Is Dark Knight III: The Master Race a comic book, or just a vehicle for variant covers?

That's probably not too terribly legible, but it's the credit page for the first issue of Dark Knight III: The Master Race. Those long columns of credits are the artists responsible for the "retailer" variants; there are another handful of "regular" variants. All in all, there are 49 variant covers listed on this page, although I'm pretty sure between black-and-white versions, blank covers and the super-rare incentive variants, there's likely well over 50 variants for this book, making it, perhaps, DC's answer to Mavel's Star Wars #1, which I believe had somewhere in the neighborhood of 10,000 variants, if I put the comma in the right place.

Looking at that list, I can't help but wonder if maybe DC shouldn't have just published a comic book format "gallery" like they used to occasionally did in the 190s, a tribute to Frank Miller's Dark Knight comics by top creators (If you've seen many of the variant covers, you'll notice none are specific to this new series, of which only one issue has been released, after all, but to the original Dark Knight Returns series).

It's a very strong line-up, including some of my favorite artists--

--and at least one from an artist I never would have expected to produce a variant cover for a prestigious DC superhero comics project, Kevin Eastman--

(Although given the fact that it was already announced that Eastman would be contributing variant covers to the upcoming Batman/Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles cover, his presence seems much less out-of-left-field than it might have otherwise.)

On the other hand, I'm sure DC is going to make many, many, many times more money publishing a new Miller-attached Dark Knight comic book series with 50-100 variant covers than they would just publishing a Dark Knight Returns tribute gallery book.

The good news is that the book itself is pretty alright, particularly if you view it for what it is--Brian Azzarello and Andy Kubert doing their best Frank Miller impressions in homage to Dark Knight Returns, with an actual Frank Miller mini-comic embedded in the middle of it. Also, there was at least one incredibly shocking moment in the book, something I never expected to see in a DC comic book. Not because it was over-the-top or anything (it's not; it's a perfectly natural thing, really), but given the particular character and the fact that what she's doing is still deemed "controversial" in some circles, I was surprised to see it appear here, and in the way it appeared.

Anyway, I'm sure I'll be talking in greater length and with (hopefully) greater insight on the book at some point later in the very near future. In the mean time, I just wanted to point out that Good God that is so many variants! and, while I generally think variants are a pox upon the industry, it is at least nice to know that it lead to so many great images from so many great artists, like those whose work is pictured above.

Meanwhile...

What kind of adventure is that? It's my kind of adventure. And I respectfully disagree with Super Backpack; that does too sound awesome.

Anyway, I reviewed two books at Good Comics For Kids this week (both of which are also good for adults too), James Kochalka's The Glorkian Warrior Delivers a Pizza (from which the above panel is taken, obviously), and Monsters & Titans: Battling Boy on Tour, which collects artwork from Paul Pope's Battling Boy and an interview with Pope.

I also reviewed the handful of March releases I didn't get to giving a full review elsewhere at Robot 6 today, so click here for mini-reviews of Jesse Lonergan's All Star, Ian Edginton and Francesco Trifogli's Hinterkind, Geoff Johns and ten different artists' Justice League Vol. 4, Inio Asano's Nijigahara Holograph, Ken Akamatsu's UQ Holder! and Brian Azzarello and company's Wonder Woman Vol. 4.

While you're at Robot 6, you may want to check in with Tom Bondurant, who discusses the first issue of Aquaman and The Others, after a bit of a history lesson on Aquaman...and The Others. I think he liked the book better than I did (Regarding last night's reviews of Aquaman and The Others #1 and Detective Comics #30, I completely forgot to mention the one rather weird part of TEC...or at least the part that struck me as odd. One of the character's mentions Bruce Wayne's son, saying something along the lines of, "Just wait until your boy becomes a teenager," and Bruce doesn't correct her, just makes a sad face. I guess I didn't realize Batman was covering up the death of Damian which, obviously, would be pretty hard to explain—"No officer, I have no idea how he was run through with a huge blade"—particularly since his body was stolen. Still, if Damian's existence was hard to explain to the public, his sudden non-existence has got to be even harder, right? I imagine that's going to be addressed at some point somehwere...if Damian doesn't get Lazarus Pitted back to life in the next few months here. Or hell, maybe it already has; I read Batman and Robin in trade, so I haven't yet seen what Peter Tomasi's been doing there since Damian died).

Also, I found this post at Robot 6 about Evan Dorkin's almost getting to do the Popeye/Mars Attacks! crossover story interesting—not simply because of how crazy it makes the life of a freelance comics creator seem, but also because Dorkin's pitch seems pretty great. I remember liking the Popeye/Mars Attacks! book that ultimately got published pretty well, but Dorkin's sounds like it would have been awfully fun too. At the moment, I want to say it would have been better than what was ultimately published, although I realize that is likely because it exists merely in the realm of possibility, and there is therefore nothing for me to find wanting about it.

Meanwhile...

I reviewed Jeffrey Brown's new Star Wars: Jedi Academy comic/prose hybrid book for kids (and Star Wars fans of all ages) for Good Comic For Kids. Above is the page in which our young protagonist, Roan Novachez, meets one of his instructors: Yoda. My favorite bits involved Yoda's interaction with the students, and the ways Brown chose to depict the communication of the Wookie gym teacher and resident astromech with the students.

Here are two things I didn't mention in my review.

First, I was struck by how racist Roan's comic strip Ewok Pilot scanned to me, as its premise is that a primitive, spear-chucking savage who can't speak space-English is a fighter pilot; I'm positive it wasn't Brown's intention, but imagine its Earth-bound equivalent, like, say, Pygmy Cavalryman, about an African pygmy who joins the British cavalry and the hilarity that ensued. That would have been wildly offensive were it published anytime after, like, the 1940s, wouldn't it....?

Second, I kept wondering how close this was set to Episode III, and if Roan and all his classmates were going to be massacred by Anakin Skywalker shortly after the events of the story.

Elsewhere, I reviewed Paul Pope's Battling Boy for Las Vegas Weekly today. It is a very good comic, and I liked it a whole lot.

If you'd like a second, longer, more thorough opinion, might I suggest Charles Hatfield's review for The Comics Journal...?  I agree with much of what he said, although I did not find the size of the book—typical First Second trade size—to be any sort of detriment. It was manga-sized, or thereabouts, which seemed to fit Pope's pacing just fine (On the other hand, I didn't read that chapter that was previously published in a larger format, so I didn't have something to compare it to the way Hatfield did).

Worth noting? It's a very Kirby-influenced work, with the title character being the son of a character that Pope seems to have arrived at my meshing Jack Kirby's Fourth World hero Orion (and the character's setting and cast) with that of Jack Kirby's Thor (and that character's setting and cast).  So I couldn't stop thinking about Keith Giffen and John Romita Jr.'s Marvel/DC "Amalgam" comic Thorion of the New Asgods, which literally amalgamated those characters together as part of the two publisher's line-wide crossover/event.

These "Ligons" from Hinterkind annoyed me so much. Almost as much as the zebra on top of the skyscraper. Everything else was pretty good though.

And, finally, today at Robot 6 I reviewed the launches of a quartet of the Vertigo imprint's new series—Coffin  Hill, Collider/FBP: Federal Bureau of Physics, Hinterkind and Trillium—and I finally got to use a dumb headline joke I've been dying to use for longer than I want to admit.

In other, non-Caleb news...

—When I mentioned Marvel's plans for finally releasing Miracleman serially via over-priced, variant cover-laden floppies the other day, I barely took the time to note that good God that's a lot of variants, and to laugh at how weird Alan Moore's "Written by He Who Shall Not Be Named" credit looked, so I'd recommend Mike Sterling's thorough post dissecting that solicitation and Marvel's apparent plans. Not only is it never not a good idea to check out Sterling's blog (well, almost never), but as a guy who sells comic books for a living and as someone very familiar with the original series (I've never read a panel of it), Sterling's thoughts on the matter of what might be the best way and what might be a not-so-good-way to make that material available for today's market place are probably worthy of consideration.

—And hey, speaking of Miracleman, Tom Bondurant's column at Robot 6 this week is all  about the character and how he's similar and different to Fawcett-then-DC's Captain Marvel, the character he was created to take the place of. One of the striking things I noticed while reading Bondurant's column is that DC doesn't seem to have ever just tried to do Captain Marvel "straight" (Ordway's attempt being probably the closest). Rather, they are always trying to reinvent the character in some way to make him work, but they don't seem to have really ever tried the path of least resistance, despite having had several continuity reboots in which to attempt doing a DCU version of the character as he was originally created. As with Wonder Woman, I really don't see what's so damn hard to "get" about the character, but (again) like Wonder Woman, he seems to be a character the publisher is constantly trying to fix.

—I'm going to have to assume that this post on Comics Reporter, in which Tom Spurgeon solicited his readers to suggest books that are perhaps in danger of going under-appreciated this year (and with only about two months left until we're neck-deep in best of 2013 lists) is a good one, as I personally have only read and reviewed two of the 35 on the list (and I had only heard of, or remember hearing of, maybe a half-dozen or so more, one of which I only remember because someone, I think Spurgeon, ran a picture of its cover before, and that cover features a naked lady, which is a pretty good mnemonic device). Spurgeon offers additional commentary here.

Because of Labor Day, this week Friday is links day

—Hey Aquaman fans wishing there was a regular Aquaman book on the shelves (and/or DC editors trying to figure out why the last fifteen Aquaman relaunches didn’t take), this edition of Comic Book Urban Legends details the point where it all started to go horribly, horribly wrong.

Writer Peter David’s sharp veer away from the traditional orange shirt, green pants Aquaman of Superfriends might not have sat well with everyone, but it was a pretty great superhero comic while it lasted, and, as this article reveals, he fully intended to leave Aquaman where he found him, in terms of how many hands he had and everything.

I felt as confused and angry reading this as I did back in the late ‘90s, when David was replaced by Erik Larsen, and the book/s slid into perpetual reboot status.

I like he part where Kevin Dooley is alleged to have said that after “Death of Superman,” no one would be interested in that kind of story again. These days, about one-fourth of all DC stories seem to involve a character either dying or coming back from the dead.

Confidential to the Person At DC Who Decides What Gets Collected Into Trades: I’d happily buy an Atlantis Chronicles trade; I’ve been looking for a few issues of that for years now in back-issue bins…


—This has been bothering me for a while: Is “skrull” a proper noun? I’ve been capitalizing it, but I’m not sure that’s right; like, “human being” isn’t a proper noun, but maybe “earthling” is…?

Maybe Marvel should publish, like, a Daily Bugle Style Guide. It wouldn’t be much weirder than those Marvel Atlases they recently released….


—As you’ve probably already heard, Top Shelf is having a kick-ass $3 sale that you would be a fool to pass up. I highly recommend Superf*ckers #1-#4 (pretty much my Platonic ideal of a LOSH comic), That Salty Air, Yam, Black Ghost Apple Factory, The Octopi & The Ocean* and Beach Safari (topless surfer girls!). There are plenty of other great books that are available for reduced prices, too. Me, I’m gonna finally catch up on Eddie Campbell’s Bacchus. Sale’s good through next week, September 12.

PictureBox Inc. is also having a crazy tempting sale on their offerings. It began on Monday and is only good through next Monday. I haven’t read many of their books, so I can’t make as many recommendations, but you can get the really sweet Goddess of War for just $9.50, and it’s a pretty damn good read. (If you do get it, let me know how you store it, as mine is still sitting on my coffee table, mocking me with it’s unorthodox size).

Finally, TwoMorrows is having a price-slashing sale through the end of the month as well. Check it out here.


—As long as I’m doing public service announcements, local comic shop The Laughing Ogre will be hosting two pro signings over the next two months. On September 12, Jason Aaron of Scalped and recent Marvel fame will be visiting, and on Saturday, October 11, Brian Wood of DMZ, Local and every PW Beat sales analysis comments thread ever will there. So mark your calendar if you want to see what these guys look like in real life, and get your chance to ask them who’s stronger, Charles Xavier or Niles Caulder.


—Hey, guess what’s been translated into English and is now available in North America? I eagerly await reading about the first ginned up COMIC SHOP-SELLS-PORN-TO-KIDS!!! “scandal” that will inevitably arise once some concerned professional umbrage-taker realizes those aren’t their tails hanging between their legs.

I’m sure the book will do well in Rome, Georgia.


—Man, I posted about Invasion!/Secret Invasion one day too early this week, I guess.

As David Page pointed out in the comments section of that post, and everyone else in the world has posted on their blogs, DC really did seem to publish a trade collection of Invasion! just to be jerks to Marvel, as the cover reads “Secret no more!”

Bravo, DC!

Now, I think the biggest difference between the two Invasions isn’t merely that the current one has the word “Secret” in it so much as the older one has an exclamation point following it. Clearly, it’s the more exciting of the two.

So, the next Marvel crossover should have, like, three exclamation points in it. Just imagine how much more exciting World War Hulk would have been, for example, if it were actually called World War Hulk!!! or, better still, World! War! Hulk!.

I hope this kicks off an ever-escalating war of words embedded in the trade dress of all future collections from the big two. Like a Doom Patrol collection can have a starburst-shaped box on the front that says “Just like the X-Men, but with 1000% less crying!” And Marvel can publish a trade entitled Captain Marvel: At Least We Can Put His Name on the Cover, Pansies! And…Sorry. I’ll stop now.


—This short post about the Kick-Ass movie contained something that really surprised me: A mention of the script.

I guess I just don’t pay that much attention to news on comic book movies (it’s not like they’re a rarity or anything anymore), but I sort of just assumed that all of this talk of Kick-Ass: The Movie revolved around the film option and/or the development phase, with various actors and creative types being attached to an upcoming project. I didn’t realize there was a finished script already. Not only is the comic series not over yet, but it’s only like half over.

Now I’m kind of curious about the process of the book’s creation. Did Millar write it as a movie script and adapt his script into a comic? Did he write a film script and a comics script simultaneously? Has this story been done and in a folder for a few years already, and it’s just not hitting comic shelves because John Romita Jr.’s schedule opened up just recently? (That would explain why the pop culture references in the first issue seemed to stale).

Er, wait. IMDb.com credits Millar with comic book series, with director Matthew Vaughn and his Stardust co-writer Jane Goldman getting screenplay credits. So maybe Millar submitted his script to JRJR to be drawn, and Hollywood to be adapted simultaneously…? Of course, at this early point, IMDb credits aren’t as solidified as they will be closer to the actual release date

One thing I’m not terribly curious about is what’s actually going on in the book; I tried the first two issues, and it really seemed like the worst Millar work I’d ever read. Even JRJR on art couldn’t get me to keep reading it, and he’s an artist I’ll buy just about anything from.

From what I’ve read, it’s only getting worse.


—You know, if I were in charge of Countdown, I think I would have made it a year-long quarterly instead of a year-long weekly.

And I think I would have dropped all the plotlines dealing with the time-lost Legionnaires, “The Challengers of the Beyond,” the Multiverse, The Monitors, The Rogues and Mary Marvel, replacing them with Etrigan the Demon and The Sandman between Wesley Dodds and Morpheus, so that it was basically a story featuring all of Kirby’s DC characters interacting, with no distractions.

And instead of Paul Dini, five writers and thousands of artists, I would have just had Paul Pope write and draw the whole thing. Because that would have been awesome.

I mean, look at this. And this! And this! And this! Not to mention…this! And remember this?

Yes, Jack Kirby’s New Gods vs. The Demon vs. The Guardian and The Boy Commandos vs. Kamandi vs. OMAC vs. The Least Popular Guy Named Sandman and Maybe Atlas Too by Paul Pope would have been fantastic! Hell, it could still be fantastic. They might want to work on that title though…



*Did you know that the plural of “octopus” is really “octopuses” and not “octopi?” I didn’t until just last year, but it’s true, I swear. This is still a really cool comic book though.

Bat-Pope Week: Turning Points #5

In a lot of ways, Paul Pope’s weirdest Batman work was probably this
, the fifth issue of five-part, 2001 series Batman: Turning Points. It wasn’t set on an alternate timeline, it wasn’t part of a one-off project and it wasn’t set up as a showcase for Pope’s unique style and storytelling sensibility. It was an in-continuity, non-“imaginary” story that Pope merely provided the pencil art for, working from another writer’s script and having an inker finish his art.

Turning Points came out during that very structured period of Bat-comics I had mentioned the other day in discussing Gotham Knights, between the conclusion of “No Man’s Land” and before “Officer Down,” and the slow unraveling of the line that followed.*

Writers Greg Rucka and Ed Brubaker took turns writing issues of Turning Points, with Chuck Dixon stepping in to handle #4, which focused on the Jean-Paul Valley Batman, a storyline that predated Rucka and Brubaker’s Bat-work but coincided with Dixon’s.

As the title implies, the series focused on the major beats of the Commissioner Gordon/Batman relationship, the moments when that relationship took a turn for the better, or worse: There’s a “Year One” era story where they make tentative steps toward a personal relationship in addition to a professional one, the introduction of the first Robin, Batman’s withdrawal after the Joker murdered Jason Todd and attacked Barbara Gordon, Batman electing to have Valley replace him without mentioning it to Gordon, and then the then-current “status quo.”

DC eventually collected it all into trade, and it’s a pretty solid endeavor, particularly the Rucka and Brubaker issues. (I’d highly recommend it to Batman fans; although I suppose it does make for a decent primer on Bat-history for those who might not have read all the stories it responds to, like Batman: Year One, The Killing Joke, Death in the Family and Knightquest).

The art is consistently incredible, coming from Steve Lieber, Joe Giella, Dick Giordano, Brent Anderson and Pope, with covers by Javier Pulido, Ty Templton, Joe Kubert, Howard Chaykin and Pope. (The trade features a new cover by Tim Sale).

Rucka was back on scripting duty for the final, Pope-drawn issue, which wasn’t really about a “turning point” so much as where all the turns lead, the then-current relationship between Gordon and Batman. The plot is a sort of callback to the first issue, in which the bad guy from that story, Corbett, returns to Gotham with an insatiable desire to face Gordon and Batman—to thank them for stopping him back in #1, and setting him on the path to his current happiness.

Pope’s pencils are inked by Claude St. Aubin, and it’s so damn weird to see a somewhat toned down and subdued version of Pope’s Batman in the “real” Gotham. The spinning, ballet like fight moves, the balled-up posture, the full lips—this is clearly Pope’s Batman, but it’s the turn-of-the-21st-century Batman of Batman, Detective and Gotham Knights, complete with Gordon, Renee Montoya, Detective Crispus Allen, the laser-light Bat-signal and the peculiar GCPD uniforms familiar from Gotham Central.

Now let’s take a look at some of the art.

Here’s page two, in which Batman comes to the rescue of a couple being attacked in an alley:


It takes him just two panels to knock out all three of the muggers. It’s interesting to look at this Batman of Pope’s after reading about his thoughts on Batman’s costuming in the Batman: Year 100 trade. Now we know what Pope thinks of various elements of Batman’s costume, but he’s not 100% free to tweak it as he wants; this is the costume Batman was wearing at the time—the same one he’s been wearing since “No Man’s Land,” actually (Black and gray, no yellow oval, with bulky pockets on the utility belt).

Pope gives Batman’s shorts more of a swim trunk cut than the man-panties cut he was wearing when most artists drew him, and he gives the boots discernible treads (Gotham Knights penciller Roger Robinson was also drawing Batman with realistic sole and tread-having boots back then).

Also, Batman’s costume is clearly fabric, not body paint and plastic; his tights bunch, his jersey stretches across his torso, little wrinkles appear in his gloves and boots at the wrists and ankles.

Here’s another action scene a few pages later, during which Batman swoops to the rescue of Gordon, Allen and Montoya:

I love the various expressions on Batman, Allen and Montoya’s faces in those last two panels. This is apparently Allen’s first time seeing Batman.

“He’ll get over it,” Batman responds two panels later, after one panel of staring at Allen in silence.

Later, Gordon is pouring himself a cup of coffee in his darkened kitchen, and goes out to his garden, where he knows Batman is waiting; checking up on him as he has been ever since Gordon’s wife Sarah Essen was killed by The Joker at the end of “No Man’s Land.”

Rucka has the two joke a little bit before talking business, and there are some really interesting choices in the staging. When Gordon sits on a bench, Batman crouches down near him, and…bites his thumb?:

That seems very un-Batman-like to me, which actually makes it kind of neat. Batman’s now so comfortable with Gordon that he doesn’t have to pretend to be a mysterious monster man around him, but can feel free to nibble on his glove (which has honest to God seams on it!).

On the next page, there’s some more interesting body language choices:

Their conversation is interrupted by the Bat-signal, and they convene on the roof of police headquarters, where Corbett has turned on the signal to lure them there. He wanted them to meet his new family, which leads to this darling scene between Batman and Corbett’s daughter:

And that, as far as I know, is all of Pope’s Batman work.

I would say I would like to see him doing more of it, even if just on a penciling basis (especially considering the appalling state of the Batman monthly at the moment), but, honestly, I’m really looking forward to more Thb and the upcoming Battling Boy, and, as much as I enjoy seeing Pope take on Batman (or Spider-Man, or The Fantastic Four or—some day—The New Gods), my favorite work of his has been his original stuff, like Escapo and Heavy Liquid.

Perhaps what I’d really like, then, is to see more artists draw the regular Batman books who are good in the same ways that Pope is good—capable of realism that serves rather than subverts a highly individual personal style, possessing a basic understanding of drapery and anatomy, having a passion for design that shows through in every drawing, and excellent “acting” skills.




*Just in case I need to justify that statement: Back then, there were three Batman monthlies, each with their own look and focus, plus a fourth in Legends of the Dark Knight which sometimes focused on present continuity and sometimes told stories set in the past, plus satellite books for supporting characters Robin, Nightwing, Catwoman, Batgirl and Barbara Gordon/Oracle. Now there are just two Batman monthlies, each defined by a strong writer with his own vision of the character, but little in the way of month-to-month visual continuity, and Batman Confidential has replaced LDK as an anthology title focused on different, past eras of Batman’s fictional history. Catwoman and Batgirl have lost their books, Birds of Prey has been refocused away from the Bat-line, and Robin and Nightwing have been a wee bit…chaotic, creatively over the past few years. The latter seems to have settled down for now, however.

Bat-Pope Week: "Teenage Sidekick"

So far we’ve seen Paul Pope portray Bataman’s sidekick Robin as a cute German girl and a hunky gearhead, but we haven’t seen him portrayed in his original interpretation: A cocky teenage boy in a cape, mask and very little in the way of pants.

Pope got around to that particular interpretation with his issue of Solo, the final story of which was “Teenage Sidekick.”

It’s a short, 11-page story (actually, 10 and a half pages; part of the last page is devoted to an “ad” the way a lot of old DC comics used to be). It’s told through a third-person omniscient narrator, who talks us through the action, and, in the process, does a pretty good job of making the idea of Batman running around fighting killers and gangsters with a teenage help-mate seem downright plausible.

It opens with two rather large men in rather rumpled suits hauling an unconscious Dick Grayson between them, one nursing a bloody nose. Robin comes to, breaks away and goes on the attack again, only to get knocked out by a black jack.

The narrator tells us about him throughout the scene: “Fourteen years old, five foot eight, hundred-fifty-eight pounds…Intuitive, quick, a little arrogant, maybe. A hothead, a risk-taker. He’s brilliant actually, a natural born showman. If you had to have one kid on your side in a fight, this is the one you’d want.”

As the narrator recounts Robin’s origin, he comes to again, breaks free again, and beats the two men again, until he’s apparently re-re-knocked out. He also swears at one point, saying "#*@!?$X!" as he falls onto his attackers. I liked seeing that; it’s weird how you never see the teens in the DCU swearing, even comic book swearing.

We cut to Batman, on Robin’s trail, and hear a little about his origin, and why he might have taken Robin in, with Pope still using this Frank Miller-esque, abbreviated sentence structure, full of colorful to the point of purple imagery.

The goons take Robin in to meet their boss:


Make sure you click on that image to get a look at Pope’s Joker. He draws him as a version of the Cesar Romero Joker, complete with moustache (this Joker’s moustache would be growing on top of his chemically bleached skin, rather than obscured by make-up, as the narration points out the “bleached skin” specifically). The Joker looks particularly Romero-like in the second panel there. There’s something super-creepy about the Joker from the silly TV show being cast as the psycho killer of the comics.*

Also of note on this page is Robin dropping another @#$%-bomb. I like out-of-context comic book swearing like this, because it’s so hard to imagine what he might be saying. “You!! Oh no!” and then some sort of swear word that makes the Joker stop laughing and make that Romero expression.

As Pope switches to narrating about the Joker, they haul Robin out to some sort of industrial press, which slams up and down with a loud BOOM BOOM BOOM filling the background of the panels, the plan being to toss Robin under it (and he loses his shit a bit here, screaming at the site of the press and the realization that he’s going under it).

Then he changes his mind, and decides to have Robin thrown into “an industrial grade plastic shredder.” Robin shrieks and pleads with the thugs to stop, but he’s thrown into it…and manages to press his left hand against one wall and his legs against the other, stopping him from falling into the grinding blades, while his left hand gathers his cape and lifts it above them.

That leads to the juxtaposition of these two panels, which provides a pretty nice diptych of Batman and Robin:


Then Batman beats the devil out of the Joker and his men, leaving Robin to haul himself out of the grinder himself, and the narrator to keep wondering about what Batman sees in him. Is it just empathy? Or “maybe there’s more to it—Maybe Batman knows that without Robin he’d be too much like the Joker—Too much like the enemy. Dark, isolated, alone. Maybe Batman would come to believe he’s the only one alive in the whole world-- the only one who counts. A lonely, hollow man, always laughing, never at peace.”

It ends with Batman looking over his shoulder at his teenage sidekick, telling him simply “Take notice of your missteps for next time.”

The end.

I guess I didn’t scan as much of this story as I thought I did. So it may not be apparent from the few scans above, but this story is extremely well colored, by Mr. James Jean, with most of the panels being predominantly black, blue or pink; often with blue foregrounds contrasting sharply with pink backgrounds.



*Coincidentally, Mike Allred's Solo issue also includes a Batman and Robin story ("Batma A-Go-Go!") in which the Joker looks an awful lot like the Cesar Romero version, complete with moustache.

Bat-Pope Week: "Broken Nose"

Batman: Black & White was a really good idea. This four-issue 1996 miniseries was an anthology series featuring short Batman stories by a bunch of big names, all presented in—as the title says—black and white.

There were familiar Batman creators like Dennis O’Neil, Brian Stelfreeze, Matt Wagner, Chuck Dixon, Klaus Janson, Brian Bolland and Bruce Timm; there were big names not normally associated with Batman, like Walter Simonson, Richard Corben, Bill Sienkiewicz and Neil Gaiman; and there were “Holy fuck, they got this guy to do a Batman story?!” creators like, well, just Katsuhiro Otomo. Covers by Jim Lee, Frank Miller, Barry Windsor-Smith (!) and Alex freaking Toth (!!!).

It was apparently successful enough that DC continued soliciting Batman Black and White stories from creators, which they ran as back-ups in then-third monthly Batman: Gotham Knights.

Running from 2000-2006, Gotham Knights came out of the more structured, post-“No Man’s Land” Batman line. Each of the books took on a particular focus distinct from the others. Batman became the Batman-as-as-superhero book, Detective was the Batman-as-a-detective-and-crimefighter book, and Gotham Knights focused on Batman’s relationship with his “family” members, playing to writer Devin Grayson’s strength with characterization and interpersonal drama.

Gotham Knights was further distinguished by its eye-popping Brian Bolland covers, and the presence of the black and white back-ups, from such creators as Kyle Baker, Warren Ellis and Jim Lee, Dave Gibbons, Chaykin and Jordi Bernet, Grant and Enrique Breccia (which I really should have written about during Scarecrow Week, as Breccia does a mean Scarecrow), Mike Carlin and Dan DeCarlo, Paul Dini and Ronnie Del Carmen and so on. The original series and most of these back-ups can be found in the three volumes of trade collections DC has published.

Since this is Bat-Pope Week, then you know which one I’m going to talk about once I finally get to the point of this post, right? In Gotham Knights #3, Pope’s next Batman story appeared.

It was entitled “Broken Nose” and is about Batman getting his first broken nose.

What kind of foe could actually break the nose of one of the world’s top martial artists (and all-around badasses)?

Well it wasn't necessarily a better fighter; but it was a guy in a robot battle suit.

You don’t have to be that fast, strong or schooled in the fighting arts to break a man’s nose, provided your arm is encased in pounds and pounds of metal, after all.

The story opens with Alfred patching up Batman after round one with the guy in the robot suit, Alfred noting that it is Bruce Wayne’s first broken nose, which, for a vigilante hero is perhaps something like losing one’s virginity.

Batman isn’t amused.


Since it only hurts when he smiles,

Alfred advises Batman not to smile. That shouldn’t be too much trouble for Batman, the ever grim, ever dour hero who doesn’t even find Alfred’s dry wit the least bit amusing.

In fact, there’s only one thing that makes Batman smile, and t hat’s causing physical pain to criminals.

And that’s just what happens during round two, when he brings a can-opener into battle, gets in close enough to tear off the robot suit’s face plate and, ignoring his now vulnerable foe’s panicked surrender, proceeds to break his nose, and suffers the consequences.


Oh Baman, you lovable sadist you!

Bat-Pope Week: "Berlin Batman"

In 1995, DC began publishing quartlery-ish anthology series Batman Chronicles, because four ongoing monthlies (Batman, Detective, Shadow of The Bat and Legends of the Dark Knight) just weren’t cutting it n terms of giving fans all the Batman comics they needed.

Each issue generally contained three stories by various creators—some who were already working on the core Bat-books, some from pretty far afeild—often organized around some kind of theme. For example, #4 had short stories tying in to the “Contagion” crossover story, #7 was a team-up issue, #9 featured characters from that summer’s shitty Batman movie, and so on.

The winter of 1998’s Batman Chronicles #11 was an Elseworlds issue, featuring a story of Bruce Wayne as a 1940’s private eye, a Leatherwing (i.e. Pirate Batman) story, and Paul Pope’s first ever Batman work (And his first superhero work for either Marvel or DC)

It was entitled “Berlin Batman,” and it actually had a lot of thematic similarities to Batman: Year 100, which is probably why DC decided to include it in the back of their trade collection of Batman: Year 100.

The set-up is pretty much classic What If…? or Elseworlds change one detail and see what happens formula: What if Batman were a Jew, and instead of debuting in Gotham City, his career began in Berlin, in the year 1939, the same year Detective Comics #27 was published?

It opens with a bat-shaped caption box: “Berlin, 1939. In the home of wealthy socialite Baruch Wane, who at the moment is entertaining his friend, Kommisar Garten.”

Baruch is “a painter of the cubist school, inspired by the great Pablo Picasso.” He too rarely leaves his home, as far as Garten knows, and his pink house robe and long cigarette holder don’t exactly project the sort of man who might secretly be the scary “criminal Batman…seen lurking around the homes of prominent party members.”

After their expository conversation, Garten leaves for business, letting it slip that his men have confiscated the property of “a certain economist…a Jew from Vienna.”

After a few brief words with the cutest Robin ever,


Barcuh suits up in his red-brown and gray Batman costume and heads for the train yards, remembering his origin as he does so.

Young Baruch's parents were beaten to death by a mob one night, for the sin of being Jewish, and at his grandparents’ house, the young Wane clutches his stuffed toy “Mister Batmouse” and swears to avenge them one day.

At the train yard, he battles against Garten and his men, and when it becomes clear he can’t stop a train, he opts to destroy the tracks with a bomb, the beginning of his campaign against the party.

The story is framed as the memoirs of Robin, written in 1989. It’s short—just 18 pages—but it imagines a very interesting take on Batman, suggesting a much larger story that will never be told, of the Batman’s campaign to defeat Nazi Germany from the inside out.

It’s really the best kind of Elseworlds story; the kind that suggests a bigger, more appealing narrative that you don’t really ever need to read, but enjoy imagining just the same.

Bat-Pope Week: Building a better Batmobile

The original, 1966 Batman movie gets an awful lot of grief, but there’s one thing it does better than the half-dozen live action Batman movies to follow: It’s Batmobile doesn’t completely suck.

Of course, that movie had a giant penguin-shaped submarine and Bat-shark repellent in it too, so it could afford to have a completely ridiculous Batmobile in it and still not have detracted from the tone of the film at all.

That Batmobile was basically just a bitching black convertible with lots of bat-symbols all over it. Batman didn’t have to worry too much about people trying to steal his car or the cops tracing it back to him and discovering his secret identity, because that Batman was basically just a celebrity policeman. That Batmobile parked on a street corner was a little like a fire truck or ambulance parked on a street corner. Who’s going to mess with it?

The later movies all have a moment or three that just hurled me out of the worlds they were creating, and they all had to do with the Batmobile.

In the first Tim Burton movie, the Batmobile didn’t do anything too stupid, other than that weird scene where its has, like, armadillo body armor grow all over it. But in the sequel, it’s got a built-in hydraulic lift to turn around with, and a bunch of gadgets that seem built in to specifically battle an army of gothic circus clowns, should the need to do so ever arise.

By the time Joel Schumacher is moving the Batneedle back to the ‘60s with his soul-destroying fourth Batman, the Batmobile is driving up the sides of buildings thanks to a grappling hook.

I’m not sure where the limit of my suspension of disbelief is, exactly, but I know I’m perfectly willing to believe in a billionaire who dresses as a rubber bat, but not that he also drives a car that drives up the sides of buildings.

When Christopher Nolan re-booted the franchise with Batman Begins, the take was decidedly grimmer and more realistic, and the new Batmobile seemed to reflect that. It actually looked like a vehicle that could conceivably be used in a war zone, and I recall one film critic referring to its jagged design as a deconstruction of the Batmobile, a cubist nightmare coach. That’s cool. Or at least it was cool until Christian Bale had it driving over rooftops. What the hell, Nolan?

The Batmobile scene didn’t ruin The Dark Knight, or even hurt it as much as I think the Batmobile scene in Batman Begins hurt it, but it sure wasn’t a highpoint, either. Batman zipping around on the so-called “Bat-pod,” a video game adaptation ready motorcycle with comically large tires was probably the low-point of the film, but then, all of the least enjoyable parts were the ones with Batman in them.

The late, great comics blog Dave’s Long Box had one of the best pieces of writing about the Batmobile I’ve ever read, in which Dave Campbell details the ways in which it would actually be a pain in the ass for Batman:


As anyone who lives in or near a big North American city knows, urban driving can be a maddening experience. Heavy traffic, one-way streets, swerving buses, crazy-ass taxi drivers, potholes, inadequate signage, kamikaze bike messengers, oblivious pedestrians – don’t even get me going about parking. The shit is hard enough to deal with in a normal city in a normal car. Now just imagine trying to navigate Gotham City’s rat nest of streets and alleys in an extra-wide custom hot rod with a wonky torque converter and limited visibility.


Seriously, if you haven’t read that post yet, go read it. I’ll wait.

Campbell points out some of the better ways Batman has to get into town, like the subway rocket he used back when Chuck Dixon was writing three out of every five comics set in Gotham City. “Bat-train” might not roll off the tongue like “Batmobile,” but I thought it made a certain amount of sense; it kept the underground, cave motif Batman has going, and trains are old enough to fit into the gothic/ghost story/urban legend vibe of the modern Batman.

There’s also the Whirly-bat, which might look a little silly, but hell, at least he can park it on a rooftop before getting to work.

The easiest thing for Batman to do, however, would probably be to just get a couple of JLA transporter tubes to stash around town. Have one in the Batcave, one in his penthouse at Wayne Tower, and two or three around town, and he can simply zap his molecules around the city instantaneously.

Like costuming, transportation is something that Paul Pope apparently gave a lot of thought to when building the future Gotham of Batman: Year 100.

Pope’s Batman doesn’t have any kind of working relationship with the police in his world, and is more of an outlaw/vigilante type figure. In fact, the major conflict of the story is Batman vs. The Police State Who Want To Unmask Him. So his mode of transportation needs to be somewhat inconspicuous, and, because this is a Paul Pope coming, it needs to be something that makes sense (A New Yorker, Pope would know firsthand how difficult getting around a major North American city is in any kind of car, let alone in an illegal race car with a jet engine and monster truck wheels).

So his Batmobile is simply a very, very cool motorcycle, one that can be easily hidden, can be customized with a voice activated remote control and other Batman-style technological enhancements, and which can be disguised as a monster bat.

Here’s a scene of Robin building the Batmobile. The Robin in Batman: Year 100 isn’t so much a teenage sidekick or son to Batman’s father figure so much as his friend. He never wears a red costume and cape, but tinkers on Batman’s bikes and, later, dresses up in a bat-suit to fool the police into thinking Batman’s in two places at once.

Note the completely inappropriate quotation of a Marvel comic book,



and the last-minute touch of slapping on a bat-symbol sticker.

What I like most about a motorcycle for a Batmobile isn’t the practicality of the vehicle (Batman could zip through traffic easily, if he had to ditch a bike it wouldn’t be as bad as having to ditch a super-stealth rocket limo, he could hide them in dumpsters and the backs of vans or rented out ground floor warehouses or whatever, and so on), but the way Pope has Batman and Robin package them.

Here’s the Batmobile once it’s built, all folded it up and wrapped in a tarp, so that it looks like a gigantic bat:


When Batman needs his ride, it can be found hanging upside down in a sewer tunnel. If you saw this huge shape in an underground tunnel, would you dare approach it?:


A voice command from Batman gets the Batmobile to release it’s grip on the pipe, and then it can be hastily assembled into a motorcycle which Batman can ride around making bad jokes to himself about:



Here it is in all its glory; note the only slightly abstracted bat “face” on it:


And here’s another image of Batman on his bike:

Now that is a Batmobile I can believe in.

Dream Trades: The Rest of Paul Pope's DC Work

DC’s got hundreds of pages of Paul Pope comics in print at the moment, between Batman: Year 100, Heavy Liquid and 100%. And while that sure is a lot of Paul Pope comics to devote trades to, they also have plenty of shorter Pope stories floating around here and there, probably enough to get together in one place and publish as a standalone trade, along the lines of trades they’ve done for Alan Moore, Darwyn Cooke and Tim Sale.

I’m not sure what you’d call such a theoretical collection of Pope material, but then these creator-specific collections DC has done lately have all had pretty terrible names.

You certainly wouldn’t be hurting for material, however, as Pope has a ton of short works he’s done for various DC publications and, considering how many pin-ups and covers he’s done, I wonder if DC could conceivably publish a Paul Pope trade in a larger, album-sized format, and push it as an art book instead of a just-another-mess-of-Batman-comics type of trade?

The first decision Mr. (or Ms.) Person In Charge of Deciding What DC Should Collect Into Trade would have to make would be whether or not to include the DCU and the Vertigo material, what with the recent erection of an impermeable wall between the imprints that characters can’t cross (Although the Alan Moore trades, Across The Universe and then DC Universe, including Swamp Thing among the DCU characters).

Pope’s had short pieces in several Vertigo books, mostly anthologies and jam issues: 100 Bullets #26, The Dreaming #55, Swamp Thing #9 (the Brian K. Vaughan series), Weird War Tales, Weird Western Tales, and Vertigo: Winter’s Edge #1-#2.

In the DCU proper, the character he seems to have done the most work on is Batman (hence Bat-Pope Week). He wrote and drew “The Berlin Batman” story for Batman Chronicles #11 a Batman Black and White story entitled “Broken Nose” about Batman fighting a man in a robot suit. He also illustrated the fifth and final issue of the Greg Rucka/Ed Brubaker/Chuck Dixon miniseries Batman: Turning Points, and his issue of Solo, the greatest comic book series DC ever cancelled, included a Batman and Robin story entitled “Teenage Sidekick.” (We’ll examine all of these Batman sories in greater detail later in the week).

That issue of Solo obviously includes a lot of Paul Pope material. If DC would want this theoretical trade to stick to Pope stories featuring their heroes, then Solo offers the excellent “Are You Ready For The World That’s Coming?”, a lovingly crafted “cover version” of Jack Kirby’s OMAC, in which pope re-draws Kirby’s original story.

It looks like this:

And this:


The rest of Solo #3 is comprised of non-DCU short stories: “The Problem In Knossos” is a kinda sorta Theseus and the Minotaur retelling, “On This Corner” is a story about a New York City stret corner, and “Life-Sized Monster Ghost” is a neat little story about one of those products you used to see advertised in old comics.

Pope illustrated a Bizarro vs. Superman short story for 2000 hardcover anthology Bizarro Comics, a short story written by Jeff Smith, a name that sure seems to help sell graphic novels these days. In this story, Superman is in space saving people when he comes across a potentially dangerous Bizarro, and is able to talk Bizarro out of causing trouble by using some cleverly applied backwards talking (Bizarro can dish it, but he can’t take it).

It’s a great little story, and Smith and Pope make nice use of the zero gravity setting to set much of the action upside down. But then, just about everything in that comic is a great little story, except for the framing sequence by Chris Duffy and Stephen DeStefano, which is a great big story.

What else is there?

Pope’s Wonder Woman pin-up from 1997’s JLA Gallery #1


his covers for Catwoman, back when it was still a cool crime-oriented book





and that weird little fashion advertisement insert section he did back in 2000, which featured members of Young Justice and Gen 13 in back-to-school fashions (Sorry, no scans; it's somewhere in my longboxes, but I know not where).

Am I missing anything?

Anyway, I’d sure by an oversized, art album-style trade featuring all these stories and images, and I already have them all somewhere in my long boxes.

Bat-Pope Week: Creating the Caped Crusader's costume

Earlier this summer, Paul Pope visited Columbus to talk about his work at The Wexner Center for the Arts as part of the Jeff Smith: Bone and Beyond event. During the question and answer portion, someone mentioned how much they enjoyed the detailed world-building Smith put into Thb, and he talked about how that was one of his favorite things about working on a series like that—if he wanted to spend 20 pages talking about roofing materials for theoretical villages built on Mars in the future, he had the freedom to do that.

He’s always been more interested in the make-up of fictional worlds as much as the events that transpire in them, he said. When he’s watching a Sherlock Holmes movie, he finds himself more interested in what Holmes might keep in his desk than who murdered who and why.

That sort of detail orientation might strike some as a weakness in a storyteller, but it’s a great advantage to someone who both writes and draws his own comics like Pope, particularly when they so often occur in fantastic settings so far removed from our own (the Martian future of Thb, the futuristic settings of 100% and Heavy Liquid, the Gotham City of Batman: Year 100).

As I had mentioned at the time, hearing how much thought Pope had put into Batman: Year 100 made me want to revisit it, and when I did so I borrowed a trade collection of it from my local library, rather than digging out my single issues.

The trade comes with a great deal of backmatter, including Pope’s first Batman story, another out-of-continuity affair called “The Berlin Batman” from an old issue of The Batman Chronicles (more on that Batman later in the week). Among all that backmatter were plenty of sketches from Pope, and an essay on the creative process behind the book.

I think this sketch, intended for one-time Batman editor Bob Schreck, perfectly encapsulates what exactly it is that makes Pope a great cartoonist instead of simply a really, really good one (and head and shoulders above so many of the artists who draw Batman):

Not the drawing itself, of course—that’s just a goofy little sketch—but the questions. Beyond asking about Batman’s build, something it’s difficult to imagine Ed Benes or Tony Daniel doing before turning in their pages, he asks some incredibly specific questions about materials.

Because Pope understands that clothing gathers around joints and muscles when they move, and that leather and vinyl have different textures, and that while “soft leather” and “hard/molded plastic” might be similar, they are still different enough to matter a little when they’re being drawn.

How many artists even care about such things, let alone would have any intention of drawing the costume well enough that a reader would be able to tell how the costume would feel or what it might be made out of?

I’m not sure what story the above image/message to Schreck is about, exactly; whether it was for Batman: Year 100 (which seems like a good bet, given its inclusion here) or one of Pope’s other stories, as it’s not labeled. (Because he asks so many questions, it seems as if it might be for a more in-continuity story than B:Y100).

At any rate, it serves as the title page to Pope’s commentary, which is a pretty great read:


This guy would need a good, sturdy pair of boots. He’d need some serious footwear for all the trouble he’d be seeing. I imagine he’d prefer military combat boots, like the kind Airborne Rangers wear when they go leaping out of airplanes and helicopters; something steel-toed, lightweight, offering durability and support…It’s long been a pet peeve of mine when you come across comic book artists who insist on drawing generic, featureless boot-like shapes beneath the ankles of their superheroes, as if boots were just vague, foot-shaped stumps molded out of colorful plastic blobs.


Similar thought went into the rest of Batman’s costume.




In addition to noting where all the seams are and so forth, these offer good examples of just how much thought Pope puts into drawing Batman, with the discussion of the way the mask is built, something which has little to do with the actual story (There are no scenes of Batman making a mask from scratch, for example).


Pope also takes the time to fill every pouch of Batman’s utility belt, which I thought was very, very cool.

It doesn’t really bug me so much now that Batman can and will pull out pretty much anything he needs from it these days (usually something that explodes or one of several different bat-shaped projectiles), but it used to bug the hell out of me when I was a little kid and Adam West would just so happen to have whatever he needed in his belt (That was the joke, of course, but I was way too young to realize that the Batman TV show was a comedy; I took it very seriously at the time).

Here’s Pope talking about the utility belt:


His utility belt suggests an interesting challenge to a writer and a designer. You don’t want to just use the belt as a lazy story device, a cheap dues ex machina which gets him out of tight spots…

I tried to select the belt contents based on what Batman himself would likely think he’d need before setting out for battle. How much weight would he want to carry around on him? How and where would he organize the utilities in order to best…utilize them? How would he keep all the little metal things from rattling around and making nose when he needs perfect stealth?

…I didn’t want Batman to have a thousand little super-spy gadgets that did all the work for him. Regardless of what’s in his utility belt, Batman has to be believable, relying on muscle, brains and will power more than anything else.


Here’s what Pope stocked Batman up with for Batman: Year 100:

There’s some of the familiar stuff (smoke bombs, flares, rope, tracers), ome handy things to have around that you rarely if ever see Batman pull out of his belt (knife, matches, money and credit cards), a few sci-fi things (vertigo inducer, EMP generator) and some things only Pope seems to have thought of, like the fake vampire teeth and a protein bar.

“This is a very physical superhero we’re talking about; he’s bound to get hungry,” Pope writes. “It’s another pet peeve of mine how little the question of hunger or the need to eat is addressed in comics.”

That’s a good point. Usually the only time food comes up in a Batman story is when Alfred brings it to him, and Batman’s all “Not now Alfred, first I’ve got to solve this case,” and it’s used to insinuate how inhuman Batman is—he’s so intent on eradicating crime that all he needs is a cup of coffee a day to live on.

Carrying his own food with him is actually probably a must for Batman, since it’s hard to imagine him going up to a hotdog stand in costume the way Spider-Man often does. He couldn’t even slip out of costume and stop at a restaurant or anything, as his secret identity is a rather famous person, and it wouldn’t do for a convenient store clerk to note that billionaire playboy Bruce Wayne stopped by for a bag of chips and a hot dog at 3:30 a.m., shortly after that shooting two blocks over where the Batman was sighted.

So Paul Pope? Pretty much a genius.


This section of the Year 100 trade, by the way, is what made me realize how much better Final Crisis would be if Pope were illustrating it rather than J.G. Jones. Not only does he share with Morrison a love of Kirby creations and making sense of superhero silliness, but his process seems to be the same.

Whereas Morrison will channel characters, or talk to people dressed as Superman about what their Superman-like thoughts are, Pope was here putting himself in Batman’s place and imagining what Batman would do for lunch or wear on his feet.

It also made me dislike the costume in The Dark Knight a little more than I did before just rereading this. One of (several) moments that Dark Knight pulled me right out of it’s more-realistic Gotham was the first time Batman appears and disappears soundlessly from Gordon’s presence, despite wearing some 60 pounds of plastic and rubber that looks heavy and noisy at rest.

I wonder if some costume folks with a Hollywood budget would be able to take these designs, tinker with the boot laces, gloves and shorts to make them more like the traditional costume, and come up with a costume for the next Batman movie that doesn’t look really stupid?