Archive | December, 2011

Wonder Woman 1-4

30 Dec

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Wonder Woman while Drew is hosting the discussion of The Flash.

Patrick: The ladyfriend and I tried something new this evening.  I hooked my computer up to the TV and we read Wonder Woman 1-4 together.  She doesn’t read comics – I think the only thing she’s ever read was Batman: Year One, and if I recall correctly, I read it to her.  She’s not in to the whole genre, but she is a woman, and that’s a perspective that I think it always going to be important regarding whatever Wonder Woman series DC is running.  My point is, I got a little female insight into this character, expect to see it scattered throughout this write-up.

But let me start by saying that I really like Wonder Woman.  I never knew her that well before reading these monthlies, and most of what I did know was shaped by the gender disparity that plagued this character’s creation and most of her existence.  Remember when they tried to do a WW television show, but the pilot couldn’t get picked up?  The Deadman pilot has a better shot, and no one even knows who that is.  The point is Wonder Woman has a rough media history and in a lot of ways still only exists to be a girl version of Superman.

There were other reasons I didn’t get into the character before this – she’s an Amazon.  Like a real life Amazon.  I now realize this falls in the “duh” category, but when everyone else is aliens and speedsters and batmen, the concept of a super hero being an actual mythological creature was off-putting to me.  One of the ways this series in particular helps me get over this hurdle is by throwing me into it full force.  The first issue opens with Apollo entertaining some slutty guests at his penthouse suite in Singapore.  He uses them as Oracles to search for his missing father, Zeus, but they can only speak cryptically about the woman that bears his seed.  This woman – a Virginian redneck named Zola – is under attack by Centaurs sent by Hera.  With the help of Hermes and Wonder Woman, Zola is able to escape her attackers to Paradise Island.

Let’s throw on the breaks there for a second.  If you had any reservations about dealing with traditional elements and characters from Greek mythology, the first issue makes you confront that directly.  No hints, no implications – the gods are real, they still exist in 2011 and they still get into the same kinds of trouble the did in the good ol’ days.  And that’s the kind of story this is.  It’s a myth.  Most superhero stories borrow the forms, but this takes what was essentially religion, and makes it literally true in this fiction.  It’s like Thor – I remember being thrown way off when someone told me that he’s actually Thor.  Like the Norse god Thor.  Thor Thor.  But those mythological stories, while presented now as Important Stories, were probably just the comics of their day.  We place a lot of importance on Zeus and Hera and the gang because their slapped with that “god” title, but maybe if we called them Kryptonians or Mutants or whatever, we could recognize those myths for what they were probably intended to be – fun, pulpy stories about super creatures doing crazy shit.

So it was in this spirit that I started the second issue.  I stopped thinking of the mythological characters as being repurposed, and just accepted their presence.  Good thing too, because Hera and her daughter Strife start out the issue on Mount Olympus talking about Zeus’ transgressions.  Back on Paradise Island (which… is this the same as Themyscira? This series didn’t name the place beyond “Paradise”), Wonder Woman is warmly welcomed back by her mother, Queen Hippolyta, and not so warmly welcomed back by the rest of her Amazon sisters.  In addition to leaving them some time ago to live among the mortals, she now comes dragging this white trash chick and (gasp!) a man.  Or god-man-bird-thing, however we best describe Hermes.  There’s a nice scene between Zola and Hermes where he lays down the standard Silver Age (possibly Golden Age too, now that I think of it) Wonder Woman origin story: her mother made her out of clay, prayed for a miracle, and got it.  But the fun and festivities of Diana’s return are cut short when the Amazons appear to be under attack.  Wonder Woman is quick to identify that it is just confusion brought on by Strife, but not before the Amazons slay a lot of their own kind.  Strife reveals herself and indicates that she’s there to talk to her sister – Diana.

SCREEEETCH!!!!  That’s right, the perfect fatherless Amazon is actually just another one of Zeus’ bastard offspring.  This is the kind of character alteration the New 52 was designed for, and it better integrates Wonder Woman into the word of the Gods of Olympus.  Now, not only do I feel better about seeing Hera and Apollo and Hermes on the page, their presence illuminates Diana’s character and the whole world is richer for it.  I know there was some nerd backlash on this one, but come on nerds, sometimes change is good.—Issue three sees the Amazon’s burying their own and blaming Diana while Hippolyta recounts her romance with Zeus to her daughter.  Her sense of home and identity (they are closely bound) shaken, Diana decides to leave the Island and commit herself to protecting Zola and her unborn baby.  Really light on plot, but the pages give way to some really excellent character work.   Diana had already left her home, but she was still using her non-superhero name and had still been taking marching orders from her mother.  The games and festivals she participates in the second issue are all part of the culture she reluctantly returns to when she comes back to the Island.  Scorned by her people and her family, Diana embraces her Wonder Woman monicker and does the Amazon version of a microphone drop – lighting a series of funeral pyres from a touch using her mighty breath.  It’s a pretty cool moment and her first rejection of family.

Issue four is where things really pick up.  I think if we had reviewed 1-3, I would be more middling on this title, but the fourth issue really reinforces the idea that we’re reading a kickass series.  Apollo appears in Darfur, and as the place is war-torn, he easily locates his brother Ares.  Apollo asks for his brother’s participate when he makes a move for the throne, and Ares obliges.  Back in London, Wonder Woman is embracing her new-found normalness by going out to a bar and rocking out to some live music.  Hermes is there (rocking a hilarious disguise of a knit cap and what look like rayban sunglasses) along with Zola and Strife.  Strife makes some comments about how they are sisters now and, as family they need to stick together.  She even suggests turning over Zeus’ “pound of flesh” by simply taking the baby from Zola now.  But for the second time in as many issues, Wonder Woman rejects her family in favor of her friends and stands up for Zola.  Back at her flat, Wonder Woman chats with Zola about her life – her family.  Zola’s father has been in and out of jail and she and her mother were always on the outs.  Until her mother died.  It’s a simple story.  Not even a story really, just Zola offering bits of information in a shockingly undramatized fashion, like a friend mentioning they weren’t close to their mother any more.  Wonder Woman decides that, regardless of how she feels about the rest of the Amazons, she should make peace with her mother.  Using Hermes’ staff to teleport back to Paradise island, she discovers that her mother has been turned to clay by Hera to punish her for her affair with Zeus.

Now, I know that doesn’t necessarily mean the character is dead, but HOLY SHIT.  Hippolyta is a pretty big wheel in DC sidecar – I did not expect to see her eat in in the 4th issue.

There is some interesting violence happening just on the edges of this series.  Near the end of the third issue, two crabs are fighting, and one removes the other’s claw.  In issue four, a child soldier murders a man in Darfur.  It is as though the nature of the gods is affecting all creatures around them, and the real world echoes the conflict of the heavens.  It’s cool and mysterious and I want more of it.

There’s also some really great little touches in the writing that help individual issues cohere so well.  Issue two opens with Hera calling herself “Queen” and Strife lumping all the various baggage that word implies.  When she is called “Mother” moments later, Hera acknowledges the weight of that word.  Later, Hippolyta notes that “fear” is the word to describe how she feels, and at the end Diana accuses Strife of misusing the word “peace.”  I spotted similar unifying language themes in the other issues, but for the life of me I can’t remember them.  They’re all very clever and I tip my hat to Brian Azzarello for managing to squeeze them in amid the nicely paced story and character work.

The art in Wonder Woman is also fantastic.  All of my current favorites embrace this slightly cartoonier style and Cliff Chiang’s work on WW is no exception.  The characters are all elegantly designed and simply drawn.  Unlike Batman, I don’t ever have a hard time distinguishing one character from the next, even when everyone in the scene is a similarly dress Amazon warrior.  My girlfriend pointed out that a lot of the coloring in this title is softer – almost the jewel versions of those colors.  Pages frequently appear mostly pink, orange or teal.  She suspects it is all in an effort to feminize the action of particularly non-feminine women.  I’m not so sure that I agree, but if you compare the color palette to anything else we’re reading, you’ll definitely see a difference.

I feel like I’ve been writing for ever and haven’t touched on a lot of the things I liked about this one, but in the name of brevity(ish), I’m passing it over to you.  How do you feel about having Greek mythology in your comic books?

Drew: Maybe this is dumb to say, but the thing I’m liking most about the supporting cast being made up of greek gods is that I already have a passing familiarity with their abilities and motivations.  In the same way I kind of know that Wonder Woman is an Amazon who carries a lasso of truth, I know that Hera is constantly on a rampage about Zeus’s most recent extramarital conquest.  It’s an effective way to populate a story without devoting a time to the whos and whats.  This frees up time for the whys and hows, and some good character moments, to boot.  Where other titles may not even get around to properly introducing the supporting cast (Green Lantern Corps, I’m looking at you), Azzarello is able to jump right to nailing his characters’ voices.

I had some preconceptions coming to this title, mostly surrounding how she’s been treated in the past — and the present, for that matter.  My girlfriend thought I was crazy for calling Jim Lee’s ogling depiction of Wonder Woman, telling me that “that’s just how women are depicted in comics.”  While I admit that comics don’t have a great history of treating their female characters like, you know, people, I think the only way to change that is by holding writers and artists to a higher standard.  My soapbox aside, her point was that everybody draws Wonder Woman that way, at which point I was happy to point her to Cliff Chiang’s work on this title.  Sure, there’s occasional implied nudity, and the sexualities of some of the characters do play a role in the plot, but it never feels like anyone’s body is there for me to drool over.  In fact, Hera seems to use her nudity as a bludgeon to demonstrate how confident and powerful she is, an attitude that is effectively foreshadowed in Zola and Diana’s first meeting.

The acting here is also stellar.  Chiang’s faces and gestures convey both the subtle feelings of the quiet conversations and politicking going on, as well as the huge, raw emotions of the more dramatic scenes.  I’m also digging the little details he’s cramming into the frames.  Did you catch Strife hitting on the bartender in that club scene before she butts in on Zola and Hermes’s conversation?  It’s completely auxiliary to the plot, but it’s a fun detail that absolutely fits with her character.

But back to female empowerment.  The thing I’m liking most is the way femininity is permeating every aspect of this title.  There’s an emphasis here on manipulation with a subtlety I don’t think anyone would ever try to pull off in a title with a male lead (they’ve got to make room for all the punching), but what I’m most impressed by is the way the story is paced femininely.  Bear with me, here.

I think the easiest way to illustrate what I mean is to draw our attention to the other end of the spectrum with the macho-est title we’ve been reading: Aquaman.  In that title, emotional resonance is skipped in favor of speeding towards a climax that is over too soon (plus, he runs around with a big fucking phallic symbol).  We’ve already discussed how this is bad, but I’d like to posit that it’s also an inherently masculine way of pacing a story.  Wonder Woman, on the other hand, has only hinted at the “main event,” devoting much more of its time to emotional connections. This slow burn is much more feminine, and works thematically to turn Wonder Woman’s gender into an asset rather than just an excuse to put her in a skimpy outfit.

I mentioned in the comments for our write-up of Batgirl 4 that Wonder Woman (as of issue #3) was failing the “reverse Bechdel” test (suggesting that men are under-represented in the title).  By the close of issue #4, this is no longer the case, which is a testament to how well this past issue grew the world that this story is inhabiting.  Apollo is clearly going to be a big player in the issues to come, but he has yet to interact with Diana or the rest of the cast.  The fact that his journey hasn’t led him directly to Wonder Woman’s flat has me excited to see how his journey will play out.

I hate to make predictions about where I think plots are headed — they tend to always be pretty embarrassingly off the mark — but I can’t help but thinking that the child Zola is carrying is Zeus.  I know that doesn’t exactly make sense, but, you know, Jesus.  Anyway, I think it explains Zeus’s mysterious absence, and may work to explain the oracles’ prophecy in the first issue.

Anyway, this title is hitting all of the marks; it’s got good writing, art, and a compelling hero at the center of it all.  Diana has established herself as a strong character and a total badass, all without having to whip out any tridents.  Geoff Johns should take note.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Action Comics, Aquaman, Animal Man, Batgirl, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Swamp Thing

Top 10 of 2011

30 Dec

I didn’t experience everything in 2011.  There were books I didn’t read, movies I didn’t see, games I didn’t play, cultural phenomenon I didn’t participate in.  This must be true of all listmakers, but few acknowledge it.  One of my strengths is frequently admitting my faults.  One of my faults is frequently relying on that admission to excuse poor craftsmanship.  One of your faults is you’re too judgmental.  See, I can do this all day.

The point is, this Top 10 List differs from the others out there this year in that it is exclusively personal.  Not one movie or album made it on here, and that shouldn’t serve as an indication of the quality of either of these mediums for the year.  These are the pop-culture items that had an impact on me and I think they’re worth sharing.

10. The Popular Rise of Breaking Bad

I’ve been a strong supporter of Breaking Bad since I discovered it.  Even I was a little late to the party, catching up on iTunes (what?  who catches up with TV shows on iTunes?) the summer after the second season aired.  There was a gradual increase of popularity of the show throughout the third year, but I still largely felt like half of every conversation I had about Breaking Bad was “Oh, I haven’t seen that one – how is it?”  And then BB disappeared for over a year.  I guess assholes like me went into high gear and actually convinced their friends, co-workers and drug-dealers to watch Breaking Bad, because when the show’s fourth season stomped onto the screen it felt like the whole world was watching with me.  This year was a slow barn burner and it was cool to read the digital gasps of an increasingly large audience.  I did weekly recaps of the show and the diversity of traffic to this feature was so cool.  And the show itself provided so much awesome shit to talk about.  Great performances, stellar writing, and a million brand new friends to talk about it with.

9. Batman: Arkham City as a Direct Extension of Arkham Asylum

When I started playing this game, I had a sinking feeling in my heart very early on.  I realized that I wasn’t really playing anything new; I was getting more Arkham Asylum.  But then I thought “Wait, I loved Arkham Asylum.”  And the game quickly dispelled me of the notion that I was treading old territory by letting me take to the skies of the beautifully realized prison/city.  Everything I liked about the first was brought back in sequel and they added a whole host of engaging side missions that felt 100% Bats.  Look, I like pretending to be Batman, this is just cheaper than renting the costume (it’s hard to get the deposit back when you get blood on the cowl).

8. Louie: “Eddie”

Loius CK has been a comedy workhorse for decades and he’s finally hit on something that amplifies his voice in such a way as to make critics swoon.  Always profane and frequently insightful, his FX series, Louie, stands as a damn clear expression of one man’s take on life as a working comedian.  In Eddie, Doug Stanhope guest stars as a frustrated comedian resolved to be at the end of his rope.  Eddie and Louie hang out in NYC, drinking, driving around and doing stand up sets and at the end Eddie says he’s going to kill himself.  The show is brave enough to not give Louie the hero’s role, neither validating his response to Eddie’s crisis nor demonizing it.  It’s an unsettling half hour of TV and while there a lot of amazing episodes in the second season, this one most accurately displays why Louie is so unique.

7. Game of Thrones’ faithfulness to its source material

It’s always a gamble with a new HBO show.  Are you tuning into the new True Blood or the new Sopranos?  I assumed Game of Thrones was going to be trashy but fun bullshit.  I was wrong.  The show is great and looks absolutely stunning.  But the best part of this show, for me, was how close the series stuck to the novel.  I had a friend who had not seen the show at all, but was working her way through the first book.  There was NO POINT in our conversations about Game of Thrones in which we misunderstood eachother.  So, that’s the answer to the question of how do you adapt a novel successfully – film a 10 hour movie.

6. The Last Resort

I feel a little bad about including this one because it’s not very likely that anyone will ever be able to see it unless you happen to catch Jeff Hiller and Amy Heidt performing it at UCB in New York or LA.  But make my list it does because this is the single funniest sketch comedy show I’ve ever seen.  It’s a two man show that takes place at a couples retreat built on an ancient Indian burial ground.  Naturally, the individual sketches involve a couple (or the golddigging 2/3s of a thrupple) being brutally murdered.  For bumpers between the sketches, they mixed 90′s smooth R&B vocal tracks with classic horror movie scores – think Backstreet Boys “I Want It That Way” with the Halloween music.

5. Community: “Advanced Dungeons and Dragons”

Community never shied away from depicting imagined scenarios on TV.  Frequently, those scenarios were presented as though they were actually happening, like Abed’s Uncontrollable Christmas from earlier that season.  So, when it became clear that they were going to do a Dungeons and Dragons episode, I was eager to see how they’d pull it off.  Portrayals of D&D on TV are never flattering, even when done lovingly – such as Futurama’s Bender’s Game.  Unlike Bender’s Game, this is actually successful.  Community doesn’t cut away to show the audience what’s happening to the character’s characters, rather we’re forced to watch Abed, Troy, Annie, Jeff, Pierce, Britta, Shirley and Fat Neil sit around the study room table and work out their problems with dice and paper.  It’s a totally courageous choice and it pays off in spades as they craft a story that actually works within the framework of playing the game.  Look around, you’ll never find a kinder depiction of D&D on TV – you’ll also be hard pressed to find a more moving and hilarious half hour too.

4. Gail Simone’s Batgirl

Yes, yes: nerd.  God, I really have gone far down this nerd rabbit hole on this one haven’t I?  Video games, D&D and now comics.  No, not even a collection, but MONTHLY ISSUES.  DC’s New 52 marketing ploy totally worked on me and I started snatching up #1s of a bunch of new series.  Many are forgettable and a few are downright no good.  There was a line-wide mandate to revamp their heroes, for Batgirl, it meant getting Barbara Gordon out of the wheel chair.  Now, this could well have been retconned magically, but instead much of this series focuses on Babs’ survivor’s guilt.  Writer Gail Simone has nailed a voice for Batgirl that is at once humorous and personal, and it helps to create one of the great characters of the relaunch.  It’s an easy entry point and some of the best storytelling I took in this year.

3. John Hodgman’s That Is All

This year John Hodgman finished his trilogy of false-trivia almanacs.  His first book, Areas of My Expertise, was a revelation.  Hodgman invented history, present and the future with such confidence that experiencing the book is often dizzying.  The sequel, More Information Than You Require built on the same premise while incorporating Hodgman’s newfound fame.  His 2011 release, That Is All, applies the same magic formula to Ragnarok, the Norse myth about the end of the world.  The previous books were very funny, but this volume builds so successfully on the material before it that I felt as though he and I had completed a surreal journey together.  I was also lucky enough to see Hodgman on his book tour which featured people like Rich Sommer, Aimee Mann, Paul F. Tompkins and others celebrities my mom doesn’t recognize.

2. Parks and Recreation: Fancy Party

TV weddings are the worst.  There’s a lot of hype, they’re intended to be “events” and there’s always some wacky shit that has to happen.  Parks and Recreation deployed a secret wedding in the form of Season 2′s Fancy Party.  And it seems like there are a few minutes where Parks is going to go the traditional TV route and make Leslie object to the wedding, just to adhere to convention.  But, without confrontation, she backs down and we just Andy and April get married.  Without contrivance or ulterior motive, the audience is allowed to bask in the characters’ happiness.  I love Andy and April, they are one of the least traditional (straight) couples on TV and I love watching these kids find their way.  Doesn’t matter how much Parks tries to push Leslie/Ben on me, April and Andy are the couple for me.

1. Portal 2: Co-op Play

The single player campaign of Portal 2 is enough to make it on to this list.  But the real, transcendent experience is playing the co-op with a friend.  Portal’s gameplay revolves around puzzles that need to be solved with only a handful of consistent physical abilities and the level design is so spartan that nothing appears in vain.  And it is this complex simplicity that facilitates the most engaging multiplayer I’ve ever had the pleasure of playing.  Plus, the robots you control get a series of gestures to celebrate a job well done – one of those gestures is hugging.  Hugging.  I don’t believe I need to expand on the immeasurable joy of making robots hug.

So that’s it.  Say goodbye to 2011.  You have to, the year isn’t sentimental enough to acknowledge any of us on its way out.  We try every NYE to get some kind of reaction out of the year, but no matter how much noise we make, it always slips away.  Maybe this time, when the clock strikes midnight, we can all just give 2011 a knowing smile and cordially thank it for spending so much of its precious time with us.

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Okay, how was that for you?

27 Dec

Several months ago, I wrote about the shows I was excited about for the 2011-2012 season.  How did that turn out?

Not good.  Not fucking good.  Bad, even.  I was way off the mark and apparently hadn’t heard of American Horror Story.  I was hopeful for so many things, and basically none of them came to pass.  So let’s take a look back at my expectations and use the gift of hindsight to reveal my boundless idiocy.

Offender: Terra Nova

Why I Was Hopeful: “Time Travel.  Survival.  Dinosaurs.  Honestly, the show itself could be terrible and I’d still watch it.”

I Was an Idiot: Well, I was a liar at the very least.  The show was terrible and I stopped watching it despite all the effort I put into making a Fantasy Terra Nova game to spice things up.  I’m always on the lookout for the new LOST – recently, I’m even content looking for the next FlashForward.  Just something that wants to have fun crafting a serialized science fiction universe.  Terra Nova didn’t want to have fun doing anything.  Luckily, the finale that aired a few weeks ago marked the end of the season, and not the beginning of a brief hiatus.  The jury is still out on whether this one is coming back next year – on the one hand, the show was impossibly expensive to film, but on the other, it did incredibly well overseas.  Lousy overseas markets: always encouraging shit like Terra Nova and the Transformers movies…

Offender: Person of Interest

Why I Was Hopeful: “Ben Linus was was one of the first components of Lost that made me think I was watching, not just a fun show, but a great show.  Michael Emerson gets to play a crazy millionaire with access to some kind of predictive crime-prevention machine.  Only problem?  He needs a righteous agent of justice to stop these violent crimes.  Enter: Jesus Fucking Christ.”

I Was an Idiot: This show quickly established itself as the single most-boring case-of-the-week spy show.  I might have been compelled to do some scathing write-ups of this program, but honestly, I don’t think I made it through a single episode without falling asleep.  Person of Interest had no personality and no sense of humor or excitement and was repeating itself in the second episode.  It’s like the anti-Burn Notice.

Offender: Once Upon A Time

Why I Was Hopeful: “Edward Kitsis and Adam Horowitz wrote on much of Lost‘s run and Once Upon A Time is their baby.  [...] [T]his show has a nearly insane premise with the suggestion of a deep, interesting mythology.  Mix in writers like Eddie and Adam and an engaging world is basically guaranteed.”

I Was an Idiot: Maybe I chose to ignore the prominently displayed child in the middle of that production still.  Unlike the previous two shows, this one does have some redeeming value, but that FUCKING KID smothers those positive qualities.  I am frequently charmed by Robert Carlyle’s performance as Mr. Gold/Rumplestiltskin and it’s surprisingly fun to play the “which fairy tale character is that guy supposed to be?” game.  But the whole thing is anchored by a grating little child actor.  DO LET’S NOT BLAME THE CHILD!  He doesn’t know any better – why should he?  Nothing is going to make the premise of your goofy fantasy show seem even goofier than making the only person who believes the premise a 12 year old with a psychotic obsession with a fairy tale book.

Offender: Hell On Wheels Patrick Ehlers

Why I Was Hopeful: “[A] sweeping historical drama on AMC is bound to be at least well-filmed and/or meticulously well-plotted and/or well acted.  And/or.”

I Am an Idiot: Frankly, after the Walking Dead, I couldn’t much be bothered to watch this show.  Oops.  Also, I think Boardwalk Empire was on at the same time and that show was incredible this year.  If something scared you away from away from it in the first season, I suggest you find a way to watch it all.  Also, Game of Thrones.  HBO is knocking it out of the park, that’s what I’m saying.

The Offender: Awake NBC Universal

Why I Was Hopeful: “It looks to be either a psychological drama about dealing with loss (while solving murders) or a science fiction drama about traversing parallel universes (while solving murders).  Even if it just ends up being a procedural with a gimmick, it appears to be one hell of a gimmick.”

I Was an Idiot: I still think this is one of the more inventive and promising new shows of this season… and it hasn’t even aired yet.  There hasn’t been any word yet on when they’re actually going to deploy this show, so it’s possible we will never see this thing.  As I’ve asserted before, let’s watch this trailer and think about the possibilities.

Offender: Pan Am (the television series, for the Pan Am disambiguation page, click here)

Why I Was Hopeful: “I’ve been properly conditioned to love bright, colorful depictions of the 1960s – thank you very much Mad Men.”

I Was an Idiot: One of the big problems with Pan Am is that it can’t decide if it wants to be fluffy fun with a strong historical perspective or a serious statement about gender roles.  Or a show about a globe trotting lady-spy.  It pretty much fails to achieve any of this, but it occasionally eeks out some charm.  It’s hard to determine whether that charm comes exclusively from the cute women in classy flight attendant uniforms.  Oh and rumors abound about its cancellation, so, right, that’s fun.

 

Batman 4

23 Dec

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Batman while Drew is hosting the discussion of Justice League.

Patrick: I was having a conversation with my friend Taylor the other day.  He had been watching someone play Batman: Arkham City and he was excited by how much detective work the player has to do.  I think the modern popular perception of Batman has a tendency to forget the detective aspects of Batman’s character.  Sure, we all know that the character was born out of Detective Comics and bears the title “World’s Greatest Detective,” but the more marketable characteristics of the Batman mythos tend to overshadow this.  Check out Nolan’s Batman – he’s badass, driven to obsession by revenge, an instrument of justice that inadvertently creates super villains.  It’s a compelling way to characterize a super hero but it lacks this single element so fundamental to Batman’s being.

I once read a book that said that every character on television is a detective.  Which is kind of an assholeish way of stating that there’s no more obvious motivator for a character that solving a mystery.  You don’t need to tell me why the cardboard cut-outs on NCIS want to discover the identity of a killer.  Protagonists want to solve mysteries – it’s a foregone conclusion.  Oh sure, you explore what motivates them to select this mystery of the millions of others life offers, but very little fiction deals in why someone might be driven to solve mysteries at all.  Batman 4 does just that.

As just about everything in Bruce’s life, his passion for detective work can be traced back to his parents’ murder.  He grew up hearing the nursery rhyme about the Court of Owls, and as such, he refused to believe that a random act of violence killed his parents.  Young Bruce was convinced a great conspiracy, enacted by the Court of Owls, was to blame so he spent months investigating the most powerful people in Gotham.  Every time he encountered anything that could generously be considered a clue, he followed it.  There had to be some meaning behind his loss.  So when he discovers a hidden room in a building that housed a social club that used owls on its emblem, Bruce expects to blow the lid off the Court of Owls conspiracy.  But all he finds there?The whole of this flashback sequence is done up in these similarly sized and shaped panels, and the color palette is minimal.  The images are scratched and old, brushstrokes are thick and crude.  The whole thing does a really admirable job of lending some gravity to what is essentially an origin story.  But rather than explaining the origin of super powers, we’re exploring Bruce’s skepticism.

The opening of the issue finds Batman enduring the explosion at Talon’s hideout.  His voice over claims that he’s fine – a tripwire explosion like that is really meant to scare, and the Bat doesn’t scare easily.  The scare, which Bats claims wasn’t working on him, is based on the idea that your enemy knows the land better than you do.  And it’s that fear that’s at the center of this series: Bruce knows and loves Gotham City and is afraid that there’s a force that knows the city better than he.  Dick says Gotham is over 400 years old, so there could be dark corners untouched by the Wayne dynasty.  I really like this as the thematic glue that holds this series together.

It’s nice that we get to see Dick in this issue – even if he’s just around to be Bruce’s audience for the flashback.  He’s been making the rounds, huh?  Between this and his cameo in Batgirl, he’s in almost as many series as Batman.  Okay, that’s an exaggeration, but only because there are like 5 series with “Batman” in the title.

I continue to love this series.  The situation Batman finds himself in at the end of the issue seems maybe a little goofy to me, but I trust Snyder to make it work next month.  Oh, and is it just me or does Capullo draw everyone with enormous chins?  Bruce looks like Jay Leno in a few of these panels.

Drew: Whew, is that flashback sequence ballsy.  It’s one thing to insert the Court of Owls into the character histories of Bruce’s long-dead ancestors; it’s quite another to assert that it played an important part of Bruce’s own life.  I was initially skeptical that Bruce would be so convinced that his parents’ murder couldn’t have been just a random act of violence — frankly, I think the acceptance that it was is of vital importance to Batman’s psyche — but this sequence plays perfectly into the Bruce we know.  Moreover, young Bruce’s investigation suggests that there was no big conspiracy surrounding his parents’ slaying, convincing him that the world is a brutal place, creating Batman as we know him.  In fact, that this lesson was so hard won seems to be the very reason he’s unwilling to entertain the notion that it isn’t true.

As the evidence continues to suggest that there may have been a conspiracy to kill his parents after all, Bruce becomes withdrawn, shrugging off Dick, and avoiding a rendezvous with Commissioner Gordon.  Bruce says he built his detective skills on the lesson to “never let your emotions guide you on a case,” but this investigation has shaken the very foundations of that lesson.  Could the young Bruce have been played by the Court of Owls?  The panel just below the one you cited, featuring an owl inches away from snatching a bat out of the air suggests that he may have been.  That he may have been manipulated during such a formative moment is powerful, both for Bruce and the reader.

It helps that the art in that sequence is fantastic.  You mention the muted colors and the scratch effects, but those combined with the very subtle detail of rounding the panel corners make this sequence feel not just like a series of old photographs, but of an actual scrapbook.  As the sequence goes on, the “photos” partially obscure a map of Gotham, and Bruce’s notes from his investigation.  Intriguingly, they also partially obscure that image of the owl and the bat, suggesting that Bruce may have thought then (or is starting to think now) that the attic door closing behind him was not an accident, but an assassination attempt.  If that sounds like an impressive amount of subtext for a comic book, it’s because it is; I’ve never before had doubts as to the subjective meaning of art in a comic book in this way, so bravo to Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo for expanding what I know comics to be capable of.

Honestly, though, this flashback is quite a bombshell.  Bruce seemed to be well on the way to psychopathy before he was locked in the closet — he killed an owl and smashed its eggs as an act of vengeance — so the suggestion that that was the correct line of thinking is actually pretty scary.  Villains that “promise to change everything” are a dime a dozen in the comic book world, and they invariably never deliver on that promise, but Snyder has found a way to challenge Batman’s very moral fabric, a threat that I find much more compelling than any hulking bruiser.  In the end, I’m not sure much will change (and I’m not sure I want it to), but this promises to be an exciting emotional journey.

I don’t really have any complaints about Capullo’s chins (I did grow up on Batman: The Animated Series, after all), though I will say that the slightly cartoony style he’s using doesn’t make for easy distinctions of characters.  If it weren’t for Bruce’s stubble, I’d be hard pressed to tell the difference between him and Dick during their conversation (reminding me of the panel in the first issue that featured Bruce, Dick, Tim, and Damian all in tuxes, looking pretty much like different sized versions of the same character).  It’s not exactly bothering me, since I understand that it’s kind of inherent with a cartoony style (which I’m loving), and since Capullo seems happy to oblige with distinguishing details (like stubble) when necessary, but it is kind of a funny quirk of this title.

You’re right, the idea of a secret labyrinth beneath the sewers of Gotham is a little silly (that’s a pen and paper style maze, not a byzantine series of tunnels, mind you), but at this point, I trust this creative team to deliver.  I’m very much looking forward to next months issue.  Each one seems to be better than the last, which is saying a lot for a title that started as strongly as this one has.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Action Comics, Aquaman, Animal Man, Batgirl, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Swamp Thing


Walking Dead – Minisodes – Torn Apart

18 Dec

We need a better word for this.  Minisode?  Webisode?  Mobisode?  God, they’re all terrible.  I want to see real suggestions in the comments.  Then we’ll start a letter-writing campaign.

In theory, extra content on the internet is a great idea.  You kids love surfing the webternet for video content – right?  There’s a long history of television shows putting up middling to crummy content on-line in the form of web-exclusive shorts that tie in to the main show.  For obvious reasons, they don’t direct too many resources to these little projects.  Damen Lindelof used to say that they wanted their extra content to be as good as possible, just so long as it never took anything away from “the mother ship.”  LOST is actually an example of a show succeeding in producing web exclusive shorts – their “Missing Pieces” featured main cast members, were directed by series directors and were generally interesting (if fairly insubstantial).  Rescue Me also did a series of minisodes (their terminology), which aired on TV first and then were made available on the internet the next day.  These too were pretty good, and frequently had interesting things to say about the characters.

But then there are the rest.  Someone correct me if I’m wrong, but I can’t think of a single other example of a show producing minisodes that anyone gave a shit about.  That doesn’t stop networks and studios from trying, however.  Walking Dead is a fine candidate for this treatment.  Watching the show proper, you always get the sense that there are about a million interesting stories they’re not telling us so we can focus in on the Grimes family drama.  Up on AMC’s website, you can view the 6-part minisode series, Torn Apart.  Also, don’t follow that link unless you’re current on the episodes – there’s a spoiler in the graphic on the main page.  Classy, AMC, real classy.  Alternately, I’m embedding them all here.

Part 1 – A New Day

Presented by Pizza Hut.  We start with a flashback to earlier that morning.  Hannah, a mother of two, explains to her son that everything dies over a still shot of an empty fish bowl.  We’re lead to believe this statement doesn’t horrify the child as we jump back to the present.  Hannah awakes, alone, in her crashed car.  She looks around for the kids, but they have long since fled the scene of the accident.  She encounters some zombies and runs back to her house, where she is greeted by her ex-husband with a shotgun.  There’s actually some striking imagery in this one, including a busted up red bike that you might recognize from the pilot episode.

Part 2 – Family Matters

Presented by Pizza Hut.  It’s a rare condition, this day an age, to read any good news on the newspaper page.  Love and tradition of the grand design, some people say is even harder to find.  Well, there must be some magic clue inside these gentle walls ’cause all I see is a tower of dreams: real love bursting outta every seam.  As the days go by, it’s the bigger love, a family.

This minisode is shit.  Just terrible.  Hannah’s ex-husband Andrew is played by an absolute garbage actor.  And the only thing that happens in this short is Andrew hinting at things that are going to happen (or have already happened) in future minisodes.  I honestly think the whole series would be better skipping this entry.  Watch the Family Matters theme song again and smile.

Part 3 – Domestic Violence

Presented by Pizza Hut.  In the first minute or so, we’re flashed back to Andrew’s wife (or girlfriend or something) trying to give mouth-to-mouth resuscitation to a zombie.  Oops, that’ll get your ass zombie-fied.  Back at the house, but still in flashback, Andrew washes his bloody hands and listens to the emergency broadcast on the radio.  Suddenly, the power goes out.  The hands, the radio, the loss of power were all explicitly announced by Andrew in Part 2.  AREN’T YOU GLAD YOU DIDN’T WATCH THAT ONE?  Then, to jam some fresh incident into this short, his newly zombied ladyfriend staggers into the house.  Without taking the time to properly assess the situation, but probably making the right choice anyway, he blasts her ass with a shotgun and rolls her up in a carpet.  If you find yourself saying “Hey, where’d he get that shot gun?” then you’d do best to continue on to the next minisode.

Part 4 – Neighborly Advice

Presented by Pizza Hut.  Because linear storytelling is for fucking pussies, we jump further back in time to watch Andrew have a talk with Mr. Palmer, the mildly racist next door neighbor.  Again, Andrew told Hannah about this interaction in part 2, even mentioning that Palmer thinks terrorists are behind all this zombie business.  So nice, they wrote it twice.  The two men share a scene wherein Mr. Palmer shares way, way too much about his life.  It’s his birthday today: the big 5-0.  What’s that?  You didn’t ask?  It isn’t relevant?  Hmm, good point.  You’ll be happy to know that before he bows out, Palmer hands over his prized shotgun (OH THAT’S WHERE ANDREW GOT THE SHOTGUN) and asks his neighbor to shoot him in the face.  Request granted.

Part 5 – Step-Mother

Presented by Pizza Hut.  Now we’re caught up to the present.  Andrew and Hannah argue about what to do next.  Meanwhile the kids hang out in the dining room, dangerously close to their step-mother (I guess she was Andrew’s wife after all) rolled up in a rug.  Evidently, Andrew thought he could just clean that up later.  Even if the dead weren’t getting up and attacking people, you’d think he would want that rotting carcass out of the house.  Further proving his worthlessness, Andrew’s previous attempt to fell the zombie – with a shotgun, mind you – was unsuccessful.  Zombie Step Mom terrorizes the kids for a minute or two, and that’s actually pretty cool.  Knowing all of these characters are probably doomed lends the scene some sense of actual consequence.  The kids could die right here and now.  They don’t.  But they could have.  Mom enters the room with a fire axe and an action movie quip and saves the day.

Part 6 – Everything Dies

Presented… oh, Pizza Hut’s name isn’t on this one.  Okay…  So, the newly assembled family decides to make a break for it.  They can use Palmer’s pick-up truck.  Andrew knows where the keys are!  But he is an idiot, so he doesn’t take his gun with him when he saunters back over to Palmer’s house for the keys.  Oh right, Palmer’s zombie kids are waiting there for delicious Andrew meat.  DEAD.  Back in the house, mom’s doing the math in her head and realizes she and the kids are on their own.  Hannah readies a handgun (which, wait a minute, where’d that gun come from) and drags her kids out into the street.  In an attempt to hijack an abandoned vehicle, Hannah is bit.  With zombies closing in around them, Mom hands off the gun to her children and tells them to run.  Rather than go down fighting, Hannah just let’s the swarm dig out her internal organs with their bare hands, effectively splitting her in half.  TIME LAPSE AND MINDFUCK – she is half-zombie Rick encounters in the pilot!  Ta-da!  Oh and you don’t get to learn the fate of the kids.  Who cares?  They’re kids.

That was it.  The only thing that makes this even a little neat is that it ties back to the actual series in the form of that really striking zombie from the first episode.  That and all the sweet, sweet early 90s sitcom theme music.  Let’s all get some Pizza Hut and enjoy these classics.

I just enjoyed what?

18 Dec

Yes, I like to be contrarian.  I don’t usually sculpt my tastes to fit that purpose, but I do like to have an opinion that starts a conversation.  It seems like this manifests itself most frequently with Leonardo DiCaprio movies – I didn’t like Inception, Revolutionary Road or J. Edgar.  That’s not what this is about.  This is about me trying to understand my expectations of the stories I take in.  You see, I had a weird fucking experience this morning.

We have HBO – mostly for the TV shows – and the occasional Saturday morning is devoured by a whatever movie they dump there.  This morning it was Shrek Forever After.  I watched the whole thing.  And, excepting two dance sequences and some musical anachronisms, I didn’t hate it.  Okay, be strong Patrick: I liked it.  I was moved by Shrek 4.  I am generally repulsed by the Shrek series for all the usual critical reasons.  I haven’t check the critical consensus on this particular installment (the Time Warner Guide gave it two stars), but I have to believe this flick isn’t hailed as a rich execution of a compelling science fiction concept.  That’s what I thought of it!  I’m terrified of what that means.

Since you missed the movie, here’s a quick run-down of the plot.  Shrek and Fionna are ogre-heroes of Far Far Away and they have three one-year old ogre babies.  They have friends and a life and the domesticity of it drives Shrek nuts.  He’s pissed that he doesn’t command the fear and respect of the villagers as he once did.  Basically, Shrek used to be dangerous, and since growing up, falling in love and making a family, he is no longer dangerous.  And he finds this lack of danger in opposition to his fundamental being.  He pitches a little fit and walks out on his triplets’ birthday after.  Right after ruining it.  On his way home, he encounters Rumplestiltskin.

Rumpy (the characters in the movie embrace this nick-name, so I might as well) is a super powerful character, capable seemingly limitless magic just so long as his victim agrees to sign a contract.  This is a common take on the character these days – in fact it’s nearly identically to Robert Carlyle’s portrayal in Once Upon a Time.  In Forever After, Rumpy has the power to give Shrek 24 of his old life, in return for 24 hours from Shrek’s past.  Little does Shrek know, Rumpy selects the day Shrek was born.

So Shrek gets a day of being a feared ogre.  But it’s in a universe wherein he never existed.  That’s right, we’re dealing in ALTERNATE TIMELINES.  Like all alternate timelines, things have gone to shit.  Rummplestiltskin has taken control of the king of Far Far Away and the ogres are at war with the witches.  These witches have the full backing of King Rump, and the ogres are largely driven underground.  Shrek discovers that, since he was never born, the 24 hours Rumpy gave him as a scary-ass ogre will be the last 24 hours Shrek exists.  There’s an emergency escape clause in the contract, of course: true love’s kiss.  If he can’t elicit a kiss from Fionna before the sun rises, he’s going to be paradoxed out of existence.

But what happens when the princess was never rescued from the dragon’s keep?  Princess grows a pair and rescues herself.  As human-by-day-ogre-by-night, she organized a band of ogres to lead a revolution against Rumpy and the witches.  And she leads by example, training and working out and turning herself into a one-woman war machine.  She’s capable, she’s confident and she doesn’t have any time or affection for Shrek.  True loves kiss may be harder to get than Shrek thought.

But Rumpy’s not in on all the details, so he’s naturally concerned about the two of them traveling together.  The solution is a woefully misconceived Pied Piper.  He plays a magic flute – fine so far – that makes his victims dance.  And dance they do.  You know how sometimes you’re watching a movie and the characters start break dancing to flute music?  Don’t you hate that?  Pied Piper takes control of the ogre army and conga lines them back to the castle dungeon.  With the help of his old new-found friends, Shrek escapes this fate, but all the ogres are locked up.

That’s not good enough for Rumpy though and he puts an award on Shrek’s head.  Anyone who brings him in gets “the deal of a lifetime” – anything they want, no strings attached.  Shrek turns himself in and demands the reward for himself.  Rumpy acquiesces, but reminds Shrek that nothing gets him out of their previous deal but true love’s kiss.  I guess magic can’t fight other magic.  But that’s fine: our hero wishes that all the ogres be set free.  Then the movie delivers on the promise of the Witch and Ogre war: there’s a huge battle.

After the fight, Shrek gets that kiss just as he’s flickering out of existence like Marty McFly playing Earth Angel.  Then there’s this sort of horrifying sequence where all of the characters in this timeline burst into ethereal fire and disappear as the universe rights itself.  It’s never addressed explicitly in the film, but this could have been a great new start for the ogres and a new dawn for Far Far Away, but Shrek’s desire to get back to his home-universe erases their entire existence.  And not just in a “well, that happens in a different time-line” kind of way.  We watch the characters explode – individually – and we watch the other characters react to these explosions, terrified.

Having negated the magical contract, Shrek returns to his old life.  Happily whatever after.

I don’t know how kids were supposed to follow this flick.  Alternate timelines are hard for adults to understand – Back to the Future II still confuses my mother.  Also, what kid understands the existential dread that drives Shrek to make such a rash decision in the first place?  I don’t think kids understood this movie and I know adults didn’t give this thing the time of day – I sure didn’t.

Try as I might, I can’t quite  determine what I need from narratives.  Why does this movie work for me, while something like J. Edgar doesn’t?  Do I want to be challenged by my fictions?  Do I want to learn something?  Do I want to be comforted?  Do I want laughs?  Excitement?  Thrills?  True love?  Spectacle?  Maybe I just need something that makes me stop and say “oh that’s neat.”  I often suspect I just want to watch something that isn’t stupid – something that can do 15 minutes without doing something to embarrass itself.  Who would have guess that this morning, I’d need Shrek?

I’m not going to make the claim that this is a great movie.  But damn it, I responded to this thing in a way I didn’t expect.  So much so, that it’s roused me from my blog-slumber.  It sorta freaks me out.  Somebody tell me I’m going to be okay.  Please?

Green Lantern 4

16 Dec

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Green Lantern while Drew is hosting the discussion of Batgirl.

Patrick: We’ve discussed the problem with reading Geoff Johns’ books from week to week.  Basically, the biggest issue is an over-reliance on an impossibly serialized story.  This means there’s an awful lot of place-setting, and early issues in a series can snap under the weight of exposition.  This week saw both of our leads incapacitated and/or imprisoned the the entirety of the issue, which you’d think would force a lot of cool personal development.  And while Hal had some neat moments that successfully explored his character, I’m less moved by Sinestro’s plight.

Thaal Sinestro is a bad dude.  He’s a nuanced character, his motivations are complicated, and his history has more bumps and bruises than most of our best heroes.  But he’s a bad dude.  He enslaved his home planet in the name of maintaining order as a Green Lantern.  His work with the Sinestro Corps, while motivated by his desire to stop the increasingly out-of-touch Guardians, resulted in the murder of millions and sorta unleashed this HELLISH ARMY OF FEAR on the universe.  So when the crux of Green Lantern issue 4 hinges around Hal and the Korugarans believing in Sinestro, it strains credibility.

And yes, I know I’m talking about strained credibility in a story about aliens with magic rings that are powered by fear.  I GET THAT.  I suppose the move is also justified because Hal has a similar distrust of the Guardians (and a similar murderous history from his time as Parallax) and because the Korugarans don’t let Sinestro off the hook.  But so much of the issue revolves around Sinestro being tortured, imprisoned, and performing miracles that it’s hard not to see him as a martyr figure.

But maybe this is something Green Lantern has always been about: there is no such thing as redemption for these characters.  Take the obvious example of Hal Jordan.  While under the influence of Parallax, he decimated the Green Lantern Corps.  When he was reborn, free of possession, the remaining corpsmen were reluctant to welcome him back and some (Hanuu from GLC for one) never forgave him.  He keeps messing up his relationship with Carol.  Hell, he’s not even technically a Green Lantern right now because of his falling out with the Guardians.  This is the most sympathetic I’ve ever seen a book be towards Sinestro and yet we’re focused largely on his failures.

I think there’s a compelling narrative to be found in there somewhere, I’m just not sure that we read it this week.  I remain hopeful about the series, and I actually get a little giddy when I think about the themes this series seems to want to explore.  And that comes off harsher than I mean it to.  To reiterate: compelling themes are there, and I can’t wait to see where we go with them.  Conversely, I also cannot wait to actually go somewhere with them.

The art in this issue, in contrast, is an unqualified success.  The tiny cells inhabited by our heroes for the majority of the issue are effectively claustrophobic and the imagery of the Sinestro Corps logo looms impressively over the later pages.  Constructs (both yellow and green) throughout are dynamic and energetic but don’t overwhelm the panels, as they often do in Green Lantern Corps titles.  Whenever Sinestro Corps members are around, there’s opportunity for some scary looking monster-creatures.  Doug Mahnke delivers on the SC members with some old favorites, but there are two really cool looking Yellow Slingin’ monsters I’ve never seen before – one is this purple alligator dude (above) and the other is this grotesque white-skinned torture-doctor guy.  I mean, they pale in comparison to monsters that haunted my dreams from last week’s Animal Man marathon, but they’re effective within the context of a super hero space comic.

One scene in particular really worked for me.  Hal is locked in a cell and is unable to bust his way out with classic Jordan constructs (hammer, fist, blunt objects).  Hal’s ring warns him that he’s approaching 0% power.  So he summons the image of Carol Ferris and apologizes.  Naturally, Carol won’t get that message – I doubt Hal would have been able to say it if he thought she would ever hear him.  Drained of its power, Hal’s ring starts to strip away the costume and the green light dims until it disappears completely.  This last bit of action is framed by a yellow square – Hal’s got nothing left: even fear is starting to get to him.  It’s a cool set of panels.

And finally, an on-going problem in the DC Universe: stupid hair.  In an effort to make him extra-Hitlery, Sinestro’s got a pretty awful haircut.  It’s not new, but I did find myself noticing it anew.

So, what do you think Drew?  We still building to something here or are you starting to feel the title sagging?  I can’t really tell what sort of conclusion this is building toward.  Sinestro stated his goal – destroying his old corps – but I suspect he will again fail to achieve that goal.  Or, he will but at a Terrible Personal Cost.

Drew: It’s interesting; I think my unfamiliarity with these characters is allowing me to enjoy this title (or at least this issue) more than I would if I had your knowledge of their history.  Sure, I get that Sinestro is a bad guy, perhaps an unforgivably bad guy, but it’s also clear to me that this storyline hinges on him regaining the trust of the very people who have the most reason not to trust him.  I fully expect Sinestro to betray that trust at some point down the line, but I also fully expect everyone to trust him, however begrudgingly, first.

I was intitally disappointed that we were going to have to see Sinestro win over the Korugarans the same way he won over Hal in issues 2-3, but what Johns delivers is subtly different.  While Sinestro appealed to Hal’s desire to do good (and perhaps more importantly, to be a Green Lantern), he actually has to convince the Korugarans that he always had good intentions, which is a hard pill for them to swallow.  Ultimately, I think they’ll ally themselves with him as long as it serves there purpose (in this case, busting out of jail), but are going to keep an eye on him, in much the same way Hal has.  I’ll admit that it’s a tad predictable, but Johns is adding some interesting twists here that I like.

Does Sinestro think he’s a bad guy?  It’s hard to tell, but I’m starting to believe his appeals that he always had good intentions.  This, of course is a bit muddled by his admitting that he is sorry for his mistakes (mirroring Hal’s apology to his construct-Carol.  What is it with [space] men having such a hard time apologizing, am I right [space] ladies?), suggesting that his insistence that he meant well may be meant to convince himself as much as anyone.  He really is misunderstood, and everyone’s jumping to conclusions about him is getting in the way of his attempts to help.  You’re right to say that there’s no such thing as redemption for these characters, and Johns seems happy to explore the morally grey world of these two characters.  I think the title is already dealing with some neat themes, among them the somewhat surprisingly political issue of supporting someone you distrust in order to achieve short-term gains.  Even if I know the Korugans ultimately will work alongside Sinestro to bring down his Corps, the question of how they arrive at that decision is still an interesting one.

They are hitting the martyr notes pretty hard, though, focusing on Sinestro to the point that Hal barely registers a supporting role.  You’re also right to point out that this issue is more about putting pieces in place than it is about actual action.  When I think about it, that’s most of what this title has been thus far, but it isn’t bothering me in the same way it is with the other Johns titles, mostly because of the focus on the characters.  I don’t mind that we’re still spinning our wheels bringing down the Sinestro Corps as long as the time spent getting there is compelling.  I’m a little surprised that the focus is so trained on Sinestro, but hey, whatever works.

I, too, am really happy with the art this issue.  I always think the menagerie of the Sinestro corps is fun, and the design for that torture-doctor riffs brilliantly on the archetypal killer clown.  I’m also not nearly as troubled by Christian Alamy’s inks that I complained so much about last week.  His high-contrast style serves the darker setting of this issue perfectly, but it also helps that most of the characters this issue aren’t human, so too-thick facial lines don’t read as awkward.

At any rate, I’m not disappointed with this issue.  Sure, it’s not the most kinetic or surprising of the titles we’re reading, but I’m finding it far from boring.  The focus Johns is putting on the characters here is lending his exposition some real interest, which for me is saving this title from deteriorating to bland stage-setting in the vein of Aquaman (though I’m still hopeful that title will start kicking ass this month).  Not a ton has happened yet, but this title has effectively gotten me interested in more than just plot points, so I’m not minding that it’s taking it’s time.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Action Comics, Aquaman, Animal Man, Batgirl, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Swamp Thing

Action Comics 1-4

9 Dec

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Action Comics while Drew is hosting the discussion of Animal Man.

Patrick: Who cares about Superman?

I imagine, actually, that we could ask this question about both titles we’re reading this month.  In the case of Animal Man, it’s a sincere question, but in the case of Action Comics and Superman, the question is rhetorical.  The character is an icon, an institution and yet I feel like it takes an event for anyone to give half a shit about him.  I include myself in that “anyone” by the by.  I liked it when Doomsday killed Superman.  I liked Superman’s tenure fighting for the Soviets in Superman: Red Son.  I liked Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow as it recounted the “last” Superman story.  Those last two examples are the product of exciting new ideas from visionary comic book writers Mark Millar and Alan Moore.  It’s a once-in-a-lifetime idea that makes Superman palatable for me – so why bother picking up Action Comics #1 in the first place?

Well, there’s the little issue of its creative team.  As a writer, Grant Morrison is never afraid to be bogged down by the fact that he’s writing pop-fiction.  If he wants to depict an event that may not literally be happening, but he thinks it’ll be emotionally resonant, then he will – expectations be damned.  Sometimes this means his books get a little to up-their-own-ass, even for my liking, but I appreciate the willingness to take the medium in those stranger, more cerebral directions.  You’d never see Geoff Johns taking the narrative chances Morrison does.  And the penciling is done by Rags Morales, who’s work I’m only familiar with in the context of the 2004 DC crossover event Identity Crisis.  Unlike the other Crises, IC doesn’t use ridiculous conceits like parallel worlds or time travel or anything like that.  The “crisis” in question is the loss of a loved one and the effect that has on the crime-fighting community.  As even the most dramatic moments in the book are rather quiet, Rags had his work cut out for him.  He rose to the challenge and delivered really rock solid acting throughout.

Starting this series my expectations were simultaneously very high and very low.  Pros: Morrison’s crazy stories, Rag’s expressive art.  Con: Superman is boring.  Now that I’m four issues in, I think both of expectations have been met – occasionally at the same time.

Issue #1 opens with a  young Superman cruising around Metropolis, exposing (and occasionally threatening) white collar criminals.  One in particular, Mr. Glenmorgan, is a villain born from current economic climate: a rich bastard who makes life tough for all us working stiffs while making himself richer and richer.  Glenmorgan’s got some kickass security (and an in with Metropolis PD), so we’re treated to all of Superman’s usual tricks from the get-go.  Leaping tall buildings, catching bullets, super-hearing and neigh immeasurable strength – all of it toned down from the semi-invincible god we’re used to seeing.  Clark makes his way home from a night of Wallstreet-busting and is harassed by his land-lady.  See, this incarnation of Clark Kent is even geekier than… come to think of it, this may be the nerdiest secret identity I’ve ever seen a super hero take on (and yes, I am including Kick-Ass in that).  The character is such a mess it looks like he’s perpetually cosplaying Harry Potter.  It’s sorta neat that he wears bulky sweaters to hide his enormous Kryptonian muscles, but goddamn, he looks a mess.  Clark is a struggling reporter, working for the Daily Planet’s rival newspaper (Metropolis can support two major newspapers?  That seems like wish-fulfillment from these titans of print media) and he has only a passing, somewhat adversarial, relationship with Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane – both of whom do work for the Planet.

The last 8 pages or so pack a lot of “huh?” into them, so I’ll try to write plainly here.  Clark calls Jimmy.  Jimmy and Lois are about to board a train.  The train is wired to take off, causing a runaway-train disaster.  The men behind this train sabotage are Mr. Glenmorgan (from whom Clark had discovered the plot), Lois’ father (and army man) and Lex Luthor.  Superman, though he is more powerful than a locomotive, is only incrementally so and bringing the train to a full and complete stop takes a lot out of him.

Issue #2 is called “Superman in Chains” and that’s basically all it is.  Having apprehended and enfeebled Superman, Luthor performs a series of tests on the strange visitor from another world.  In a character defining run, Lex insists on referring to his captive as “it.”  Turns out the army has long been working on a “Steel Soldier” program, and while Superman’s appearance has rendered the project sorta irrelevant, they still want to run some experiments on him.  Or, whatever.  Look, you have to experiment on the alien, right?  That’s what happens in these things.  What else happens?  Superman escapes.  Oh and we discover that Luthor is sorta (and I mean sorta) working with Brainiac.

Issue #3 is where this series starts to become something.  The action is split pretty evenly between Kal El’s flashbacks to the final moments of Krypton and the adventures of Clark Kent, investigative reporter.  In flashback, we’re treated to an abundance of crazy alien vocabulary and and colorful character designs (the image of Krypto above is the only cool picture of that character I’ve ever seen).  Back in the present, Clark is hassled by the man for writing articles that expose Glenmorgan’s corruption.  And it’s here that I want to take a break from plot summary for some analysis.  One of the issues I’ve always had with Superman is that I can’t reconcile his heroing life and his civilian life.  Why would a guy with so much power pretend to be so powerless, and yet still try to accomplish something – like a career in journalism?  Playing up both the alien aspect of Superman AND the hard-hitting investigative reporter aspect feels like a glitch in the matrix.  I guess I’m happy that all parts of Clark’s life are interesting to read, but it does raise a series of questions, most of which start with the phrase “Well then why doesn’t Clark just…”  Oh and the issue ends with Brainiac’s machine’s possessing all the robots on Earth, just as they did on Krypton moments before it was destroyed.

Among those robots is a US Army Steel Soldier fused with Sargent John Corben.  Some exposition I skipped, but don’t care about, is that Sgt. Corben and Lois have some kind of relationship… look, if Morrison doesn’t care about it, why should I?  Anyway, Superman fights off the robots as best he can on his own until he’s joined by Steel – indeed, the cover of this issue brags of the “DEBUT OF STEEL” within.  They are successful, naturally, but not before Brainiac does what he does and shrinks and bottles a portion of Metropolis for his personal collection.  Not that we need the stakes to be higher, but Lois and Jimmy were in that part of the city.  Superman thinks he can take on Brainiac, but he “might need a little help.”  And the issue proper ends with promise to conclude this story in Action Comics #7 – so like March.

There’s a weird little coda on the book that retells the big robots-fight from Steel’s perspective and it fills in some holes in his backstory.  I don’t know if all editions of the issue came with these extra pages, but my digital copy did.  Drew, if yours didn’t, be sure to hop on my comixology account to check it out.  I have a feeling that Action will be sticking with Steel for issues #5 and #6 before returning to wrap up the City in a Bottle story.

I’ve never read Action, Detective or Adventure Comics before, so I’m not really used to the idea that the series is going to move off of it’s main hero for a while.  As long as something falls under the Metropolis umbrella, I suppose it’s fair game for Action Comics.  It’s interesting – this is the only title I’m reading that’s not named after a hero or a group of heroes.  The title promises nothing more than “Action,” so who am I to complain when the narrative shifts its focus a little?

I think most of my issues with this series are evident from my plot summary.  To some extent, I get really excited by all the bat-shit crazy stuff that’s going on, but I also find it wearying – especially when I read all four issues back-to-back.  I think going back to tell the story of young Superman is smart, and there is a lot to be mined of the world reacting him to.  We mentioned that that is a peripheral concern in Justice League, but it’s being handled with aplomb here.

But I do have to knock Rags a little.  I am having a hard time getting over the lines in these issues.  When you see the un-inked, unpainted images that he renders, the detail is staggering and the perspective is jaw-dropping.  Sometimes that cleans up really well, but usually, the character’s faces are so full of extraneous lines that they look ugly, busy and messy.  As a result, I haven’t seen much of that great acting I know he’s capable of.

I hope I left you with something to talk about, Drew.  This is one of the higher rated Superman titles (of which there are 4), does this make you want to check out any of the others or avoid them?

Drew: I’m sorry to say that I’m disappointed with this title, but I may be even more disappointed that I’m disappointed.  Grant Morrison is kind of a nerd’s nerd, synthesizing a seemingly random pop-culture tidbits into a pastiche that at times can seem almost Tarantino-esque.  He generates pages of backstory other preliminary materials, much of which are collected at the back of his trades, a “special feature” that I geekily look forward to whenever I see his name on a byline.  This can serve his stories well, creating universes that are immersive and consistent, but it also runs the risk of causing his stories to disappear-up-their-own-ass, as you so eloquently put it.  Unfortunately, his run on Action Comics is clearly falling into the latter category.

Morrison and Morales clearly have a lot of the subject matter, drawing on a ton of Superman history, from an homage of the cover of the original Action Comics #1 in Sergeant Coben’s dossier on Superman, to systematically depicting him being faster than a speeding bullet, more powerful than a locomotive, and able to leap tall buildings in a single bound.  Unfortunately, their devotion to Superman’s history makes the story both predictable and overstuffed, and won’t impress readers that aren’t already duly immersed in Superman’s mythology.  Like you, my familiarity with Superman is largely limited to the special story-lines that tend to summarize his entire life.  Unfortunately, that means they generally tend to cover the same territory: Lois, Jimmy, Luthor, Braniac, etc.  We haven’t encountered Kryptonite or Lana Lang yet, and Perry White has only been mentioned, but already the plot feels overstuffed with SIGNIFICANT MOMENTS.  I would probably enjoy this a lot more if I had more invested in Superman’s history, but without that connection, the story feels strangely like it’s just going through the motions.

I think you’re right to point out that the name Action Comics requires it to deliver the action, but unfortunately, that seems to be at the cost of the kind of character development we’re so enjoying in other titles.  Your Harry Potter cosplay joke is well founded, but I found the obvious cribbing from Spider-Man 2 even more distracting.  I suppose the similarities between Peter Parker and a young Clark Kent are inherent — a young, idealistic kid gets a job at the local newspaper, barely earning enough money to cover the rent, masking his secret identity with a air of klutzy nerdiness — but they’re connections that I had made it to this point never having considered, thank you very much, and I’m not sure what the point is in highlighting them here.  No matter, though, as there’s no real time to dwell on any of this, as there are action sequences to get to.

I wouldn’t mind all of the action if it was exciting or interesting, but it just isn’t.  Morrison is right to acknowledge that the neigh-invincible Superman of recent stories doesn’t make for very dynamic fight scenes, but his solution of making him only slightly less powerful doesn’t really solve anything.  Where we might have had a sequence of Superman being shelled by a tank, walking away unscathed, and then upending the tank, we now have an identical sequence, just augmented by a single panel where Superman can say “ow.”  This doesn’t make Superman interesting as much as it just makes him look like less of a badass, and doesn’t change the tension of the scene at all.  I appreciate the difficult position Morrison is in — changing Superman’s level of power is kind of a catch-22 — but that doesn’t make the action sequences any more exciting.

I’m also with you on not being impressed with the art here.  Morales seems to be playing pretty loose with the character models, giving faces a rubberiness that can make them hard to distinguish from one another.  My biggest issue, though, is the clarity of the staging.  There’s a tendency to show only single characters in frame, such that it’s impossible to tell where they are in relation to each other, which often completely dissipates the tension of the scene.  Add to that the fact that the story tends to jerk suddenly from one place and time to another without warning, and it’s not even always clear whether or not two characters are in the same scene (your explanation of just what is going on at the end of the first issue is absolutely necessary).  There’s a single panel in issue #3 where we see Clark sitting in his apartment clutching a picture of Ma and Pa Kent, his costume crumpled in the trash.  “Im so sorry.” He says, “I tried.”  That has all the potential to be a telling and touching character moment, but we’re in and out of it so fast that there’s no time to even fully understand where or when this happened, let alone processing what it might mean for Clark.  When he dons the cape again in the next issue, it doesn’t feel like anything has changed, drawing only more attention to the half-hearted aping of Spider-Man 2.

It’s tough.  I know good things can be done with Superman, but I think they’re mostly character-based, exploring the weird head-space of being a god among men and wanting so desperately to live and love like a normal person.  Unfortunately, Action doesn’t seem to be the title for philosophical ruminations, which is strange to say for a series written by Grant Morrison.  In theory, I might be more interested in the Superman title, simply because it may focus more on him than on the action, but the reviews I’ve read aren’t promising.  Maybe I should just stick to the special event books I know I’ll like.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Action Comics, Aquaman, Animal Man, Batgirl, Batman, the Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Nightwing, Wonder Woman, Batman and Robin, Swamp Thing

Batman and Robin 1-3

2 Dec

DC Comics recently relaunched their entire series, giving curious but uninitiated nerds a convenient entry point.  Fellow blogger Drew Baumgartner and I are two such nerds, and we’ve decided to jump in with a handful of monthly titles.  We really wanted to pull out all the nerd stops, so we’re also going to be writing about them here and on Drew’s blog (which you should all be reading anyway) every Friday.  This week, I’m hosting the discussion of Batman and Robin while Drew is hosting the discussion of Aquaman.

Patrick: We’re reading eight titles for this series.  Three are written by Geoff Johns and two are written by Peter Tomasi.  I think I would be able to pick out Johns’ writing without seeing his name on the cover – there’s a certain amount of aggressive cleverness in the dialogue and also a lot of posturing and inflated egos from his heroes.  But while I think we both agreed that Green Lantern Corps (Tomasi’s other book) is a little overstuffed with meaningless characters and incidents, Batman and Robin feels much more streamlined and deliberate.  As such, I think this is a really successful series and a lot of fun to boot.

When the DC Universe relaunched itself, there was an awful lot in the Batman world that didn’t change.  It was my understanding that one of the principal aims of the relaunch was to allow for an easy access point for newbies that had been intrigued by these characters as portrayed in other media.  Which makes a ton of sense.  Batman is at the heart of a film series directed by Christopher Nolan, he’s the hero of Rocksteady’s Arkham Asylum and Arkham City video games, DC just released an animated version of Batman: Year One (which maybe we should also discuss in one of these things?) and it seems like there’s always a new animated series featuring Batman (The Batman, Batman: Brave and the Bold, etc.).  Batman is a massively popular character but his comic book continuity, as guided by the pens of Grant Morrison and Scott Snyder, was becoming increasingly impenetrable.  Batman died.  Sort of.  His soul (or… something… I don’t totally get it) was sent back in time during the events of Final Crisis and Bruce had to claw his way through time, era by era, before catastrophically crashing into the present.  During this time, Dick Grayson plays the part of Batman and Bruce’s son, Damien Wayne-Al’ Guhl, plays the part of Robin.  Realizing that Dick and Damien have Gotham under control, Bruce goes about franchising the Batman school of crime fighting, traveling the world and teaching others to fight for justice.  They call that last bit “Batman Inc.”

Naturally, would-be Batman fans were a little miffed to discover that all of their basic assumptions about Batman were rendered incorrect as soon as they opened a comic book.  If I enjoyed the Thor movie, I wouldn’t want to read a book wherein someone else was Thor and the original Thor was setting up a dojo on Mount Olympus.  So the relaunch was intended to do away with all of this confusing bullshit.  But the Batman books decide to reinstate the status quo while keeping as much insane history as possible.

Which is what brings us to the opening of Batman and Robin.  A Russian Batman is picked up on his nightly rounds by a mysterious figure.  By issue’s end, he’s being boiled alive in acid.  Too dark for a book called ‘Batman and Robin?’  I sorta thought so, but the tone Tomasi so excellently nails is one of chaos.  This chaos is largely represented (and caused) by the 10-year old Damien.  You see, being the son of Talia Al’ Guhl, Damien was raised to be a battle-hardened killer without fear, remorse or sentimentality.  So much of the conflict that arises as Batman and Robin fight crime is generated by Bruce’s total inability to control his son.  Damien is ultra-capable and confident to match, so there’s never any fear that the dynamic duo will be anything less than successful in their missions.  And they go on quite a few little crime-fighting missions in the first three issues.  I was struck by how light and episodic the stories are in this series – each one ends up being nothing more than a backdrop for an interaction between Super Hero and Side Kick.  Father and Son.  That’s the heart of the series.

There is one on-going story throughout that involves the aforementioned killer mysterious figure.  Bruce calls him Morgan, and sorry Drew, I don’t know who that character is.  Should I recognize him?  He seems to know Bruce and Damien, but if he’s a normal fixture in the Bat-universe, I don’t recognize him.  Whoever he is, he seems to think that Batman Inc. is a big mistake and is working to eliminate all the franchises.  (Side note: this sort of thing almost makes me want to check out Bat Wing – the African Batman Inc. series – which is getting better reviews from most outlets than this series.)  So Morgan starts to encourage Damien’s murderous tendencies just as Bruce is trying to stomp them out.  It’s a wedge that I’m not sure needs to be driven: there’s already sufficient friction between father and son.  In issue 3, Morgan puts them both in danger and so much of the dynamic I was enjoying sorta crumbles under the weight of a third character.

Drew, you mentioned early on that you liked the series but fundamentally had a hard time accepting that Batman would ever take a 10-year old kid out into the streets with him.  I agree with this criticism almost entirely.  It is a lot of disbelief to suspend (and that’s coming from someone interesting in reading superhero comics in the first place).  However, I find that once I allow myself to just shut up and watch the characters rub eachother the wrong way, I have a very nice time.  It’s really pretty cool to watch Batman struggle to control a side-kick that’s just too damn vicious.  Mix in a little “he’s your son too” and it’s hard to object premise.  I think it also helps that the Robin design is tight and tough – he wears the yellow and red like an angel of death, not like a fucking bulls-eye.  The design matches the attitude of the character and the bright colors do a great job of standing out against the blacks and grays of Batman’s world.  Even Batman himself appears to melt into the background when Damien’s in frame.

Of the four Bat-family books we’re reading, I’d probably rank this as my least favorite.  But that might only be because I’m enjoying Batman, Batgirl and Nightwing so much.  Actually, it’s also because – as mentioned in a previous write up – I’m not really sure how this series fits in continuity-wise with the other Gotham City books.  I can imagine a Gotham where the other three books are all playing out at the same time, but this one seems to just be doing its own thing.  Like, shouldn’t we have seen something about the League of Owls in this series?

IMPORTANT NOTE: The name of the series is “Batman and Robin” AND NOT “Batman & Robin.”  That is the law.  Let us never speak of it again.

Drew: It’s interesting; NoBody (as the DC press materials are calling him) is a brand-new villain, but Tomasi writes it like we understand his history with Bruce.  I think it’s an effective way to integrate a new rogue into the lineup without wasting time with back story, but it risks alienating (or at least annoying) readers who think they’re missing something.  Aside from a passing reference to Henri Ducard, a totally amoral master detective who trained Bruce in Paris, we don’t know anything about NoBody’s motivations.  I think the allusions to Ducard and the fast and loose nature as to what that means is an attempt to appeal to a new audience, one that might recognize the name “Henri Duckard” as the alias used by Liam Neeson’s Ra’s al Guhl in Batman Begins.  In fact, the scene where NoBody encourages Damian to kill a petty criminal is strikingly similar to a scene from that movie between Duckard and Bruce.  Maybe I’m off my rocker here, but between the concerns about courting new audiences you mentioned and Tomasi only loosely implying the history, I wonder if some potential for multiple interpretations might just be intentional.

I have to admit this is also my least favorite of the Bat-titles we’re reading, but not necessarily because of the presence of Robin.  I’ve almost gotten to a place where I can accept that Batman might bring a kid along on what is otherwise an intensely personal and dangerous mission.  That Dick Grayson’s life mirrored Bruce’s so closely makes the pill easier to swallow, and the individual skill sets of the previous Robins almost justified their presence; Dick had nigh-superhuman acrobatic skills, Jason had serious balls, and Tim had detective skills rivaled only by Bruce himself.  Damian has all of these things in spades (though he could care less for sleuthing), having been literally bred to be a super-assassin.  The only problem is that Damian has no respect.  He is completely insufferable as Bruce pays tribute to his parents, and repeatedly disobeys him when they’re out in the field.  Bruce is simply too pragmatic to take along such a wild card out with him on a regular basis, especially when he doesn’t exactly trust Damian not to kill people.

It’s an interesting inversion that the reason Bruce would be apprehensive about taking a kid out because it’s unsafe for the criminals, but with Damian being such an entrenched super-killer, one wonders why Bruce risks it.  Tomasi offers a compelling reason in issue two, where Bruce confesses that with Damian around, he is, for the first time in his life, afraid of dying.  On my first reading, I thought this was generic parental drama that I’m sure has come up with every Robin.  Looking at it again, it’s clear that Bruce isn’t afraid of simply leaving Damian fatherless; he’s genuinely afraid of what kind of monster Damian might become without Bruce’s guidance.

To me, the tension between Bruce and Damian that make this a title worth sticking with.  Over the years, Bruce has come up against many vigilantes that have no qualms about killing criminals (notably, one of them was also a Robin), but teaching them the error of their ways has never been so important to him.  Batman is more interested in apprehending criminals than reforming them, but this isn’t a problem he can walk away from; it’s his parental responsibility to teach this kid morals.  Moreover, no prison could ever hold Damian anyway, so if Bruce can’t curb his homicidal tendencies, nothing will.

The moment that got me hooked on this title comes late in the second issue.  After Bruce stiffly commends Damian for showing some restraint in apprehending some criminals, Damian lingers in the Batcave.  He snatches a bat out of the air, crushes it, examines it with disinterested detachment, and drops it unceremoniously down a crevasse.  What does this mean?  Is he frustrated with Bruce’s repressed parenting?  Was he satiating his bloodlust?  Was the fact it was a bat intended as symbolic?  I have absolutely no idea what is going on inside Damian’s head, but the prospect of exploring that will have me coming back to this title for a while.

Here’s a list of what we’re reading.  The list is Batman heavy, and we’re not going to write about everything.  That being said, feedback and suggestions on what to read and discuss are welcome.  Overlapping books in bold:

Justice League of America, Batman, Batman & Robin, Nightwing, Batgirl, Aquaman, Green Lantern, Green Lantern Corps, Wonder Woman, Action Comics

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