Category: Batman

By J. M. DeMatteis & Brian Ashmore (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-984-5

This original graphic novel is a passable adventure with great aspirations that regrettably falls short of its intentions. Early in his career Batman survives a terrorist bombing of the Wayne Building which kills many of his employees. His helplessness amidst the tragedy resonates with the night a ten year Bruce Wayne couldn’t stop his parents from being murdered. When a video message from “The Children of Maya” claims credit for the atrocity he has a face and a name to hunt…

Over the next ten years he almost catches Jennifer Blake a number of times, but always she eludes him. Each time however he gets a little more of the puzzle and he knows that one day she will pay for her crimes. Eventually he tracks her to a mission in India, but once cornered she reveals a stunning secret. She has reformed, seen the light. In fact the locals believe her to be a true saint…

The attempt to bolt on a deeper meaning is painfully heavy-handed in places as DeMatteis’ usual subtlety seems to have deserted him in this tale which careens from obsessional parable to mystery-thriller, and Brian Ashmore’s painted art is painfully hit-and-miss, varying from moody brilliance to rushed and insubstantial daubing.

In a career that has seen some truly unforgettable comic stories this is one that perhaps should be.

© 2002 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Mike W. Barr & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-5638-9390-2

This Elseworlds tale (created outside regular continuity and featuring small or large re-interpretations of a character’s fundamental properties) is a generational saga by Mike W. Barr featuring three heroes of the Wayne bloodline fighting against the eternal villainy of the immortal Vandal Savage.

Dark Past is painted by Scott Hampton and tells of Joshua of Wainwright, a Knight Templar accused in 1222 AD of theft and treason by his peers who could not believe his tale of undying warriors, shape-shifting temptresses and vanishing fortresses, whilst Dark Present, with art by Gary Frank and Cam Smith, crafts a different origin for the Bruce Wayne Batman when his life of indolence is cut short by the machinations of Vandal Savage.

This time the villain has become a playboy’s business manager in a scheme to use the Wayne fortune to capture the meteor that made him immortal 50,000 years ago, uncaring of the damage it will cause. Newlywed Bruce Wayne, outraged and inflamed, is determined to thwart the plan at all costs…

Dark Future, illustrated by Scott McDaniel and Bill Sienkiewicz, reveals the final battle between Savage and the House of Wayne in the dystopian Gotham of 2500 AD. Thinking he has neutralized the Wayne dynasty with sybaritic excess, the undying man has not reckoned on the forceful girl Brenna whose archaeological interests lead her to the secrets of the Batcave and one final chance to defeat her family – and Earth’s – greatest threat…

Although no masterpiece this undemanding chronicle is a fun and furious epic that will please action-fans and art-lovers everywhere. Old fashioned thrills just as you like them.

© 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By George Pratt (DC Comics)
ISBN: 1-56389-775-X

Sometimes even the best of intentions don’t quite produce a great result. Master illustrator George Pratt returned tangentially to the Vietnam War for the back story of this supernatural thriller starring the Dark Knight but the overall results are vastly below his superb par as established with the landmark Enemy Ace: War Idyll (ISBN: 978-0-9302- 8978-2).

Bruce Wayne is tortured by bloody nightmares of devils and sacrifices as a killer tries to re-enact a murder-ritual based on the points of a cross. Such ritual has been attempted many times throughout history, but on this particular occasion the stakes seem much higher – and much more personal. Only a girl named Luci Boudreaux, escapee and survivor of the Hell of Viet Nam seems to have any answers to the dilemma…

Although painted with astounding passion and skill, the story seems to have been sadly neglected and is a bit of a mess, with war veterans, voodoo priests, faith-healers, demons and an uncomfortable misunderstanding of the relationship between Batman and Commissioner Gordon muddying a rather tired old plot. If you love dark and moody style above content give it a shot but otherwise this pretty much a completist-only book.

© 2000 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Doug Moench, Kelley Jones, John Beatty & Malcolm Jones III (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-645-0

Now that the 52 multiverse is established as “real continuity” and an accepted fact of the DC Universe, lots of discarded story concepts should be up for repackaging in the foreseeable future. This compendium collects a trilogy of tales that appeared under the Elseworlds banner in the 1990s and are now bona fide Batman stories that all began with another of those literary cross-pollinations that publishers seem so in love with.

Batman and Dracula: Red Rain is a genuinely creepy adventure of heroism and sacrifice as Dracula moves into Gotham City and the Dark Knight is forced to ally himself with “good vampires” in an attempt to stop him. Considering the title of this collected volume it’s presumably not a spoiler to reveal that he also has to sacrifice his life and his humanity before the threat to his beloved city.

This tale was a great success when it was first released in 1991; a minor gothic masterpiece, both philosophical and tension drenched, with the sleek, glossily distorted artwork of Kelley Jones and Malcolm Jones III creating a powerful aura of foredoomed predestination. It alone is well worth the price of admission

And that is a very good thing because the two sequels are ill-advised and, frankly, unwelcome and unnecessary.

Batman: Bloodstorm (1994, with the somehow more visually hygienic John Beatty replacing Malcolm Jones III as inker) sees Gotham City protected by a vampiric Batman who combines crime-fighting with dispatching those bloodsuckers who escaped the cataclysmic events of Red Rain. He is a tortured hero who struggles perpetually with his unholy thirst, but who is determined nonetheless never to drink human blood.

But when the Joker assumes command of the remaining vampires and attempts to take control of Gotham, not even the hero’s greatest friends and a lycanthropic Cat-Woman can forestall Batman’s final fate.

And yet Batman’s final rest is thwarted when the heartsick Alfred and desperate Commissioner Gordon recall the Batman from his final rest in Batman: Crimson Mist. Released in 1999, Doug Moench, Kelley Jones and John Beatty recount the grim but predictable tale of a city overrun by super-criminals since the caped Crusader went to his reward. So when his faithful manservant brings him back he is horrified to find the now corrupted hero a malevolent blood-hungry beast that plans to save Gotham by slaughtering every criminal in it. Only a bizarre alliance of good men and monstrous villains can rectify this situation before humanity itself pays the price…

These stories take the concept of Batman as scary beast to logical extremes – and beyond – but although well drawn and thoughtfully written the sequels lack the depth and intensity of the initial tale and feel too much like most sequels – just an attempt to make some more money. At least in this volume you have the real deal, so buy it and just treat the last two thirds as bonus material.

© 1991, 1994, 1999, 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Alan Grant & Frank Quitely (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-5638-9372-8

Way, way back in Detective Comics #198, 1953 (“Lord of Bat-Manor” drawn by the legendary Dick Sprang) Batman was left a Scottish Castle. It was later established that Bruce Wayne’s ancestors came from Scotland. Don’t ask me why that bit of ephemera remains when so very much else has been rewritten over the years but it has, and professional Scots Alan Grant and Frank Quitely used that fact to craft this slim yet gripping little thriller.

On a visit to the Auld Country, Bruce Wayne stumbles onto a quasi-Masonic plot to locate the lost treasure of the Knights Templar; that’s just the tip of the iceberg in a revenge scheme hundreds of years in the making that involves beautiful tragic women, deadly plagues, ancient super-weapons, crazed claymore-waving maniacs and good old-fashioned Heid-cases and Barm-pots…

Beautifully illustrated, deftly scripted and brilliantly skirting the line between comedy and thriller, this is pure adventurous escapism from two consummate professionals. Go and get it, bonny lads and lassies.

© 1998 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Pepe Moreno, with dialogue by Doug Murray (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-9302-8987-4

It’s hard to credit now but not so long ago computers were a really big deal in comics. Not like today when digital colours, lettering and even drawing enhancement packages are part and parcel of the daily process of production, but simply for being the newest sort of pencil in town. Along with such products as Shatter from First Comics, and Marvel’s Iron Man: Crash (I’ll get to them another day), DC entered the market with a tale from Spanish wunderkind Pepe Moreno and their biggest gun, then riding high on the coattails of the Tim Burton Movie. So from the safe perspective of a few decades distance let’s take a look at Batman: Digital Justice.

Pepe Moreno moved America in 1977, briefly worked for Jim Warren’s Creepy, Eerie and Vampirella titles and gravitated to Heavy Metal where his short, uncompromising post-punk strips (collected in the album Zeppelin) caught the attention of Epic Illustrated editor Archie Goodwin. Generation Zero led to the graphic novels Rebel, Joe’s Air Force and Gene Kong. His growing fascination with technology led him into animation (Tiger Sharks, Thunder Cats and Silver Hawks) and eventually back to comics with this futuristic Bat-thriller.

The mid-21st Century: Gotham City has become Megatropolis, a sprawling, corrupt dystopia. Jim Gordon, honest cop and grandson of the Police Commissioner who worked with The Batman, loves his job but knows that something is very wrong with his city. The graft seems to go all the way to the top and even the ubiquitous flying robotic enforcers get more respect than the flesh and blood Force.

When his partner Lena is murdered he discovers that a computer program/virus based on the Joker’s brain patterns is the de facto ruler of the city. He adopts the identity and tactics of the fabled Caped Crusader but is still outmatched until the long-dormant Bat-Computer awakes and takes him under its digitised wing. Now with a new Robin and Catwoman he is ready for a final confrontation with The Batman’s greatest foe…

By our standards the artwork is pretty clunky, although I recall being quite impressed with it at the time, yet the real problem here is the story. This is a terribly ordinary premise that depended too much on the novelty of delivery rather than strong plot or characters, and doesn’t stand up well to the tests of time. This didn’t stop much of that premise resurfacing in the animated feature Batman Beyond: The Return of the Joker though.

© 1990 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

By Paul Dini & various (DC Comics)
ISBN13: 978-1-84576-673-3

The second collection of post-Infinite Crisis Batman adventures from Detective Comics (issues #827-834) presents another fine crop of tales of the Not-Quite-So Dark Knight righting wrongs in the urban sewer of Gotham City, courtesy of Paul Dini and a stalwart team of associates.

‘Double Talk’, illustrated by Don Kramer and Wayne Faucher, introduces a new and nasty Ventriloquist as the mouthpiece of the murderous Scarface, whilst ‘Sharkbite’ is an old-fashioned murder “whodunit” with reformed villain-turned-consulting-detective The Riddler racing Batman to the killer’s identity.

Stuart Moore and artist Andy Clarke combine for the excellent two-parter ‘Siege’ as a human bomb captures the entire Wayne Tower skyscraper during a peace conference, and Dini, Kramer and Faucher return for ‘Kind of Like Family’ wherein Harley Quinn struggles with her decision to go straight when Scarface and the new Ventriloquist make her an offer she just can’t refuse.

‘Triage’, by Royal McGraw and Andy Clarke brings back Silver Age villains Fox, Shark and Vulture in a chilling psycho-drama before the volume concludes with the superb ‘Trust’ as warped stage magician Ivar Loxias returns in a chilling tale of slaughter and trickery guest-starring the bewitching Zatanna by the first team of Dini, Kramer and Faucher. And wait ’til you see the twist…

These tales of a renewed and determined crime-fighter look well set to overturn the Grim Sociopath image that has dogged Batman for too long. They are fresh, thrilling and powerfully compelling adventures that will astonish long-time fans and casual browsers equally. This is the best Batman in years.

© 2007 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.