Batman & Robin: "Batman Reborn"
Snuck on during Yom Kippur to write this.
Just finished reading "Batman & Robin: THE DELUXE EDITION: Batman Reborn".
Want the one-dollar version? Not too thrilled with it.
Want to know why? Read on.
Written by Grant Morrison, and drawn by Frank Quitely and Philip Tan - now there are a few names who've given us some great things. I re-read "All-Star Superman" last week, and it's still one of my favorite Superman stories ever written. On the other hand, this is also the same group that gave us "We3" and "JLA: Earth 2", neither of which particularly impressed me.
Let's start off with the art. Mostly, it wasn't too bad; Quitely has a fairly good grasp of scenery, and the character designs were all...interesting, at the very least. Newcomer Oberon Sexton sports a look I'm quite fond of, in particular; top hat, black suit, Nehru collar, black ski mask and opaque red glasses, topped off by a pair of spotless white gloves. Very stylish, in a basic sort of way. The new Batman suit is fine, as long as you're not part of the rabidly long-eared-Batman crowd, and while I have my issues with the new Robin costume, it's mostly a matter of personal preference - I despise the mask, but that really is just my subjectivity speaking.
I do want to cover the good stuff first, so don't think that this title was entirely bad; Alfred and Dick got some good scenes together, with the young Batman trying to get past the feel that he's just not big enough for Bruce's boots, and commiserating over the Brat That Walks Like a Man, Damian. They're both well-written and provide a nice respite from the action filling most of the rest of the book.
However, beyond the settings and character designs, this book has some serious issues. The new Batmobile somehow manages to be the first-ever Bat-car design that I've hated. Every other one - Adam West's marvelous ride, the animated series' tombstone roadster, Batman Beyond's flying jalopy - has meshed with the feel of its setting; even that hideous tank from "The Dark Knight Returns" was really the only imaginable ride for that grizzled old ultraviolence-loving Bat. The new ride for Dickie Grayson and the spawn of Bruce's loins...just doesn't fit. The design is an eyesore, the flying has no real purpose other than the "Gee-whiz" factor, and the coloring doesn't make any sense within the comic - a giant, bright red bat-shaped windshield, really?
As a reader, of course, I can see what they're trying for - it looks to me like Morrison is trying to slowly write his way towards Batman Beyond, but it just doesn't work. The off-handed reference about Damian "fixing" Bruce's designs doesn't make up for it being, essentially, a giant flying car out of nowhere.
There also appears to be some serious trouble keeping character design straight; Damian Wayne's face, for example, jumps between "wide and short" and "tall and angular" with no real rhyme or reason. It's something I noticed in "JLA: Earth 2" as well, with Wonder Woman's model in particular just not settling around a coherent look.
The fight scenes, sadly, are just no fun to read. There's no sense of motion to most of them, and sometimes the fragmented panels appear to be doing nothing more than trying to look "artsy" while at the same time making the fights harder to see; I'm put in mind of directors who zoom in far too close and shake the camera during a dramatic brawl, desperately trying to hide the fact that they just don't know how to choreograph the fight itself. In the fights where it's more zoomed out, it sometimes is even worse; I swear, there is a two-panel sequence where Dick goes from "left leg kicking high, left arm punching down and to the right" to "right leg kicking high, right arm punching down and to the right" with no apparent motion in between. All I can say is, the kid has got to be one hell of a Russian dancer.
Now, the villains. I quite liked the Toad, with the random "Wind in the Willows" references, though some idea as to the origin of the character would have been great. Pulling up random one-shot villains with no origin and no chance of surviving past the last page just gives the feel of sloppy writing - like Morrison didn't want to bother looking through the vast pre-existing gallery of Gotham rogues, so he just wrote in someone new. The "freaks" who attack the Gotham police station are fine, though - honestly - they feel more like they belong in the Joker's retinue during his "psychotic ringleader" days than anything else.
I can sincerely say that the idea of a grotesquely obese crossdresser in a tutu is a villain concept that I never would have thought of.
As for Professor Pyg...well...it's not like it's his first appearance, though his only other appearance WAS in another Morrison issue - but he gets points for at least using a pre-existing villain. The Dollotrons (ugh...that name...) are faceless mooks of the old school, though taking that crossdressing theme another step further, most of them appear to be male under the purple dresses and baby-doll masks. How the masks actually work...is never really gone into. How they control your mind, likewise. Oh well.
Pyg himself...ugh.
I cannot take this man seriously as a villain. At all. Honestly, he dresses up in a pig mask and wears a bow tie - no amount of psychotic rambling and power drill wielding can change that. The Joker is about at my limit for taking a bizarre-looking supervillain as a credible threat, and Pyg is far, far beyond that. The fact that his "Dollotrons" are just mind-controlled people in masks with no special training just makes it worse, especially when they somehow manage to teleport in around Damian and dog-pile on him - the miraculous super-assassin son-of-the-Bat superbrat, whose fighting prowess is only matched by his arrogance.
*tt*
I'm not even going to bother mentioning Pyg's little musical freakout aside from this paragraph. Wasted pages, pure and simple. It doesn't establish him as a villain, it just makes him look pathetic - and honestly, he didn't need any help on that score. Two pages that could ahve been better-spent doing anything but show us a middle-aged, out-of-shape man doing a strip-tease and rambling about "trotters".
Oh, and apparently Pyg is capable of designing a virus that acts like a hallucinogen. Somehow. And it has a simple, clearly-marked antidote. Can I stop reading now?
Jason Todd...oh, Jason. Still one of my least favorite two Robins, you just cqan't keep a bad character down; he's back from the dead, again, somehow, and he's the Red Hood...again. Honestly, Jason, learn to let go. He's even retooled the costume, so I guess he's moved on from being a Deadpool wannabe to being a...Mysterio wannabe. (Yes, I know that it's also a move back to the original Red Hood costume, but somebody should tell Grant that that was never a good costume. Even the Joker didn't like it when he wore the damned thing.)
Anyway, Jason is...Jason. I never liked the character, even as Robin, and I do wish they would just let him lie and move onto something new...except that typing those words reminds me that Grant Morrison's idea of "something new" for Batman is Damian.
New "super-assassin" the Flamingo shows up, murders some random women and eats their faces ("ooh, how scary!"), shoots Jason and Damian and dies. That's it. He exists entirely to be a scary assassin who dies at the end of his first real story. I seem to be detecting a pattern here...anyone ever hear of the "Lightning Bug" before Jason killed him, by the way?
Damian Wayne manages, again, to narrowly snag the entry of "worst Robin" ever; Jason had a good shot of taking away the title, but was disqualified due to not actually being Robin any more. Oh, well, better luck next time. The real clincher to this, more than Damian's know-it-all attitude and complete lack of a personality beyond "I'm better than you so NYAH", is the end of the book. He gets shot in the spine, and Talia pops up literally minutes later to (presumably) patch him up...so just how long has Barbara Gordon been in a wheelchair, anyway?
Honestly, Grant, please stop writing Batman. You're good at other things - "All-Star Superman" is one of my prized possessions, and your run on Animal Man was beautiful - but Batman just isn't you.
TL;DR: If you want a good Batman and Robin story, pick up "Astro City: Confession". It's a better read all-round.
Just finished reading "Batman & Robin: THE DELUXE EDITION: Batman Reborn".
Want the one-dollar version? Not too thrilled with it.
Want to know why? Read on.
Written by Grant Morrison, and drawn by Frank Quitely and Philip Tan - now there are a few names who've given us some great things. I re-read "All-Star Superman" last week, and it's still one of my favorite Superman stories ever written. On the other hand, this is also the same group that gave us "We3" and "JLA: Earth 2", neither of which particularly impressed me.
Let's start off with the art. Mostly, it wasn't too bad; Quitely has a fairly good grasp of scenery, and the character designs were all...interesting, at the very least. Newcomer Oberon Sexton sports a look I'm quite fond of, in particular; top hat, black suit, Nehru collar, black ski mask and opaque red glasses, topped off by a pair of spotless white gloves. Very stylish, in a basic sort of way. The new Batman suit is fine, as long as you're not part of the rabidly long-eared-Batman crowd, and while I have my issues with the new Robin costume, it's mostly a matter of personal preference - I despise the mask, but that really is just my subjectivity speaking.
I do want to cover the good stuff first, so don't think that this title was entirely bad; Alfred and Dick got some good scenes together, with the young Batman trying to get past the feel that he's just not big enough for Bruce's boots, and commiserating over the Brat That Walks Like a Man, Damian. They're both well-written and provide a nice respite from the action filling most of the rest of the book.
However, beyond the settings and character designs, this book has some serious issues. The new Batmobile somehow manages to be the first-ever Bat-car design that I've hated. Every other one - Adam West's marvelous ride, the animated series' tombstone roadster, Batman Beyond's flying jalopy - has meshed with the feel of its setting; even that hideous tank from "The Dark Knight Returns" was really the only imaginable ride for that grizzled old ultraviolence-loving Bat. The new ride for Dickie Grayson and the spawn of Bruce's loins...just doesn't fit. The design is an eyesore, the flying has no real purpose other than the "Gee-whiz" factor, and the coloring doesn't make any sense within the comic - a giant, bright red bat-shaped windshield, really?
As a reader, of course, I can see what they're trying for - it looks to me like Morrison is trying to slowly write his way towards Batman Beyond, but it just doesn't work. The off-handed reference about Damian "fixing" Bruce's designs doesn't make up for it being, essentially, a giant flying car out of nowhere.
There also appears to be some serious trouble keeping character design straight; Damian Wayne's face, for example, jumps between "wide and short" and "tall and angular" with no real rhyme or reason. It's something I noticed in "JLA: Earth 2" as well, with Wonder Woman's model in particular just not settling around a coherent look.
The fight scenes, sadly, are just no fun to read. There's no sense of motion to most of them, and sometimes the fragmented panels appear to be doing nothing more than trying to look "artsy" while at the same time making the fights harder to see; I'm put in mind of directors who zoom in far too close and shake the camera during a dramatic brawl, desperately trying to hide the fact that they just don't know how to choreograph the fight itself. In the fights where it's more zoomed out, it sometimes is even worse; I swear, there is a two-panel sequence where Dick goes from "left leg kicking high, left arm punching down and to the right" to "right leg kicking high, right arm punching down and to the right" with no apparent motion in between. All I can say is, the kid has got to be one hell of a Russian dancer.
Now, the villains. I quite liked the Toad, with the random "Wind in the Willows" references, though some idea as to the origin of the character would have been great. Pulling up random one-shot villains with no origin and no chance of surviving past the last page just gives the feel of sloppy writing - like Morrison didn't want to bother looking through the vast pre-existing gallery of Gotham rogues, so he just wrote in someone new. The "freaks" who attack the Gotham police station are fine, though - honestly - they feel more like they belong in the Joker's retinue during his "psychotic ringleader" days than anything else.
I can sincerely say that the idea of a grotesquely obese crossdresser in a tutu is a villain concept that I never would have thought of.
As for Professor Pyg...well...it's not like it's his first appearance, though his only other appearance WAS in another Morrison issue - but he gets points for at least using a pre-existing villain. The Dollotrons (ugh...that name...) are faceless mooks of the old school, though taking that crossdressing theme another step further, most of them appear to be male under the purple dresses and baby-doll masks. How the masks actually work...is never really gone into. How they control your mind, likewise. Oh well.
Pyg himself...ugh.
I cannot take this man seriously as a villain. At all. Honestly, he dresses up in a pig mask and wears a bow tie - no amount of psychotic rambling and power drill wielding can change that. The Joker is about at my limit for taking a bizarre-looking supervillain as a credible threat, and Pyg is far, far beyond that. The fact that his "Dollotrons" are just mind-controlled people in masks with no special training just makes it worse, especially when they somehow manage to teleport in around Damian and dog-pile on him - the miraculous super-assassin son-of-the-Bat superbrat, whose fighting prowess is only matched by his arrogance.
*tt*
I'm not even going to bother mentioning Pyg's little musical freakout aside from this paragraph. Wasted pages, pure and simple. It doesn't establish him as a villain, it just makes him look pathetic - and honestly, he didn't need any help on that score. Two pages that could ahve been better-spent doing anything but show us a middle-aged, out-of-shape man doing a strip-tease and rambling about "trotters".
Oh, and apparently Pyg is capable of designing a virus that acts like a hallucinogen. Somehow. And it has a simple, clearly-marked antidote. Can I stop reading now?
Jason Todd...oh, Jason. Still one of my least favorite two Robins, you just cqan't keep a bad character down; he's back from the dead, again, somehow, and he's the Red Hood...again. Honestly, Jason, learn to let go. He's even retooled the costume, so I guess he's moved on from being a Deadpool wannabe to being a...Mysterio wannabe. (Yes, I know that it's also a move back to the original Red Hood costume, but somebody should tell Grant that that was never a good costume. Even the Joker didn't like it when he wore the damned thing.)
Anyway, Jason is...Jason. I never liked the character, even as Robin, and I do wish they would just let him lie and move onto something new...except that typing those words reminds me that Grant Morrison's idea of "something new" for Batman is Damian.
New "super-assassin" the Flamingo shows up, murders some random women and eats their faces ("ooh, how scary!"), shoots Jason and Damian and dies. That's it. He exists entirely to be a scary assassin who dies at the end of his first real story. I seem to be detecting a pattern here...anyone ever hear of the "Lightning Bug" before Jason killed him, by the way?
Damian Wayne manages, again, to narrowly snag the entry of "worst Robin" ever; Jason had a good shot of taking away the title, but was disqualified due to not actually being Robin any more. Oh, well, better luck next time. The real clincher to this, more than Damian's know-it-all attitude and complete lack of a personality beyond "I'm better than you so NYAH", is the end of the book. He gets shot in the spine, and Talia pops up literally minutes later to (presumably) patch him up...so just how long has Barbara Gordon been in a wheelchair, anyway?
Honestly, Grant, please stop writing Batman. You're good at other things - "All-Star Superman" is one of my prized possessions, and your run on Animal Man was beautiful - but Batman just isn't you.
TL;DR: If you want a good Batman and Robin story, pick up "Astro City: Confession". It's a better read all-round.