There are a lot of comics out there, but some just stand out head and shoulders above the pack. With “Don’t Miss This” we want to spotlight those series we think need to be on your pull list. This week, we look at a little known book called “Batman” from little known writer Tom King.
Who Is This By?
Over the past 74 issues of “Batman” the creative team has varied a bit. Tom King has written the vast majority of it. Major line artists throughout the series include David Finch, Mikel Janin, Jorge Fornes, and Tony Daniel. June Chung and Jordie Bellaire are the primary colorists. Clayton Cowels as letterer.
What’s it All About
How can Bruce Wayne be a better Batman? After a near death experience, Bruce Wayne begins to reevaluate how he is doing things.
What Makes it So Great
The Rebirth era run of “Batman” has been polarizing from the start. I am, however, rather taken with the creative teams use of the medium and how its content opens it up to be prodded at by various theoretical sticks.
At the center of King’s run on “Batman” is Bruce Wayne, the man. The frightened boy who saw his parents gunned down in the alley ways of Gotham, made a vow, and grew up to be a person who dresses up to theatrically avenge their murder. King’s run explores the gap, the discrepancy, between Bruce Wayne the Man and the Symbol he puts forth as Batman. In exploring this liminal space “Batman” opens itself to psychoanalysis to explore these anxieties that develop due to the shortcomings between Reality(Bruce Wayne) and the Imaginary(Batman.) These anxieties are at the heart of arcs like ‘The War of Jokes and Riddles’ and ‘Cold Days,’ but are an underlying element throughout the run as Bruce contends with his superhero immortality and survivors guilt.
Over the course of seventy plus issues the creative teams have put Batman through the action ringer, employing a mixture of splash pages, gritty closeups, and somewhat humorous moments of violence. The treatment of action in “Batman” echoes Stella Bruzzi’s argument in Men’s Cinema: Masculinity and Mise-en-Scene in Hollywood for how film treats action heroes that “suggests largely that the hero’s internal damage or frailty exists in virtually inverse proportion to any external damage he suffers”(Bruzzi 152.) This idea comes through in art for the fourth part of ‘I Am Suicide,’ an issue that is nearly all double page spreads. The spreads spectacularly track Batman’s progress through Santa Prisca defeating an army along the way in his pursuit of Bane with barely a scratch on him, juxtaposing his physical impermeability with his internal doubts.
The type of action hero Bruzzi is describing is a type of male subject that is perceived to lack interiority. Bruce Wayne does not lack that, King writes “Batman” with consistent internal monologue. That awareness is the primary trigger of his anxieties and fuels his quest for a better way of being. As he tries to steer a passenger jet through Gotham City and realizes it is hopeless he becomes aware of the limits of his vow and the false idealized masculinity the Batman figure represents. That Batman as he is configured is a manifestation of death drive and stuck him in a self-perpetuating cycle of shallow violence that continually escalates and can only end in his, meaningless, death. Except he hasn’t died, yet. All he has to answer back to this cycle is the phrase or question, depending on the context, of “I’m still here.”
While this run is rooted in the anxieties of Bruce Wayne and limits of Batman, it is realized in a post-Morrison way befitting the meta nature of the Rebirth era. Grant Morrison’s run is in some way an attempt to bring a bunch of zany, obscure, Silver Age stories into the present continuity. Throughout the series the art teams pays homage to iconic Bat moments, such as the above image echoing the famous splash from “The Dark Knight Returns.” Clayton Cowles lettering whenever Bruce writes to Selina evokes the lettering of Todd Klein in “Year One.” Before Bruce proposes to Selina David Finch echoes the image of Batman and Carrie Kelley flying through Gotham City, foreshadowing his relationship with Selina as a means by which he can grow and be a better person. As Bruce and Selina bicker over when they met each other for the first time, it references their various rendezvous throughout history. It isn’t that these moments now officially “happened,” they often contradict, but their bickering fits Will Brooker’s view of Batman as a continuum of experiences. This run smashes together various formal styles of previous runs with new ideas and twists on older ones. In practice it becomes both a playful representation of Batman’s varied history and further illustrates the gap between Bruce Wayne and mythic status people ascribe to him as Batman. For all the references to Batman there is an equal number to poetry and literature that further give the book a meta layer.
Continued belowAs a comic book “Batman” is consistently one of the more interesting and formally driven Big Two series, it isn’t so much the story being told but how it is being told that interests me. The run has a recurring motif of mirrors and cycles which are realized in various ways. As Deathstroke and Deadshot battle to a destructive draw during ‘The War of Jokes and Riddles,’ Mikel Janin shows those 5 days in a series of splash pages that echo his work in ‘I Am Suicide.’ Their spectacular nature highlights the impotence of Batman as he fails to stop two of the greatest hitmen. Until finally Batman has had enough and we get a brutal single page beatdown of the two. Bane is the series overarching Big Bad, a fitting antagonist for a run about reconstructing Batman. As the antagonist Bane is a dark mirror to Batman, and if you didn’t read the original “Knightfall” saga or missed their parallels, King and artist David Finch make their mirrored nature explicit in “Batman” #18. The meat of that issue is built around the mirrored upbringings between the two in a 2×3 grid. In issue #20 the creative team use two pages with nine panel grids that can be read individually, as a double page, or forwards and backwards. Tom King’s writing as an organizing property helps to cohere the run, but the book also reads as surprisingly artist driven.
With his near “Azrael” length run and the support of double shipping, King is afforded the ability to play the long game in a way most Big Two or indie books do not. Little moments become big moments in retrospect. Or in the case of “Batman” #18 and #70 he waits 52 issues (give or take a annual) to drive home the motif of cycles and mirrors. In “Batman” #18 Bane breaks (read: smashes) his way into Arkham Asylum in pursuit of Batman, running into a Who’s Who of Gotham Rogues. In issue #70, Batman breaks (read: smashes) his way out of Arkham Asylum running into that same Who’s Who of Gotham Rogues in reverse order. The long game of “Batman” is one of its greatest strengths and real weaknesses, despite well done art and inventive layouts individual issues can feel lacking. It is better read and understood in larger story arc units.
At the center of “Batman” is Bruce Wayne, a very fallible man prone to anger, depression, and plenty of self-doubt. He reads as human and cartoonishly broken in a way only a comic book character can. And yet for all the darkness, “Batman” has this audacity of hope and romance. That Bruce can and will break the cycles that bind him. That Batman, for all the darkness the bore him, is a fundamentally hopeful figure in some way because he persists.
How Can You Read It?
Issues #1-60 of “Batman” have been collected into nine trade paperbacks. The tenth collection ‘Knightmares’ is due out in September. “Batman” participated in “Night of the Monster Men,” “The Button,” and “The Price,” crossovers, only “The Button” is really required reading. Issue #74, the conclusion of ‘The Fall and the Fallen,’ is out this week.
