Batman #36-37 (and #38 too)

Batman and Superman switch costumes to enter a superhero costume theme night at the fair!

Tom King is the it-boy scribe of DC and with good reason. His Mister Miracle is hands down the best superhero comic of 2017 not titled Black Hammer and his upcoming Swamp Thing Winter Special is my most anticipated book of the month (especially after how well he wrote Swamp Thing in Batman #23 “The Brave and the Mold”). His work on Batman (which just recently dropped the Rebirth logo) has been solid. Yet at times it is profoundly ok. King has written some incredible arcs (the Bane story for one), but there is also a lot of stuff that illicit a shrug of the shoulders (the over-long and over-hyped “War of Jokes and Riddles” for one was a beautiful dud overstuffed with well-drawn and well-written villains). But the book is recently hitting its stride. The Batman-Catwoman courtship arc “The Rules of Engagement” that just wrapped in #35 is some of the best work on the title to date, and really pops under lead artist Joёlle Jones’ work (I wish she did the entire book, but alas).

This is all to say that if you’re looking to jump on board Batman without catching up on nearly 40 back-issues than this is the place to start. #36 and 37 form a brilliant two-parter called “Superfriends”, which is entirely a double-date story arc with Superman and Lois Lane. It becomes the clearest expression of King’s interest in Batman as a traumatic figure surrounded by people who love him. It’s also genuinely funny and artist Clay Mann is a perfect fit with King’s penchant for nine-panel storytelling. Mann also provides clear and concise visualization of King’s use of asynchronous dialogue—a style device he uses more on Mister Miracle—that provides a number of smart visual gags with Batman and Superman and Catwoman and Lois.

The follow up (#38) is an incredible stand-alone whodunnit that promises to reverberate for issues to come. It is one of King’s supreme talents that even when the arcs are not the best (“Night of the Monster Men” for one) he’s delicately establishing characters and setting up profound transformations, as with Gotham Girl, a character that went from a forgettable plot device to a deeply tragic and interesting parallel story of recovery. "The Origin of Bruce Wayne" continues the theme of copycats throughout King's run as well as the emotional and psychological consequences of Batman's inspiration.

references:

1. Batman #36 w.Tom King a.Clay Mann Pub. Dec. 6, 2017 Read 1/5/18
2. Batman #37 w.Tom King a.Clay Mann Pub. Dec. 20, 2017 Read 1/5/18
3. Batman #38 w.Tom King a.Travis Moore Pub. Jan. 3, 2018 Read 1/5/18
4. image no.1 credit Batman #37
5. image no.2 credit Batman #38 variant cover by Tim Sale.

Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1

My first 2018 title, and I read it on the day it came out! A real treat for me since I'm normally months behind as you will no doubt discover.

DC’s acquired properties of Hanna-Barbera and Wild Storm seem to be the place for full expressions of strangeness and much more open to savage critiques of American culture and U.S. government. The Flintstones—of which I’ve only read the first trade paperback—is notable for its idiosyncratic visual style and Paul Verhoeven-esq satire. The poppy visuals and funny gags barely contain the anger at the heart of a comic book about genocide and the commodification of human existence under capitalism. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 promises to be a continuation of this DC/Hanna-Barbera brand of re-imagining old school cartoons as sophisticated adult stories—and here I mean adult in these sense of complex ideas and storytelling rather than saying fuck and showing titties (I’m looking at you Fables).

Snagglepuss isn’t as immediately arresting as The Flintstones. Mike Feehan’s art has much more generic digital feel that sacrifices character for a sort of realness (in many ways this feels like a Furry comic par excellence—and that’s not a jab!). Mark Russell, who also pens The Flintstones, is also more clearly going for a long-form story arc instead of the episodic situational comedy of his previous title. This isn’t to suggest that Snagglepuss is bad, far from it! The introduction of the time period is layered and nuanced in ways that comic-book period pieces rarely are. It goes for a feeling and mood rather than a string of contextualizing references (although those are present, but always in service of feeling). The nihilistic anti-intellectualism of American politics of the time permeates the narrative through deflated figures and a creeping violent crassness. These elements structure its most compelling sight-gag: the revelation that the dating strangers of the opening aren’t rushing to see Snagglepuss’s latest play (a spot-on parody of overwrought Tennessee Williams works that suggests an intimate familiarity with the style), but rather the execution of Ethel Rosenberg.

Lastly, I’m most intrigued by the introduction of an antagonist working with the House Un-American Activities Committee; a prudish crusader akin to Anita Bryant named Gigi Allen (although no piss drinking a la G.G. Allin) who looks like Ayn Rand.

references:

1. Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 w.Mark Russell p.Mike Feehan Pub. Jan. 3, 2018 Read 1/3/18
2. top image: Exit Stage Left: The Snagglepuss Chronicles #1 variant cover art by Evan "Doc" Shaner

Doomsday Clock #1-2

I keep coming back to a phrase my friend said regarding Doomsday Clock #1: it’s not a sequel to Watchmen, but rather a response to it. It’s not the continuation of the story but instead it is a story that is framed by the lingering effects of a seemingly untouchable icon. Most interestingly it isn’t an attempt to extend the context of the original—a near future world that is in fact a reflection of the Reagan/Thatcher present. Doomsday Clock is of our moment. It is a narrative that is more influenced by the tragedy of Wikileaks and the phenomenon of fake news than anything from Alan Moore or Dave Gibbons, at least thus far. Geoff Johns drops us deep into the mire of media exhaustion. The constant march of the present renders nothing sacred and the Great Events™ unravel in real time over the wire. It’s just yesterday’s news but the response of the truth coming out casts a pall over the day-to-day.

I’m still skeptical of reactionary attitudes bleeding through the panels. Superhero comics, even when pronounced as progressive (or should I say liberal not leftist) almost always betray a regressive, even adolescent, attitude toward the complexity of politics. This is most evident in the use of protesters, a major visual and thematic force in Doomsday Clock (just look at the cover of #1!). While nowhere near as heinous as Frank Miller’s “pond scum” remarks, the attitudes are on the same spectrum: protesters are at best well-meaning dupes, reacting to what information is delivered to them on mainstream media. The superheroes—or metahumans as we’re calling them now—must continue to do their noble work despite being decried—spit on like returning Vietnam vets—and always the protesters hinder the slow turning wheels of justice. In an interesting switcheroo the protesters are out of vengeance and vigilantes are out of justice, when in the real world the opposite is true. Not all protests are de facto righteous or even right, but the depiction of all mobilized community action as pawns of global-media manipulation is straight out of the right-wing reactionary playbook. It was Russian-Bots! However, the extent of this remains to be seen as Johns rightly presents the protests of Doomsday Clock as a direct reaction to leaking news that Ozymandias murdered millions of people. 

Doomsday Clock #2 unfurls another layer of this exploration of mediated political truth through another popular theme in Superhero comic books: supposed real-life reactions to superheroes. I guess I should say vigilantes. I’m curious to see where this goes in the remaining 10 issues, especially after Johns and artist Gary Frank (whose faces are so precise in their expressions!) situate Batman in the same vein as Moore placed his heroes. After Watchmen it became de rigueur to position superheroes in contemporary political discourses—what if they were real how would people react? This continues to fascinate in an age of “alternative facts” where every bit of information that doesn’t benefit one’s position is at best fake news and at its worse folded into Anti-Semitic globalist conspiracies of cucks and libtards. Would visual confirmation of “metahumans” even be believed?

Batman presents a unique case here that Doomsday Clock #2 picks up on. In the past year it has become increasingly fashionable to paint Batman as a traumatic figure, as a blatant fascist, as, what Rorschach calls “a monster”. Tom King explores this through the Bat-family characters who push back on Batman’s paranoid, hyper-vigilant isolationism and Sean Murphy is attacking it directly in Batman White Knight. My favorite though is the film The Lego Batman Movie, which uses the licensed characters to explore queer trauma responses and modes of healing. It remains to be seen how far these writers, including Johns, will go. Batman, after all, is a major DC property and one of the most iconic characters in the current lexicon. These explorations of his fascism and deranged attitudes are never taken to their logical conclusion, but nor is Batman ever redeemed. It’s an endless play of interesting ideas that ultimately seek to maintain Batman’s supremacy as a badass.

reference:

1. Doomsday Clock #1 w. Geoff Johns p. Gary Frank Pub. Nov. 22, 2017 Read 1/1/18
2. Doomsday Clock #2 w. Geoff Johns p. Gary Frank Pub. Dec. 27, 2017 Read 1/2/18
3. image credit: Doomsday Clock #2