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| Saturday, April 21, 2007 11:29 AM |
| At Home with the Batman |
 by Fëanor |
The wife's in NYC doing her patient modeling gig, the dog's at the parents', and I'm sitting at home watching guys paint the house. Which means I have time to catch up on my blogging, and my reviewing! Aren't you lucky! I'll begin with an incredibly long review of a couple collections of Batman comics.
Batman Archives, Volumes One & Two - I mentioned a while back that I had read volume one and enjoyed it, but I never went into detail, so here we go. Both these books, along with volume three, which I haven't read yet, were lent to me by my generous brother, and like the Superman Archives book I reviewed a while back, it collects chronologically the first bunch of Batman comics as they originally appeared in Detective Comics magazine. Like Action Comics, Detective Comics was originally a bunch of different comics bundled together, all with a detective theme, and beginning with issue number 27, one of those detective stories was Batman. Counterintuitively, this Batman Archive does not include any issues of the comic known as Batman, or any of the other various comics in which Batman appeared; this is strictly Detective Comics. Which means these books are actually missing the first appearance of the Joker, which took place in Batman; the first time we see the Joker here, he's already been introduced, so they talk about him like you already know who he is.
Anyways, as with the early Superman books, these early Batman stories present us with a slightly different Batman than the one we know and love. But here the differences are not quite as gigantic. The costume is nearly the same (although the ears on the hood are bigger, and the bat symbol is not surrounded by a yellow circle), and quite soon Batman finds himself squaring off against supervillains, including famous ones like Clayface (although this Clayface is just a crazed and murderous actor, and quite a bit different from the shape-shifting man made of clay that Batman eventually faces). Still, Batman deals with his share of petty criminals, too. This older Batman, like the older Superman, is also a lot more callous about human life than the contemporary Batman. This seems to have a lot more to do with changes in our culture in general than it does with changes to specific superhero characterizations. Still, while the modern Batman would never take a life, this Batman finds it quite acceptable to let guys fall off of high cliffs or buildings, and doesn't bat an eyelash when a suspect chooses to kill himself rather than be taken in by the police; in fact, he says something to the effect of, "It's better this way. Well, bye!"
Of course, another big difference is that early on, Batman has no Robin to accompany him - but he does have a fiance! Yes, Bruce Wayne is engaged to be married to a nice young lady that you've never heard of, from whom he must keep the secret of his Batman identity. This seems to have been an attempt to create a Lois Lane-type character for Batman - a woman who hates him for his lazy carelessness as Bruce Wayne, but is impressed by the strength and courage of Batman. Oddly enough she only appears a few times, then is forgotten about for a number of issues, and when she reappears, it's only long enough to become a famous actress, change her name for her career, and then dump Bruce Wayne because he's such an apathetic layabout. I'm guessing the comic creators decided a fiance for Batman was a bad idea. Later on, we occasionally see Bruce Wayne with random girlfriends, but no one he's really close with, and certainly no Vicky Vale.
The early art in the Batman comics is really quite abstract and distorted, with odd, expressionistic, shadowy, angular cityscapes, or sometimes vague, solid-color backgrounds with no hint of what's actually supposed to be behind the characters. The characters themselves are drawn in a rather odd and sometimes even clumsy fashion, without great attention to real human anatomy. Some of this earlier art I actually rather enjoy; the abstraction and surreality of it adds to the effect. Later on, they seem to try to get more realistic with it, but don't do it well enough, so it sometimes ends up being rather clumsy and ugly.
Story-wise, they often seemed to have similar problems. Some of the plots seem to be very slapdash, as if they were making them up as they went along, or one person was writing one half, and somebody else the other, and then they tried to paste them together. They also seemed to have a problem with pacing and space constraints; sometimes a story will be really too long to fit into one issue, but they'll cram it all in anyway, so the whole thing ends up rather confused, hurried, and breathless. One particular story from early on in volume one really stands out in this way. It's about an evil monk who kidnaps Batman's fiance. It turns out the monk is a werewolf... or does he just command werewolves? Or is he a vampire? The comic itself never seems to quite decide, as it sometimes refers to him as one monster, and then as another, and in the end Batman gets himself some silver bullets because, as the comic reveals to us, "that's the only way to kill a vampire." Huh?! Somebody wasn't watching their monster movies very closely.
This same book has an incredibly rushed feel to it. In one particularly astounding sequence, a giant ape man is sent to kill Batman. You'd figure this would be kind of a climactic, centerpiece fight, but the whole thing is over in the space of three panels, and you only get one image of the ape man, in one panel, before Batman is out and onto something else.
These early issues can also often be rather repetitive in some of the story elements, dialogue, and descriptions. I can't even tell you how many times Batman and Robin are described as "lithe," or how many times they're compared to jungle cats, or pumas, or cougars, or tigers. Then there are the comparisons to dynamite, lightning, and whirlwinds. The thugs in these stories are also almost constantly afraid to use their guns on the dynamic duo for fear that the sound of the shots will bring the cops. Which works out well for Batman.
Early on, Batman is a pretty cold, dark, mysterious figure - a lone vigilante who must run from the police. He is often described as weird and frightening. I was fascinated by the fact that Batman's origin isn't given until a number of issues into the series, and in the first issue, you don't even know that he's the same person as Bruce Wayne until the very end. It's only later, when Robin is introduced and the creators decided to start appealing to their biggest audience, kids, that Batman becomes a lighter, happier figure who jokes and kids around with Robin. Both of them make awful puns and really have fun while fighting crime. Also, they rather suddenly end up no longer fighting and running from the police, but in league with them, doing jobs for Commissioner Gordon, and even are considered honorary policemen.
Early on, Batman is also not in Gotham, but the real New York City, and he has no cool vehicles, but just tools around the city in a regular old car (though it is "high-powered"). There is no butler Alfred in the house, and no Batcave. Again, it's only after Robin shows up that he gains a Batmobile and a Batplane. Then we are also told that there's a secret entrance in a barn to an underground passage that leads to Wayne manor.
Although Joker is always kind of considered Batman's quintessential enemy, I actually found myself most interested in the character of Two-Face, originally introduced as DA Harvey Kent (apparently they changed Kent to Dent later to avoid the connection to Clark Kent). His story is, of course, rather corny and melodramatic, but he is also actually a pretty interesting character, odd and unpredictable, with a fascinating dual personality. The Penguin is also quite a wonderful gentleman villain, complete with helper birds and a collection of dangerous umbrellas. A lot of these villains haven't changed a lot since they were originally introduced.
Of course, not all the villains introduced ended up sticking around. A particularly uninspired one is Mr. Baffle, who has no real personality or signature look; he's just a guy with a black mask on who steals stuff and jokes around. They suggest that he's going to return at the end of his issue, but I doubt I'll read about him again.
Anyway, despite the flaws in storytelling and art, these books are actually a lot of fun to read. They're goofy little detective/action stories starring some great characters, and they're a fascinating look back at some larger-than-life figures in our popular culture. |
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