By Dean Motter, Michael Lark and Matt Hollingsworth (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-979-5
The depictions and narrative signatures of the post-war genre “Film Noir†are powerful and evocative, celebrating a certain weary worldliness as much as stark lighting and visual moodiness. As such this murky world would seem a natural milieu for Batman tales, but there are precious few that make the effort, and so very few of those successfully carry it off.
This superb alternative adventure published under DC’s Elseworlds imprint (wherein the company’s key characters are translated out-of-continuity for adventures that don’t really count) is a magnificent exception, combining the hard-boiled detective yarn with the icons of gangster movies.
1946: Selina Kyle was a woman everybody wanted, and who exploited that fact fully. When The Batman finds her ravaged corpse in the sewers, there’s no shortage of suspects. Was she murdered by a high society big-shot like Oliver Queen, Harvey Dent or Bruce Wayne, desperate to keep her quiet or was one of her more sinister consorts to blame?
Gangsters like jilted embezzler Eddie Nigma, mob-boss ‘Clayface’ Hagen, The Poker Joker, ‘The Penguin’ or even the stone-cold hit-man ‘Mr Freeze’ would have snuffed her in a instant if expedient, and seedy gumshoe Dick Grayson knows that he’d be just as expendable if he digs too deep into the private affairs of the Highest and Lowest denizens of Gotham. But somehow he just can’t let go…
Reconfiguring key figures of the Batman mythos as such recognisable archetypes, although perhaps obvious, is still a wonderfully effective way to revitalize them. The plot is as engrossing as any movie masterpiece and the human analogues of the bizarre and baroque Batman cast are just as menacing even without outlandish powers and costumes. And through it all lurks a vigilante dressed as a bat, once again the mad element of chaos that he can no longer be in his regular comic outings…
Although a pastiche of many things, Nine Lives is nonetheless a brilliant and engrossing read, blending mystery, crime-caper and sophisticated suspense thriller with moody visuals and a cynical tone that will show any naysayer that comics have as much to offer as any other creative medium. Hunt this down and make it yours!
© 2002 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.