks and appearances in out-of-continuity books like the digital-first Legends of the Dark Knight).

That meant that when The Joker finally did return in this storyline, it almost automatically made the storyline special, and the reader could more readily identify with Batman: This wasn’t an everydaynight threat like The Court of Owls or The Penguin or Two-Face or the Al Ghul family, this was something more rare, unique and even apocalyptic (It wasn’t all due to the fact that DC rested the character, of course, but that sure helped prime the pump).

The stories collected in Joker: Death in the Family chronicle DC’s 180-degree turn on their policy regarding Joker appearances, the strictly controlled rationing of the first year of The New 52 turning into a deluge.

If you read the storyline monthly, I imagine all these Joker appearances in all of the Batman books got very tedious very fast, and might have even ruined the experience that Snyder, artists Greg Capullo, Jock and others crafted  in the Batman title: A 100-page, novel-length, can’t-put-it-down epic, perfect for a graphic novel reading (Also hurting? The climax of Grant Morrison’s years-long run on Batman, which was playing out simultaneously in Batman Inc; the stories don’t compliment one another very well, and somewhat contradict one another, and a thing that DC was promising at the end of “Death of the Family” actually occurred in Batman Inc like a month later. More on that later).

This Joker book, on the other hand, collects every thing labeled as a crossover or a tie-in, making for a 456-page slog that oughta make anyone sick and tired of The Joker. Most of these are somewhere between lesser quality and far lesser quality than that of the Sndyer and company material from Batman…except for the bits of it that are Snyder and company’s material from Batman.

As DC did with their "Night of the Owls" crossover material, this book doesn’t collect everything, but it does collect all of the tie-ins (which will also be collected individually in collections of their home titles), plus repeats important material from the main book, Batman.

So this doesn’t replace Batman Vol. 3: Death of the Family, it’s meant to be a companion to it…although it does include some key material from Batman Vol. 3 as well.

It’s meant for completeists who trade-wait, basically. If you just want to read “Death of the Family,” then you’ll want to read Batman Vol. 3. If you just want to read “Death of the Family” and maybe follow your favorite character Batgirl, well, read Batman Vol. 3 and Batgirl Vol. 3, both sub-titled “Death of the Family.” And so on. But this book? This is really only for someone who wants way too much of what might at first seem like a good thing.

Because the book contains material taken from so many books (in addition to collecting the entirety of many issues), its broken up by character, rather than title or story arc.

Let’s take them on individually, because I am a glutton for punishment and, if you’re still reading, so are you (For a more concise, and less exhaustive exhausting review, I did cover this book in the space of a few paragraphs elsewhere already).

BATMAN

This part is taken from three issues of Detective Comics, by writer John Layman and artists Jason Fabok and Andy Clarke…or, I should say, the lead story in three issues of TEC, as TEC now has back-up stories featuring related side-stories. It seems that what Layman and company did for the “Death” crossover was to use the main story for the tie-in, and retreat into the back-ups to tell their own, ongoing story (In which The Penguin’s right-hand man decides to usurp his boss’ criminal empire, and declare himself “Emperor Penguin”).

The TEC tie-in is sort of counter-productive, and doesn’t seem to sit well next to the Batman portion of the event, unfolding in Batman.

In it, Batman is running around town dealing with various Joker wannabes, clown-themed killers, gang-bangers and idolizers who are celebrating the villain’s return by going on crime sprees of their own.

Among the legions of Joker fans is a small group of the most-accomplished and threatening of the would-be Joker acolytes, calling themselves “The League of Smiles.” They’re lead by someone calling himself “The Merrymaker” who claims to represent The Joker.

On it’s own, and de-coupled from “Death,” this would be an okay Joker story not actually featuring The Joker, but here it basically just raises logistical questions, like why Batman is dealing with this crap all by himself when he has a family of helpers who could be dealing with it while he concentrates on bringing down The Joker (The whole point of the "Death" story being that Batman now has an entire family of helpers, and whether The Joker can kill that family unit or not; in it, Batman expressly forbids them all from going after The Joker themselves), and when he finds time to do this between the panels of the story in Batman, which, frankly, keeps him pretty busy.

The designs for a few of the Leaguers are stronger than others—too many of the background characters look too much like juggalos (Am I spelling that right? It is not in my spellcheck, apparently)—although I’m not a fan of Fabok’s art. It’s very detailed, and looks like very good David Finch art (if you can imagine such a thing), or perhaps not-as-good Ethan Van Sciver art.

The origin of The Merrymaker is kind of interesting, especially when taken in relation to the overall theme of Layman’s story here, although I had a hard time accepting his fate after reading The Law of Superheroes regarding whether The Joker and his ilk should be able to avoid prison or the death penalty by being criminally insane.

Also, the whole Joker-as-inspirational figure aspect of the story does feel like something cribbed from the old Batman Beyond cartoon, and was recently explored in the new-ish Batman Beyond comic book storyline “10,000 Clowns.” Not sure if Layman’s story came out before “Clowns” or not, but the cartoon certainly established that aspect of the Joker long ago. 

CATWOMAN

This two-part story by regular Catwoman writer Ann Nocenti, pencil artist Rafa Sandoval and inker Jordi Tarragona is just a mess, although it’s a pretty good-looking mess, thanks to the fine artwork. Or, that is, the fine design and rendering chops on display in the artwork; large sections of the art border on unreadable.

I suspect that was a creative choice on the part of Sandoval and/or Nocenti, meant to reflect the crazy mind of The Joker, or the crazed state he puts Catwoman in, and/or the effects of various drugs she’s exposed to.

There are whole passages though, some of which are action scenes, that don’t make any sense in terms of size, scale and place. The Joker and Catwoman will be fighting in a panel, for example, and both bodies are just drawn on the page, not interacting in any logical way with one another or the setting they’re in; Catwoman will be perched on a ledge high above the city, and a truck will drive by and hit her. Toys change sizes and function in bizarre ways. At least two death-traps she escapes from require careful reading of the text and then re-reading of the art, so a reader can figure out what should have been drawn there in order for the scene to make sense.

It’s so hard to read, and there seems to be some breakdown in communication between the script and the art, that it’s hard to even give the story too much in the way of consideration. Basically, Catwoman falls somewhere between a Batman villain and a Batman ally, and Joker treats her accordingly: Visiting her and trying to press her into some service as he does to Harley Quinn, The Penguin and Riddler in the Jock-drawn Batman back-up stories, yet also attempting to take her out of Batman’s life in order to kill Batman’s “family.”

This could be due in large part to Catwoman’s rather confused status in The New 52, but I suspect Nocenti chooses simply to present The Joker as feeling Catwoman out, emotionally torturing her and physically trying to kill her in an attempt to figure out where she is in terms of Batman, before leaving her as they go their separate ways.

I really liked what bits of the artwork I could read, and I suppose the storyline works well enough as a time-wasting answer to the question of “Hey, how come Catwoman didn’t help Batman out during ‘Death of The Family’…?”

If that is what you’re in to.

I was surprised by three bits, the first two because they seemed needlessly provocative, the third for just being dumb.

The first was the scene in which Catwoman’s black friend shows up clutching a bucket of fried chicken (She’s only on three pages, two of which feature her eating fried chicken). I think the chicken’s only there so Catwoman can make a comment about not liking the skin, meataphorically tying in to one of the themes of this story and “Death” in general, but it feels…off to have your only black character eating a bucket of fried chicken constantly. (Also? Catwoman doesn’t seem like the sort to eat fast food-chain fried chicken; nutrition aside, I can’t imagine that grease is all that great a thing to get on a super-thief’s hands as she’s about to go to work).

The second was the inelegant way in which Catwoman phrases her realization that The Joker is even more in love with Batman than she could ever be: “He’s so blind he can’t see he just wants to be Batman’s be-yotch.”

The third? Just the disguise Catwoman wears to a meet a contact:

Er, maybe a short blonde wig and a pair of dark sunglasses might have disguised the fact that you’re Catwoman a little better than simply wearing a hood over your Catwoman costume…?

HARLEY QUINN

This section includes the two Harley Quinn bits from Batman: The Snyder/James Tynion IV/Jock back-up story in which The Joker approaches Harley and presses her into service in his plot to take down Batman, first suggesting he allow her to cut off her face with a straight razor and, when she declines, instead having her dress up as The Red Hood for him, and the Snyder/Capullo portion of Batman in which she does as The Joker asks.

These are book-ended by passages from Suicide Squad, written by Adam Glass and penciled by Fernando Dagnino, which show The Joker pre-approaching Harley for this task, and then attempting to dispose of her afterwards.

It’s unnecessary information to non-readers of Suicide Squad, and evidently only there for the anal retentive who want an explanation for, say, what Suicide Squad leader Amanda Waller might think about Harley running off to be in a Batman comic for a few pages.

It’s also, in keeping with what little of Suicide Squad I’ve read, crass and poorly-drawn.

Dagnino’s main concern seems to be getting Harley’s huge, white boobs just right, as they are in most every panel, barely contained in her tiny, ever descending corset thingee. He also spends a lot of attention on the Joker’s gross new face, but he pays less attention to things like Harley’s cape, which is there in one panel, gone in another, and then back again.

The plot of these book-ends? Harley, Captain Boomerang and Amanda Waller are at Deadshot’s funeral, when The Joker attacks everyone with a paralyzing rain that knocks everyone but Harley, dressed in a black fetish-y widow’s outfit, unconscious.

The Joker punches her in the face, then sticks a straight razor in her open mouth, playing around the inside of it with the blade as he talks to her a half-dozen panels.  Then he threatens to cut of Deadshot’s corpse’s dick if Harley doesn’t help him. She agrees.

Then we get the Batman sections.

Harley, back in her tiny Suicide Squad costume is then attacked by The Joker, and the pair have a pretty savage battle.

He strangles her with a chain, attempts to throw her in a vat of chemicals, bites off part of her ear, and sics rabid hyenas on her (These Dagnino draws as if he’s simply going by someone’s description of a hyena, rather than Google Image-d “hyena;” one takes a big, bloody bite out of Harley’s thigh, but the wound disappears in the next panel, and apparently she doesn’t get rabies from the bite).

She attempts to throw him into the same vat of chemicals, bites off part of his tongue and smashes him face-first into a boiler so hard that his face sticks to it, and he has to peel it off and re-fasten it before continuing the fight.

The Joker ultimately wins, and chains her in a room full of skeletons to starve to death, but she manages to escape, by tearing her flesh out of the shackles.

 BATGIRL

Gail Simone’s Batgirl is one of the books I’ve been most actively avoiding since the New 52-boot. I don’t think the reboot was a good idea in general, particularly since it was a sort of half-assed reboot where rather than starting over, they just changed a bunch of stuff in the characters’ histories, and didn’t tell anyone what had changed (And, of course, certain characters, titles and franchises were rebooted more thoroughly than others).

And, speaking as a fan here, I liked Barbara Gordon. I liked Oracle. I liked that she had a story, a character arc, in which she grew up and changed. I liked that there was such a prominent character in the DC Universe that was in a wheel chair. Reverting her to a teenage crime fighter in a Bat-costume, making her Female Batman Analogue #2 seemed like a supremely bad idea to me (Also, I didn’t like any of the creators involved enough to try to ignore all of that to try the book out).

But! If you were going to so thoroughly reboot Barbara Gordon’s history so that she was never Oracle, so that she was still a very young girl and so that she was still Batgirl (something she gave up being before she lost the use of her legs), then why on earth wouldn’t you also reboot the fact that The Joker once shot and paralyzed her?

The only things they kept in continuity regarding Barbara Gordon were 1). She has red hair 2.) Her dad is Police Commissioner Jim Gordon and 3.) Batman: The Killing Joke totally happened.

This got to brain blowing-up for me when Barbara mentions in the narration that not only did The Joker still shoot and paralyze her, she was paralyzed for three years, and has only been Batgirl for a year after that.

So, and I know I mentioned this on the blog before rather randomly, this means that Batgirl was only Batgirl for about a year or less before being shot, and has only been Batgirl for another year or two since. It also means she was Batgirl sometime around Year Two of Batman’s career, and also got shot by The Joker around that time.

That’s just nuts. In the previous continuity, Dick Grayson wasn’t even Robin until the third year of Batman’s career. Here Batman's got (and lost!) a Batgirl immediately. It also rather boggles the mind as to how Batgirl is, like, any good at all when it comes to like, you know, fighting and superheroing. I had spent as much time training to run 5K races by the end of my sophomore year of high school, and I wasn’t exactly Olympic material or anything, you know?

This also means that while The Killing Joke still happened, it happened very differently (Maybe Simone already wrote it, within the earlier pages of Batgirl?). I’m not sure the story—written as a sort of “last” Joker story—makes sense if it happened, like, during Year Two, as Batman and Commissioner Gordon could have only dealt with The Joker so many times by that point in their careers (Also, where was Robin in The New 52 Killing Joke? There had to be one. With four Robins in five years, Batman couldn’t have gone without one for any significant stretch of time). Batgirl couldn’t have retired from crimefighting at that point; she’d just started. And if that was four years ago and she’s in her early 20s no, did that mean she was a minor at the time? Because that’s a whole new icky aspect to an already dark, dark story.

Feh.

Anyway: This story. It’s four issues of the Batgirl monthly, all written by Simone. The first issue is drawn by Ed Benes who is, you know, Ed Benes.

The rest of them seem to be drawn by Daniel Sampere, who does one of the better Joker faces (but it’s still not as good as Patrick Gleason; that guy’s the all-around champion Joker face drawer).

Simone is picking up the Commissioner-Gordon’s-son-is-a-brilliant-serial-killer plotline that Scott Snyder started during his Detective Comics run, which The New 52 reboot cut short (and seemingly forced him to abruptly end unsatisfactorily).

In this story arc, The Joker has kidnapped Barbara’s mother as a means to lure her to him for capture, ultimately deciding he wants to marry Batgirl. James Gordon Jr. is heavily involved throughout, ultimately outwitting The Joker and temporarily saving his sister and himself—but Batgirl still ends up as she must, in The Joker’s clutches for the finale.

The story ends with a splash page featuring The Joker changed out of his repairman’s costume and into his more traditional purple suit, about to uncover a silver serving dish dripping blood, and telling Batgirl, “You simply won’t BELIEVE what I’ve got under her for YOU!” (Hey, so, uh, spoiler warning, right? You’ve all read “Death” at this point, and know what is actually under all the serving trays? What did he show to The Penguin and Two-Face in the penultimate issue of the arc? He showed them one of them, I guess, but which one? That bugs me).

In the context of this book, and taken on its own terms rather than in the greater scheme of things (i.e. all my kvetching about continuity and the fucked-up, ridiculous timeline of the Bativerse above), this is probably the average book in the collection. It’s not the best, it’s not one of the better ones, but it’s not the worst, nor one of the worse ones.

It does present a couple of problems, I think.

First, The Joker’s plan for his wife is to Boxing Helena her, although I don’t think Boxing Helena is ever mentioned. Is there another source for a story in which a dude cuts off a woman’s limbs in order to keep her that both Simone and writer/director Jennifer Chambers Lynch were alluding to independently in Batgirl and Boxing Helena, or is this an unattributed homage to the film on Simone’s part? (To be charitable in my phrasing).

And secondly, this story seems to directly contradict the ending of “Death” in Batman in two ways. (Again, spoiler warnings, okay?) So one of the ways in which The Joker metaphorically kills Batman’s family is by sowing doubt and distrust among his sidekicks. He repeatedly claims to know who they all are in their real, civilian lives, and to have all of their secrets written down in a little book he carries with him at all times.

These are, it ends up, “jokes.” He has no idea who they are (nor does he care at all), and the book is blank. Like the gag with the serving dishes, this is just a fiendish joke of his own.

But in the Batgirl arc, he shows his book to an Arkham psychologist in flashback, and it doesn’t seem to be blank.

Also, clown-masked thugs attack Barbara Gordon’s apartment, and The Joker kidnaps Barbara Gordon’s mom to apparently trap her; the script makes it sound like The Joker doesn’t know she’s Batgirl’s mom, but, at the same time, why did he kidnap her in the first place? If it was to draw someone else out, like Commissioner Gordon or Batman, it doesn’t work, and he doesn’t seem to have tried to contact them, or be disappointed to end up with Batgirl instead.  He’s just sort of hanging around a skating rink with a kidnapped Mrs. Gordon, having set a bomb and ringed the place with snipers…just in case Batgirl or someone comes for him…?

RED HOOD AND RED ROBIN

And here we get into the absolute nadir of the tie-ins, the Scott Lobdell and Fabian Nicieza-written issues of Red Hood and The Outlaws and Teen Titans that crossover with one another, featuring art by six different artists (Of whom Ale Garza is maybe my favorite, and Brett Booth is probably the biggest star).

Now Teen Titans and Red Hood are two more books I’ve avoided since the reboot, for much the same reasons as Batgirl. In addition to featuring creators I wasn’t interested in, they rebooted characters I liked into unrecognizable versions that don’t really make any sense, if you stop and think about them for, like, any seconds.

The characters are—or were—second and third-generation heroes, but there are no longer any generations in the DCU, as everything sort of happened simultaneously, so Robin III Tim Drake and the grown-up sidekick of Green Arrow Roy Harper aren’t really themselves anymore (Also, have you seen what they make poor Tim wear these days? Yikes).

Also, as with Batgirl and The Killing Joke, DC apparently decided not to reboot “A Death In The Family,” the storyline in which The Joker killed Robin II Jason Todd, who DC brought back to life many years later through a Superboy punch (I don’t know the explanation for why he’s alive in The New 52, but he was apparently still killed by The Joker and resurrected).

Reading this felt like reading a “Heroes Reborn” version of The Titans.

Here’s a plot synopsis.

The Teen Titans, in civilian clothes and calling each other by their real names (Kiran, Miguel, Cassie) discover that The Joker must have kidnapped their ally, Red Robin (These Titans are apparently Some All-Black Lady With Glowing Eyes I Didn't Catch The Name Of; Bunker, introduced with some fanfare as a gay teen, who here talks like 1980s Vibe only without the phonetic accent; Wonder Girl and Kid Flash, who is Bart Allen).

Meanwhile, Jason Todd, in his civilian identity, was hooking up with some lady he hooks up with, when The Joker stages an extremely elaborate attack in her apartment (Again, this story seems to indicate that The Joker knows Red Hood’s secret identity), and eventually captures Todd.

He fights him, and after making him run a gauntlet seemingly designed to prove without a shadow of a doubt that he totally  knows his secret identity, deposits him in a room alongside an unconscious Red Robin.

The Teen Titans and the, uh, Outlaws arrive in Gotham to look for their teammates, and Batgirl shows up to make a stupid, already outdated po culture reference…

…and offer some sort of logistical support (So this story must take place after the Batgirl one, which it follows in the collection).

The Joker has, of course, planned for the intervention of Red Hood and Red Robin’s allies, and while Kid Flash runs all over town looking for them, he’s spreading a form of Joker toxin that turns everyone it touches into a Joker, which the superheroes spend the rest of the story fighting.

In this hideout, Joker says he has kidnapped Todd and Drake’s fathers, and he makes the two former Robins fight to the death in order to save their own father (This is a fake-out. He doesn’t actually have their fathers, but reasonable facsimiles. But in order to fake them out, he must have known enough about them to know what their father’s might look like, right? So, again, this seems contrary to the end of “Death”).

The Robins figure out The Joker’s game, and Red Hood tries to shoot him to death, but The Joker anticipated that too, and then The Robins are both gassed unconscious again, and the last page features the serving tray scene we’ve already seen at the end of Batgirl.

Oh, and the weirdest part? At one point, Tim narrates that Jason is "Maybe the person who has come closest to being an actual brother in my entire life."

That's...that's a pretty extraordinary difference than the old DCU. 

NIGHTWING

This three-issue arc of Nightwing, by writers Kyle Higgins and Tom DeFalco and pencil artists Eddy Barrows and Andres Guinaldo (with a pair of inkers and a pair of colorists), seems like a conclusion to what was a major arc in the title, and seems to come so close on the heels of that arc that it seems as if the book must have changed directions rather suddenly.

The last Nightwing comics I read came in the trade Nighwing Vol. 2 and in it, Dick Grayson had decided to invest in Gotham, similar to Bruce Wayne, but without Wayne’s finances backing him, creating “Amusement Mile,” an entertainment area in which his Haly’s Circus would be housed.

The Joker scuttles those plans, killing off one of Haly’s clowns, kidnapping and Joker-izing the rest of the circus and, in the course of his fight with Nightwing, blowing the whole place to kingdom come. That seems pretty significant to the title,  but then, I haven’t read anything that’s followed, so I’m not sure to what extent the title really did change direction.

As with several of the stories above, this one features a Joker plan so elaborate that it stretches credibility in and of itself. If all he did during this night or three screwing with Batman was the stuff he pulled off in Batman, that in and of itself would have been a near miraculous bit of planning (tapestries of living victims hanging from the ceiling, recruiting The Penguin, freeing the Arkham inmates, dressing some of them up and pressing them into service, et cetera).

But in addition to that—and his elaborate traps and plans to get Batgirl, Robin, Red Robin and Red Hood—here he breaks someone out of Blackgate, kidnaps and poisons an entire circus, rigs a section of town with explosions and, digs up almost every single person at Haley’s who has died and posed their corpses on pikes just to shock Nightwing. And, unlike in Batgirl, where he had a gang, here he seems to be working alone.

Maybe the real origin of the New 52 Joker was that he was a janitor at the Central City police station, and he was mopping the floor on the other side of the shelf full of Flash chemicals the night lightning through Barry Allen into them…?

On its own, it’s a fine example of The Joker as a master-planner, Batman’s evil opposite in terms of being prepared for any eventuality and able to take down anyone, so long as he has time to plot for a victory.  But with the other half-dozen stories that occur simultaneously? It’s kind of hard to process how this event works, unless The Joker is, like, six different people.

Oh, and the fact that Joker targets everyone at Haly’s except Dick Grayson in order to get at Nightwing would seem to indicate, once again, that The Joker totally knows his secret identity, which is contradicted in the conclusion of the arc in Batman.

The art is, as it was in the previous issues of the series I read, the weakest part, and the multiple art teams for just a single arc is a good indication of why (although I’m not generally a fan of Barrows’ style, with its muscular, agonized figure work and strained, over-acting faces…even if it is somewhat appropriate here, given the number of characters wearing chemically-enforced expressions and fighting to the death).

ROBIN

This section contains the tie-in issues of Batman and Robin, by Peter Tomasi, pencil artist Patrick Gleason (only one pencil artist? Weird!) and inkers Mick Gray and Keith Champagne.

Visually, it’s by far the most accomplished work in the book, eclipsing even Greg Capullo’s chapter (Looking at sales charts, I may be in the minority here, but I think Gleason is the best Batman artist at the moment, head and shoulders above Capullo and head, shoulders and torso above the rest).

His is also the best and scariest Joker. Part of that is simply how horrifying some of The Joker’s actions with his face that Tomasi has him take are (When Robin first encounters him, Robin is hanging upside down by his ankles, and The Joker has his own face on upside down, so his eye-holes are full of teeth and his maniacal eyes are staring out of a wide mouth hole).

Much of that though is how Gleason draws the face. First, it’s thoroughly three-dimensional, with a pancake-like thickness, rather than appearing like a mummy-think, paper-like mask, as most of the other artists draw it.  There’s a tactile quality to The Joker’s flayed-off face, which makes his playing with it all the scarier.

Gleason also seems to have put more thought into what that might actually look like, so instead of having a nose structure, the face is smooth there (Having never skinned a face, I’m not sure what happens to the nose area, as there’s no bone under there, just cartilege…would the face-flayer have cut around the nose, leaving a nose hole, similar to the eye and mouth holes, or chopped it off completely? Is it possible to skin the nose itself?)

Most of the time, The Joker’s eyes aren’t visible through his eye-holes, but appear in shadow….particularly in medium or long shot.

Tomasi and Gleason include plenty of other horror elements, though. First, the setting here is a zoo, which The Joker has also taken over and filled with various traps (a giant, prop Robin’s egg, an avalanche of insects, hyena’s poisoned with Joker venom, etc). A skating rink, an abandoned church, Amusement Mile, the Gotham City Zoo, and incursions into police headquarters, Wayne Manor and Blackgate Prison…how much of the city did The Joker conquer in this crossover series…?

Gleason draws awesome animals, and fills the pages with the squicky horror of insects crawling all over. The Joker’s rotting face naturally attracts the attention of flies and, here, maggots (as the crossover progresses, flies gradually appear around The Joker, and, at its climax, Capullo and company show the face starting to turn brown rather than chalk white, as if it were rotting).

Remember feeling itchy, wriggly and repulsed during that bug-cave scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom? Imagine this then: The Joker pulls a cord, and a trapdoor opens above Robin, half-burying him in piles of insects, worms and other creepy-crawlies..

Damian and The Joker have encountered one another a couple of times during Morrison’s apparently still in-continuity issues of pre-New 52-boot Batman reboot, and those are referenced here. The two have a pretty interesting relationship, as Damian is generally written like a kid-version of the angry, violent take of Batman, albeit one who is even more angry, more violent and willing and able to kill, as he was trained to do since birth.

Knowing this, The Joker apparently presents Robin with an enemy he’d hesitate to hurt too badly: A Joker-ized Batman (who ends up not being Batman, but a reasonable enough facsimile to fool the drugged-up Damian).

He first appears emerging from the sea of bugs.

It ends as all of these chapters do, with The Joker seemingly in a life-and-death struggle with the sidekicks, before the whole thing is more-or-less called off, and the sidekick taken captive, only to awaken to The Joker offering up a gory sliver platter that readers would have safely assumed almost certainly contained the head of Alfred Pennyworth.

Oh, hey, check out Gleason’s drawing of the polar bear habitat:

As with the architecture of the parks in Gotham City (as seen in Batman/Superman #1), and its many insane-looking gargoyles, that seem to be more evidence that the reason that there are so many violently insane people in Gotham City is that all of the public space seem to have been specifically designed to drive everyone who lives there crazy.

CONCLUSION

This is Batman #17, by Snyder, Capullo and inker Jonathan Glapion, the conclusion of the core “Death of the Family” story from Batman.

It also appears in Batman: Death of The Family, and Batgirl: Death of The Family, and Batman and Robin: Death of The Family and, I imagine, every one of the trades that are coming out sub-titled “Death of the Family.” It kind of has to, in order to resolve the stories that will appear in those books, but if you’re only reading, like Batman, Batman and Robin (the two best Batman books at the moment) and pick up this The Joker volume, you’ll be buying that same issue three times. If you read more of the Batman line in trade, you’ll be buying it and reading it in each of them (I sort of talked about this phenomenon the other week).

I’ve already reviewed Batman Vol. 3 elsewhere, of which this is the climax, but I did want to reiterate that what I thought most brilliant about it (other than those cool last two pages, where The Joker leaves a goodbye message only Batman would find), was that The Joker’s ultimate attack was premised on a series of evil jokes on Batman and his family of fellow crimefighters (The contents of the platters, which we find out here actually number five, rather than just the one, and the contents of his little black bat book).

The former is somewhat perplexing in that, if The Joker still has access to his face-flayer*, he really could have done what he only pretended to do, effectively ending the lives of the characters as they know them, permanently building an unclimbable wall between them and Batman and maybe driving some of them and/or Batman crazy in the process.

I also like that Batman ultimately defeated Joker by turning his own strategy—that of the evil joke—back on The Joker. That, and that the Joker is defeated by seemingly dying—not being killed by The Batman, but falling to his apparent but certainly not actual death, his body never being found. I much prefer that sort of “ending” to a Joker story than the whole arrest and incarcerate in Arkham ending, as it forces the uncomfortable question of why doesn’t someone, anyone just kill The Joker at this point to the fore, and Arkham seems pretty silly the longer you read Batman comics, given its revolving door (If Bruce Wayne devoted his entire fortune to securing Arkham and making it impregnable, he would probably save more lives in Gotham City than he does by Batmanning).

What I didn’t like about the issue was a certain professional wrestling aspect to it; Batman seems to have been getting his ass kicked throughout the entire story arc and then, halfway through this issue, he just starts winning, because it’s time for the story to end, and he has to win (or, at least, he can’t be killed or physically lose a member of his family).

As for the metaphorical “death,” it’s a clever, coy play on The Joker’s plans, and ends ambiguously—did Batman really win? Did The Joker win? Will things ever be the same?

It was slightly clumsy in its execution though, as it makes most of the characters seem unconcerned about Alfred, who is shown to still be recovering in bed when the various family members rebuff Batman,when it’s really Batman they’re mad at. And they’re all a little too transparent. Damian’s excuse seemed especially flimsy, since unlike the others he actually lives with Batman and works with him consistently.

The other huge problem with this ending isn’t the fault of the story, but the fault of its timing in relation to the climax of Morrison’s Batman Inc, as I mentioned up top. These two stories could have used a year between them, whichever one came first, but, it ended up there was only a month between them, meaning what seemed like what was likely to happen at the end of “Death” didn’t, and the death was metaphorical; then, the very next month, someone did die.  (More on that in a bit).

EPILOGUE

The final bit of the book, before the gallery of covers, is Batman and Robin #17, by Tomasi, Gleason and Gray. It begins as a nice, night-in-the-life type of story, with Alfred meeting the Dynamic Duo in the locker room corner of the Batcave with an after-crime fighting meal, and then all three of them going off to bed.

The rest of the issue is devoted to the three characters’ dreams, with Damian haunted by a nightmare within a nightmare, and getting to enjoy a happy dream at the end, one that takes a very elegiac turn read at this point, given what happens to him next in the pages of Batman Inc.

I liked the send-off it gives Damian, and the way Tomasi and Gleason are able to touch on the stories they’ve told featuring these three characters up until this point, and to tease future directions, some of which will naturally never come to be (unless Damian is resurrected as his immortal grandfather is always being resurrected).

Additionally, the story Tomasi writes is full of cool shit for Gleason to draw, which is always a treat.

Some final Caleb thoughts…

So this  book is a little strange in the way it collects so much, and as I said, I think that, collectively, these stories all diminish the core “Death” arc, either by contradicting important elements of it, or simply by stretching a reader’s credulity well past the breaking point.

Financially, all of these tie-ins existing was probably a great idea, but I think I would have preferred it if The Joker had managed to capture the Bat-Family off-panel somehow, and, naturally, some of these tie-ins probably shouldn’t have existed at all (Catwoman and TEC certainly, and the Suicide Squad, Red Hood and The Outlaws and Teen Titans issues probably could have been toned down or trimmed so that The Joker was focused on Harley, Red Hood and Red Robin, rather than involving their extended teams…although, given that Snyder already wrote a story about how The Joker approaches Harley, I’m not sure the Suicide Squad story needed to exist at all, really. In addition to being a super-violent, poorly-made comic, it also thematically lumps her into the Bat-Family, which isn’t quite right).

The extensive targeting of characters only vaguely associated with Batman or people vaguely associated with Batman—Harley Quinn and, through her, Captain Boomerang, for example, or Red Hood and Red Robin’s teammates in the Titans and the, um, Outlaws—sort of begs questions like, “Hey, why did The Joker leave Batwoman out of it? She’s got a “Bat” right there in her name, unlike Catwoman").

Or why wasn’t Batman Inc more extensively targeted, particularly given the fact that, you know, most of them were in Gotham City at this very same time.

And that’s the biggest problem with “Death of the Family” and the conclusion of Batman Inc, the end of Morrison’s years-in-the-writing Batman story.

The events of “Death” are obviously pretty dramatic, with The Joker, as I said, conquering several square miles of Gotham City (on the downlow, apparently), publicly attacking a few big targets and killing God-knows-how-many, while managing to capture a half-dozen vigilantes and the bulter of the city’s most prominent citizen).

The events of Batman Inc’s ending are even more dramatic, with Talia al Ghul’s army setting a trap that lured most of Batman Inc into it, killing Britian’s Batman, occupying Wayne Tower and then blowing it up. Batman is outlawed in Gotham City. The skies are filled with warring Man-Bat ninjas and Batman robots (“Ro-Bats,” I think they called ‘em). Damian and Jason Todd have created new identities.

Obviously they weren’t happening simultaneously, and comic book readers are pretty adept at self-editing what they read, arranging into chronologies that makes sense to them.

That would have all been fine, were it not for the fact that a Robin dies at the end.

So immediately after the conclusion of “Death of the Family,” a storyline named for one of the most famous Batman stories of all time, the one in which The Joker kills Robin, a conclusion which seemed to promise the literal death of a character (with Alfred seemingly the most likely, but Jason Todd, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne all seeming kill off-able to a certain degree), but ended up being a metaphorical death.

Readers worried about their favorite characters could breathe a sigh of relief.

And then next month Robin Damian Wayne gets killed.

I imagine that was more frustrating to serial readers of the comics than to trade readers, but the suddenness of it, the way these two huge storylines jut right up against one another, was really driven home for me when I read Batgirl Vol. 3: Death of the Family. Only a single issue (and the short story from Young Romance) separate the reprinting of Batman #17, the conclusion of “Death”, and the issue of Batgirl in which she mourns the death of Robin (mostly on the cover, and by trying to call Nightwing on the phone, as she has her own storyline following up on “Death,” involving her brother, in-progress. We’ll talk about that later).

I don’t know what the solution would have been, really. I’ve wondered before if DC maybe should have waited a few years for a New 52 reboot, at least until Geoff Johns wrapped up his years-long Green Lantern mega-story and Morrison his Batman story. DC did take a few months off with Batman Inc, as it wasn’t one of the original New 52, but a replacement title in a later wave of new series. Perhaps if it weren’t for that, it would have wrapped up prior to “Death,” which wouldn’t have featured Damian in it at all…but I don’t know, maybe a Batman without a Robin wouldn’t have worked, as then Batman would be working more or less solo, just with a large group of ex-sidekicks…?

The timing of the two stories was obviously less than ideal, and I think hurt each of them when read in a larger context of the Batman line. But I don’t know how one fixes that, either, even with the benefit of hindsight.

Perhaps one fix might have been not to make such a big deal out of Damian’s death, and resurrect him immediately? I was really struck by how un-final his death was in Batman Inc. By the end of the story, his grave has been emptied, as has that of his mother, who surely won’t stay dead for long, and his grandfather is shown in a room full of clones of Damian and talking about inventing a new process for bringing the dead back to life.

I imagine Morrison left things as they were so that he could have his ending—he created Damian, he killed him—and let DC go whatever way they wanted to with him after that. But by having the entire line of Batman books mourn Damian, and then relaunching Batman and Robin as Batman and [Someone Helping Him Cope With Damian’s Loss], it seems like DC decided to let Damian stay dead for a while.

* Dollmaker, I think? I had no interest in reading Tony Daniel’s TEC run, but this story made me think it might be worth reading it just to read that initial Joker story, which seems like it probably should have been something to occur in Batman, rather than TEC, since Snyder followed-up on it; I imagine that that first New 52 Batman/Joker story in TEC was an example of DC’s editors kinda sorta pre-writing plots for their writers.

A few ads of note from this past week's comics:

I love how upfront The CW is with the main appeal of their new-ish Green Arrow television show.

I wonder if Arrow might garner greater ratings if instead of changing Green Arrow's superhero name to Arrow, they had instead called him Shirtless Arrow...? Or perhaps Bare-Chested Arrow...? Maybe Naked-From-The-Waist-Up Arrow...? (They would also need to modify his costume accordingly, of course).

Not trying to be a jerk or anything, but I honestly can't recall every seeing anyone saying anything so positive about artist Eddy Barrows that could be construed as "acclaim."

I'm certainly no fan of his work, but, that said, based on this image alone, Teen Titans seems like it will be ever so slightly improved by his presence. The costumes are all still high aesthetic crimes (and they all pretty much match too...? What's up with that...?), but this image isn't anywhere near as repellent as many of the other Teen Titans covers I've seen since the New 52boot.

That was one of the nine house ads I saw in Green Lantern #15 this week (all of the ads were house ads, save one for The Kubert School and one for Geek magazine, which features DC's superheroes on its cover in the ad). Of those nine, 1/3 were trumpeting new creative teams as if those were positive things, and not a sign of some sort of behind-the-scenes creative chaos in the not yet a year-and-a-half old comics series (In addition to Teen Titans getting a new artist, ads for Green Arrow #17 and Demon Knights #16 proclaimed their new teams; the other ads were for Justice League of America #1, Before Watchmen: Dollar Bill #1, Animal Man Vol. 2, Earth 2 Vol. 1, the "H'El on Earth" crossover in the Superman titles and the new series Threshold...if that is indeed its real title).

Exactly how is it that we've gotten this far into our culture's still-surging zombie craze and no one thought to make collectible zombie figures in the style of the pink MUSCLE figures of my youth until now...?

It's too bad these SLUGs are using the color green. I always thought it would be awesome if DC Direct did a line of 7,200 Green Lantern Corps toys in this same style, featuring every single member of the Corps in green, MUSCLE-like form.

A library comics update: Batman #703 and Superman #700-702

This past spring I told you about a little library in the little city I live in that doesn’t carry any graphic novels, but does carry floppies in their kids magazine section, seemingly having subscriptions to Batman, Superman and Scooby-Doo.

That lead to a series of…let’s see here…seven posts, each based around a particular run on a particular one of those titles, large handfuls of which I checked out at once.

Well, it’s been long enough since then that a few copies of each title came in, so I thought I’d try and catch up on the single-issues that were checked in during the time I happened to be there.

Batman #703

This one-issue story, which immediately followed Grant Morrison’s three-issue return to the series and immediately preceded the resumption of Tony Daniel’s run as both writer and artist, is perhaps the perfect example of a pointless fill-in issue.

So interchangeable were the contents and creators that DC solicited it in June as a completely different book than the one they published in September.

Here’s what the initial solicitation said:

BATMAN #703
Written by PETER MILLIGAN
Art and cover by TONY DANIEL
1:10 “DC 75th Anniversary” Variant cover by KEVIN NOWLAN
Celebrating the “Return of Bruce Wayne”! Those closest to The Dark Knight look back on the legacy he has created. Featuring appearances by Alfred, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake, Damian Wayne, Selina Kyle and more!

The book is actually written by Fabian Nicieza, a decent writer who, no matter what you may think of his abilities or style, is quite clearly not, in fact, Peter Milligan. And while Tony Daniel’s cover, apparently featuring Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and Damian Wayne facing the returned Bruce Wayne (That’s his shadow cast on the wall behind him; the logo covers up the other bat-ear that appeared in the solicited image), shipped on the book, Daniel did not in fact provide the interior art. Instead it was drawn by Cliff Richards.

The description of the contents is at least close. Selina Kyle doesn’t appear, but the other characters mentioned by name do, and I guess there are technically “more” characters as well, including a second-generation version of a minor villain, Vicki Vale and, um, people in the background of some panels.

The story that actually shipped featured Batman Dick Grayson and Robin Damian Wayne trying to capture The Getaway Genius, a character who last appeared…well, sometime long before I started reading comic books (Wikipedia says he last appeared in 1983’s Detective Comics #526). Despite the obscurity of the character, Dick flashes back to a scene from that story when noticing how Damian’s behavior apparently paralleled his own behavior when he was Robin to Bruce Wayne’s Batman.

The Dynamic Duo attempt to takedown the Genuis and, in the process, Damian learns that his biological father wasn’t the grim, heartless avenger of the night he thought he was, but also had a compassionate side.

Meanwhile, the Vicki Vale-tries-to-out-Batman-and-his-many-sidekicks’-secret-identities plotline makes another appearance from…wherever that story was playing out. I think it started in those post-Battle For the Cowl one-shot anthologies that were collected in the Battle trade (Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead? #1 and Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive?#1), and likely continued wherever Nicieza’s been writing Bat-stories over the last few months (Red Robin, I think).

The book ends with this:And, as you can see on the cover, it was billed as “A Prelude To Bruce Wayne The Road Home,” so this pointless, time-waster fill-in was itself a lead in to an eight-issue pointless, time-wasting, fill-in month-long event.

Nicieza’s story here obviously has some problems, mostly having to do with accessibility—the Vicki Vale sub-plot is context-free, with no indication of where it began, or what it has to do with anything else in the issue—but it’s decent enough work and fits the requirements of this particular issue’s mandate. That is, it has to be a Batman story and it has to fill 22-pages.

The art is just appalling. It looks an awful lot like Greg Land’s work, particularly in the creepy, vacant, waxen, photo-reference-y expressions on the characters’ faces, none of whom seem particularly on-model (to be fair to Richards on that last point, DC doesn’t seem to have anything approaching a model to stay on when it comes to character designs these days; Vale, for example, looks completely different when each and every artist draws her, and the only way to really know that she’s supposed to be Vicky Vale is that that’s what the characters who are identifiable by their costumes call her). You can read a five-page preview of the book here at Newsarama, and take a look at Richards’ art for yourself. That segment is the first five pages of the comic, and an action scene involving Batman and Robin, and is thus actually among the strongest bits of the book.

Richards colors his own work here, and it seems as if it were applied directly to the paper using an airbrush and stencils a computer created from photographs. It makes me a bit nauseous to look at.


Superman #700-#702

This issue is the official start of writer J. Michael Straczynki’s Superman walking storyline.

When it was first announced, I had mixed feelings about it. As someone who follows comics, I thought there was a lot about the storyline and the DC’s promotion of it that was extremely interesting, but as a reader, I was more curious than excited, and due to my aversion to the work JMS’s artist collaborator Eddy Barrows, I figured I’d wait for a trade of the story arc.

Of course, while waiting for that trade, JMS and DC have since announced that the former was leaving Superman mid-story to pursue other commitments, and another writer was being called in to finish the story from JMS’s notes.

What interest I had in the story as a reader dissolved at that point; if the guy writing the story isn’t all that engaged in writing the story, it’s pretty clear it’s not going to be much of a read, and so I quite waiting for the trade. I was holding off on reading these library-owned singles so as not to spoil the experience of reading the trade once I bought it, but I took JMS’ implied “Aw, fuck it, it’s boring” declaration to forget getting the trade.

So here I am, reading it.

But before we talk about “Grounded,” JMS, Barrows and J.P. Mayer’s Superman walking story, let’s take a look at the rest of #700, an over-sized anniversary issue which ends with the first ten pages of the since-aborted JMS run.

The book opens with a 16-page story entitled “The Comeback,” which functions as something of an epilogue to the long-ass New Krypton storyline. It’s written by James Robinson, who was one of the main Super-writers during that period, and drawn by Bernard Chang, one of the artists from that period. The superhero action involves an opening during which the Parasite chases Lois Lane and Superman saves her, but the more interesting business involves the married couple talking about what a crazy, shitty year it’s been for them.

I checked out of the Superman books long before the climax of that particular status quo they had going for a while—Lois Lane’s dad used some kind of doomsday weapon to kill 100,000 Kryptonians? Is that right?—but for the purposes of this story, that’s not even really that important.

I think this story’s existence is a little important, given that Superman spent a long time away from his wife during the last Superman status quo, and his new status quo necessitates him doing the same, so, you know, nice to be reminded that though they don’t appear in the same city and/or planet all that often any more, the pair are married and do love one another.

That’s followed by a 16-page Superman/Robin team-up by writer/artist Dan Jurgens and artist Norm Rapumund. The Robin is, of course, Dick Grayson—the story is billed as “a tale from Superman’s early years”—and while it reads like an inventory story that could have appeared almost anywhere, the fact that Dick was Batman when this issue came out perhaps gave it some timely relevance.

The story is an uncomplicated but fun one. Batman has to go be Bruce Wayne at a social event, so Dick has to stay in and not be Robin for the night—plus, he has a big Geometry assignment to do. But when our young hero discovers a gun shipment headed for Gotham, he sneaks out and gets in hot water, and it’s up to Superman to save him.

I’ve always like Jurgens’ artwork, and it was a treat to see him drawing the classic version of Robin here, in addition to the Batman and Superman we’re more used to seeing him draw.

I really liked the bit at the end, where Superman uses his powers to try and cover for Dick:Then we get to “Grounded.”

It’s a very strange story. You’ve no doubt heard a lot of criticism of it already. I know I have, and, having read the first 54 pages of it, much of the criticism I’ve read seems well justified.

It’s not very good.

It is a pretty interesting idea. The premise is simple: Worried that he’s growing out-of-touch, Superman decides to walk around the United States and get his head on straight, walking among the people he’s dedicated his life to saving. And instead of spending all his time in Metropolis, Gotham, Nightwingville, Hawkman City and Starmanopolis, JMS was having him visit real cities like Detroit and Pennsylvania and Cleveland.

That’s actually a kind of ingenious idea for a Superman comic, as it practically guaranteed a steady, monthly stream of local mainstream media coverage. If done right, anyway. JMS’s inability to meet deadlines and DC Comics’ unfortunate tendency to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory eighty-sixed a lot of that potential.

But forget all that—let’s look at the content of the comics themselves.

I think John Cassaday’s covers are worth noting. He didn’t provide the cover for #700, that’s a fairly strong one by Gary Frank (I didn’t think much of it the first time I saw it, but it’s been growing on me, and I like it more and more the longer I spend time with it, even though it contains a damn lie—Superman #700 was completely Krypto-less!).

Cassaday had a bit of a challenge in providing covers for “Grounded” because it is a story about Superman just cold walking around, so there’s only so many “Superman walking” covers you can do. Cassaday seems to have been shooting for iconic covers involving Superman and America, and the results have been interesting.

I don’t really care for that of #701It's a walking cover, but it’s a simple piece that stood out from the other books on the shelf and worked conceptually.

I do really like his cover for #702:The Superman on a black field is a very classic-looking image. I’m not a big fan of Cassaday’s style, but this was a really powerfully composed image and, again, one that stood out on the shelves. Superman is one of the only superhero characters—hell, maybe the only one—whose colors are so indicative of the character himself that just seeing them in relief against black like that can given a picture a sort of visual eloquence.

I know I’ve mentioned that I don’t care for Barrows’ art a few dozen times before, but his pencil work in these two-and-a-third issues was his best work yet.

His specialty, form what I’ve seen, seems to be twisted, swollen, muscular figures in agonizing poses, and so a story about Superman strolling about dealing with ordinary folks wasn’t exactly a story that seemed like one for Barrows, but he acquits himself quite well.

I haven’t completely come around on his work, nor do I think he was the best possible artist for this storyline, but I think it’s evident he’s doing the work of his career here (And if I were him, I’d be pretty pissed off that JMS checked out on the story).

Coloring isn’t something I pay a whole lot of attention to—good coloring isn’t something you should notice, and is, in fact, one of those elements of comics you only tend to notice when it’s either really good or really bad—but I thought it was a little bright and garish for this story.

It’s a very superhero palette that Rod Reis uses here, except the subject matter is mostly regular people in regular clothes, resulting in something akin to watching an old television set with the tint not quite right.

Now, the story itself. The idea of Superman feeling out-of-touch with humanity and feeling the need to reconnect is an exceedingly strange idea for a Superman story set in 2010, and is actually pretty hard to swallow at all—Superman’s been at this for seven decades our time, and about 12 years his time. He’s also got a job and is married to a human being, so you think he’d be pretty in-touch with humans at this point. It really feels like a storyline that should be occurring in a continuity-free original graphic novel, if not an officially “Elseworlds”-branded storyline.

Having the “real,” modern, DCU, in-continuity Superman having to do this at all just seems…off. JMS is helped somewhat past this hurdle by the fact that Superman has been living off-Earth on New Krypton for the last year or so, and, before that, his dad died. Oh, and I guess his father-in-law committed genocide against his people? I guess that could lead to a mild mid-life crisis.

If the timing works, the catalyst doesn’t—JMS has Superman allude to the stressful year he’s had, but the reason for his walking around is simply this. That is really one of those things that you should pretty much never have happen in a story involving Superman—a fellow Justice League member’s wife being raped by a supervillain in JLA HQ is another one—because it’s the sort of thing you can’t think seriously about while taking a story seriously because it just makes Superman look like an enormous asshole.

Instead of responding with a readymade answer along the lines of not interfering with acts of God or not being a doctor or not wanting to play God or not wanting to rob humanity of his achievements by doing everything for humans or whatever, Superman seems to take the lady’s criticism to heart.

Did Superman really go all this time without anyone saying to him, “Hey asshole, way to let my loved one die of something you could have easily saved them from!”…? I find that hard to believe. Like, harder to believe in than a flying invincible guy from a different planet with laser eyes. (Am I misremembering, or was Brian Azzarello and Jim Lee’s “For Tomorrow” story all about Superman wrestling with whether or not he had the right to cure that priest’s cancer…?)

If Superman agrees with that lady, then forget her husband, what the hell is he doing working as a reporter? Or eating or sleeping, human activities he doesn’t need to do, but does anyway? Because while he’s taking a nap he doesn’t really need or pretending to be a mild-mannered reporter, thousands of people all over the world are dying. What a selfish prick!

And if he didn’t think that until the lady brought it up, why does he decide to walk around? Why isn’t he immediately setting about curing diseases and operating on people constantly? Why isn’t he peacefully stopping wars and suchlike?

His motivations aside, JMS’ Superman is an alien one—not necessarily alien to humanity, but alien from the Superman we’re used to reading about. He’s kind of pretentious. And sanctimonious. And hypocritical. And a…well, a jerk, I guess you’d say.

Recently having his eyes opened by some grief-stricken lady, he immediately responds by giving his colleagues shit about continuing to see the world the way he did until about five minutes ago.

He’s essentially like the alcoholic who suddenly stops drinking, sobers up, and then shakes his head sadly at his non-alcoholic friends who drink socially. (Is that a bad example? How about the sinner who becomes a born-again Christian? The meat-eater who goes vegan?)

So when he and Batman Dick Grayson are on the JLA satellite, and Dick talks to him about how he’s tinkered with the monitoring systems so that they can no see if “anything bad” happens from up there in space, Superman corrects him by saying, “Anything important you mean,” and disappearing.

On the next page, he stops Flash Barry Allen just to ask him what he sees when he’s running across the country at super-speed. Batman and The Flash haven’t had their eyes opened like Superman has.

Issue #701, the first all-“Grounded” issue, was pretty thoroughly picked apart online. There are some neat bits to it—as labored as the set-up to the second-page reveal was, it was an effective splash page, and I still sort of like the idea of the story and the potential it shows, but there are so many little, irritating moments in it, most of them involve Superman vacillating wildly between totally douche bag and speechifying preacher. On one page, he makes short, sarcastic remarks to reporters, on the next he pats a youngster on the head and gives what sounds like a graduation speech.

Let’s see, there’s the one-page scene where Superman diagnoses a dude with heart problems and tells him to get to a doctor quickly, and then strolls off (Er, wasn’t your motivation for the walk that you didn’t save that one guy?).

There’s the seven-page scene where Superman talks a woman off a ledge, which Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely did better in a matter of panels in All-Star Superman.There’s the bit of dialogue where Superman tells the would-be jumper that it’s not fair that some folks are dead and some still alive:Huh. Superman wishing bad guys dead? Okay, I guess we can excuse Superman’s failure to save John Lennon and JFK since, given the DCU’s sliding time line, the Superman making this statement wasn't around during the time those men were murdered. But what’s stopping him from icing Manson or Castro or Kadaffi, if he wants ‘em dead so bad? Or hell, The Joker? It probably wouldn’t even be all that difficult for Superman to bring John Lennon back to life if he really wanted to, so maybe he should just shut up about it, huh?

Superman #702 doesn’t seem to have been picked apart online quite as thoroughly as Superman #701 was, perhaps because so many of those who read the first chapter of “Grounded” swore off the rest.

This issue finds Superman walking around Detroit, and it’s an even stranger issue, with a timeline I can’t quite make sense out of (Note that the industry that replaces automobile production in Detroit is already up and running by the time Superman walks out of town).

In this one, Superman encounters a house full of alien refugees hiding on earth, and is pretty miffed about their immigrating to the Earth and/or the U.S. illegally.

These are “good” aliens, who don’t want to conquer the world, but basically just post as humans using holograms and stay inside, keeping to themselves and watching TV. Superman wants to narc on them though.This would be fine if this weren’t a DCU story, but given the hundreds of aliens that live on DC’s Earth, I’m pretty sure there are laws regarding aliens moving to Earth. In fact, it was in the aftermath of a big Superman storyline, “Our Worlds At War,” that there were so many aliens seeking refuge on Earth that there was, like, an alien refugee camp outside of Metropolis and an X-Men like conflict with xenophobic Americans being all “Earth for Earthlings!” and so on.

Superman doesn’t want these aliens freeloading though. They have to give back to the community. According to Superman. What an asshole.