“Batman and Robin”, Part 1: Batman Reborn (Batman and Robin #1 – 3)

Oh, man, this part of the run is going to be bloody amazing. The bright cover of the first trade paperback should have given it away, but it looks like these adventures are going to be over the top crazy, and a lot of fun. Not that everything that’s lead up to this point hasn’t been fun per se – it’s just been a lot darker exploration of Batman, both in the colour palette and in the choice of villains, which have really just been the Joker and Black Glove. In fact, I’d say the last time we saw anything as easy on the eyes when it comes to colour and downright silly was back in Batman and Son, in that one issue where Batman fought Talia’s man-bats with the comic’s sound effects being replaced by all the pop art in the background.

Don’t get me wrong, some of the subject matter here is still pretty nasty stuff – the main villain of this first story arc is Professor Pyg, who we saw back in Batman and Son too, during Damian’s little “What if?” scenario, and he’s a pretty sick dude. As I recall, Andy Kubert drew more doll-like versions of the guy’s Dollotrons but Quietly makes them look less like mannequin figurines, and more like they really have had faces plastered onto their own, which is pretty darn horrible stuff. The guy’s a straight up psychopath, at one point even dancing in front of Damian, a spotlight shining on him and all, and I realised that he puts me in mind of Sander Cohen of Bioshock, a character also obsessed with creating a masterpiece. That or Doctor Steinman from the same game, who is a surgeon obsessed with creating symmetry in the human face. But though this guy is as nasty as villains get, the other baddies that make an appearance are…a bit more unusual, shall we say.

Also coming from the same Batman and Son story, for example, is Phosphorus Rex, who is sadly not a flammable dinosaur but just a man, and for some reason has fiery hands and a face, yet an unflammable body. Weird. Oh, but Mr. Toad opens the first issue. It is as it sounds, yes. Sadly that one kicks the bucket, or croaks as one of Gordon’s officers puts it. There’s also Big Top, a huge bearded lady in a ballerina costume that closely resembles one of the fatties from the Judge Dredd universe. Don’t forget the Siamese triplets who make for an interesting fight scene. Note that those last two are circus-based characters, even using the lingo, something Dick picks up on from his own background. Anyway, going by the title of the sixth issue in this part of the run, we’ll shortly be seeing the Flamingo too, another character that made an appearance in Bethlehem, so god only knows how wacky he’ll be. In a way, I suppose they’re all no more crazy in appearance than some of the traditional enemies, but I think there’s a reason that Morrison has created them instead of taking his pick from the usual roster, you know?

Though one familiar face does make an appearance at the end of the first story arc and would appear to be the main focus of the next – Red Hood, I presume Jason Todd. This will be particularly interesting. Everyone probably knows but I’ll explain anyway: Jason Todd was the Robin after Dick Grayson, making him the second, but he was murdered by the Joker in A Death in the Family, a quite famous story of Batman. Though I’ve never read the comic that did this, my understanding is that Ra’s al Ghul used one of his Lazarus Pits to bring Jason back from the grave, and I believe these Pits have an effect on the mind of the person being revived, driving some of them mad, which was the case of Jason, who became Red Hood – ironically, who the Joker first was – and nearly killed the Joker. Why his inclusion to the story should be interesting is because he seemingly recruits one of Pyg’s victims at the end of the story, a young girl called Sasha that Damian failed to save. Thus they will be a mirror to our new Batman and Robin, though hopefully just as interesting – one thing that could be interesting to see, perhaps if three issues is enough time, is that they do a better job together than our very own Dynamic Duo.

But probably not. Though things certainly do get off to a shaky start for our two heroes, they seem to pull it together by the end, with the last scene between the two being the same one we saw at the end of Batman R.I.P., that being their surprise attack on Le Bossu who believes them dead. But, then again, one of the story arcs in the next trade paperback is called Batman V.S. Robin and the front cover depicts Damian on the verge of swinging a sword at Dick. But, then again, again, I have my theory that Damian is a weapon of Talia’s since we saw him being hooked up to suspicious looking medical equipment in Batman and Son after the submarine explosion – it would honestly not surprise if she has some way of controlling him if she can also “repair” him. That’s something we’ll just have to wait to find out, though. In the meantime, we can have fun with Damian being Robin. One thing I did notice was that, in nearly every full page shot of he and Dick, it’s Robin up front and centre instead of Batman. Of course, Damian does say to Dick that, “It’s Robin and Batman from now on”, to more or less spell this out for you, but I think the point was as I said in my last post: that the roles are practically reversed, with Robin being the threatening one and Batman the friendly crime fighter. Well, he does at one point take Phosphorus Rex for a less-than-fun ride through town, but he does appear to give up pretending to be Bruce, Alfred having advised him to be Batman “as a performance […] and play it to suit your strengths”. Which is why, of course, we see him pulling off all his acrobatic moves instead of trying to mimic Bruce’s fighting skills.

But, though he no longer seems concerned about his own portrayal of Batman, he does note that Gordon and the other officers realise he isn’t the same Batman that they’ve always known, nor the Robin. This seems less worrying by the end of the story, Gordon finally thanking Dick and telling him that he doesn’t want to know what’s been going on for the past several months since the real Batman’s death, but I did notice in the second issue that he recognised Damian from the end of Batman R.I.P. and I’m very curious to see if that’s a little thing that comes back at some point in the future, and to see how Gordon will react when he knows Robin’s identity. Where I see this being possible is in Batman Incorporated. The cover of that suggests that Batman goes global, but at what cost? Corporations need their CEO’s so does Bruce reveal his identity? Guess we’ll just have to wait it out to see.

Well now, to finish things off, I suppose we should talk about Frank Quietly who I believe makes his only appearance in the run here sadly. Though his artwork isn’t as amazing as his All Star Superman stuff, he is still very much incredible here and Morrison takes the opportunity to make him bring to life some brilliant scenes, the fights of which are the best in the run thus far, flowing from action to action as they do. Take the scene in which Damian fights Pyg and some of his Dolls. Notice how the chair is falling backwards as he takes care of two Dolls at once, how he then pushes it in the opposite direction against Pyg’s hands as he takes out another, so that it’s back in place, firmly on the ground, as he takes a flying kick at Pyg himself. Simply amazing, and it makes me want to buy the Absolute edition of this part of the run for it alone. But, since I can’t find that particular example online, here’s Pyg’s dance routine in all its glory. It makes me so sad that we won’t be seeing Quietly in the remainder of this run. Seriously, as you read this book, look carefully at every little detail you can – you’ll find that only do the character’s expressions speak a lot for themselves, but the tiniest of details, like how, following the above fight scene, Damian tracks Pyg with his head in the background of one panel as he makes his attempted escape, pursuing him in the next. In other words: I love you, Frank Quietly, you beautiful bastard, you.

Alas, our next artist, a chap called Philip Tan whom I’m unfamiliar with, isn’t quite as amazing, but then again, not many people are when it comes to Quietly, so that’s no slight against him at all. My review of the second story arc might be up a little later this very same day if I write fast enough, and I most certainly see myself blasting through these Batman and Robin books. They could very well be the best part of the run yet as a matter of fact. See you next time.

“Time and the Batman” (Batman #700 – 703)

In my last post I suggested that the stories here probably wouldn’t be important in the long run of things, particularly when the last isn’t written by Morrison, and I was right – they will probably, in fact, be the only stories in this entire run that can be considered unnecessary. But they’re actually not bad, if I accidentally gave that impression, so let’s get into them, shall we?

First up is the titular story, Time and the Batman (Batman #700), and it’s probably my favourite of the three. With a glimpse at Damian’s “What if?” future, it is indeed an “elseworlds” tale…sort of. It starts off with a section with Bruce Wayne as Batman called Yesterday and follows with Dick and Damian’s team up in Today before Damian’s solo part, so the first two could have happened, I suppose. In fact, they probably did, only the murder mystery told over these three eras is never actually solved because – let’s face it – Damian’s future isn’t a real thing, so it can’t be solved in his time. Or maybe the whole thing’s not to be taken seriously because, you know, 700th issue of Batman and all, and the whole story is like a tribute to the endless possibilities of Batman, the first story featuring older, classic portrayals of characters, the second being what I guess at the time was Morrison’s ongoing Batman and Robin series, and the third bringing back Damian’s “What if?” follow up. Plus, after the third story, there’s And Tomorrow…, which is wacky ideas of what Batman would be like in the far future, and that ends with the lines, “No matter when. No matter where. No matter how dark.”, obviously meant to drive the point home that Batman – perhaps all fiction if Final Crisis is any indication of what Morrison thinks about creativity – is for forever. So let’s talk about these fun little tales one by one real quick.

Yesterday, as I say, has classic portrayals of characters – you know, that silly Robin costume, the Joker’s purple suit, the Riddler’s green costume covered in question marks, and Catwoman’s old variant with a cape. It’s kind of funny to see some of these villains – the Mad Hatter’s here too, as is Scarecrow – because we probably won’t at any other point in the run, the Joker obviously being the exception. Even though the Joker here is actually displayed as the more wacky lunatic of the past, and even hits a guy with a rubber chicken, it is still very much Morrison’s idea of the Joker, at one point changing persona’s like he did in The Clown at Midnight. In this case, what he changes to seems to be Heath Ledger’s Joker of Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight, suddenly threatening to cut Robin a “baby smile” across his face with a switch blade after, moments before, muttering to himself about his joke book and smoking a pipe.

The next part of this story, Today, is amazing. First of all, we get five pages of Frank Quietly’s amazing artwork. This brilliant guy will be doing all of the artwork for the first part of Batman and Robin, so there’s an additional reason to be excited for the first book in that series and I’ll be talking about his work then. Secondly, this is obviously Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne we’re seeing here for the first time and, man, reading this has got me hyped. The first thing I noticed was that Dick, arriving to the crime scene related to the first part of the story, asks one of Gordon’s officers how his boy’s doing, remembering both their names. Let’s face it: Bruce would never bother his arse to do this because he’s all about the job, which to him is focused on solving crimes and scaring the shit out of criminals. On the complete contrary, however, we see that Dick as Batman is really friendly, actually allowing a couple who warn them of some thugs to take pictures: “Holly, we’ll be killed”, says the man, to which Dick responds, “Nah, you’ll be fine. We’re here”. Also, he smiles, but not in a scary way. Oh, and makes time for a quick shave at the end. Yeah. But then there’s Damian. Although he doesn’t say too much for me to outright say that this is how it is, I did notice that he makes a “Tt” noise, which instantly reminded me of Bruce and all his “Hh” grunts, which strongly implied, to me anyway, that Damian will be more of the Batman between he and Dick if that makes sense. But he’s not an all out lunatic like we see in the fake future as, in fact, one of the things I’m suddenly looking forward to is how hilarious these two are going to be together. A guy called Scott Kolins does the art for the last three pages of this section and in those three pages we see the two stop for a coffee and some pizza, compare their  work that night, and jump off some gargoyles with big grins on their faces to end their part of the story. The next three books with these guys are going to be a blast.

Tomorrow, finally, is the best of the bunch because future Damian is just awesome and Andy Kubert’s back with his fantastic artwork. On the latter point, the very first page shows clouds of smoke throughout what we can see of Gotham, revealed by Damian’s narration to be Joker toxin, so what Kubert does is put the Joker’s face in this murky sky to suggest this, so well that Morrison doesn’t really need to point it out to you, and I think that says it all. Quality work. On the former point, here’s what Damian accomplishes in nine pages: he saves the city from this Joker toxin in nine minutes, off by only two seconds, defeating the mastermind behind, 2-Face-2 (yes, really), and a guy called Roboto. The funny thing he does with the latter villain is tell him that he’ll break his neck “clean” if he tells me where the kid that’s being held hostage is instead of leaving him to be eaten by mutant rats. Only…once this guy tells him, he lets him get eaten by the rats anyway, to which Roboto screams something that isn’t typically said in a sincere way about Batman, usually just as an insult: “Batman, you bastard!” Gotta love Damian, and you gotta love this story as a whole, portraying three very different Batmen.

Next up in the book was R.I.P. – The Missing Chapter (Batman #701 and 702). The first thing I have to point out, and this goes for the first part of the former story too, Tony S. Daniels does the artwork here and, to my great surprise, it is actually pretty bloody good the whole time. For these stories he uses a style not like what we’ve seen before – less concerned with being realistic and the better for it, all of his characters looking a lot more natural. Not only that, though – he actually does some pretty nice stuff with panel composition that I thought looked great, so bravo to him for a stellar, consistent job. Check out Exhibit A for an example. Incidentally, I had forgotten to say what my overall impression of his art in R.I.P. was, so here goes: inconsistent yet again. Although I pointed out that he nailed some images, some of which I’m sure will be iconic one day, throughout that whole story he goes from excellent to utter crap, most noticeably seeming to struggle with how some of the characters look. But here? Bloody excellent. As this was years ago, I don’t know if it’s the style of art he uses today, but I sure hope so.

Anyway, we should probably talk about the story of this one, or some of the specific stuff that’s brought to the surface. First of all, Doctor Hurt does indeed survive the helicopter crash of R.I.P. In the first part of this story we see his hand at the wreckage and when Batman comes back later in a submarine (of course) he finds neither his mysterious nemesis or his pilot, the third ghost, Lane. But we maybe get the first hints of understanding who Hurt could be too. Back at home, Batman at one point realises that Hurt knew of the manor’s secret room, which Bruce’s parents had always forbidden from entering. It’s the first we’ve heard of this, I’m sure, but more than a little uncanny, doubly so when Bruce enters and finds the word “Barbatos” written on the wall, and the name “Thomas” repeated over and over, and remember that Hurt claimed to be Thomas Wayne. Anyway, a search on Google revealed to me that Barbatos is some kind of demon of Hell, and so this obviously supports the theory that Hurt implies, that of him being either the Devil or a worshipper of Satan. However, I can’t obviously help but notice that the word “bat” can be read in Barbatos, and I’m betting that Bruce doesn’t talk of his own “myth” in the second part of this issue for no reason.

Indeed, what he confirms is that being shot by Darkseid’s Omega Sanction sends him back in time. How his body is left behind in the world is still confusing to me, but that’s time travel for you, I suppose. Plus, his memory is wiped clean, as I suspected at the end of Final Crisis. Anyhow, what he somehow realises about finding himself in the past is that history has changed around him and it doesn’t appear to be a coincidence that we see Bruce in the hidden room when we read this idea. Here’s the wild theory that I’m driving at: at the end of Final Crisis, and here too, we see Bruce draw his bat symbol in the cave he finds himself sharing with Anthro. The presence of the latter character is significant because it was through him drawing Metron’s symbol everywhere that that became the symbol the characters used to save the world. With Batman’s talk of myths in this story, even going as far as to point out that he needs to make a trail with his memory slipping, my theory is that he creates his own around being Batman, and in doing so will mistakenly create Barbatos, thus mistakenly creating Doctor Hurt, “the hole in things”. It’s a lot of time travel nonsense to wrap one’s head around but it makes sense in mine if you take into consideration that, when Bruce somehow returns from the past, he’ll be creating Batman Incorporated, which the cover implies is global Batmen, thereby following through with this idea that Batman is a symbol of good triumphing over evil. Indeed, one of the far future ideas shown in the first issue of this book shows what appears to be an older Damian actually training new Batmen.

But, hey, I could be completely wrong, so who knows? Either way, I’m really curious if we’ll get some definite answers the next time Hurt rears his head. Two more things before we move on to the last story of this book. In the second part there’s a panel of Batman’s body in a coffin, candles and all – it’s clearly the same funeral we see in Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader? That story isn’t technically meant to make sense but it is pretty cool to see the same funeral scene here. The second thing is the repeated phrase of “the hole in things”, which Bruce not only relates back to Hurt, but to the bullet left in his mother, which can be traced back, he thinks, to Darkseid and the Radion bullet Batman used to kill him with. Though I’m not sure how literally to take the idea of this bullet being “the essence of bullet”, the same one that killed JFK, John Lennon and countless others, I do think that this phrase will be back in the run because here’s a question: though the bullet that shot Bruce’s mother and father left literal holes in them, did it not too make one in him? That, in a sad or happy way, depending on your outlook, is a hole that Bruce is constantly trying to fill or stitch together as Batman, and I see the opportunity for this to become a theme of the run, which could be quite interesting. Quite sure I talked about this before, but there you go again – it’s a theme I’d like to see openly explored.

Well now, this has been a pretty long review for such a short book. Well, it’s probably best I end it here. There is one more story in this book, The Great Escape (Batman #703), but it’s written by Fabian Nicieza, not Morrison, and so not really important to us. Indeed, I did a search online to be sure, but this is part of his own series of Batman stories, though it sounds like there was a bit of mess in what issues you could find the whole story. This itself is actually pretty good, following our new Batman and Robin in pursuit of what they believe is an old villain, with help from Red Robin, which is Tim Drake’s new position which we in fact saw with Superman in the last story, listening to Bruce’s audio recording from the distant past. Although I haven’t read Morrison’s Batman and Robin yet, this does actually read like what he might have the characters say, Dick and Damian exchanging funny banter with one another. But with it not affecting our run, I’ll end this review here, though I’ll emphasise once more that it is pretty good – maybe I’ll check to see if this story and the others Fabian wrote are collected together anywhere.

Well, that’s another book down. It’s not really necessary but I recommend picking it up at a cheap price anyway since the stories inside aren’t too shabby at all. Next up in our long run is the three Batman and Robin books, and I cannot fucking wait. How I’m going to review them is not issue by issue probably, but instead in six parts for the six story arcs that the three books are comprised of. That might change depending on the content issue by issue and how much I have to say, so we’ll just have to wait and see. Either way, I’m terribly excited, and a review may be up as early as tomorrow if I indeed enjoy the following three books as much as I think I will. Until then.