Four-Color Critiques #6: The Bestest Batman
Four-Color Critiques #6: The Bestest Batman
Jul 03We’re coming up on Bat-Fever, Volume 47 or something, in which every cereal box, soft drink product, and medical waste disposal container features the familiar Batman logo, so as to underscore the summertime release of a feature film featuring the aforementioned Batman.
Me? I’ve got low-grade Bat-Fever all the time, since as I may have mentioned before, Batman is My Favorite.
But who’s my favorite Batman? Up until a few weeks ago, that answer would have been easy: Frank Miller’s Batman, as depicted in The Dark Knight Returns. Easy answer, but I gotta keep it real.
Based on visuals alone? Jim Aparo, followed closely by Norm Breyfogle.
Now, I’m not so sure. I finally got off my duff and read the legendary Steve Englehart/Marshall Rogers run of Batman, and I think maybe the EngleRogers (does that work, like a “Brangelina” kinda thing? Maybe yes?) version of the Caped Crusader is now my favorite.
Because frankly, Batman’s been depressing as hell for a really long time, and EngleRogers’ Batman is actually (gasp) FUN.
(image from the exceptional Bat-Blog)
We all know why Batman is. One minute, he’s an eight-year-old skipping out of a screening of The Mark of Zorro; the next, he’s kneeling in a pool of his parents’ blood, which usually also contains bits of pearl necklace and movie theater popcorn as well.
It’s an incredibly simple, elegant origin. It’s lasted for the better part of seventy years with nary a tweak. It doesn’t just work; it RESONATES. You may or may not be the vengeful type, but you can at least understand the cataclysmic event and its emotional fallout. You yourself may not have chosen to become a Creature of the Night in response to your parents’ murders, but you can sorta see where Bruce is coming from.
The problem with that origin is that sometime round about the emergence of Mr. Miller’s vision of the character, the origin stopped being an inciting moment and became far more. Because it’s an easily-drawn line between lil’ Brucie in that alley and Big Bruce dressing up in a bat costume and striking fear in the hearts of criminals, that line has become everything the character is. The death of his parents grew to be far more than just Batman’s origin; it became the totality of his being.
Which is what led us to Bat-Dick, the popular online term for the asshole Batman who prowled the streets of Gotham for something like twenty years, or basically, since the immense commercial and critical success of Miller’s Year One and Dark Knight Returns.
There’s something about those two stories standing as they do at the dawn and the twilight of Batman’s career that underscores the origin-as-essence phenomenon; later creators must have looked at these two towering tales and realized, subconsciously or otherwise, that Miller had already done the heavy lifting for them. Whatever happened to Batman in their stories, it was simple enough to plug it into the template, since the template was not just easy and well-defined, but literally spanned Batman’s entire life as a character, as defined by Miller.
So: Miller draws the pearls and the popcorn; a parade of talented creators fall in line; we get two decades plus of angry, vengeful Batman, some of which is perfectly good stuff, but all of which is frankly a fucking downer.
Of course, as I do a bit of internet research for my next trick, I discover a far more talented writer has already done an incredible piece on EngleRogers’ Batman. Apologies in advance to Peter Sanderson if I eventually follow along the path he carefully cleared through the jungle of Batman, and we’ll get back to his essay in a moment.
What struck me most powerfully about the EngleRogers Detective Comics run is that their Batman is not a character defined by vengeance. The death of his parents is what drove him to become Batman, but it is not what drives him to continue being Batman.
What keeps him going is a sense of justice, and frankly, a sense of adventure–you get the sense that the EngleRogers Batman enjoys what he does, and that he’s not undertaking some solemn, lonely vocation that would handily destroy most men, and quickly.
There’s lots more to love about EngleRogers’ Batman; his relationships with Dick Grayson, Silver St. Cloud, and Alfred all seem much more healthy and grounded, and the guy’s actually able to deal with police and citizens without terrifying anyone who bumps into him. But it all stems from the central conceit of Batman as dark, heroic adventurer, NOT Batman as brooding, vengeful sociopath.
In interviews just prior to launching his run on Batman, writer Grant Morrison referenced the “Neal Adams hairy-chested love god” version of the character, and that quote certainly stuck in my mind. On reflection, I think Morrison’s actually aiming for more of an EngleRogers conception of the character, one that’s able to absorb all of the various aspects of the character without becoming too beholden to any of them. Bruce Wayne has an actual healthy romance again, he’s got developed relationships with his supporting cast, and he’s dealing with a wider range of threats than the vicious street scum he would regularly beat to within an inch of their lives as the Deep, Dark Knight.
Then there’s the issue of Morrison’s run as all-encompassing clearinghouse for ALL of Batman’s history–he’s said that he’s taking the approach that every adventure we’ve seen Batman have since 1939 actually happened to this guy over the span of twelve-odd years. That again has echoes of EngleRogers, as Sanderson astutely points out in his essay linked above:
All of this reflects a different mindset than that which prevails in comics today. Englehart believed in drawing from and incorporating the classic stories of the past, presumably not just because they provided him such rich material, but also out of respect for the writers, artists and editors who created those stories. Englehart was presenting his stories as the latest in a long and honorable tradition. How different this is from the current fashion in comics, whereby classic stories are regarded as dated antiques to be superseded by new versions by whoever the current hotshots are considered to be.
Englehart’s approach was more of a pick and choose strategy, closer to what Geoff Johns has done with heroes like Green Lantern and now Superman; Morrison’s actually dragging it ALL in to see what that does to Bruce Wayne. But the principle’s similar.
Morrison’s taking Batman on quite a freaky psychological journey right now in “Batman RIP,” but I already like his Batman more than any I’ve read in years. It’s because Morrison’s conception of the Dark Knight owes quite a bit to the EngleRogers version of the character. It’s a Batman you WANT to read about, that you want to cheer for, and that you want to see happy.
That’s right–a balanced, HAPPY Batman. Shocking, but as Englehart and Rogers demonstrated, quite possible, and endlessly entertaining.
