Either Charles Soule is mistaken about the nature of J'onn J'onnz's Martian vision or I am.

Martian Manhunter THROOMs General Zod, and then gets THWAMmed in return, in this page from Superman/Wonder Woman #3 drawn by Tony S. Daniel and Matt Banning

It has always been my understanding that J'onn J'onnz's "Martian vision" eye-beams were rather different than Superman's heat vision.

The latter is just what it sounds like—blasts of intense heat that blast out of Superman's super-eyeballs in a concentrated ray, usually drawn as a visible red eye-beam (Comics being a visual medium and all). But it was my understanding that the former was some form of laser beam or concussive blast, rather than simply heat-vision under a more local name (Examples of the pair of them shooting their eye-beams in the same panel are relatively rare, but I do recall it happening at least once during the Morrison/Porter/Dell JLA run, and in that case J'onn's martian vision beams were colored darker than Superman's heat-vision, more purple than red.

In Superman/Wonder Woman #3, however, it seems like J'onn's martian vision is basically heat-vision, of a sort.

Seeking to capture a mysterious and powerful visitor from a different dimension (General Zod, actually), the Justice League of America's Steve Trevor has Vibe use his, um, vibrational powers to kick up a cloud of sand around Zod, and then says the following to J'onn:

J'onn complies, his martian vision here transforming the sand into glass, as extremely intense heat would (No, I don't know why they thought glass would be the best way to contain him; prisons are rarely built of the same material as green houses for a reason).

Note that not only is the martian vision here clearly a heat beam, setting the cloud of sand on fire as it fuses it to glass, but Trevor indicates (and J'onn seems to agree with him) that the Martian aversion to fire is so powerful that it includes even a fear of their own vision powers, which is a little, well, nuts, isn't it?

Just how vulnerable J'onn is to fire, and the whys and wherefores of it, have changed over the years, of course. Pre-reboot, it was more of a psychological fear than a physical weakness, more debilitating phobia (like Storm's claustrophobia) than Achilles' heel (like Superman's kryptonite), although during his JLA run Joe Kelly played with it in a way to suggest that it's a psychological block meant to keep a monster of the Martian collective unconsciousness at bay.

After the New 52-boot, I don't know J'onn's status in regards to fire (His history is a bit confused, to say the least, at this point, most of it having occurred off-panel, in the undocumented five missing years), but if he's afraid of or somehow vulnerable to his own eye-beams now, well, that's a pretty big change.

To answer the question suggested in the title of this post, however, I would assume that Soule is right and that I'm wrong, given the fact that he's a professional writer hired by DC Comics and is writing comics edited by editors at DC Comics, while I'm a guy who reads DC comics and then complains about their shortcomings (if any) on the Internet.

And perhaps the New 52 continuity reboot changed the very nature of J'onn's Martian Vision...?

Except that would be really weird if they actually sat down to redesign and reimagine J'onn J'onnz and were like, "Okay, let's streamline this character to make him more accessible to more readers. We changed the shape of his head, added a loin cloth over his pants, put him on StormWatch instead of the Justice League...what else? Oh! Let's alter the nature of his eye-beams, so now they are even more like Superman's, and also he doesn't like using them, because he doesn't like heat, because heat comes from fire."

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.

Meanwhile, at Robot 6...

It's the first Thursday of a new month, which means I have an installment of "A Month of Wednesdays" at Robot 6, reviews of every new graphic novel released in the previous calendar month that I read but didn't review elsewhere. So click here to read shorter-ish reviews of Avengers: Endless Wartime (pretty good, or pretty great relative to 21st century Avengers comics), Batman Vol. 3: Death of the Family (pretty great), JLA: Earth 2: The Deluxe Edition (still great), The Joker: Death of the Family (not so much), Palookaville #21 (pretty great), The Smurfs Christmas (pretty smurfy) and Tropic of the Sea (great).

The above image is from the Joker collection, and is taken from the included Batman and Robin arc, drawn by Patrick Gleason, with either Mick Gray or Keith Champagne inking it. Gleason is the all-around champion face-less Joker wearing his own face drawing champion.

Speaking of which, I'd like to ask a question of any of the Batman readers in the audience. Okay, so "Death of the Family" is set one year after the events of Detective Comics #1, in which Joker had his face skinned off. Was TEC #1 set in the present at the time (i.e., Year Five of the New 52's new five-year timelie?), or was it at some undetermined point in the past...?

Because if TEC was set in the present (Year Five), that means an entire year has already passed in The New 52, and we're already on Year Six. According to the text boxes in the "Zero Year" tie-ins, "Zero Year" is six years ago. But does that mean Zero Year is set the year before Year One of the New 52, or during Year One of the New 52? (I guess that would depend on how close to the beginning of the year The Joker had his face flayed off...?)

The new, shorter continuity really does my head in, and I think makes things even more complicated than a 10-12 year sliding timeline ever did.

For example, Barbara Gordon was paralyzed for three years, so how long was she actually Batgirl, counting the time she spent as Batgirl before and after her paralysis...? Less than two years? Maybe three, if a year passed between Batman #1 and "Death of the Family"...?

And how quickly did her dad James Gordon shoot up through the ranks of the Gotham City Police Department that he made commissioner in, what, a year or two? (He would have been Commissioner when Barbara was shot, right?)

Hey, wait a second! If this is The Creeper...

...then who is the yellow-skinned, green-haired guy with the creepy red shawl and boots in this splash page from September 2011's Justice League International #1...?

Review: Animal Man Vol. 3: Rotworld: The Red Kingdom

I thought Animal Man was supposed to be one of the good New 52 books, one of the best comics DC is currently publishing? It's probably the comic I see cited most often in the comments that occasionally attach themselves to pieces I write at Robot 6, or under articles on various blogs about some dumb editorial decision DC has made; you know, things like, "Ugh, DC is the worst, Animal Man is the only book I'm still reading" or "That it, I'm dropping everything but Animal Man" or "Wow, I guess I can drop Batwoman too now, so Animal Man is my last DC comic."

And it's written by Jeff Lemire, a very talented cartoonist and pretty decent super comics-script writer that everyone seems to like, in this volume occasionally collaborating with Scott Snyder, who seems to be the universally accepted Best Writer At DC.

And yet this comic is sort of awful. Granted, I started the series with volume 3 instead of volume 1 (my only previous encounter with New 52 Animal Man being this summer's annual), but what I found wanting about it had absolutely nothing to do with not being able to follow the plot or recognize and understand the characters and their conflicts (all of which were pretty similar to how I remember them from 1990s Vertigo stories); Lemire and Snyder do a fine job of making this volume stand on its own and serve as an easy enough entry point.

Rather, I just found the whole endeavor repetitive (of older, better comics I read as a teenager), and bloodless and cold. It was plain old generic superhero comics, without any interesting or fresh ideas boiling under the surface; the art was occasionally very creepy and weird, and kept my eyes from drifting up from the page to the carpet or wall paper, but it was inconsistent (seven artists were involved in the volume), and rarely inspired enough to make up for the overall deficiencies of the comic.

Steve Pugh's "Rot Queen Maxine" is scary as fuck. Good job, Steve Pugh!

This volume contains eight issues of Animal Man and two of Swamp Thing; despite the 200-page contents, a sizable chunk of the narrative seems to be missing, as the two DC-to-Vertigo-and-back heroes are separated when arriving in Rotworld and go on separate quests that converge; we see the start and climax of both, but Swamp Thing is otherwise MIA, returning with a bunch of characters that weren't introduced and with a deus ex machina not mentioned int his volume until it appears (Given the title, I suspect there's a volume of Swamp Thing out there with the sub-title "Rotworld: The Green Kingdom," but if issues of this aren't reprinted there as well, I have a hard time imagining how complete that story must read).

Buddy Baker, aka Animal Man, is on the run with his family: Wife Ellen, be-mulleted teenage son Cliff, power-sprouting young daughter Maxine, and his mother-in-law. Both she and Ellen are pretty unhappy with Buddy about all the dangerous craziness he brings into their lives, an unhappiness that ultimately culminates with Ellen leaving him. I read issues written by Jamie Delano featuring these very conflicts and events, some of which were drawn by artists Steve Pugh, who drew the lion's share of this volume, increasing the sense of deja vu (The greatest change is that Animal Man's costume is quite different, and he looks like a minor X-Men character. While these issues were being published, there are Animal Man collections written by one of the most popular writers to work with DC in the last twenty years for sale on bookstore shelves, and short cartoons featuring Animal Man on Cartoon Network; he looks completely different. Synergy!).

What they are running from are agents of The Rot, which is the equivalent of The Red, the mystical lifeforce web that binds all animals that Animal Man draws his powers from, and The Green (Replace "animals" with "plants" and "Animal Man" with "Swamp Thing").  Cliff has been injured and seems to be near death, and while the adults argue about how best to help him, ultimately Buddy convinces them they have to stop the problem at its root, by visiting the swamp with a talking cat and allying themselves with Swamp Thing and Abby Arcane, both of whom have slightly different haircuts, but seem to be otherwise immediately recognizable as their mid-nineties Vertigo selves.

The two character with books bearing their names dive into a fetid pool that is a portal into The Rot, and something something, Arcane is the Avatar of The Rot, they end up in a post-apocalyptic, possible, so-sure-to-be-immediately-reversed-this-might-as-well-be-an-Elseworlds-world future in which The Rot has conquered the world, save for a handful of heroes in need of Animal Man and Swamp Thing's leadership to win the day.

In this respect, it reads a lot like (what I've read of) Age of Ultron or sections of Grant Morrison, Howard Porter and John Dell's "Rock of Ages" storyline; there are no consequences, and thus no import, to anything that happens (In fact, a reset button is pushed by cosmic forces near the end, sending the characters back in time to prevent Rotworld from ever coming to pass.

But what it reminded me most of was Jeph Loeb's "Hush" story arc in Batman: A series of cameos, strung together like beads. Many of these are indeed cool, several are completely out-of-left-field (Would Medphyll be in many readers' list of The Top Ten Green Lanterns Most Likely To Appear In a crossover...?*). That is at least one virtue to the parade of Geoff Johns-like guest-star reveals; many of them are relatively minor characters, fan-favorites (as in, like, one fan likes them a whole lot) that probably don't appear as often as they should.

They get a chance to shine, and some cool stuff happens, like Frankenstein joining The Green Lantern Corps.

Black Orchid can morph her hands into big scary monster claws, just like her namesake flower

So Buddy teams up with New 52 Black Orchid, who wears purple cabbage leaves, can change shape and generally looks infinitely worse than the original DCU version or the later version reinvented by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean (And why would you want her to resemble the version of her appearing in that graphic novel by Neil Gaiman? It's not like millions of people like to read books that guy writes or anything); Beast Boy, who is now red and doesn't look anything like the version in Teen Titans, Young Justice or the new Teen Titans Go cartoons that are on television;  Steel, who is now a robot with his consciousness uploaded; and John Constantine, who apparently must appear in every single comic featuring more than two superheroes in it.

Together they pick up some more allies, like Frankenstein and his Patchwork Horde, an army of sewn together cavalry on sewn-together horses that the Rot can't rot and the aforementioned Medphyll, and fight some villains, like Blackbriar Thorn and Gorilla Grodd and his gorilla army (which Mallah and The Brain are in).

Pugh's cover to Animal Man #13, I think, featuring an awesome Rotworld Hawkman

At Arcane's castle, they meet Swamp Thing's team—a Batgirl who looks like a female Man-Bat, Mister Freeze, a giant Batman robot with the power to fix everything—and get in a big fight with the various forces of The Rot, most of which are corrupted, badly deformed versions of DC superheroes and villains behaving a bit like zombies, only much more fucked-up looking.

A lot of them die horribly, but who cares? It reboots at the end, as is clear from the pages.

In order to win the day, they have to get the Batman robot-thing up into the clouds, where it will make it green Fix Stuff juice, that will fix stuff. Because this is an Animal Man/Swamp Thing crossover, it falls on them to get it up into the sky, by having Swamp Thing grow wings made of plants (?) and fly it, while Animal Man fights Arcane atop it.

Artist Andrew Belanger takes over for the climax, because that's when you wanna see a different artist come in. I'm no botanist, so I don't know how much metal a pair of leaf wings can carry

This is sort of weird, since Green Lantern Frankenstein, who has a magic ring that specializes in allowing its bearer to fly and in lifting heavy objects, usually in green spheres or giant green hands, keep the hordes at bay. This would be a little like a Justice League story where Superman is like, "Batman, I'll keep these thugs off your back while you  fly that nuclear missile up into space where it won't hurt anyone when it goes off in thirty seconds!"

And then, back in the past, Cliff dies, which is actually more funny and sigh-inducing than tragic, given the fact that Grant Morrison, the writer who salvaged Animal Man from DC trivia obscurity and made him a character capable of supporting his own book (and serving as a pillar for DC's adult reader Vertigo imprint), a writer whose work apparently so inspired both Lemire and Snyder that they are here near-constantly echoing and quoting aspects of characters Morrison wrote, whether from Morrison's runs or from those that preceded or followed Morrison, did a whole story arc decrying cheap shock tactics like killing off Buddy Baker's family as pretty shitty things for writers to do.

I liked seeing so many characters I like—particularly Steel, whose presence isn't what I would have hoped in a rebooted DCU—and much of the artwork is fine, but it all felt quite soulless, like a plot for a comic book with a first-draft of a script that got illustrated, before the writers could work in any real drama, or any fresh, big, new ideas that can justify the otherwise generic Heroes Go To a Shitty Possible Future Then Avert It storyline.

If those Internet comment leavers are right, and this is the best DC Comic, than the publisher is in much greater creative trouble than I could have imagined.

Luckily, Internet comment-leavers are never, ever right about anything.**

*On the other hand, he has appeared in Swamp Thing before, so, again, we have that repetitive, recycling element.

**Um, except for all you guys who leave comments on EDILW, of course. You guys are the best. You've discerning taste in writing-about-comics, you smell divine and, is that a new shirt? Or did you lose weight? Something looks different about you.

DC's Villains Month post-mortem

I read 48 of the 52 Villians Month specials. I did it for money. (Left to my own devices and my own finances, I probably would have only bought the Two-Face and Bizarro issues...and maybe the Scarecrow one, depending on whether or not I flipped-through it and so who the artist was and what his art looked like in it.) I reviewed them in four, weekly installments for Robot 6, which you can read here, here, here and here.

The four I missed were The Creeper, Deadshot, Deathstroke and Joker's Daughter. (For the purposes of this post, I'm referring to them by character/star, not actual title, as the actual titles are those of the hero characters or teams that usually—but not always—interact with the villains on the covers, and all have decimal points in them and I don't want to deal with that shit right now.)

Of those, the only one I've seen on a comics shelf was the Deadshot one, a week or two after release, and I did flip-through it, even if I didn't read it. It didn't appear to have anything to do with Forever Evil, and looked rather dull. He jumps out of an airplane and shoots a guy with a special bullet and thinks about his life, is what I got from the flip-through. He still looks way too much like Lord Zedd from Power Rangers).

The third week was the hardest week to read; that week, I read all 13, and I think that may have exceeded the limit of the number of violent, mostly shoddily-made comic books about evil and depravity that I can read and write about in a single evening. My eyes, head, fingers, stomach and soul all kind of hurt before I closed my laptop for the night.

Here are some thoughts on the whole month's line in general.

1.) I think all of the covers would have been improved if the heroes themselves were not included in the backgrounds. They were likely included to both provide an additional background element for the weird 3D-like process and to symbolically riff on the idea of the villains "taking over" the heroes' books. If you looked at any of them, you'll notice that they each featured the hero of the book bound or otherwise defeated-looking in the background.

In many cases, images of the hero bound were repeated from book to book, regardless of the artist drawing the foreground. It tended to look incredibly cheap and lazy, particularly in the case of the Batman books, where there were about three or so different images of Batman spread across some 12-16 books.

It was worst on the Justice League books, as they just showed a whole team of characters laying around on the ground, asleep. In some of these, there weren't actually any backgrounds, so the prone heroes just sort of floated around with their eyes closed, some propped up against something, or an implied something which was actually just nothing. I think just about every single image would have been improved without the heroes in the background but, again, I understand why they were there in the first place. (The Batman/Superman issue featuring Doomsday  looked particularly weird, as a defeated, prone Superman was in the background, but there was no sign of Batman at all).

2.) The decimal points and the rigging of the sales charts, in which they published four issues of the most popular titles in a franchise and no issues of the secondary or tertiary titles (that is, four issues of Green Lantern, and no issues of Green Lantern Corps or Green Lantern: New Guardians or Red Lanterns), can't possibly help sell any comics in October, December, February or March. Say you liked the issue with The Cyborg Superman in it, or The Ventriloquist, and wanted to see more of those characters by those writers; you might naturally look for future issues of Action Comics and Batman: The Dark Knight, as those were the titles devoted to telling stories featuring those characters, but it looks like they will actually be continuing in Supergirl and Batgirl. So good luck unlocking the Da Vinci code to follow these characters and creators!

3.) There were more bad books than good ones. I devised a 1-10 rating system, but didn't award anything any number higher than a nine, and I think the average worked out to about a 4.

I think the best books were The Riddler, Parasite*, Killer Croc, Ocean Master, Ra's al Ghul, The Rogues and Bizarro. Those are the ones I gave eights and nines, but since nothing got a ten, I guess you should count the nines as tens and eights as nines.

There are some obvious trends in those seven issues: Three of them are Batman comics, two are Superman comics. Most have at least a little to do with Forever Evil, at least as a source of inspiration. But the main similarity they all have is simply this: They all featured good writing and good-to-great artwork. This isn't—or it really shouldn't be—any great secret or anything, but I guess it still bears repeating in many circles. The best way to make the best comics is to get good writers and good artists and good writer/artists, and assign them the work.

4.) In terms of importance in relation to the unified catalyst of the month's promotion (which does feel more like something someone in marketing came up with to tie into the big crossover story, rather than something Geoff Johns thought would serve the big crossover story), The Secret Society one was probably the only really essential read, in that it was so heavily connected to the events of Forever Evil, focusing on Earth-3's Alfred Pennyworth and Thomas Wayne, aka Owlman, and offering clues and suggestions regarding several plot elements.

The Lex Luthor issue is probably the next most essential, given the role he played in Forever Evil #1 (as the protagonist and therefore default "hero" of the book), and the comic is a day-in-the-life story of Luthor leading up to the events of that particular book.

The Rogues and Scarecrow and Bane issues were about as connected to the events of Forever Evil as any of the books mentioned between now and #5 on my list of observations, but are perhaps of greater note because they lead directly into spin-off/tie-in series (Forever Evil: Rogues Rebellion and Forever Evil: Arkham War), and will therefore potentially play greater roles in the remainder of the Forever Evil series.

Black Adam, Black Manta, Killer Frost, Harley Quinn and Deadshot all more-or-less declare extreme dissatisfaction with Syndicate rule in some of the books, and are therefore likely to play a bigger role later in the series, if it does indeed turn out to be an Earth-52 vs. Earth-3 villain war, or a team-up of Earth-52 heroes and villains to repel the invaders and their allies.

The books having at least a little to do with the events of Forever Evil, either in a red-sky, this-is-what-so-and-so-was-up-to-at-the-time or a more direct expansion of cameo roles in Forever Evil sort of way, are these: Bane,  Black Adam, Black Hand, Black Manta, Cheetah, Clayface,  Court of Owls, Grodd,  Harley Quinn, Killer Croc, Killer Frost, Mr. Freeze, Ocean Master, Man-Bat, Metallo, Parasite, Poison Ivy, Ra's al Ghul, Two-Face, and The League of Assassins, Scarecrow and Ventriloquist.

The books having nothing at all to do with the events of Forever Evil were these: Arcane, Bizarro, Brainiac, Count Vertigo, Cyborg Superman, Darkseid, Desaad, Dial E, Doomsday, Eclipso, First Born H'El, Joker, Lobo, Mongul, Penguin, Relic, Reverse Flash, Shadow Thief, Sinestro, Solomon Grundy, Trigon and Zod. That's a lot.

5.) What's striking to me about how high that number of books having nothing at all to do with Forever Evil is the fact that Forever Evil involves a group of brand-new (to the New 52) villains that we the readers don't know anything about; villains from another world who likely have long and exciting backstories that would certainly have proven a lot more interesting than almost any of the stories of the characters mentioned in the previous story arc, some of which do tie in to their home titles (Reverse Flash read like an issue of Flash, for example, and told a piece of a storyline already in-progress), but others of which are just standalone filler issues not really connected to anything at all.

Why weren't any of those 23 issues devoted to The Crime Syndicate (as a whole), Ultraman, Owlman, Superwoman, Johnny Quick, Power Ring, Deathstorm, Atomica, The Outsider, Sea King and Talon? Wouldn't their origins be a hell of a lot more interesting than a day-in-the-life of the Penguin or Count Vertigo, or retellings of origins for The First Born and Sinestro and Brainiac? I would have appreciated a Dr. Psycho origin, given his relatively prominent role in "Trinity War," or some other Society members like Giganta, Signalman and Vandal Savage. I found the Seven Deadly Sins that plague Pandora to be unlikable and poorly-designed, but they sure seem more relevant to the current state of the DCU and the stories going on in it. What's up with them? 

6.) The names of a few creators appeared a lot during these issues.

Geoff Johns had the most writing credits at four, although all four of those were co-writing credits (Black Manta and Ocean Master with Tony Bedard; Secret Society and Black Adam with Sterling Gates).

Greg Pak, Charles Soule, Matt Kindt and Peter J. Tomasi were the most prolific writers involved, all four writing three issues solo, making it a four-way tie for most productive writer in September. Brian Buccellato was involved with the writing of all three Flash issues, but a few of those were as co-writer.

Of the artists involved, Jeremy Haun and Szymon Kudranski were the only two who managed more than one issue apiece, the former drawing The Riddler  and Ra's al Ghul issues, the latter The Scarecrow and Secret Society issues.

7.) What if instead of spotlighting sometimes random Earth-New 52 villains, they instead offered Earth-3 versions of the New 52? You know, their regular offerings, only starring the evil opposites of the stars from Earth 3? I don't know that those comics  would have been any better, and the selling of them might have been a bit more tricky, but I bet they would have been interesting.

I looked at everything DC offered in August, and tried to think of Earth 3 opposites that could have starred in 'em

1.) All-Star Western could probably keep the same title, actually; I would be curious to see what an alignment-flipped version of Jonah Hex's Old West from Earth 3 might have looked like though. Or wait, would the Old West be in the East of the America on Earth 3...?

2.) Action Comics Ultra-Action Comics (Although I think Action Tragedies has a neat ring to it, too)

3.) Animal Man Beast Thing

4.) Aquaman Sea King

5.) Batgirl Owlgirl

6.) Batman Owlman

7.) Batman and Robin  Owlman and Talon

8) Batman: The Dark Knight Owlman: The Black Knight

9.) Batman/Superman Owlman/Ultraman

10.) Batwing Owlwing

11.) Batwoman Owlwoman 

12.) Birds of Prey Raptors

13.) Catwoman The Cat or maybe Super-Cat (I like Super-Cat)

14.) Constantine All-New Hellblazer

15.) Detective Comics  Owlman's Detective Comics or maybe Detective Tragedies

16.) Justice League of America's Vibe Crime Syndicate of Amerika's Bad Vibes

17.) The Flash Johnny Quick

18.) Earth 2 Earth 3

19.) Green Arrow Black Arrow

20.) Green Lantern Power Ring

21.) Green Lantern Corps Power Ring Corps

22.) Green Lantern: New Guardians Volthoom Vs. The Guardians

23.) Green Team: Teen Trillionaires Bean Team: Aged Hobos

24.) Justice League Crime Syndicate

25.) Justice League Dark "Crime Syndicate Dark"

26.) Justice League of America Crime Syndicate of America

27.) Katana Ummm...I don't know what the evil opposite of a katana is, or a more evil version of a katana...Scythe? AK-47? Swiss Army Knife? Brass Knuckles?

28.) Larfleeze Orange Lantern or Orange Power Ring (Wow, this is getting hard now)

29.) The Movement... Umm...No guess. I haven't read this at all. What's the opposite of a movement? Anarchy? Anarky, maybe? 

30.) Nightwing Talon

31.) Red Hood and The Outlaws Black Hat and...uh...His Inlaws...?

32.) Red Lanterns Red Power Rings...?

33.) Suicide Squad Homicide Horde 

34.) Stormwatch The Authority

35.) Superboy Ultraboy (Either a unique character, or The Adventures of Ultraman When He Was a Boy)

36.) Supergirl Ultragirl 

37.) Superman Ultraman 

38.) Superman Unchained Ultraman Unchained

39.) Swamp Thing Meadow...Man...?

40.) Talon Nightwing (In a pitched battle against The Court of Bats!)

41.) Teen Titans Mean Titans

42.) Trinity of Sin: Pandora Sinity or Sin: Pandemonium

43.) Trinity of Sin: Phantom Stranger Sinity of Sin: Phantom Acquaintance

44.) Worlds' Finest Worlds' Foulest (featuring Ultra Girl and Tigress)

45.) Wonder Woman Superwoman

...Hey, they only published 45 New 52 titles in August...?  Or did I just miss seven?

You'll note that would make for an awful lot of Owlman comics, just as Earth-52 has a bunch of Batman comics. Luckily, there would be a lot opponents of Owlman, like The Jester, Man-Owl, Crusader Croc, Crow Man and so on.

8.) This is what September's line-up would have looked like if they were publishing 52 villain spot-lights aimed solely at me, personally:

Action Comics #23.1: Bizarro
Action Comics #23.2: Mr. Mxyzptlk
Action Comics #23.3: Titano
Action Comics #23.4: Terra-Man
Aquaman #23.1: Iceberg Head
Aquaman #23.2: The Human Flying Fish
Batman #23.1: Bat-Mite
Batman #23.2: Calendar Man
Batman #23.3: Catman
Batman #23.4: Killer Moth
Batman and Robin #23.1: Anarky
Batman and Robin #23.2: The Human Flea
Batman and Robin #23.3: The General
Batman and Robin #23.4: Cluemaster and The Spoiler
Batman: The Dark Knight #23.1: King Tut
Batman: The Dark Knight #23.2: Captain Stingaree
Batman: The Dark Knight #23.3: The Scarecrow
Batman: The Dark Knight #23.4: Kiteman
Batman/Superman #3.1: Composite Superman
Detective Comics #23.1: Zebra Man
Detective Comics #23.2: The Gorilla Boss of Gotham City
Detective Comics #23.3: The Rainbow Creature
Detective Comics #23.4: The Mad Hatter
Earth 2 #15.1: Ragdoll
Earth 2 #15.2: Sportsmaster
Flash #23.1: The Turtle
Flash #23.2: Rainbow Raider
Flash #23.3: The Top 
Green Arrow: #23.1: Mr. Mephisto ***
Green Lantern #23.1: Invisible Destroyer
Green Lantern #23.2: Goldface
Green Lantern #23.3: The Shark
Green Lantern #24.3: Major Disaster
Justice League #23.1: Starro
Justice League #23.2: Dr. Sivana
Justice League #23.3: Mr. Mind
Justice League #24.4: Animal Vegetable Mineral Man
Justice League Dark #23.1: Monster Society of Evil
Justice League Dark #23.2: Blackbriar Thorn
Justice League of America #7.1: Lion Mane
Justice League of America #7.2: Gentleman Ghost
Justice League of America #7.3: The Man-Hawks
Justice League of America #7.4: Solaris, The Tyrant Sun
Superman #23.1: King Krypton
Superman #23.2: Ultra-Humanite
Superman #23.3: Destructo
Superman #24.4 : Krull
Swamp Thing #23.1: Cranius
Teen Titans #23.1: The Mad Mod
Teen Titans #23.2: The Brotherhood of Evil
Wonder Woman #23.1: Egg-Fu
Wonder Woman #23.2: The Blue Snowman

Of course, even then, these would all have to be made by writers I liked and and artists I liked, or writers and artists that I had never heard of, but would like the work of once I read it. I would go on to suggest creative teams for the above, but that seems way too much like fantasy football to me, but wait, half of this blog post was like fantasy football already, wasn't it? Only without the possibility of winning any money...?

*Abhay Khosla chose the issue of Superman featuring Parasite as his sample representing the Villains Month endeavor. He found it wanting, but I think he did a good job of distilling what's off about The New 52 in general, although he does acknowledge that maybe it won't be such a big deal when we get some distance from it, as he compares his feelings about it now to his perception of the feelings of the people who were unhappy about the Post-Crisis DCU. But listen:

So ultimately the thing that makes a DC Comic feel most like a real DC comic now (besides being dull) is that feeling of “everything would be better if my time machine could take us back in time” which is the most DC thing there is left, now, for me.  So, so DC, that.  I know it’s been said before by other people, but:  they didn’t just create a new universe; they created a new old-universe-that-it-was-a-mistake-to-throw-away.  You know?  I kinda find the poetry of it all interesting, if not the reading the DC comics part.

I think that's a better"that's it in a nutshell" than what I've been trying to articulate as they only partially re-booted their universe, jumped ahead five years in time and they won't tell anyone (creators included) what they actually changed and what they didn't, except in dribs and drabs (and sometimes those drabs contradict the dribs). 

**Go ahead, look him up.

***Says Wikipedia, "Hobo posing as demonic mastermind to extort fellow hobos into committing crimes." Move over, Count Vertigo!