Batman #673

This is a pretty weird issue, with lots of off-kilter stuff going on, some of it contradicting itself or current continuity. The explanation is that Batman has had a heart attack and is hallucinating almost everything that happens here. He imagines himself undergoing a ritual in a cave in Nanda Parbat, reliving the deaths of his parents, threatening a crime boss, watching his own funeral, meeting up with a creepy monster version of Bat-Mite, and undergoing an extended period in an isolation chamber. In the end, his life is saved… but his rescuer is a guy wearing a Batman costume and armed with a power drill. What the heck is going on?

This issue is getting a lot of attention right now because of one single panel:

 

Explanation: Ever since Jason Todd died, Bats has kept a memorial case in the Batcave that includes Jason’s Robin uniform. A couple of years ago, when the current Robin, Tim Drake, was taking a short hiatus from crimefighting, Batman recruited Stephanie Brown, a friend of Tim’s who operated as a superhero named the Spoiler, as a new replacement Robin. She was abducted, tortured with a power drill, and killed pretty darn horribly by a villain named Black Mask after only a short time as Robin.

Anyway, folks started noticing that Batman hadn’t set up a memorial case for Stephanie. Arguing (correctly, in my opinion) that it would be out-of-character for Batman not to give Stephanie a memorial case, and that her death was part of a long-running and way creepy hostility to female characters in the comics industry, they set up a webpage to advocate for a memorial case for Steph.

DC Comics reacted to this fairly predictably — by screaming, “A memorial case?! B-But she’s a girl!” And that really jump-started a new movement of feminist comics fans who point out that, yeah, girls read comics, and they’ve got plenty of reasons to be unhappy with the way women are portrayed in an awful lot of comics.

That’s simplifying things a lot for brevity’s sake. But the point is that, in this latest issue of “Batman,” writer Grant Morrison just gave Stephanie Brown her memorial case. Sure, it may very well be part of Batman’s hallucinations. But when a writer as important to comics as Morrison says it’s there, and when he’s setting Batman up to be tortured by the same sort of power drill that was used to kill Stephanie, that means it’s not just fans who are agitating for better treatment for Stephanie and other female characters — it means creators are realizing that it’s time to change things up, and that the editors may be realizing that they don’t gain anything by angering their readers, male or female. That alone is a welcome change.

Verdict: Thumbs up. The story’s good, the art is good. Part of me figures that, after a heart attack, getting his back broke, getting shot or stabbed every other issue, Batman should just move into a convalescent home and have a nice long rest. The memorial case issue is, admittedly, a minor part of the story, but it gives the entire comic a feeling that important stuff is going on here. I’m looking forward to the next issue.

For the past two weeks, you have been utterly lost, bereft of that which sustains us all. It was most fortunate that you had Christmas and New Year’s to distract you from your sorrow, or who knows what could have happened? But have no fear! Your life has meaning again — your life has hope again! Your life has… FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

To kick off this next round of mighty battles, let’s turn to the highly, highly recommended “Planetary/Batman: Night on Earth” from August 2003, by Warren Ellis, John Cassaday, and David Baron, in which the Batman from “The Dark Knight Returns” puts his fist through the Drummer’s mostly defenseless face:

No, that’s not a very large picture, but you’ve spent the past two weeks with a bunch of “Peace on Earth, Goodwill toward Men” stuff — I didn’t think you’d be able to deal with a BIG picture of face-punching this severe yet. Maybe next week.

It’s been a long week, the holiday stress is starting to pile up, ice is forming on your skin. Is there any relief? Yes! You need FRIDAY NIGHT FIGHTS!

From 1997’s “Secret Origins” story from JLA: Secret Files and Origins #1 by Grant Morrison, Mark Millar, Howard Porter, and John Dell: Flash gets an evil, mind-controlling interstellar starfish stuck to his face and proceeds to smack the tar out of the Justice League.

Luckily, Batman knows the perfect way to break people of starfish-hypnosis: SAVAGE BEATINGS.

In any battle between Batman and sushi, always put your money on the guy in the bat-suit.

Via Occasional Superheroine: Someone asked presidential candidate Ron Paul who his favorite superhero was… and, well, check out his answer:

“My favorite comic book superhero is Baruch Wane, otherwise known as Batman, in The Batman Chronicles. “The Berlin Batman,” #11 in the series by Paul Pope, details Batman’s attempts to rescue the confiscated works of persecuted Austrian economist, Ludwig von Mises, from Nazi Party hands.

“Batman’s assistant Robin writes in the memoirs, “[Mises] was an advocate of individual liberty, free speech, and free thinking… and so, should I add, the Berlin Batman.” Batman, a Jew in hiding in Nazi Austria, was willing to risk his life for the sake of the promulgation of freedom, and I find this to be super-heroic.”

(Most of this original post was inadvertently lost, thanks to a programming glitch, and unfortunately forgotten. I suspect the rest of my commentary here was along the lines of “Well, isn’t this interesting? I wonder if other presidential candidates could come up with sound ideological reasoning if asked to pick out their favorite superhero?”)

Rich Johnston reports a rumor — far from confirmed — that DC plans to kill Bruce Wayne next summer and have one of the Robins replace him as Batman.

Sure, DC, we totally believe you.

Yeah, Bruce Wayne’s totally gonna stay dead forever, ain’t no doubt about that, is there? It’s not like you’d do something like this just for a quick sales boost for your comics before bringing the character back to life, right?

Astro City: The Dark Age, Book Two #4

Okay, the main problem with this series is that it doesn’t come out often enough, so it’s hard to keep remember what the heck was going on the last time I read it. Basically, we’re following two estranged brothers, Charles Williams, a cop, and Royal Williams, a crook. It’s 1977, and thanks to a battle between two supervillains, half of Astro City has been infected with negative emotions and are either trying to kill each other or themselves. The Silver Agent shows up to help out — but isn’t he dead? And Royal finds his brother Charles, shot in the back by crooked cops, and with all the chaos in the city, he has no way to summon help for his brother.

Verdict: Thumbs up. As always, you wish that Busiek had time to tell more of the stories of some of these minor characters, like Jitterjack, Black Velvet, and Street Angel. At any rate, it’s well worth getting, but if I were you, I’d wait for the trade paperback. You may have trouble finding the earlier issues of this series, and if you miss those, you miss too much.

Batman #669

It’s the final chapter of the “Club of Heroes” saga, with assassins trying to off Batman, Robin, and the rest of the “Batmen of All Nations.” The Squire has a bomb in his stomach, the sidekicks have been kidnapped, and several different people are masquerading as someone else. Can I say more without spoiling the surprises? No, I can’t. Sorry, but it’s too good to spoil. Go buy it, or wait for the trade paperback.

Verdict: Thumbs up, obviously.

How many of y’all used to read the old “Classics Illustrated” comics? You remember they used to take classic novels like “Moby Dick,” The Last of the Mohicans,” “Frankenstein,” “A Tale of Two Cities,” and over a hundred others, and then they’d re-tell them in comic book format. What you got was something that was a lot shorter than the original novel, but got the general plot of the story correct and hopefully attracted a few kids into reading the classics. I doubt you could’ve used them to write a book report, but it was probably the only way you would’ve gotten kids to pay any interest in “Silas Marner” or “Wuthering Heights.”

Well, clearly, “Classics Illustrated” didn’t shorten the books enough. Or stick enough superheroes into them. Maybe they coulda produced something like this:

Comics in the Daring Dostoyevsky Demeanor!

As they say in the funny pages, go read the whole thing.

(Link from Jeff DeLuzio)

Batman #668

This is part 2 of the “Batmen of All Nations” storyline, where Batman, Robin, and a group of international crimefighters who’ve been inspired by the Dark Knight find themselves stranded on an island and being stalked by an assassin. In this issue, everyone investigates a murder, argue amongst themselves, and slowly get separated from each other. For a bunch of detectives, they seem to have no clue how to deal with serial killers.

Verdict: Thumbs up. Some quality detective work is displayed, and the mystery is still intriguing. There’s some interesting retro artwork at the beginning, but some of the rest of the artwork is a bit too dark, making it a bit hard to keep track of what’s going on. Nevertheless, good fun.

World War Hulk: Gamma Files

This is basically “The Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe” for mostly Hulk-related characters. In other words, it’s a collection of character biographies. As with most of the “Official Handbook” titles, it’s pretty high-quality material. Thumbs up, but if you’re not a Hulk or Marvel completist, you may be able to live without it.

I had a nasty realization this past week — I wasn’t currently reading any comics by Grant Morrison, who’s my favorite writer out there right now. Clearly, this dire situation must be remedied! So I ran out and grabbed the first Morrison comic I could find.

Batman #667

This issue has its roots back in the 1950s, when Batman’s writers came up with some stories about the “Batmen of All Nations,” a bunch of guys who were inspired by Batman to become crimefighters. Now, Batman and Robin have decided to attend one of the group’s periodic get-togethers. The years haven’t been entirely kind to the group — the Legionary has gotten fat and lazy, the Wingman is a self-centered prat, the Ranger has jumped onto the “dark hero” bandwagon, the Musketeer went a bit crazy, and Man-of-Bats is a bit of drinker. Others seem to be okay — the Knight and Squire are doing great, the Ranger is still fighting the fight, though he’s gotten a heavily armored costume, and the Gaucho has developed into a very well-respected hero in his native Argentina. But there’s an assassin stalking the group, and he plans on wiping them all out…

Verdict: Thumbs up. Seeing the old Batmen of All Nations again is a nice retro thrill, even as drastically as most of them have changed. Looks like a pretty good mystery/thriller shaping up, too. Hopefully, Batman will catch the assassin before too many of the other heroes die — DC’s stories always seem to be way too America-centric, and it’d be nice to see a few international characters being used in stories as something other than murder victims…

Okay, comics fans, this one’s all for you.

What was your first comic book?

I actually have a lot of trouble remembering my first one, but I think the very first one I got probably starred this guy.

That’s Super Goof, who made his first appearance back in the ’60s. Obviously, it was Disney’s Goofy. He had to eat Super Goobers to gain his amazing powers — superstrength, flight, bulletproof skin, etc. And apparently, the goobers also caused his costume appear. Either that, or it made his clothes disappear, since his costume was just some flannel long underwear.

But here’s the cool thing — as far as I can remember, the second comic book I ever owned was this one:

Yes, that’s the classic Detective Comics #408, from 1971, with the cover story of “The House that Haunted Batman” illustrated by Neal Adams. Brilliant stuff, with a villain (Hugo Strange, perhaps?) trying to drive Batman insane with a fake haunted house, including that lurid dissolving Robin bit.

Anyway, enough of my big firsts — what were your first comics?