The Batlord

It's been forever and a day since I updated this journal but I'm bored and feel like being a dickbag to innocent writers and artists who are just trying to feed their kids. A couple years ago I found this series on a comic piracy site while scrolling through the new uploads and stopped at this. Extreme Justice. 1995. Have to have it. There was simply no way any comic from the early-mid 90s with "Extreme" in the title wasn't going to be a Sunny D commercial with angry eyebrows, and while I never ended up reading it, everything I've heard backs up my assumption. So I bring to you, the Justice League that time probably forgot...






Still haven't read it, I just wanted to take a minute to cringe at the cover, where Extreme Justice are I guess busting down the wall to your room and you better believe they're gonna bring down the house. Going clockwise from the 12 o'clock position we have Captain Atom, a silver guy who shoots, like, radiation or the sun or something. I know he's one of those big whammy superheroes like Superman or Thor, who can punch buildings and then make them apologize for getting in their way, but I've read almost nothing with him in it so I'm not too clear on his power set. I really like how they tried to make him as shiny and detailed as possible, but he just ends up looking like he has chicken pox.

Next we have Maxima, a character I only know from an episode of Superman: The Animated Series and from hearing about this series. As far as I know the entirety of her character is that she wants to bang superheroes (Superman most of all) and have their superbabies. And then she reformed her sleazy ways and joined the Justice League apparently, which gives me hope that if I ever gain superpowers and join a team that I might not be the most annoying twat in the room. And if you look at where her right arm is in relation to her crotch you'll notice that HER TORSO IS AT A 90° ****ING ANGLE FROM HER LOWER BODY! I've seen some ****, but I don't know that I've ever seen that kinda ****. (And yes, I totally just tried to do that, and no I couldn't, and you should be glad you weren't here to see it.)

Below her we have Booster Gold and what even the ****? This is Booster Gold when he's not looking like a SWAT team gladiator with 80s Madonna hair.


Simple, fun, and memorable. I like Booster Gold's character design. But **** whatever the hell '95 Booster is supposed to be.

Moving on to Blue Beetle. Blue Beetle is a gadget guy who I think has some fighting ability of his own, but is most certainly not Spider-Man and can not leap nimbly from building to building while contorted like a literal pretzel. You totally thought that was Spider-Man with a costume change before you remembered that this was a DC book, didn't you?

And finally there's "Amazing-Man" whose name made me literally cringe when I looked him up just now cause I sure as **** don't know who the hell Amazing-Man is. "Superman" sounds dumb but it still has a ring to it. "Amazing-Man" has all the stupid of "Superman" but without working despite itself. What even does Amazing-Man do, besides sporting pointless headgear that lines up perfectly with his eraser cut? I don't even wanna think about the rest of his green and gold wardrobe malfunction.

And don't even ask me why the series starts with issue #0 cause I don't even care to know. Now I'm actually going to read this thing and then... well I guess I'll probably go bite something.


Okay, so, first thing's first. This isn't as terribad as I was hoping, just really bland and uninteresting and ****ty. I was assuming that with a name like "Extreme Justice" this would be DC's answer to X-Force: a team of antiheroes with 'tude who don't play by the rules and like to sneer at the things they blow up. Extreme Justice (merely called the Justice League in this book) are just kind of a team who could have been in any series, but I guess DC wanted them to be EXTREME so they put it on the cover.

This inconsistency of approach dominates Extreme Justice #0. The artwork is a perfect example of this; much of the art looks straight from the 80s, with the detailed realism that had not yet been infected with the over-the-top, ugly grittiness of the Image Comics era. The pencilling can be more than a little busy, and the colors are painfully drab (pure 90s, right there), but as a fan of 80s comic art I was somewhat pleasantly surprised... all things considered.

And then you get to the shiny things. I have no idea why artist Marc Campos decided to add so much pointless detail to absolutely everything metal, but combined with the Pollock-esque coloring it's an optometrist's wet dream. Just look at this pile of what-the-**** ON THE FIRST TWO PAGES.






Don't Captain Atom (middle) and Booster Gold (bottom left) look completely out of place? The background is, while being a bit busy and amorphous for my liking, rather subdued and "normal" looking, with the rest of the team looking positively funereal by comparison. But **** me if my eyes aren't actually hurting just a bit from looking at those two for too long. I'd say the only good thing about this "style" is Maxima, whose simple, dark purple costume actually contrasts nicely with the gold of her shoulder pads, gloves, and boots. (They could still be 50% less shiny, but so long as I don't have to look directly at Captain Atom then I'll count my blessings.) Also her hair is pretty and probably smells nice. And don't ask me why they seem to be flying through the inside of a giant pair of pajama bottoms.

Side note: in case you didn't know that the people who made this comic don't give any more of a **** about Amazing-Man (bottom right) than I do then just check how he's clearly been crammed into the edge of the page in such a way that he doesn't cover up Blue Beetle, even if he has to look like he's about to anally fist him.

That's not even the worst Captain Atom image either. I'm spoiled for choices, but I'm going with this one... ugh.




This issue definitely has its problems with art, but in general it's really not too terrible, and even works at times. But Captain Atom looks like absolute dog **** in every single panel. He looks like somebody ran over a zombie with a floor buffer. He looks like T-1000 melting. He looks like somebody asked a genie to make his lucky nickel into a real boy and it went horribly, horribly wrong. He looks like my grandmother got jizzed on by a tank. He looks like a ghost sending a warning to the living through a puddle of mercury.

But enough of that. This issue supposedly had a plot as well. The tone of the issue might not quite be bog standard 90s drek, but the first few pages couldn't be anything but: already assembled team attacks base with little introduction or explanation as to why these people all flying in the same direction are even working together in the first place, and you're just kind of expected to care cause you're twelve, like explosions, and don't know anything about proper storytelling. This time it's a base in Colorado that's been taken over by a rogue US general intent on launching nukes at Russia in order to force Washington to launch a preemptive nuclear strike because freedom. Extreme Justice (I'm not ****ing calling them the Justice League) fights a bunch of erroneous mechwarrior robots that apparently the general shouldn't have, a missile gets launched, Captain Atom chases after it, the missile blows up but Captain Atom is too boss to let a little thing like a thermonuclear explosion get to him, and end scene.

The only thing that makes this sequence even remotely interesting is Blue Beetle, who is the only character with any personality at this point, which is balls, cause Booster Gold is usually delightful (and I guess he's dressed like a Megazord because it powers his pacemaker?). After that is one of the most baffling plot progressions I've ever seen and I still don't know what it means or how it's stupid. The team now decides that they need a headquarters, so where do they go? Some abandoned military base in Nevada (remember, they were just in Colorado) where they find the same robots from the other base defending this base from the people who fought the robots at the other base who are the people now fighting the robots at this base. There is no indication that they were followed (and later in the book it's clear that they weren't), and Extreme Justice didn't go to the second base because of any link to the first base, they just sorta randomly found more robots as if killer robots are hiding behind trees and in trash cans all over your neighborhood.

Then there's some crooked general who's somehow involved with the second base who doesn't want Extreme Justice there, then some doctor tells some guy he has cancer, and then some dudes look like they're about to fight Extreme Justice and the issue ends. Oh yeah and some shadowy guy in 90s armor doesn't like Captain Atom for some reason. See how many "some"'s I put in the paragraph? I even went back and added one to illustrate how uninteresting this **** is. There is literally a scene where an unnamed person is told he has leukemia and only six months to a year and should go on vacation, and none of it even hints that it is any way superhero-related other than the insinuation that the leukemia is weird.

This is quite simply one of the most phoned in first issues I've ever read. I imagine that this was an assignment given to a middling creative team who could not possibly have been less interested in reinventing the Justice League for the grim and gritty 90s and so they just put in the minimum amount of effort to collect a paycheck. But as bad as it is it's not even good-bad like Youngblood or X-Force where I can laugh long and hard at how stupid it is. I just want to read something else and/or drink myself into a stupor.

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The Batlord

Does anyone remember Marvel 2099? That series of titles based on quasi-futuristic versions of existing superheroes set a hundred years from now (or at least in 1992) in an angsty, dystopian world with a disproportionate amount of spikes and lack of sunlight? No? Well then you're in for a ****ing treat. There aren't many characters in comics more suited to a 90s overhaul than the Punisher, as he was pretty much the 90s back in the 70s, so this is a very good fit all things considered. I think I've read this issue at some point, but I remember nothing about it other than Punisher 2099 being one of the great pinnacles of ridiculous 90s excess. Grit? Check. Guns? Check. Hideous costume redesign? Check, mate.






Good lord in heaven just look at that. Apparently the new and improved Punisher did not trust himself to design his own costume, so he just had the dude from Voivod do it. I really like all that red, to be honest. Really brings out the bulky fugliness of the rest of his costume. Look at those gun... lasers (?), the first of which, according to the current placement of his hands, must have been fired from a 45° angle at the ground. And is that a book with the Punisher logo on the cover that has no bullet holes but is expelling pages that do in a sort of magical dance to pay homage to the Punisher's supreme manliness? **** me I don't even know where to begin with that ****.

That goes triple for the comic book itself. You know how a good cyberpunk story uses a dystopian future world to make commentary on the nature of humanity by focusing on something like the widening gap between rich and poor, or the difference or lack thereof between humans and androids? This book wants to be all the things, and pretty much everything about everything is a cyberpunk nightmare to make George Orwell dry heave into an evil cyber trash can. There are simply so many panels and pages I want to post that I'd basically have to commit copyright infringement to try. So let's just look at the first page and count the ways in which the future is a big meanie.






Right off the bat the first two sentences makes me glad I have the privilege of living in Trump's glorious America. Apparently all you need to do to incur the wrath of this brave blue world is not be half-dead. I first assumed the dude in wrist sweatbands and combat boots was running from a cholera epidemic down the street, but the second panel informs us that he's worried about "Street Surgeons". The two-way police terminal, complete with unnerving eye logo and bootleg 1984 slogan, from which he seeks help is not impressed however, as it ain't messin' wit no broke niggas. And so... wait, holy ****! "Street Surgeons" isn't some bull**** name! Not at all! THEY GOT MEDICAL EQUIPMENT!!! Or at least I think that's medical equipment, although I don't know what a real surgeon would do with serrated scalpels. I guess that's what they use on people without health insurance in this world. Maybe this is Trump's America and he's a head in a jar on top of a robot ruling the country with a literal iron fist?

I so want to post the next page too, but I guess I should hold off since there are so many panels that require ogling throughout this artifact of deathification. The Street Surgeons are in fact black market organ harvesters (assuming of course that this isn't just how hospitals work now, and I'm not assuming anything at this point) who target people who can't afford police protection and then cut out their "pump" (don't worry, they mean heart) without using any anaesthesia.

Enter the ****ing Punisher, bitch, clad in "high density plasto-armor" and toting what I assume is a sub-machine gun, an "antique" .54 caliber Magnum hand cannon from 2015 complete with its own ammo belt that disappears somewhere behind the Punisher's back, and three "grenazers". Apparently his shoes are also of note for some reason. Ah **** it, ya'll need to see this ****.






The kneepads really make the outfit as far as I'm concerned. Note the last word bubble from one of the Street Surgeons. It forms the beginning of the greatest witty repartee between hero and villain I have ever had the fortune of reading...

"Who are you? You're no strolling citizen packing that hardware..."

"I'm the Punisher... and you're deadware!"

"I see you went to the butt-face school of charm!"

After which the Punisher blows the reprobate straight to hell with a .54 caliber message from God's own arsenal of righteousness. How do you even write such genius? Is it skill? Practice? A concussion? And I'm not entirely sure the artist consulted the writer before drawing the dude with a smoking hole in his head, because on the next page the man is alive and clutching his smoking gun hand... huh. In any case, the Punisher doesn't seem to mind as he has something more hands-on with which to dispense street justice. Bat power! Excuse me, a power bat.






There's so ****ing much to love about this literary equivalent to hairy testicles, but that last panel with the angry eyes is one of the high points. "I've never used the lower settings." Lulz. Obviously he kills the **** out of all of them, cause Punisher, and next we find ourself at a "police" station, where the corporate racketeers who pass for law enforcement are none too pleased with our man Skully, and call in "'special operations' agent Jake Gallows" (snort) to help. And guess who Mr. Gallows is?






Alright, before I get into the meat of this scene, WHAT THE **** IS WRONG WITH THE PUNISHER'S ****ING HEAD?! It's only marginally bigger than his fist and appears to be sprouting from his right shoulder, which is big enough to house at least twelve more heads. Nobody at Marvel caught that? Really? Anyways, as much as I love droppin' deuces on this comic there's a part of me that wonders if the writer isn't actually in on the joke. Punisher 2099 is just so outlandish that there are only so many people on Earth who could have written it seriously, and the reasoning behind the police pursuing the Punisher shows some small amount of cleverness. He didn't attack a cop and now they're getting revenge for one of their own, and they aren't being ordered to put him down by any presumed corporate masters, they're going after him of their own volition for threatening their business in a way that comes off like how any modern police force would. I'm not saying it's genius, but it does feel a little bit more intelligent than I would otherwise give this book credit for.

But that Punisher brand hoverbike amiright?

There's also a short conversation between Jake "Punisher" Gallows and Fatty McPornstache the police boss a few pages later after they've watched footage of the Punisher pouring some kind of flammable liquid on an arsonist and forcing him to transfer all of his money to charity.






Tell me that joke doesn't sound at all self-aware? I'm not jumping to any conclusions, but there are enough ridiculous things going on in this issue to make me open to the idea that the writer is actually being ironic to secretly lampoon 90s grim 'n' gritty comic trash. I honestly wouldn't be surprised, but either way Punisher 2099 is too delightful for me to hate. Seriously though, there's no way that the Punisher's brain is large enough to properly operate his terrifyingly gigantic body.

To further show that these phony cops are just corrupt thugs they don't seem able to comprehend why a vigilante would want to take the law into his own hands in an effectively lawless society where the police will happily mock a brokeass as he is about to have his heart removed by people with shark teeth knives. Is the Punisher a corporate lackey? An agent from a rival racketeer organization? A mob hitman? A serial killer? Jake knows, though, and is perfectly willing to arouse suspicion by suggesting that he "simply believes in justice", which confuses his associates as much as it does me. But they seem willing to chalk it up to his inevitable origin story of his family being killed in front of him.

Cue flashback!

Now, as much absurdity as has already happened, nothing can prepare a sane person for what now foists itself upon the page. Not-yet-the-Punisher is spending time with his mother, brother, and sister-in-law as they celebrate his brother passing what I guess is the police academy exam. I'm honestly sitting here thinking how best to present this scene. Do I post a page and let you bask in its glory? Or do I take the time to describe everything that's ludicrous and then post something? I guess I'll go with both because it'll be more fun for me.

You know how the original Punisher's, Frank Castle's, family was caught in the middle of a mob hit? Simple, but effective. But that's too bitch for the Punisher who parties like it's 2099. Frank Castle's wife and son were in a park when they were shot. Do you know where Jake Gallows' is? I'll give you three guesses. I'll wait...

Give up? Well if you guessed "dinosaur zoo" then congratulations, you're a freak, but also correct. That's right, folks! The new Punisher's family was murdered while surrounded by sauropods.






And no, you aren't having a seizure. The Punisher's family were members of the Church of Thor and it's exactly what it sounds like. Odin's beard wtf. It couldn't possibly get any more retarded you're probably saying. Think again! Instead of a botched mob hit his family are killed because they're just so happy and loving that some guy with a gun and goons simply goes nuts. He hates happy families. Can't stand 'em. Has to shoot 'em. That's literally the entire reason. All of it. I swear I'm not leaving out any motivation and that's Mjolnir's own truth. You're also probably assuming that this love-deprived psycho shot them with a laser gun or something. Wrong! It was a microwave gun. The Punisher's family were literally cooked like Hot Pockets.






Now you might be asking why the Punisher is wearing armor and carrying a gun with twelve barrels that don't even shoot when he's not even yet the Punisher, but that would be asking questions, and we best not do that here. In any case he tries saving his family but gets his kneecaps microwaved and has to watch as "Kron" nukes his mother and sister-in-law on high for one second. Then he begs Kron to kill him too, but now that he's no longer a member of a family the electromagnetic radiation happy lunatic couldn't be more polite and leaves him to presumably throw peanuts at velociraptors.

This entire scene is simply too stupid for me to wholly believe that the writer wasn't drunk and laughing his ass off at his own inspired idiocy. A dinosaur park. Microwave guns. Kron. That beret. Am I the only one willing to believe that this is all intentional?

Moving on. Now that the Punisher is laid up in "Midgard Hospital" with unevenly heated knees a friend visits to inform him that Kron has been apprehended and will soon stand trial. Jake attends the trial, only to see Kron quickly released after paying a possibly hefty fine of "2.2 million mega dollars" with his "black card", which is sort of like a get out of jail free card for those who can afford to be above the law. The Punisher is not pleased.






No offense, Jake ol' buddy, but I have to call your sense of outrage over injustice into question. You happily served in a police force whose business model explicitly allows for the deaths of the poor and protection of the rich, and yet you simply can't believe that justice could be so horrifically subverted? And it's not like this is a secret to anybody. The police even seem proud to be bootlickers for their corporate masters. In this world the very act of applying to a police academy is nothing less than betraying your fellow man. Obviously I understand why watching your family be cooked alive in an off brand Jurassic Park would be traumatic, but you're just as complicit as anyone else. **** you kind of.

But this is the ten-ton straw that breaks the dystopian camel's cybernetically-enhanced back. Having previously discovered the original Punisher's equipment and journal in police custody and stolen them I guess, Jake has been agonizing over a decision to become the new Punisher. That decision has now been made with extreme prejudice.






Gotta love that last journal entry with the blood stains and trailing "k". So evocative. So subtle. And so we leave this issue on the declaration that, "I am the Punisher now", ushering in a new age of cracked out adventures that we will sadly never get to see in our lifetimes. Although I definitely wouldn't be able to afford police protection, so it's probably for the best.

It would be easy to simply mock this mess, regardless of the writer's intent. Strip away all the charming nonsense and this is a very pedestrian Punisher origin issue: he pops some caps in some suckers, is shown to be a loose cannon, and we see his family killed before his eyes. I'm sure there are at least five hundred comics featuring the Punisher that are no different and many of them are likely far better written. But that would be joyless and lame, as all those bat **** crazy moments are what make this so entertaining. That's right, I am legitimately entertained and while I am happy to poke fun at this... this, I also very much want to read more and this will likely not be the last entry for Punisher 2099. So I implore you, if you have any love for cringey, 90s comic bull****, or you just like corny action movies, then you should really pick this up. It's a lot of ****ing fun.

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Trollheart

You're making this my favourite journal. Now don't disappoint me like with The Return of the Kings of Metal and just leave it hanging...

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

I kind of have three entries going at the same time and I was up till almost 5 in the morning last night reading Punisher 2099, so I guess I'm back for the moment.

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Trollheart

Seriously: this is great fun. Some of your best work to date.

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Trollheart: Signature-free since April 2018

The Batlord

TBH it's kinda hard to stay motivated with this journal since I'm always writing stupid long posts, so today I'm just gonna briefly mention the **** I'm currently nerding out on.






Was disappointed by the Suicide Squad movie, so seeing the exact same characters in the new series worried me, but it's fixed SO MUCH that was mediocre or just plain awful about the previous volume: the characters are more engaging and likeable, the writing isn't a toilet, and the art (especially the first two arcs) doesn't look like a cheap Jim Lee knockoff (because Jim Lee is the actual artist this time).

The previous series also gave you a lot of forgettable characters who either never died (a revolving door of constantly dying characters being one of the hallmarks of the original, 80s Suicide Squad) or came back from death in a stupid fashion. This one is just as committed to not killing people off for the most part, but it also develops its cast as an ensemble so that you don't actually want any of them to die: Harley is the heart of the team rather than a juggalette, Deadshot and Captain Boomerang are ****ing hilarious, Killer Croc and Enchantress' wtf romance is surprisingly adorable, Rick Flag is pretty ****ing cool, and Katana... okay she doesn't have much personality but god damn is she pretty and badass.

Definitely buy this book. Just make sure it's got "Rebirth" on the cover and not "New 52".






I'm only about 24 issues into this series, but it's pretty awesome so far. Basically the Thunderbolts are Marvel's rather creative answer to DC's Suicide Squad: they're C-list villains playing superhero, but in this case they're operating under aliases to trick the public into trusting them in a plot to take over the world, until some of the team decide they actually like being real heroes. I wouldn't say it's quite swept me off my feet, as it's got that awkward kind of throwback camp style that still tries to be modern (as of the late 90s) that didn't quite do either particularly well, which as far as I can tell seemed to be a hallmark of the years immediately following the mid-90s comic mega-slump that ended the boom years of the grim 'n' gritty era. But this series still does that style admirably, with some cringey character designs and obsolete comic conventions offset by relatively excellent characterization and writing.

And Moonstone (hero alias "Meteor") is one of my new favorite characters. She's one of the members of the team who couldn't care less about doing good, concerned only with her own benefit. A cold, calculating, manipulative, sociopathic, amoral ultra-bitch who is one of those villains who is just a joy to watch being deliciously evil. She's also the only truly evil member of the team who... *spoiler* sticks with her more ambivalent teammates due to her picking their faction in a power struggle, making for a fascinating dynamic between her and the remaining Thunderbolts *spoiler*

So far the Thunderbolts journey from fake heroes to conflicted anti-heroes has been serpentine and highly interesting, so I'm very much going to keep up with this series.






I honestly don't know much about Captain Marvel aside from the basics, but I've been highly interested in her for a while. Marvel is highly pushing her into the spotlight after decades of neglect, probably because she's one of the few female heroes they can put in a movie whose rights aren't owned by Fox, but I'm coming to the realization that I'm okay with that. Her characterization in this series didn't immediately win me over, as she's one of those heroes who doesn't have a larger-than-life personality that's easy to digest, or some glaring character flaw or trauma in their life that defines their journey. She's just kind of a normal person with superpowers. Except she also has a believable, likeable, and engaging personality that makes her a Superman analog (most of her powers are clearly a copy) who doesn't feel like a Superman analog. It's easy to tell that she's brash, impulsive, and even reckless at times, while also being brave and driven, but it's when you start seeing the more subtle traits that operate just beneath the surface that you start to really care about Carol Danvers.

First of all, her drive to constantly be the best she can be and test her limits, combined with somewhat of an inferiority complex that further drives her to prove herself, makes her highly relatable. She's not angsty, never that, as she's always ready with pep, quips, and oddly enough a rather sizeable ego that she expresses with tongue firmly in cheek. But seriously she'd probably battle you to the death at tiddly wings just so she could rub your cold, dead nose in it for the next month. I think my favorite thing about her at the moment though, is that she doesn't see her powers as a burden, in fact seeing them as a gift with which to discharge her duty to her country and planet. But going even further, though she is far too responsible to ever use them as such, I think she kind of sees her ability to fly, shoot energy blasts, and punch things real good as almost a toy. Not a toy to abuse at her whim, but one with which to achieve even greater goals than she ever could as a normal human.

All of this fleshes out a swashbuckling adventurer who has the time of her life being Superman, even if things aren't always so fun. Officially now waiting for her movie next summer. And OMG I love her new costume. Makes her look like a total badass, and I don't mean badass for a female superhero, I just mean badass in general.






After falling in love with the animated Batman: Under the Red Hood movie I became highly interested in Red Hood. If you don't know he's a former Robin who kind of went off the deep end and became the best Punisher knockoff ever. I then read the newest volume of Red Hood & the Outlaws, which was fantastic, and decided I'd give this previous series a try even with all the bad press it had received. I got halfway through the first issue before giving up in disgust. If you're unaware of the viral ****storm surrounding this book then it all centers around the portrayal of Starfire (the designated chick). Basically they turned her into a pandering sex doll with no personality to get the randy fanboys masturbating. I avoided this series for the longest because of this, but eventually figured it can't be all bad. I was wrong.

The first issue begins with a decent fight scene involving Red Hood and Red Arrow (Green Arrow's former sidekick), but then they literally introduce Starfire with a ginormous tit joke and a page featuring her highly prominent chest that looks like a cheap, pornstar boob job, and a costume that would make a seasoned stripper blush. And then they just keep digging the hole deeper and deeper. On the next few pages Red Hood takes the most awkward "opportunity" ever conceived to tell Red Arrow that he's hittin' that. A lot. And she's totally about his dick, yo. It's honestly flabbergasting that a modern comic book could be so bro-ish and degrading to women, but Red Hood & the Outlaws goes even one step further after the scene is over by switching to a beach where Starfire is wearing a skimpy bikini and insinuating that she ****s so many dudes that she can't even tell them apart. And did I mention that her origin had been rejiggered so that she was an escaped sex slave? I went and read something else after that. I'm not easily offended, but the sheer disrespect to Starfire's character was making me gag.

I'll try finishing the first issue, as I've heard the series gets better (presumably after the firestorm over Starfire's portrayal changed DC's mind about the series' direction), and since this volume is written by the same guy who wrote the current one that I dig so much then I guess it may very well redeem itself in my eyes. But seriously issue #1 feels like the kind of original sin that will forever taint the rest of the run.


Well, that went on longer than I expected, but it was still way less time consuming than a lot of my other entries, so I'm happy. Stay tuned, as I'll hopefully be continuing this as I read new comics.

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The Batlord

Grant Morrison simply writes amazing Batman. He does so with creative subtext while writing vastly entertaining scenes and stories that are great without the subtext but brilliant with it considered. One of my favorite scenes from his first issue is a scene that might seem like a throwaway joke, and while it is hilarious on a surface level, it also explores both the character of the Batman and his history in comics.

As issue #655 begins we are in the middle of a confrontation with the Joker that is vastly fantastic but we'll move on to the aftermath. Commissioner Gordon had been dosed with the Joker venom, which causes the victim to literally laugh themselves to death, but is now recovering in a hospital while still in the reduced throes of the affliction, which insinuates that he is at least partly in the mindset of the Joker.

Gordon is reading a newspaper article about a live beheading and giggling exactly as one might expect the Joker to respond to a fat man being decapitated.


Please take note of the line "How did they manage to find his neck?"

The nurse is obviously none too responsive to this black humor. On the next page Batman pops in through Gordon's hospital room window to talk about the case, but in the last two panels we get this...


On its face this is simply a throwaway joke (that got a pretty good chuckle from me, mother****er) but it's absolutely not throwaway. On a very easy-to-read subtextual level it compares the Joker's worldview to Batman's, implying that no matter how different they may be there is an uncomfortable level of anti-social similarity in how they view the world. What this means for just how similar their views are is left, and should always be left, unclear.

They are two sides of the same coin but just what that means is too uncomfortable and inscrutable in just what that says about the human race for the audience to ever know. The Nazis didn't rise to power because the German people, or even a segment, were evil. They rose to power because the division between those who would support the Nazis and those who wouldn't isn't simply grey but abstract to a level that must be approached academically.

This relationship between Batman and the Joker in this scene is especially interesting when you consider the scene in Alan Moore's The Killing Joke which this scene is most likely referencing (Grant Morrison's Batman run references much of Batman lore throughout the years so I am not simply grasping at straws). If you've never read it or don't have a clear remembrance of it then let me remind you of what is relevant to this discussion.

In The Killing Joke there is a scene where Barbara Gordon and her father Jim Gordon are having a conversation in his house when there is a knock at the door. Barbara opens the door to reveal the Joker.


Joker shoots her in the stomach, incapacitating her, and then kidnaps Jim Gordon. He also undresses Barbara and takes pictures (insinuating that he may have raped her because Alan Moore has a thing that may or may not be unseemly about that kind of thing) that he later uses to torture Jim Gordon for the sake of driving him insane to show that all you need to drive someone to madness is one bad day. At the end of this comic Batman and the Joker have an altercation and chase scene that ends with Batman trying one last time to reason with the Joker to convince him to seek help. The Joker's response is quite possibly his only lucid, human moment in all of comics: a joke to imply that both he and Batman are equally insane and therefore Bat's attempts to lead Joker to sanity are as ridiculous as the Joker's attempts to lead him to insanity (in context it's ludicrous for Batman to show such compassion for the Joker after having done what he's just done, but Batman's boner for saving the unsaveable is such that he may be willing to ignore his feelings for those who have been wronged to treat the victimizer with the same level of understanding that he wishes himself to be given... in other words they're both too obsessed with their own pain to see the world realistically and consequently can only ever truly relate to each other).



One important thing to keep in mind to bring this into ultimate context is that there is a theory about the last page. When Batman is laughing at this joke and seemingly resting his hand on Joker's shoulder to support himself because he is incapacitated by this joke, he is in fact strangling the Joker to death because he has finally realized that Joker is beyond saving, and by extension that Batman is beyond saving and so loses all hope, finally understanding the joke that he was never able or willing to get. This comic wasn't originally supposed to be canon, but due to its popularity was included in canon, making the idea that Batman had finally given in to madness to commit murder obviously not canon, but at the time this was potentially non-canon.

To bring this back to Morrison's comic, Batman's laughing at a beheading joke originally made by Jim Gordon high on Joker venom implicates him as being just like the Joker, which due to the possible reference to the above scene justifies the interpretation that Batman killed the Joker even if it isn't truly canon. It is a throwaway joke, but one that has implications for Morrison's interpretation of Batman. Perhaps not one that will have the repercussions of Moore's story had the possible interpretation been made canon, but one that calls in to question just how Morrison views Batman.

I suppose at this point I myself am questioning what this post means to me. I originally thought this was a post about a funny joke with a potential subtext worth exploring, but at this point now I'm treating it as an exploration of Alan Moore's story through the lens of Morrison's, making this really about The Killing Joke. I suppose I don't care. I just had fun writing and contemplating this. The Killing Joke was flawed but the ending was spectacular, and Morrison's little joke was still just a joke, even if it had greater meaning, so we're talking about the culmination of a Batman-defining story and the beginning of a Batman-defining story and this is why I ****ing love both Alan Moore and Grant Morrison. Moore is God, Morrison is Jesus, and the Holy Ghost wishes he could live up to either.

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DwnWthVwls

Dwn's Diary - Day 1

Batlord was kind of a dick to me today and it made me sad. I kind of want to hurt his feelings, but I'd feel awful.

-Dwn

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...

The Batlord

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