A week later…

Fuck, but I am hopeless with this blog, aren’t I?

Hello yet again. I think / don’t know that I’m back for more frequent writing this time, having decided that I do have topics of which I’d like to speak about…in, um, later entries. Alas, this entry will only be a brief rundown of some things I’ll be chatting about in the near future, which seems rather pointless now that I think about it, but it’ll give me something to do. Think of it as me giving myself a push to actually write more entries for this damn thing. But don’t consider it any serious attempt at practice because I’m going to be a terrible person and use bullet points, listing stuff I intend to talk about it soon and any other nonsense that pops in my head. So let’s begin, shall we?

• For starters, the Artist’s Edition of Mike Mignola’s Hellboy in Hell (and other stories too!) that I mentioned having bought in my last post arrived this morning. And holy fuck but is it gargantuan! Of course, I knew it would be a massive book, reprinting Mignola’s artwork before it was sent off to be coloured and whatnot, but having not bothered to check the actual dimensions, I was taken aback when I dug it out its box (the signed copy I bought, that came with several comics and goodies as well as a limited shot glass is now sold out it seems, but it was a brilliant service, providing tracking service the entire time and arriving perfectly intact). Disappointingly, unlike other Artist’s Editions, captions are completely missing in all but the extra stories; but it’s an amazing book otherwise – and this does clear the artwork to be enjoyed completely, you could argue – and I’m certainly pining for others in the future now. A review with pictures is very likely indeed, although I’d also like to write a bit about Mignola as an artist, the book itself demonstrating how minimalistic his artwork has become compared to the past, which I find quite wonderful.
• Image comics are fucking great! The first comic I bought of theirs was The Wicked + The Divine, a fantastic new series in which the reader finds Gods taking the form of pop icons, which is marvellous; and this being written independently (it’s a fully creator-owned comic) instantly piqued my interest for what else they had going on (I’d of course already read Saga), and I’m keeping up with other recently started series’, such as Warren Ellis’ Trees and Robert Kirkman’s Outcast (I’m surprised I’ve enjoyed the first two issues of the latter – believe me, one day I shall rant about how crap The Walking Dead is and it will be merciless). My favourite, however, is East of West, which I somehow got hold of all issues of through eBay, all first prints and at a very good price. But, yes, these are now essential comics beside my weekly dose of thrillpower through 2000AD. Fantastic.
• One thing I forgot to mention in my last post when talking about expanding my interests simply beyond comics themselves is that I got hold of two very lovely prints from Forbidden Planet, which I’ve yet to have framed but already treasure. These are giclee prints celebrating Batman’s 75th Anniversary this year and are that moment in The Killing Joke when the Joker is born (you know the one) and Jock’s first cover for Detective Comics, which is a beautiful, stylish thing indeed. Both of these were limited to 200 copies and come numbered and signed by both artists (the former Brian Bolland, which I was particularly pleased with). Nice, eh?
• For the past while now I’ve been reading J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter series from the start, having finally caught up to The Half-Blood Prince, which is where I finished years ago, having had the last book spoiled. It’s not, however, been the enjoyable experience I expected it to be. As a kid I loved all these books, of course, but reading them now I’m struck but how amateurish Rowling’s writing is. At first I was okay with the very safely played writing, these after all being children’s books, at least at the start. But after the first three forgivable books I for some reason expected the quality of the writing to reach new heights with The Goblet of Fire, which I remember quite fondly as taking the series in a darker direction. But surprisingly it’s been my least favourite of them all. Yes, I enjoyed The Order of the Phoenix – the one book in the series I didn’t enjoy as a kid – more than it, which was a shock to say the least. It’s my new second favourite of the lot so far, The Half-Blood Prince still remaining the firm best as I make my way through it, but we’ll see how much I enjoy the last in the series. Hopefully a great deal, otherwise this will have felt like a waste of time. Either way, the topic of how poor a writer I’ve found Rowling, contradicting my enjoyment of her books as a child, will be a topic for the future.
• What about that fuckin’ Deadwood, you cocksucker? Oh, yes, thanks to Amazon Instant Video, I’ve had the great pleasure of enjoying this show all over again and now at the halfway point of the final season (boo!), may watch it all over again and write about the show as I do so. Up there with The Sopranos, The Wire, Breaking Bad, Fawlty Towers, Firefly, Buffy the Vampire Slayer and hopefully a few more should Game of Thrones and Sons of Anarchy remain consistent to the end, Deadwood remains a show very close to my heart, one of my favourites of all time. Talking about it episode by episode would be great fun, I think.

Anyways, that’s all I got. A shockingly brief entry in this blog at under 1000 words, I know, but ah well. See you next time, I hope.

The End Is Never The End: A Conclusive Post On Grant Morrison’s Batman Run

When I started this run I didn’t expect to enjoy it from the first book all the way to the last. In some of earliest posts I consistently spoke of my plans to take breaks at this point or that so I didn’t get so used to reading books by the one author that I’d get bored of him. In hindsight, I maybe should have taken these breaks, only because that when I look back now, I feel like readers can see where I was burnt out on writing up posts for each or several issues. There’s certainly quite a few posts that I’m proud of – in fact,  I’m very surprised to find that I was on the ball so very often – but I do wish I took more time to write a few instead of blasting my way through them, mentally exhausted or not. Yet I never did tire of Grant Morrison’s writing.

Of course, what probably helped it from going stale at some subconscious level was the variety of artistic talent on display. Yes, so many artists being swapped for one another caused a few bumps along the road, but the only issue that looked completely terrible, inexcusably so, in my eyes was Ryan Benjamin’s at the end of The Black Glove. The only other stuff that came remotely close to being bad – though not, I should say, anywhere near as bad as whatever the fuck Ryan Benjamin was doing – was Philip Tan’s three issues in Batman and Robin, which was far too dark in my opinion, and Tony S. Daniel’s inconsistency before the amazing job he did in Time and Batman. Otherwise, I honestly believe that everyone else was doing somewhere between a good to outstanding job.

You could level some criticism at the artists who fell into the former category for “playing it safe”, I suppose, but what you have to keep in mind, I think, is that all of these people, good or amazing, had deadlines to meet and what I can only imagine are some demanding scripts to match, so I think it’s no small feat that you can look at the run as a whole and I either like what you see quite happily, or be completely blown away by it. Though J.H. Williams III, Frazer Irving, Frank Quietly and Andy Kubert were some of those who blew my mind, I think it’s Chris Burnham paired with Nathan Fairburn, the colourist, that made my jaw drop the most. It’s no wonder those guys are creating all new pages for the Absolute edition of Batman Incorporated because it’s a fucking miracle that they managed to keep up and draw every one of their issues together so damn well. But hell, let’s not play the favouritism game – at the end of the day, every one of these books has good art in it, and that is bloody amazing.

Still, whether the different artists can keep things looking fresh or not, you’d think that I’d get bored reading the words of man sooner or later. But I truthfully did not. The only other Batman books I have, most of which are my father’s, can be read alone, technically possible here but probably not a good idea. This is the only time I’ve read a particularly lengthy run by an author on a character who’s shared with others. In all the time I collected 2000AD there was never a point where one writer exclusively worked on Judge Dredd, you know? Yet Grant Morrison spent seven years writing this epic tale, longer if you take Seven Soldiers and 52 into consideration, so you might also think that, even if I never grew tired at all, he would, the brightness that it starts on fizzling out.

This is, in fact, a point of debate when it comes to the ending. Shortly after I wrote my post on that final issue, I decided to do some looking around for what other people’s thoughts were on the ending of the run and it didn’t surprise me to find that a lot of folk see the finale as too negative in contrast to how it all began. Personally I don’t see how else it could have ended but on its bittersweet note, and I think that the darker contrast itself is actually part of what makes the ending so powerful. Like the last line of my post on issue twelve suggested, I think that the hard thing is actually letting go after all this time and looking to the future. Maybe Morrison didn’t make that point clear enough, ending Gordon’s monologue as he does with the cynical sounding, “It never ends. It probably never will.” How he should have actually ended it, in my opinion, is with some other lines before this that I think mark off the greatest theme in this run. There’s been a lot of those, some subtle, like class warfare, simply adding depth to the world; and then there have been those like family, there from the start but having developed over time.

But there is one concept of the Batman mythos, indeed its very fiction, that has reigned supreme over all: the hole in things.

It wasn’t until the end of Batman R.I.P. that Doctor Hurt spoke that immortal line about himself, but the hole has actually been there from the very start of the run, a single gunshot leaving a hole in the middle of the Joker’s forehead. Even if we didn’t see that at the time Hurt made his speech by looking back, Morrison expanded the theme in a way that was obvious. First there was a hole in Bruce’s memory concerning the Thogal ritual and whatever Hurt had done to him. Shortly thereafter there were the holes Darkseid created in his manipulation of time. And eventually, when we found ourselves reading Batman Incorporated, the holes where everywhere we looked, staring back at us. It was Talia’s dark “Gorgon eye”; it was the absence of parental guidance that she and Bruce shared; it was the bloody wound left in Damian’s chest after being driven through by a sword; it was the rupture this left between the boy’s already feuding parents; it was the clean mark left in Talia’s head where Kathy’s bullet sped through; it was their empty graves that Bruce found himself looking into after being released by GCPD; and, of course, it was the unseeable centre of Oroboros. Only…

We could see it the whole time. It’s the most obvious one of all, really: the hole left in Bruce’s heart on the night his parents were killed. “Two shots killed my father”, he tells Gordon. “The third bullet left a smoking hole in my mother’s new fur coat. It left a hole in me. A hole in everything.” Indeed, it’s this very hole that Bruce has spent his entire life trying to fill. But he can’t and won’t, not only because it wouldn’t be fitting as a character, but because the moment he does so, there’s no more to tell – it would be at that point that Doctor Hurt would finally get his wish of seeing Batman retire, and we as readers would never have another Batman story to read ever again. It’s not what I would call a limitation of the character but an actual necessity instead. By killing Talia, Kathy Kane emphasises one of these herself: “Batman doesn’t kill”. It’s one of the things that defines him, seen here alongside the emptiness the death of his parents left in his soul: “The pain was so terrible”, he tells Gordon, “I decided I could never love anyone ever again”. That won’t be a thing that ever happens either.

Which is why, getting back to point, I feel like Morrison may have ended the run sourly with Gordon’s last piece of dialogue, that comes across as being quite bleak right enough, when he perhaps should have done so with a follow up to this idea of a hole being left in Bruce. Continuing off-panel but being read back to use, Bruce told Gordon, “I looked into that hole in things over and over again until it hurt, Jim…and you know what I found in there? Nothing…A space big enough to hold everything.”

How beautiful is that? Not only is it an astonishing thing to say about the character himself, but it also represents why we love him so damn much too. As I’ve said in the past, I don’t really embrace other super heroes in the way I do Batman. Though they might be symbols of something else, the thing that makes Batman so unique is that we can empathise with him somewhat. No, I don’t mean we all have parents who were shot dead in front of us or anything like that. But I do believe that many of us, perhaps most of us for all I know, are trying to do good by ourselves – to realise that we have our own holes in our lives, our own things that make us vulnerable in some way or make us unhappy, and spend our lives fighting against them.

Which is why I think Morrison’s right – this from the afterword – that, “long after all of us have come and gone, there will be Batman” because the fact of the matter is that he, and numerous other invented characters, will still be significant then, and they always will be. Life goes on, with or without us, and as long as we all live, the possibilities of the imagination are endless; forever. A snake eating its own tail.

 

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 3, Chapter 6, The End: The Dark Knight and the Devil’s Daughter (Batman Incorporated #12)

And so we come to the end of the tracks. It’s been a long ride but here we are at the final issue – and fuck knows what number it is overall – in the twelfth book in a row that I’ve read from the one author.

Starting this post isn’t as tricky when compared to that in which Damian was killed because, well, let me get one thing out of the way: for all the praise that I’m about to heap onto this ending, it’s not the perfect finale that I had pictured in my head, surprisingly small in scope for Morrison. The ending I had conjured up was grand in scale but this most certainly isn’t. It’s actually quite sad too, though that doesn’t completely surprise me. In one of my more recent posts for this particular series I did note that the humour had piped down considerably, and it shows here when the last gag didn’t even make me smile, but just feel tremendously sorry for Bruce. As a matter of fact, I was curious to see what Morrison thought of this ending himself and found this particular quote, which I agree with to a certain extent: “I really think a lot of people will hate it, because it’s super bleak.” Well, I didn’t hate it or think it was that bleak, but I definitely left feeling that it ended on a bittersweet note, which is how I would describe it.

This finale is technically told to us from the perspective of Commissioner Gordon, who is interrogating Bruce Wayne after his arrest, that which we’d already seen at the start of Volume 2. It proves to be a captivating narration this way, we skipping back and forth between the interview and the showdown between Talia and Bruce, but more interesting than the similarly structured issue that followed Damian’s death because Morrison steps into the shoes of Gordon to explain his actions in this run and why he’s ending it the way he is. And to be fair, when I think about it really hard, I’m not sure how else such an epic story could have ended but by acknowledging the fact that Batman is Oroboros, the serpent eating its own tail forever. In an earlier post, somewhere but god knows which one exactly, I actually left a link to Morrison answering an audience member’s question about the ages of his characters in this run, to which he replied that it didn’t matter, going on to talk about realism in comics and why it was a load of bullshit. But he also pointed out that Batman would be around long after he was dead. Yes, much like that post of mine that followed  Batman R.I.P., what Morrison suggests is that another writer will come along after him (in fact, he references Scott Synder’s currently ongoing Zero Year storyline, which is a new origin story of Batman), and after that person another, and another after whoever they may be, and it will continue that way forever.

Which is why that, though Talia and Bruce’s fight ends abruptly with a gunshot killing the former character, in the end we find that both Damian and Talia’s coffins have been cleanly stolen from their graves, and it’s why in the story’s epilogue we find Ra’s preparing a new army made up of Damian’s remaining clones. The story of Batman will never end. Sure, Morrison’s run has, these two cliffhangers and the deus ex machina of Kathy Kane entering to murder Talia then disappearing just as fast forever remaining unresolved, but it doesn’t matter – there’s other stories to tell, and they will be told. That’s why it’s a bittersweet ending, I think. On the one hand, it concludes in the only possible way, Morrison saying these words through Gordon’s ending monologue: “All I need to know is this: Batman always comes back, bigger and better, shiny and new. Batman never dies. It never ends. It probably never will.” That’s nice in a way, knowing there’s so much other creativity out there to be discovered.

But, on the other hand, looking back at all these posts I’ve written for all of these books, made up of so many issues, some of which I read additional material for because they were so layered, it’s sad to think that the story ends here. Quite like Bruce describes the impact that watching his parents being killed before his eyes left on him – it left a hole, of course – it’s hard, I think, to let go.

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 3, Chapter 5: Fatherless (Batman Incorporated #11)

An extremely short post before we reach the last issue of the run. Really, there’s not a lot you can say about this one seeing as the bulk of it is made up of Batman’s fight with Damian’s clone, the “fatherless” of the title, who is referred to on the book’s jacket as “the heretic” as well. It’s an exciting fight, not only for being action packed, but because Bruce is fucking furious with this guy for killing his son – just look at all the guy’s expressions that Burnham draws. Crazy.

It ends quite abruptly, however, with a reveal that I hadn’t paid any thought to: what this guy looks like under his mask. Quite strange that it never occurred to me, seeing as I acknowledged quite early on that he was probably an accelerated-aged Damian. Still, even if I had considered it carefully, what would probably have never crossed my mind is the the idea that he actually has a baby face for a grown man’s body, particularly hideous in this scene because when Beryl – who wants to kill him for what he did to Cyril – used her sling shot on him a while ago, she actually took out one of his eyes. Seriously, Bruce lets the man-baby go free when he finally looks upon him face to face, actually going, “Urr. God. No.” in disgust, and no bloody wonder.

Still, the killer of what I think was probably a lot of people’s favourite character by that point doesn’t get off scot-free, which is somewhat of a…comfort. I don’t know – once I saw his face, I was as revolted as Bruce, so when Talia decapitates him for failing her at the end of the chapter I didn’t exactly give off a massive cheer or anything. It came as a surprise to see Talia casually murder him, though it’s actually fairly obvious in hindsight. One of the things I hadn’t mentioned about previous posts was that, since the guy killed Damian, she’s been pretty pissed off, not letting him call her “mother” anymore, and having the people who made the fight against Damian unfair killed via apparent skull crashing. Lovely.

Incidentally, seeing as I have nothing else to say about this penultimate chapter of our run, I suppose I should also mention another thing I forgot to bring up in my last few posts. Somehow Talia has time to go see her father in his little prison shortly after Damian’s killed and there we find Ra’s playing chess, and paying his daughter, um, compliments: “Bravo. You have become a monster at last. […] I salute you.” Yet he also implies that she’s forgetting “one vital detail”, which I now believe is Kathy Kane’s involvement in all of this. As is revealed near the end of this, apparently to prepare us for the last, Spyral is some kind of “international intelligence community” who has been closely monitoring Bruce, and supposedly Talia, ever since the former created Batman Incorporated. What has this to do with Ra’s’ scene?

Well, the thing I noticed in his scene, that I meant to mention, was that he’s using red and black chess pieces, a familiar pairing of colours in this run, black representing chaos, and red the power of good. The really important thing about this game he’s playing is that he uses a black horse to take the red’s queen. When you get to the end of this issue then, take careful note of how Talia refers to herself after killing Damian’s brother: “I’m the wire mommy. The red queen.” Then look back at Spyral’s latest, possibly last, scene: their logo is red and black too. Though it’s inconsistent with what these colours have typically represented, as Kathy Kane wouldn’t appear to be a villain, it does look like pretty heavy foreshadowing that Talia will indeed be filling that second grave of Bruce’s vision, and that the one killing her will be Kathy.

That we’ll find out in the next post. It’ll probably be quite a long one as I want to cover every little thing that I can so that my follow up post, to end my write-ups of the run, will be focused on it all as a whole, not tying up loose ends that I may have missed in the last ever issue. See you then.

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 3, Chapters 3 & 4: Fallen Son and Gotham’s Most Wanted (Batman Incorporated #9 & 10)

It’s all coming to a head now.

Following last issue’s gutting moment, the next two chapters are a pretty standard affair, though very clever. The first starts with Damian’s funeral, but we intersect between it and scenes of Bruce and co. fighting off his killer until they’re forced out of Wayne Tower, at which point everything seems to come to a sudden halt, continuing onwards at this steady pace all the way until the fourth chapter’s ending. Indeed, it’s quite like a kettle boiling, quiet at first but building itself to a roar. It’s not just Bruce and those closest to him that are completely stunned, however – we see the Squire mourning Cyril’s death; Gordon hiding his Batman Incorporated badge as the Mayor of Gotham announces that Batman is no longer welcome in the city; and other characters, Tim and Dick specifically, begin to plot their revenge for Damian’s death. It’s the same all over the world apparently, at least where Batman Inc. is centralised – we see that El Gaucho, Man-of-Bats and Raven Red, Jiro (the Batman of Japan) and the Batman of Paris (forget his name, I’m afraid) are contending with their own problems too, also seemingly stuck in the stalemate of this war.

Things are certainly not looking good, possibly moreso in the second of these issues where we not only see Bruce witnessing the Gotham Police Department destroying the Bat-signal, Gordon watching on sadly, but that he’s being held responsible for the mess that the city’s in – how it’s being held hostage by Leviathan – because he funded Batman Incorporated. At the end of the day, though, Bruce is not going to sit by and watch his city eat itself alive, and he’s certainly not going to give in to the demand Talia sends his way. But get this: his plan involves Doctor Langstrom, yet another throwback to the beginning of this run. If you can’t remember, he’s the man whose wife Talia kidnapped in Batman and Son to force him into giving her his man-bat serum, which she’s of course been using ever since. So I did some chin stroking when I saw that Batman had paid the Doctor a visit, considering that he may have not only just taken the antidote to the formula off the doctor but done something else too… Cut to Bruce in his Batcave, slumped in his chair in a pose we’re all too familiar with at this point, the one that mimics that in Year One as he becomes Batman, the difference this time being that it’s literal as he injects himself with the man-bat serum, arriving with a legion of bats from his cave in a terrifying fashion in time to meet Talia’s demands. If I were Damian’s adult clone, I would be worried now.

The build up to that exciting reveal aside, there’s other interesting developments taking place. In the first book collecting this series there was a meta-bomb, apparently kept in the possession of Otto Netz, brought up, only to disappear. It reappeared at this late stage in the run a while ago and what the mysterious box apparently does is activate the Oroboro weapon that Netz referenced, one that will quite literally create a ring of death around the world, simultaneously nuking whole countries around the globe if activated. As a possible counter to this, however, there is the similarly secretive crystal that Bruce has in his possession at Wayne Tech. So it seems like one object is Talia’s last resort, and the other Bruce’s ace in the hole, so I guess we’ll see these playing a role as of the next or last issue.

Meanwhile, the other thing I expect that will play a big role in our finale is Kathy Kane’s angle. So, here’s an interesting thing. A few issues ago I said that The Hood brought Jason Todd to Talia, continuing his triple agent business, or whatever the hell he is. But, actually, it’s the “Headmistress”, leader of Spyral, that he brings him to. Though it appears that she could have villainous intentions in the first of these issues, as the new Knight – the Squire having taken Cyril’s place – and Dark Ranger come to rescue Todd, the latter character actually refuses their help, recognising who can only be Kathy and the gravity of “what’s actually going on here!” Hm. To be perfectly honest, I’m not sure what to expect here. All I can muster up is that Talia could be the second grave that Bruce is supposed to be and maybe Kathy’s the one responsible for her death, but it seems like she has a bigger trick up her sleeve when Jason says something as dramatic as that. Oh, well. Not long to wait at least.

The last point of interest is a very small detail that some readers may have skipped past in the scene between the Prime Minister of Britain and his assistant. The former is scrambling for some way to revive the Knight when he says, “I realise there are no active Lazarus Pits left”. This should be true because back in Batman and Robin – in the third story arc, I believe – we found it being used to bring back the clone of Bruce and Batwoman when she died, but the mine this was hidden in caved in even as the characters were there, effectively rendering it useless. Yet the assistant tells the P.M., “That may not be strictly true”. Now, I don’t expect that this will be some major part of the finale in the way of the meta-bomb and Kathy Kane, but I do suspect that this may be the kind of thing Morrison ends our run with a reminder of, perhaps with the suggestion for a future writer to come along and bring Damian back from the dead. Curious stuff, eh?

Thankfully, with two issues to go, we’ll get every answer we could want very soon. My entries for both of these should follow this one sometime today, and I may even begin my last post on the run or a draft of my “contents page”, as it were. Until then.

 

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 3, Chapter 2: The Boy Wonder Returns (Batman Incorporated #8)

Wow.

Yeah, that seems like a good way to start this post.  In fact, it’s the only thing I could think of, giving me an easy excuse to then make it the first subject of this entry in the blog. This issue was one of those chapters in a story of great length that renders you speechless. It’s one of those moments that leave you in the suddenly difficult position of trying to start talking about it, no easy task. To be honest, I can’t even think of the last time I’ve had trouble writing or talking about something major in a work of fiction; something which has affected me on an emotional level, I mean. (Oh, yeah, if you couldn’t tell: Damian dies.) The reason I think this is is that I’m a pretty creative person myself – not only a big reader or admirer of art, but someone who does a lot of writing and drawing in their own time too. Reading the foreshadowing in a character’s line of dialogue; seeing why an artist colours this like that; understanding what the imagery of this shot in a film or comic could mean; knowing when an author’s using certain writing techniques and for what purpose; et cetera are just a few examples of the kind of things I constantly keep an eye out for, and I’m quite proud when I call it right, which I believe I often do. The downside is that the impact of certain scenes are quite often softened.

When I was reading through George Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series, for instance, I inevitably came to the very popular Red Wedding scene, which had been foreshadowed to no end. In fact, I had already predicted one character’s demise as early as the book before from a vision that another character, far away, experiences. When I was coming to write my annotations for the Red Wedding’s chapter, the build up of which strongly suggested that the more anonymous faces of the vision in the last book were actually the same as those currently present, I had therefore already decided that all of them were about to be stabbed in the back, quite literally, before I got there, making what should have been a shot through the heart a mere grazing. Which isn’t totally a bad thing because, god knows, it still hurts like a son of a bitch when it happens. But, interestingly enough, I could talk about it quite easily, and managed to keep focus in my annotations of the chapter, pointing out such things as the onomatopoeia that open it, instead of writing “Ermagerd, he actually did it!” and going off on a rant about how Martin is an evil bastard.

Which is why I find it fascinating that I’m having trouble finding the words with which to talk about the death of Damian in this chapter. If you had been reading my entries about Grant Morrison’s Batman run since the second book of Batman and Robin at least, you’d know that it was as early as there, in the last issue illustrated by Andy Clarke in which Damian confronts his mother and she declares him an enemy of the family, that I first put it forward that the boy was going to die. Since then I’ve brought it up as a possibility every chance I could, littering posts with my theories about how it was going to happen. However, very recently, two things in this run have really surprised me. First of all, there was the story Asylum at the end of the last book. That was our last tale of Damian as the Batman of the future, and what was incredible about it was the fact that it was a real thing, not – as I had always suspected – a silly “elseworlds” series of tales, and the point of its inclusion at end of the last book was meant as a shocking revelation of Damian being Bruce’s third ghost, the Batman who would destroy Gotham. The other thing is right there in my last entry, a simple thing I feel somewhat ashamed for not even considering until it was too late: that Damian might die heroically, and not as an ironic twist of the knife in the war between Bruce and Talia.

You know what? Writing those three paragraphs did put me in mind of a scene in another piece of fiction that I found particularly devastating to a point that talking about it was quite tricky, and be warned that this is a Breaking Bad spoiler. That show is a masterpiece, filled to the brim with foreshadowing, a hell of a lot of duality, symbolic use of colour, and allusions to other work. Indeed, when I told my friends over Facebook about my Hamlet theory, I was actually quite surprised to find that this wasn’t such an original idea of mine, they telling me of websites covered in articles and posts on forums written by people who saw the same thing. Therefore, much like the equivalent of the scene in Hamlet, I realised that when Jesse didn’t go to sit on a park bench with Walt, exposing his crimes using a wire that Hank and Gomez are listening in on, he had actually missed his chance at nailing the bastard, dooming himself and these DEA agents. So when the well-titled episode Ozymandias arrived, I had hardened myself for the death of at least Hank and Gomez. But the former character’s death was still crushing for me. It didn’t matter that I saw it coming – it hit me really fucking hard.

It’s a perfect scene for a few reasons. For one thing, we had come full circle to the spot that Walt and Jesse had used in the first season of the show to create meth together, setting this up to be an iconic moment of the series’ entire run, the one and true moment where Walt’s crimes would finally catch up to hurt him and those closest to him the most. The other thing is that Hank by that point was a character we were really rooting for, a man we wanted to win. We’d seen his character develop from the family member who cracks the hilarious jokes in the background to one we genuinely cared about because, like no one else, he was always true to himself, by far the most honest character we had. That, of course, is also another important piece of the scene: he is a respectable man and character until the bitter end, ignoring Walt’s pleas to beg for his life, preferring to die a good man. That it comes mid-sentence of him saying his last words, when you’re vulnerable but preparing yourself, just goes to strengthen the impact of the scene. Breaking Bad spoilers end here.

Those two paragraphs apply to Damian’s death in a lot of ways too – note, for example, the similar mirroring technique in both he and Dick being thrown against glass that surrounds and protects outfit displays, a reflection of Damian throwing Tim Drake, also present in this scene, into such a display in the Batcave near the start of this run. The main difference is that, no, his death doesn’t catch us off guard so suddenly, but the pay-off is still as huge. Despite the fact that I was correct in my idea that he faces off against his man-sized clone – his brother; his own self – I could never have predicted seeing him brutally impaled the way he is, the clone stealing his “Tt” line as he ends his life, and the shattering glass of Bruce scrambling to get there in time surrounding such a distressing image. Credit to Chris Burnham for the incredible job he does here. On the page before that is a dozen-and-a-half panel fight scene in which Damian starts with the advantage before quickly losing it as Talia’s men fire bullets and shoot arrows into him as he tries to fight off his clone until, by the end, he’s a bloody mess whose last word is what we saw future Damian’s to be – simply “Mother”. It is fucking horrible. Turning the page we even find a shot similar to that of Bruce cradling Jason Todd’s dead body on the cover of Death in the Family, only better in this case – if you can call it that – because we can clearly see the distraught look on Bruce’s face and Damian’s dead eyes staring off panel. Even Talia sheds a tear at the top of this page.

But like I said – I was ashamed to give no thought to the possibility of Damian dying as a heroic character, and that he does, defending Ellie like I thought he would. Yet like the character whose demise I spoiled in the Breaking Bad spoiler territory above, he meets his end with dignity too, as much as he can show for a child anyway. All the time that occupies his fight with the clone, being shot and torn to shreds by arrows all the while, is spent well, causing injuries where he can or calling out his attackers as dishonourable cowards, even spitting in his brother’s face in replacement of saying, “Fuck you”. It’s not the death I imagined for the character, I’m sad to admit, but it’s the send-off he deserved and easily one of my favourite scenes in a comic series ever.

Until next time.

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 3, Chapter 1: Belly of the Whale (Batman Incorporated #7)

The end begins, and in a funny way, it does so just as the run itself began. The very first page is similar to that which began this run – where Gordon fell all the way to street level, however, here he is as spectator to Batman’s near lethal descent, being caught at the last moment by one of Talia’s man-bats. Later on in the issue, a subject which I’ll give its own paragraph, a girl that Batman saved all the way back in the Bat-Bane storyline rears her head for one last time. Even though I vaguely suggested in my last post that Talia is Bruce’s ultimate foe, here we also see her lock him into a safe that she has Damian’s clone throw in a pool, very reminiscent of the moustache-twirling sort of villainy that we saw from Hurt early on in the run. We really are coming full circle in a big way.

But we’ll get to that. This issue, as you might imagine, is quite chaotic in nature. Though Gordon seems to sum the situation up early on when he tells Nightwing that, “The hostages are dead. Your people are dead”, that’s nothing compared to the onslaught that unfolds, ready to lead us into the next issue. The first curve ball thrown our way is The Hood turning out to still be working for Spyral, zapping Jason Todd unconscious when he finds him alone. This is quite curious to say the least because the least we heard from this group was at the end of the first book, where it appeared that Kathy Kane was their leader. But she hasn’t been heard of since, so does this mean she has a role to play in the finale? Well, I certainly hope so – if she doesn’t then I’ll be sitting here after I’ve finished the run wondering why Morrison brought her back at all, so hopefully The Hood’s betrayal is suggestive of her having a hand to play in all this. That The Hood brings Jason to Talia at the end of the issue is possibly an indication that Kathy’s plan has something to do with Talia. Maybe she and Bruce are secretly teaming up? Can’t say I buy it myself, but I’m not sure what else she can really do that could help, if lending a hand is what she’s planning on doing.

Elsewhere in this chapter, Nightwing and Gordon are set upon by children. Kind of a messed up situation since they can’t exactly shoot the kids or anything, but I expect that when Damian arrives on the scene in the next issue, beating up some kids around the same age as him probably won’t be a moral conundrum. Yep, our young hero wears his Robin costume once again. In another reflection to the beginning of this run, though, and indeed his recent escape as Red Bird, he doesn’t harm Alfred but actually has help from the faithful butler, who promises to lie to Bruce so he doesn’t get in trouble. Which is a little sad because, as you’ll see, I expect that Damian’s dying in the next issue, making this sign of friendship and respect from Alfred, as well as the boy’s farewell to his cat and cow, quite sad.

As this is going on, Tim Drake goes off in pursuit of Bruce, but obviously only stumbles into a trap staged by Talia, only to then escape and head towards Wayne Tower instead, where shit is going down. This is indeed where Bruce is brought in a safe. It’s actually quite funny because we don’t see that he’s in there until after he’s been chucked in the pool, where I guess he’ll have to prove himself a magician of some sort. Anyway, at Wayne Tower we find that one of his own security guards is an undercover Leviathan operative, shooting another guard and trying to kill Ellie, a girl who we first saw back in Batman and Son – about halfway through that book – and has occasionally turned up since. This is one of the nice details in Morrison’s run. It’s layered heavily with symbology and clever imagery but, underneath all that, there are recurring secondary characters that are fleshed out ever so slightly.

However, Ellie, I feel, is quite unique, and I believe has a pivotal role to play in the next issue in which I expect Damian to sadly come to his end. You wouldn’t think it from the few times we’ve seen her, and the once or twice that I believe she’s been mentioned in conversation. In her first appearance she was a young prostitute that Bruce, as Batman, casually gave the telephone number of WayneTech to, telling her they were looking for a receptionist. Sure enough, when we next saw her – I believe this was in Time and Batman, in the story that took place between the end of Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis – she had accepted this job, and even had a boyfriend if I recall. Here she is again, caught in the middle of what’s going on at her job.

Frequently I’ve said that Damian’s death would probably be ironic, caused by either of his parents in a pointlessly tragic way, but in her I see the opportunity for him to die as a hero, saving the life of a girl who Bruce already reformed himself through a simple action. But here’s the best part: though no one seems to have stepped forth to take over Morrison’s story of Batman after he’d finished with it – soon in our case – there is a very clever hint here that, if he had continued, she would be the new Robin, for the security guard that’s shot calls her by a nickname that made me smile: Ellie-bird, which sounds curiously like Jason Todd’s nickname as Robin, Jaybird. Not a coincidence, I’m betting. So, yeah, Damian may die a hero after all, saving, of all people, Morrison’s choice for the next Robin. Now that would be quite an ending for the kid.

We’ll find out soon if that’s the ending he gets. In my mind, it’s the one he deserves. The chapter ends with four panels: Nightwing being beaten by the children; The Hood delivering Jason to Talia; Red Robin arriving outside Wayne Tower; and young Damian flying off in his jet pack from Batman: The Return (incidentally, Traktir and Spidra from that same story find out that his clone burst out of the whale carcass they found in that tale, and seem to put up a final stand of their own against incoming man-bats) to apparently save the day. The trouble is, below these panels there is the word “Next” followed by an image of the Robin insignia, bloodied. More worrying still is that the cover for the next issue is that of the book itself – that image of Robin as a ghostly figure, mirroring the same used for Batman that J.H. Williams III used in Batman R.I.P. Of course, Bruce never died in that story, yet I see this as being more literal, marking the end for poor Damian completely. The night’s nearly over, but I’ll make sure to get that post up at the very least.

Until then.

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 2, Chapter 6: Garland of Skulls (Batman Incorporated #6)

Damnit, Morrison…goddamnit. Any reader of this blog will know that pretty much every post I write contains spoilers – the warning’s right there in the sub-heading – but, for a change, I’m going to start with one rather tha include it somewhere in the body of text. Poor Cyril is dead right enough. It was looking like some of the characters might pull through, especially since his last act was to resuscitate Beryl, but then Damian’s clone comes along and snaps his fucking neck. It truly is the end days for this run when you kill one of the most fleshed out secondary characters. Seeing as the issue also ends with Bruce being thrown out of a top story window, as Gordon and his boys look on, and are attacked themselves by Leviathan’s child soldiers, the fate of other characters is also up in the air, so to speak.

So, yeah, this is a very short post, probably one of the most short on the blog. There’s just not a lot else to say other than “Oh, shit”. Although it starts off with some humour – Batman quipping, “I don’t like jokes” to the disbelieving Gordon; Jason Todd suggesting they eat Bat-Cow, whom he dubs Bat-Steak; Damian seeing “potential” in his new cat; and Bat-Cow making a well-timed “moo” – once we get halfway, it dives off into its set-up for the finale, which isn’t exactly looking to be happy. Hell, Damian’s cat isn’t much for humour at all when you think about it – if you couldn’t guess, he names it Alfred, like the cat he has in the future, this perhaps actually being a subtle hint that one part of his future is still close: his death.

Indeed, the boy seems quite insistent on saving the day alongside some other members of the Bat-family that listen in on Talia and Bruce’s conversation. But I suppose he has the strongest motive to act since the ultimatum that Talia delivers to Bruce – after saying that she doesn’t want Damian, and rhetorically asking if he would take him, which we know he won’t – is this: “Gotham. Or Damian. Whichever you choose, the other dies”. For some reason, I didn’t expect such a decision to be made that could lead to Damian’s death – well, that’s if the kid doesn’t march towards it himself in one of the next several issues – but I think we can all agree that what Bruce would choose is his city, as sad as it is. At least it would fit in with the tragedy angle that Morrison seems to be aiming for.

That’s actually an interesting thing that I might as well use up some space to talk about. Oddly enough, this run began by depicting Batman as the man who thinks of everything, but this current series has shown that he isn’t so perfect after all, it ironically being a character he paid very little attention to that has come closest to defeating him. It’s not exactly a huge coincidence that it’s another of the evil women that Bruce falls in love with that bests him. At one point in this issue, for instance, Talia actually interrupts herself to ask if Bruce ever loved her, to which he responds with a very curious line: “The devil’s daughter. You were everything I ever dreamed about”. How backwards thinking is that? Of course, they have particularly sombre backgrounds of growing up in common, but it’s again Bruce acknowledging, like he did with Jezebel, that it’s the bad women he falls in love with most easily. Back then I never thought to ask why this is the case, focusing instead on how obvious it really is, but: why? Is it the excitement of knowing they could turn on him at any second? The challenge? Like I’ve seen suggested in a few stories, does he believe that he’s a bad person himself deep down and sees a connection there? It’s certainly a complicated little thing, that’s for sure, and I do wish that it were explored a lot more.

Since that’s all I have to say, I suppose one final thing to point out is that we finally discover that this is the issue where Chris Burnham will be drawing several pages of his own for the upcoming Absolute edition of the series. It’s quite strange that he couldn’t fit these in, but midway through the issue another artist steps in for all of three pages. Yeah, I imagined it would be a bit more, but oh well. It’ll be nice to see his version of the scene once this new edition’s released at the end of the year, though, seeing as it’s the one where Talia tries to force Bruce into making a choice between Gotham City and Damian. Which I guess is a choice he may have an answer to as early as the next issue. See you then, with only six chapters to go before this run is finally over.

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 2, Chapter 5: Asylum (Batman Incorporated #5)

A third post? In one day? My god, I’m just knocking these out the park today, aren’t I? Highly that I can squeeze in the final chapter of the book tonight, but I can certainly do that and some more posts tomorrow, seeing as I’ll still have no life by then.

This chapter picks off immediately after the ending of the last, with Bruce breaking Damian’s heart like a right bastard. The story that follows is another really fun episode of future Damian, as they’ve all been. Even though it was Andy Kubert who drew the previous two, Chris Burnham does a really good job taking over, depicting many familiar faces really well, so that’s good too. Alas, it shall be the last such episode, which is a dying shame. There is actually an Andy Kubert written and drawn series about this whole future Damian but, from what I understand, it’s pretty shit, which is a little disappointing. At least under Morrison’s pen the character goes out in style, if you can call fucking everything up a memorable way to go.

What happens is this: apparently set shortly after the Joker’s gas toxin was released throughout the city in Time and Batman, Gotham City is aflame and its psychotic population has cornered the remaining survivors in Arkham Asylum of all places, which is where Damian arrives, presumably the same little baby he rescued last we saw him in tow. This little child is believed to be immune, the source of a cure that can help save Gotham before the President of the United States decides to nuke it off the face of the planet. Also, I did a search about the kid online, and it turns out that this baby is the same that is supposed to become the Batman of Batman Beyond. You might notice the word choice of “believed to be”, and “supposed to”. It’s…for good reason.

Remember how I said the two hanged children was quite shocking in the last couple of issues, but there was something even worse here? Uh, yeah, well, it turns out that the kid is infected, so Damian rushes over to the Infirmary where he left him with Commissioner Gordon and finds that, um, Barbara has snapped the baby’s neck. It’s not often I say anything as I read, but a “Holy fuck…” did leave my mouth. What makes it all the worse is the detail – Chris (who I now consider an evil human being) adds some lovely touches like having the baby’s eyes rolled back and some last tears, you know, if your mouth hadn’t hit the floor already. But you know what’s the real kicker? Poor Barbara’s too late, already succumbed to the Joker’s toxin, and like that scene out of George Romero’s Day of the Dead, opens the gates to Arkham Asylum, letting in every psychopath that have been waiting beyond like zombies. Oh yeah, and then the President nukes the city off the face of the earth to truly make you feel bad. Did I mention that Doctor Hurt’s the man by his side as he gives the command?

Yep, this issue just gets fucking better. Back in Batman and Son’s Bethlehem we saw that Damian was shot to shit by Gordon and her boys, yet pulled himself to his feet unharmed, as he does here too. This is because, as he told the third ghost of Batman who he killed in that story, he sold his soul to the Devil the day Bruce died for “Gotham’s survival”. Since I never took that story too seriously, nor its sequel, it never occurred to me for one second after the Joker buried Hurt at the end of Batman and Robin that Hurt could well be this Devil. Colour me bloody well impressed. It makes an incredible lot of sense when Damian realises that this is all Talia’s trap for him, the equivalent of Bruce being ensnared by Darkseid’s Omega Sanction, because what it actually means is that Damian is the third ghost of Batman – not Lane after all. Oh, he certainly was the third replacement Batman of Hurt’s, but he was only engineered – programmed if you will – into believing that he was some spawn of Satan when, ironically, it would be Damian that became the true Beast. It’s even foreshadowed at the end of his first story when he tells Barbara, “The apocalypse is cancelled. Until I say so”, something he’s saying in the spur of the moment, not actually seriously. That’s what I call fucking amazing. Bravo, Morrison – you got me.

The somewhat “good” news is that none of this will happen, seeing as Damian’s for the axe. Indeed, once Bruce finishes his story, ending with the image of two gravestones exploding with the letter W between them (which I’ll talk about again in just a moment), we come back to he and Damian. This sad scene is beautifully drawn by Burnham. As Bruce tells the boy that he must return to his mother because he can never be Batman, the background of the panel begins to shatter until he and Bruce stand alone in white space, any hope of a future between either of them crushed. Don’t even get me started on the look on Damian’s face – Morrison is ramping up the emotions and Burnham is delivering the powerful expressions. It’s horrible.

The issue ends with the two being interrupted. The Knight, Squire and some other characters have been led by a lead that Bruce started investigating in the third issue to a building he owns at Crime Alley. It’s a bit of an obvious trap, but they fall for it too late anyway, as a bomb detonates, the issue ending with an image of Kali the Destroyer, the skulls of some of our heroes wrapped around her neck, symbolic of one of our characters dying in the next issue, or so I presume. It would certainly be a good idea for Morrison to end this book with a bang, and I can’t think of any characters that I want to see die less than the Knight or Beryl, or perhaps both. Frighteningly enough, though, those are the two characters closest to the blast. Oh, fuck.

Before we go I did say that I would be bringing up the two headstones again. We saw these at the beginning of the first issue too, Bruce shown to be totally beaten and Gordon arriving to arrest him. It’s easy to presume that they’re the graves of his parents but, in light of Talia’s tragic upbringing recently, and the obvious fact that Damian’s going to die, I have a new idea: what if the graves belong to her and their son? It hadn’t occurred to me that their war could end with her death too, but then, how else could it? One of them, I’m sure, is going to be responsible for Damian’s death, or perhaps they’ll both be. God knows, they’re lousy parents, so either way, I’m expecting them to fight it out, perhaps even duel like Batman did with Ra’s all those years ago. But wouldn’t it be fitting that Bruce finally accepts both characters as family only after they lie dead at his feet? Can you think of anything more tragic? Not me.

Thankfully we won’t have long now until we find out. But first, I’ll see you for the finale of this first hardcover, which I’m sure won’t be any picnic itself. Until then.

“Batman Incorporated”, Volume 2, Chapters 3 & 4: The Hanged Man and Kill Box (Batman Incorporated #3 & 4)

Okay, I know, I know – I said that I wouldn’t be combining any more posts, yet here I am doing it anyway. The trouble is that these two issues fit quite well together, in the sense that the first is simply a set up for the second, in which we get a ton of information sent our way, the last piece of which leads us into the issue after that and then finale of the book, bringing us to the real beginning of the end in the second hardcover. So, yeah, I think it’s for the best that I do things this way, especially since I probably couldn’t have scoured even 1000 words up for the two posts if I did them individually.

Alright, so here’s a quick rundown of the first of these issues, just so we can move on to the second as quickly as possible: Bruce is  in the guise of a man called “Matches” Malone, an old alias of his that Morrison’s brought back, his purpose being to infiltrate Leviathan, whom we see at the beginning of the issue are spreading stealthily through Gotham. This leads him to a meeting with a young boy, apparently in charge of a gang, and the help of a singer named Lumina, who requires his help later on, but actually leads him into a trap with a character called The Hangman. The assassin that lied to Talia in the first issue is also present, having sold Bruce out. We also saw the members of the Dead Heroes Club under the guise of Matches’ bodyguards. Meanwhile, Damian isn’t happy with being grounded, gasses Alfred and sneaks out under the new identity of Red Bird after Dick accidentally suggested creating a new name for himself since he’s longer Robin.

Okay, so that leads us into the second and more interesting issue, one that begins with Talia and that mysterious fellow who apparently knew Damian back in Batman: The Return. My theory about that guy has always been that he’s an accelerated-aged clone of Damian and it appears I was on the ball, Talia saying that Bruce, “took my son from me”, to which this large guy replies, “I thought I was your son…”. Not sure what other conclusion you could possibly draw from that, so a Damian clone he is, as far as I’m concerned or until a character says otherwise. The other interesting line on this page is Talia’s plans for Bruce: “I want him to suffocate in the womb of chaos”. A very good line, that, said as we zoom in on Talia’s skull mask so that the eye socket takes up the last panel, creating complete darkness. If you don’t remember, the colour black was associated with the Joker back in Batman R.I.P.’s prologue, and I made the case back in The Clown at Midnight that he is symbolic of pure chaos, which makes it kind of intriguing to have Talia say this, suggestive of a very dark plan indeed.

It perhaps isn’t so surprising then that the violence is being escalated a lot higher than before. Not just more bloody but, quite shockingly, we’re seeing children being killed, perhaps in itself indicative of Damian’s impending doom, Boy Wonder or not. Like I said, Bruce finds himself trapped at the mercy of a sinister looking fellow called the Hangman, the assassin from the first chapter having betrayed him. Apparently Leviathan required sacrifices, which is why Bruce has been led here under the identity of Matches. Where the violence comes in is through the fact that the little boy Matches met with before – who didn’t actually seem influenced by Leviathan in his actions, but just a young gang leader – and another kid can both be seen hanged. The reason I mention this now is that I’ll be doing so again in the next chapter for one brief, horrible scene.

Anyway, of course Batman has help. The Dead Heroes Club make their real appearance, kicking butts but suffering a few injuries until the Knight, Squire, Nightwing and other characters carry out “phase 2” of the attack, joining on the fray whilst Batwing disables attacking man-bats with the use of an ultrasonic gun. All goes well and they win this round. Then Wingman is finally revealed to be Jason Todd right enough. For some reason it never occurred to me before to notice that Jason is basically what Damian would be like grown up, but the kid seems to realise this himself, yelling how Todd dishonours the family by being a murderer, finishing his sentence there, you might argue, because he realises that so was he once. But the other thing he quickly catches on to is the fact that everyone else knows something that he doesn’t.

Finally comes the big revelation. We’ve had two stories featuring future Damian and I’ve always considered both to be quite like “elseworld” stories – not real, not canon; just a bit of fun from someone wondering, “What if this were the case?” Which I think made sense because we didn’t actually see a lot of Damian prior to Batman and Robin, so these helped fill out some of his character. It turns out, however, that the future Bruce has seen is of Damian as Batman, and Gotham City covered in flames – it has all been a real future for the boy. The next issue, therefore, is essentially what Bruce has seen happen that has him so frightened into believing that Damian must return to his mother, and I’ll talk about it some more then, naturally. But one point of note in this scene, besides Damian’s terribly sad expression, is one of Bruce’s lines, which I think annoys me greatly: “Son, I wish it wasn’t true but I know now”. Yes, that is the first time that Batman’s called Damian his son, and he’s saying it just as he plans to make the boy leave his life. Seriously, he has completely given up on the boy: “I thought it could be different. But I was wrong”. Goddamnit, Bruce. Of course, I believe he’s missing the other way that Damian can bring around the destruction of Gotham – by dying. This is truly leading up to a sad ending for the kid, though we’ll see that he meets an equally depressing end even if he were to become the future Batman.

Since this was a fairly short post, I thought I’d finish off with something that I’d intended to mention in Talia’s own issue. Chapter 4, as I said, opens with her and Damian’s clone having a chat, and we do the whole zooming in on one of her skull mask’s “empty” eye sockets – incidentally, the exact same that’s the eye of the Gorgon, turning men to stone – until the last panel is all very “stare into my heart of darkness”. The thing is, her whole connection to the Lazarus Pits should make this an unusual choice of headpiece, seeing as her father is a man who will never look so decayed. That had got me curious in her little chapter when she pulled it on in front of him, particularly since what that whole issue was really about was her growing hatred for “daddy”.

This reminded me of two poems I studied in my last year of high school, written by Sylvia Plath: Daddy and Lady Lazarus. Have a read of those if you like. You could chalk it up entirely to coincidence but I see some lines in both that put me in mind of Talia’s position, especially if you read each poem from a feminist perspective, keeping in mind that it was Talia’s mother who urged her to become independent from her father’s clutches. The first poem, Daddy, is the one that mainly puts me in the mind of Talia though. One thing I can remember from my essay on the poem was the fact that Plath’s father had already died before she wrote it, and according to my teacher, she idolized him at a young age. This seems like it could apply to Talia as well, particularly since we see that he does die at an age where she still calls him “daddy”, yet resurrects and hits her when she approaches his Pit, after which we begin to see her rebel – he’s no longer the God-like figure she looked up to, but a monster instead. The poem, as I argued at least, is about closure for Plath, and in a sense, so is Talia’s little chapter, the last time she calls Ra’s “daddy” being as they stand opposite one another, a circle representing Oroboros between them, she revealing that his men are now hers. Not what I call coincidence, but I’ll leave that up to you.

Until next time.