Batman is pro-Bush?

Man, it was time to crawl into bed but I just had to read comments on the web how Batman in THE DARK KNIGHT was pro-Bush, that the whole thing with the monitors and all were giving an a-ok to the wire-taps and eavesdropping. And, then I couldn't sleep.

Regardless of what you think about Bush and the war on terror, the movie wasn't about that. It's seeing what you want to see. If that's an analogy equating Bush with the hero Batman, what does it say about vigilantism? It's too shallow of a comparison, it ignores the very basic nature of superheroes. Not too surprising when the comic book writers don't really understand it either and turn out stuff like CIVIL WAR.

Superheroes have been breaking the law before they were even superheroes. Sherlock Holmes took it upon himself on occasion to act mercifully and mete out justice when a court of law would not necessarily. They have been judge, jury and executioner. Batman, Superman and the rest have used interrogation techniques not allowed any police officer, have committed felonies and violated civil liberties in their pursuits of evidence. The scene in the movie is no different than a host of other questionable acts the hero performs to get the job done.

We cheer the heroes but it doesn't mean we approve of the actions. One can love reading the Shadow and the Spider and still favor gun control laws. It reminds me a little of a disagreement I had with a fan over the Charlton character, the Peacemaker. He found the character unheroic, that he valued peace so much, he was willing to fight for it. It's not an unrealistic dichotomy. Think of Hitler and other tyrants. There are times, in the interest of others, it's ok to fight for peace. How is the Peacemaker who fights for peace unheroic and Batman, who breaks laws and civil liberties in the name of justice heroic?

Because the latter, and the Shadow and the Spider are all heroes. Sure, if they existed in the real world, I'd be out there with the rest clamoring for them to be arrested (and the Spider as the Batman in the movie recognizes that is the way it has to be for the Law to work). However, in the narrative of their stories, they are the heroes. They are the Honest Men. We don't worry about Superman violating all sorts of civil liberties and having laws re-written to accommodate his x-ray vision and super hearing that make him better than any wire-tap or even just being a creepy voyeur (although Bryan Singer seems to think he should be). As the Honest Men, we are privy to their thoughts, their motivations, we know that their intentions are pure and honorable, that they won't use their powers for their own gain. Just as we know that somehow, the Shadow and the Spider won't accidentally gun down an innocent civilian or undercover police officer. It's part of accepting the superhero package. Just as in the movie, Batman's actions are justified because he doesn't accept the power for himself. He puts it in the hands of someone else and trusts them to do what's right and honorable. We allow the Honest Man to stand outside the Law and above the Law and we root for him through his struggles, because we know he's just and right even if the Law itself cannot allow him to stand.

The Honest Man only works in fiction, in story though. Johnston McCully made a living off of his rogue outlaw heroes from Zorro on down. We cannot trust real fallible human beings with the power we grant our fictional heroes. It's why we have the Law. Not that it is infallible either, but we have to have those standards. We thrill to the chase scenes and the gunfights of the police and the bad guys in countless movies and seeing our superheroes do what needs to be done when the system doesn't seem to work. We also recognize that vigilantism is often not just, we investigate when a cop fires his gun at somebody and there are actual rules governing when he can and cannot open fire, the reading of miranda rights, search warrants, etc. There has always been this gulf between what is allowed for our fictional Honest Man and what we allow flesh and blood flawed human beings. So, it's a bit disingenuous to pull out one element like this and ascribe some kind of political rhetoric to it.

Thoughts on Movies and Comic News

Been spending time working on the Heroes side of my Golden-age Encyclopedia pages. Finally finished the M's which took quite a bit longer than anticipated. Between that and last week being a very small comic week, I delayed posting a bit. So a bunch of stuff just sorta creeped up on me.

On the days I've not been working on my sites, I've been actually taking a couple of online courses. One is intermediate web design. I'm self-taught on Dreamweaver and picked up a bit of HTML along the way there and here, fine-tuning the layouts and editing. Decided I needed a bit more formal training to take it to the next level. It means I have to unlearn a few bad habits as well as learning to do things manually with HTML. I'm also taking a class on starting a small business and am hoping to put my plans on opening a small bookstore into action. Even when I'm not doing coursework on the latter, I'm making calls and meeting with people to get a handle on all that I'll need to know and do to make this a reality. It's been fascinating work.

In between all of that, I also have been trying to drum up some freelance imaging work so that I don't burn through my severance pay quite so fast. That looks like it may finally start paying off with some jobs. Even though I am not going to work every day, I at least feel like I'm making progress each day, that I'm not standing still.

MOVIES

I thought the ads for the movie WANTED looked interesting. I leafed through the trade paperback, but was turned off by the character pages in the back as it seemed that all of the character quotes had them use the F*** word. Though I hardly ever cuss, I wouldn't consider myself a prude. Some of my favorite movies were brutal in their language. What struck me was how all the same it made the characters sound in these pages that were supposed to be highlighting them. The repetitiveness of it made it seem even more uncreative, as if the writer really doesn't know how to give characters their own voice and that he's swearing because he can and he thinks it makes the book sound more adult, much like teen-age boys are apt to do when talking with each other.

Went and saw the movie anyways, because from the previews and all, I was expecting it to be considerably different from the comic. Different doesn't mean better though. The storyline and basic premise is interesting, though we saw a bit of it in THE MATRIX: A nobody unhappy with his life learns that there's more to the world than he's aware, and he's unhappy because he is far more than those around him. In this case, he learns that there are people out there that are stronger, faster, and more agile than most, that they can mentally direct a bullet around objects. They work for a brotherhood of assassins. Only one has gone rogue and is killing them off, killing the nobody's absentee father who was one of the best. So, they need to train him in his abilities to go after the rogue, that his abilities will be to a degree that he can match the rogue.

The movie has a good cast who all turn in good performances. There are interesting side characters, some fun shoot-outs and fight scenes. The middle act of the lead undergoing his training is the highlight of the whole movie, as the end is fairly obvious early on.

Where it flounders is in the beginning. The movie goes through great lengths to paint the nobody as a complete loser and whiner. There are some reasons for that, later payoffs, yet it does the job too well. He's not a loser because the world makes him so, it's because of his own doing or lack of doing. Within 10 minutes, I really don't care if someone shoots him or not because I have zero sympathy for the character. His swearing even makes him seem more pathetic and a petulant child in an adult's body. Even when he does show backbone it's because he has these superior abilities, he's basically a bully unable to compete or deal with the real world on even footing. We are supposed to think he had some great character growth at the end, but that growth really isn't there, he's still acting as the person he's created as being and not his own man, the complete opposite of Malcolm Bourne of the BOURNE movies.

THE DARK KNIGHT really took me by surprise. I expected to enjoy it. However, there was far more meat and substance to the movie than I anticipated. Heath Ledger manages to take the role of the Joker and make the character his own.

The movie is dark and intense. In that, I think it's actually keeping in spirit with how Batman and the Joker were originally presented and intended. There is context as well to it as well. Batman struggles with the kind of hero he is, there's a lot of talk about heroism, serving as inspirations to others. This is a character that is aware of the line he's walking and trying to be a good man. It serves as a great counterpoint to the casual and mindless brutality all done in slick stylings of Tim Burton's movie where Batman blows up a factory full of crooks and where he's directly responsible for the Joker falling to his death. Burton's Batman was pop art and shallow, taking a backseat to the outlandish villains that were all painted with one cloth. Here, there's more noir to the story, yet remaining true to the hero of the character.

This movie has an advantage that Burton's does not. When Burton did his movie, the last time Batman was on the screen was the Adam West tv series and crude Filmation cartoons. Batman in the comics was still mainstream, THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS nonwithstanding. However, with the current movie, there have been a host of live-action comicbook movies and superhero movies. The comics themselves have been dark for years to boot. The movie's presentation is actually lighter, truer to the basic superhero spirit, and more intelligent than the comics.

There was a lot in the movie that reminded me of how the pulp hero the Spider should be presented. A man passionate about justice, protecting the innocent, and passionate for his friends and the woman he loves. While the Spider is admittedly more violent, a lot of the motivating psychology that supports that character is in this movie as well. Great stuff.

Some of my video picks the last couple of weeks:
Taking a cast consisting of Jason Statham, Leelee Sobieski, John Rhys-Davies, Ron Perlman, Ray Liotta, Claire Forlani, Matthew Lillard and Burt Reynolds, and one should almost by default have an interesting movie. However, IN THE NAME OF THE KING must be one of the biggest wastes of talent to ever stand in front of a camera. Admittedly, these aren't all great actors, but they are all good and should actually excel in the roles they are playing here. Instead, they are saddled with a script that only gives enough to any scene to take the plot from point A to point B, and a director that doesn't seem to know how to set a scene, tell a story, nor how to get the most from his actors. At best, the editing and story progression is disjointed. Expecting something to be kind of dumb fun, and instead, just got dumb.

Then take THE CONDEMNED a movie where the only name actor is a wrestler and end up with something that's actually an enjoyable escapist action movie. Even though there are some scenes and questionable logic extrapolation, the movie knows how to at least tell a story. It even has a little bit of subtext of the un-reality nature of reality television and what it says about humanity that we still are suckers for our bread and circuses as long as it's not us in the arena doing the fighting and the dying.

IN BRUGES sounded interesting on the box, talking about two hit-men hiding out in Bruges after a job, just laying low. But, laying low isn't something that really suits their style and they have problems with a crime boss, leading to a funny and action filled movie. Least that's more or less how the DVD box described it. And with Colin Farrell, Brendan Gleeson, and Ralph Fiennes in the three principal roles, can't possibly go wrong...

Can't go wrong, but it's not the movie the box would lead you to believe. Farrell and Gleeson play hitmen cooling it in Bruges after a hit, that much is true. Farrell chafes at the slower pace and could care less about the culture while Gleeson takes it all in and enjoys it. Farrell is struggling with the fact he killed a kid and has suicidal thoughts while their boss, played by Fiennes, has ordered Gleeson to kill Farrell. The movie has that whole surreal and bizarre feel that BEING JOHN MALKOVICH aimed for and almost achieved as odd-ball characters and the works of Hieronymous Bosch weave through it. The language is harsh, but it fits in with the brutality of the lives these characters lead and allows the actual depth of the characters take you by surprise. It makes Gleeson's character all the more intriguing as he's full of contrasts and contradictions. A hardened hitman that is moved by culture and history and refinement. Can he kill his friend? Is he a realist or an idealist?

UPCOMING COMICS

The Blue Marvel: Kevin Grevioux talked with CBR News about his upcoming book

It's the story of Marvel's first black superhero. He was the most powerful and the most popular superhero around for a period of three or four years back in the late 1950s early 1960s. Think of how pre-'Civil War' Captain America was lauded in the Marvel Universe or how Superman is hailed in Metropolis or throughout the DC Universe and that was the popular status that the Blue Marvel enjoyed during this time period.
(SNIP)
When a mysterious super-powerful villain comes back from the Blue Marvel's past, one not even the Avengers can stop, there is a quest to find the Blue Marvel as he is the only one who has ever defeated him.

The art looks good and it sounds like an interesting idea for a character. My misgiving is inserting a Superman level character into the history of the Marvel U., especially after we already have the Sentry (and now Dynamic Man, Rockman and Fiery Mask of The Twelve and Namora of Agents of Atlas who at least were already part of the Universe anyway). It does not really make the character sound interesting, but more of like "he's my character and so he's going to be better than the Avengers and all other heroes around." Sounds a lot like the Sentry in fact.

And, the bit of him being secretly an African American, it makes sense as long as you're dealing with history, but it wouldn't make much sense for him to keep his race secret nowadays, at least not in the context of the Marvel Universe where there are already powerful African American superheroes and villains.

Meanwhile DC announces that both the Milestone characters and the MLJ/Archie heroes will be brought into their universe continuity. Similar announcements but I have different thoughts about it.

With Milestone, I had gotten a few of the comics when they had originally come out. I thought there were some good ideas, good coloring and a different feel than the other books. I think bringing them into the DCU would strengthen the DCU overall. It provides them with real minority characters instead of ones taking over the identities and M.O of non-minority ones.

However, with Dwayne McDuffie spearheading it early on in JLA, one has to wonder what this might mean for characters like Black Lightning and Steel when Milestone has conceptually similar characters. There is already a preview to an upcoming issue that suggests a dire fate for Black Lightning. Is Steel to join Technocrat in obscurity?

As far as the MLJ/Archie heroes, J. Michael Straczynski told Newsarama:

I enjoyed the characters a lot as a kid, and had a real fondness for them born of nostalgia and the sense that they were just really off-beat and interesting characters. I wasn't as keen on the later incarnations or reinterpretations of them, because I thought they went a bit afield of what made them compelling, but never lost my fondness for the originals. When it was decided I'd start with B&B at DC, Dan mentioned that they were working on getting some of these characters and that I could, if I wanted, fold them into the DC universe by way of this book...not as later incarnations, or revisions, but as themselves, rebooting their origins from the start. I thought it was a terrific and exciting idea, as I love the idea of rediscovering or redefining heroes, as evinced in The Twelve. So for me, this is a seriously fun thing to do.

I'm glad they seem to be hewing to the classic look of them instead of a total revisioning. HOWEVER...


1) Reading The Twelve, I don't really have much faith in him as a writer or being all that faithful really to them as he felt the need to darken all of the Timely characters he's using in that mini and re-writing the backstories or just ignoring the material and potential already there. And his ego prevents him from seeing the injustice he does to the characters.

2) They aren't the real deal. They are revamps of the original characters. You dump the WWII histories of the characters and frankly you're losing a lot of the context that made them special. ESPECIALLY the Shield who was the first patriotic themed hero. With Captain America MIA, here's a chance to upstage Marvel. Get rid of that, and you make the Shield a copy, a second-rater.

3) Lastly, they AREN'T NEEDED AT DC! Let's face it. DC has crapped on so much history and characters they already own. Their slash and burn approach to characters and the rich tapestry of history that makes up their universe: Ted Kord, the Question, Captain Atom, Judomaster, Sue and Ralph Dibny, the Freedom Fighters, the New Gods, the Marvel Family. They've killed off pretty much all of their Charlton, Quality and Fawcett properties in favor of the new. It's hard to believe they will do any better with these characters. Instead of importing another company's characters, why not actually restore (NOT revamp, revision, retcon, and any other re-term that makes one want to regurgitate) characters they already have to glory: Mr. America instead of the Wizard. Minute Man instead of the Shield. Captain Marvel instead of Red Rube. Bulletman instead of Steel Sterling. Firebrand instead of Black Hood. Ibis instead of Zambini. Mr. Scarlet instead of the Hangman. It's not that I don't like the MLJ characters. I do and they were greats. But, I'd rather see them in their own universe where they'd be allowed to shine instead of being treated as second bananas to DC's "flagship" titles. They don't really give DC something DC doesn't already have and squandered.

As an aside, I also thought MLJ/Archie didn't own the Fly outright anymore, that he went back to his co-creator Joe Simon.

DC vs Marvel

Over at the Permanent Damage blog by Steven Grant, he talks a bit about the differences between DC & Marvel. To sum it up, he basically says DC caters to Golden-Age fans whereas Marvel created everything new and catered to fans who wanted that (and ultimately, to the Silver-Age once they had an established status quo). He touches on something that I do believe is important and I had written about it before when talking about the ending of the Golden-Age and the start of the Silver-Age

I think what Grant says has some merit. But, in focusing on catering to fandom and character creating, his argument is ultimately weakened. If the creation of the Silver-age Flash and Green Lantern was setting up for catering to GA fans, how does it truly differentiate what Marvel did with Namor, the Human Torch and Captain America which he seems to dismiss as not really counting? What about their own Silver-Age revision of Ka-Zar? How does DC creating the Freedom Fighters and All-Story titles catering to the GA fans but not Marvel giving Captain America his own book or starting THE INVADERS, the first true GA continuity driven book? And, the lack of staying power for all those GA focused books? And, what about all those characters and concepts that DC trotted out at the same time, way before they decided to launch a new JSA or Freedom Fighters books? How is Miller's handling of Black Canary an example of doing something "new" if the Silver Age revamps were not? Miller's handling of BC and the DCU in general is like Marvel's Ultimate line, existing not as really doing something new but as reflections of the mainstream line. Much of the resonance of those titles are only because the originals exist to serve as counterpoint to.

I'd word it a bit differently. It's not that DC really stuck going after Golden-age fans of the GA characters as Grant posits. It's that they were stuck with that type of storytelling and editorial base and style. They did some rudimentary updates in their character revamps, a little streamlining, but it was still very conservative, very much in the Heinlein mode of science fiction. It's part of why I posited that the start of the Silver-Age really was FANTASTIC FOUR #1. The characters were new, but the approach to characters and storytelling were not. Because DC had never gotten away from superheroes. Superman, Batman & Wonder Woman still had their own books; Robin, Green Arrow, and Aquaman had steadily appeared in the anthology titles; and we had other proto Silver-Age superheroes in Martian Manhunter and Captain Comet. It's not that the Flash and Green Lantern had 1940s roots, but that their superhero storytelling itself was still there.

Marvel pretty much had to create their superhero market ground up. Unlike DC, they only had 3 successful properties from the 40s and none continued into the 60s. Stan Lee had been scripting monster comics for years now. Kirby and Ditko had been part of that. Their superheroes and storylines of Spider-man, Fantastic Four, Hulk and Thor reflected the type of writing he had been doing for the last decade just as the style of DC reflected theirs. As such, their science-fiction model was not the good science of Heinlein, but a morally ambivalent science, of man puttering around with cosmic forces beyond his scope.

Lee wanted to be a novelist and so wrote what he would want to read. He was hamstringed by this point of spending decades writing the purple prose of comics, but his writing had more heart and real human condition to it. Whereas Mort Wiesinger and Schwartz were more plot-centric, their stories old-fashioned science fiction that didn't grow with the times, Lee's works reflected the times outside the window which made his stories more relevant. The FF and a space race, Namor's people killed by atomic testing, fears of Communism. He looked at what was going on in the world and wrote about that, only in superhero form. Their one hero that was pretty much in the DC mode: Ant-man/Giant-man. Lee pioneered the ideas of continuity across company titles and ongoing soap-opera sensibilities, something DC was very slow in adapting.

And, his loose writing style allowed two of the most creative artists ever in the business push the envelopes in their styles and storytelling. A great synthesis in creating and storytelling. DC had Gil Kane, an incredible artist able to push the envelopes of the genres as well, but to do so, he had to go outside of the company to create things like Savage and Blackmark. By the 70s they managed to get Kirby and Ditko over to do some books. Without Stan Lee giving their visions humanity, purple though it may be, their works at DC didn't resonate. Plus, by that time they had become a bit old-fashioned as more realistic art styles were in-vogue. Further cementing the notion that DC was old-fashioned where Marvel was bold and new despite some of their bolder and more creative outings.

I think the article also ignores or places too little value that DC did successfully re-position themselves in the 80's and made Marvel look like the old-hat between the relaunches of many of their core characters and books, the artistically daring of Frank Miller's DARK KNIGHT, Alan Moore's Swamp-Thing which lead in to Vertigo and Neal Gaiman's SANDMAN books, not to mention WATCHMEN. Indeed, part of the problem I see nowadays stems from that very success. They left behind the feeder market of having their mainstream books be for fans of traditional superheroics, books that weren't impenetrable due to in-bred continuity and outre storytelling. Books young readers could discover, that parents would recognize and buy for their kids. Instead, most of today's fans that are catered to are cultivated from that 80s market. And that's who they cater to with ALL their books. Now the marginalized book lines are not the Mature Readers and Vertigo line, but ones that are written and drawn down specifically for kids.

The problem is not necessarily continuity, least not the fact that both Marvel and DC have history and continuity. Those are strengths for storytelling. I will say that the problem the companies have is that they do cater a little too heavily towards continuity obsessive stories. But, it's sorta in a cannibalistic manner, linking themselves heavily to that history while simultaneously strip mining that history. New stories revisit the past and reflect past stories and events while at the same time destroying what went before. Indeed, the beauty of the Flash of 2 Worlds story was that it acknowledged the past, brought it into the fold of the new, but neither Flash invalidated the other. It allowed for the new and the old to co-exist, fertilizer for new stories in the future.

Comics
Slow week at the comic shop this week. Glanced through GODLAND, mainly to check out Scioli's artwork. His time spent on the title has helped him tremendously, he still shows signs of being heavily influenced by Kirby, but having to regularly draw things Kirby didn't, his style is growing into something of his own. It will be worth checking out regularly. Steranko, Keith Giffen, Barry Windsor-Smith all started out as being heavily influenced by Kirby before finding their own paths. Ladronn's cover work has shown him to be able to do more than ape Kirby. Here's hoping that Scioli finds his own path as well. The only thing that kept me from picking it up was I really didn't get into Joe Casey's writing style, the characters really failed at making me want to continue with them month in and out.

Green Arrow/Black Canary #10: A long fruitless fight scene between super-powered agents of the League of Assassins. The League must be lax in their standards as despite their powers against a mostly non-powered they cannot even take out a relative non-fighter nor teen-aged girl. Judd Winnick is unable to make any of the characters stand out or seem all that dangerous. From the start, Winnick seemed to want to make Green Arrow back into being a Batman clone with his own family of superheroes. He got his wish and it has turned the book into a team book without any grounding of believable civilian characters. Factor in the extra guest stars this month, there is little focus really on Black Canary and Green Arrow, the title's lead characters. Batman has his "family" but it's carried out over a host of books, not just one.

Winnick has never really been able to explore in detail the Black Canary and Green Arrow dynamic. The two seem to have gotten together and married just because fans and writers wanted it more than something that felt natural. Black Canary was better handled in BIRDS OF PREY where she had better chemistry with Barbara Gordon than she's been shown with Ollie, least in these pages.

Zorro #5: As usual, a good book and read. But, it is also increasingly obvious that the driving inspiration of this title is Isabel Allende's revisionist novel, more than any previous version of Zorro seen. In fact, Wagner hasn't really captured the swashbuckling swagger and fun from previous incarnations. The title is nothing more than a comic adaptation of Allende's novel, far more faithful than movie adaptations of comics and books usually are that don't pretend to be merely inspired by said work.

Francesco Francavilla's artwork manages to capture the feel and atmosphere perfectly, the colors and painted feel not overwhelming the pencils. To really get a feel of the ability of his pencils, one only needs look at the back cover and see how wonderful this would look in b/w and ink washes. Whew.

The front cover by Sook is also nice until you look at the face. Zorro looks old, serious and his face is largely lacking features with no lips and his nose and details around the eyes obliterated by the mask, it's almost as if he has some kind of death-head face ala Phantom of the Opera.