Best of the Decade #5

The story of Superman has been retold many times in many media, with the basic facts rearranged. A common, but not universal, element is that sometime during his young adulthood, Superman endures the death of his adoptive father, the Midwestern farmer Jonathan Kent. (Somewhat less often, he also loses his adoptive mother, Martha.) As a consequence, Superman has the distinct tragedy of losing two sets of parents in a life which is otherwise generally gilded and overflowing with blessings.

Grant Morrison's twelve-part All Star Superman crafted a continuity all its own, largely drawn from continuities we'd seen before -- conspicuously the comics of the Bronze Age of 1972-1986. However, its depiction of the death of Jonathan Kent -- a heart attack suffered while he stood outside on his farm, leaving his wife Martha as a survivor -- more closely resembled the facts of Superman The Movie. This death, in issue #6, did not come as a surprise, as it was apparent on the cover of the issue. But there was a twist coming, a trick in which Superman even outwitted his younger self.

The issue unfolds with Clark Kent on a return visit to Smallville shortly after having moved to Metropolis. Mystery is afoot from the early going, with three strangers arriving to help with the Kent's harvest, with each of them looking like a figure from elsewhere in the All Star story or the Superman mythos. We soon find out that the three are future Supermen, apparently descendants of the original, on a mission to battle one of Morrison's great inventions, a lethal time-eating beast called the Chronovore.

As the three even-stranger visitors try to lasso the Chronovore, and keep the current Superman from getting entangled in the fight, the fatal moment draws nearer. Jonathan perhaps knows it's coming, telling the bandaged Superman, of Martha's plan to move into town, "It's the end of the line for me and the farm." Then he asks, clearly intuiting something of the nature of his farmhands, "He'll be okay, won't he? The boy." That last endearing appellation is perhaps owed to Eliot S. Maggin's Miracle Monday, in which Jonathan Kent calls his adopted son "the boy" as a matter of course.

When the Chronovore has prevented Superman from coming to Jonathan's aid, Superman realizes the loss, bitterly regretting the impotence of his mighty powers when it comes to the irreversibility of death. That's a regret expressed elsewhere in the comics and the movies when Jonathan's death comes about. But as he mourns, the twist (Superman had noted "There's something weird about all this!") is finally revealed to us when we find out that one of the future Superman is the original Superman, from the not-so-distant future, thankful for having had "the opportunity to see my Pa one last time." It's a moment that resonates brilliantly with his earlier mourning; Superman can't reverse death, but he can cheat it a little. At the end, it's hard to say whether Jonathan was more thankful to know that his boy would be all right or Superman to have truly said goodbye, and Superman has rarely felt so human.

At #4, is a sort of reverse angle shot -- we see a hero through a villain's eyes, and it confirms everything we ever thought about both of them.

Best of the Decade #6

As I've mentioned in previous posts, a common problem in superhero comics is that the predetermined outcome often hinders the possibility of real drama. While some of my other favorite scenes of the decade beat that problem by allowing things to end badly, my selection at #6 did so by pounding the expectation that the story would end badly, and then let the hero defy that expectation by winning -- again.

The backstory of Grant Morrison's Batman, R.I.P. is that for about ten of the fifteen years of Batman's career, he's been the subject of a single plan to bring him down -- a noose that had been placed around him almost without his noticing, then allowed to tighten slowly before being set into its final phase in the year following "52". Interviews, solicits, several consecutive ominous events in Batman, and finally the title of the story itself indicated that for once, the Caped Crusader would not prevail. When issue #680 ended, Batman was unmasked at the feet of the Joker, grinning maniacally from a dose of fatal Joker toxin, at the mercy of Doctor Hurt and the Black Glove organization, left for dead and isolated from any allies in a deep basement of Arkham Asylum. By this time, we had seen how deep Doctor Hurt's plan had run, a concoction of Morrison that integrated the plots of stories as far back as the Fifties.

It was the culmination of a fear Batman had expressed to us in issue #674 -- "an ultimate villain out there, unseen... an absolute mastermind, closing in for the kill... an invisible, implacable foe who'd calculated my every weakness... who had access to allies, weapons and tactics I couldn't imagine. An adversary whose plots and grand designs were so vast, so elaborate, that they went unnoticed until it was too late." That's a real nightmare of a possibility. And by the time of DC Universe #0, we had Batman losing his cool for the first of several times, clenching his fists and asking "Who is the Black Glove?" while the Joker taunts him, "Scary, isn't it? When you can't see what's coming." By the end of #680, we'd seen it come -- a plan that split Batman from the inside, psychologically, stomping him into the ground when he was down. This plan was so complex, it was hard for the casual reader to grasp it in full. To freshen up on it, consult my 11-point summary of the Black Glove's plan. Even when the first pages of #681 were released as a preview a few days before the full issue, things were still grimmer, with Batman straightjacketed in a coffin.

There were the slimmest of hints that Batman would turn it around. The fact that he had tried to grapple with the concerns he raised in #674; the comment (perhaps the figment of madness) that he made to the Joker in #680 that maybe he had worked it all out and was playing with his enemies; the fact that he had obviously escaped the episode with the monk who tried to poison him, and the likelihood that that story within a story was a microcosm of the larger plot.

This set up the moment of greatness. (Remember, this is a list of my favorite scenes of the decade, not necessarily my favorite stories.) And then, in about ten pages, Batman sprung surprise after surprise on the Black Glove, and on us. It turned out that he not only had the physical means to dig himself out of the hole he was literally in, he also had been planning this for a very long time. The signs of his derangement -- the broken radio and his tattered Zur En Arrh costume -- were among his instruments of victory. He not only suspected Jezebel Jet of having betrayed him -- he never trusted her at all, and had taken out a symbolic revenge on her long beforehand -- something we learned with a line that pointed all the way back to a scene in Batman #664. He had built a defense mechanism into his mind that beat Hurt's efforts to brainwash him, and immunized himself to the Joker's toxins. Just as he had switched cups with the monk, Batman had beaten the Black Glove, and soon had Hurt running, futilely, from him.

Put aside the utility belt and the pointy ears, even the myth of avenging his parents -- the legend of Batman is more than anything else that of a man who can rise to any challenge without having godlike powers, just absolute self-actualization. Out-thinking the Devil himself, and summoning the willpower to beat the ultimate challenge, Batman had his finest hour in issue #681. A victory summarized in Morrison's elegant prose:

"In my attempts to see clearly in the deepest dark, in my efforts to go to the still eye in the storm of madness, did I open up myself to some pure source of evil? Did I finally reach the limits of reason? And find the Devil waiting? And was that fear in his eyes?"

Yes.

My countdown of the best scenes of the decade is half done, with the best half yet to come. At #5, we'll see a mighty hero brought down low by a situation he cannot change. And then perform a miracle that makes something good of it.

Best of the Decade #7

It's been often observed that the hero of a serial cannot be allowed to die, for the sake of the series, and therefore the drama is lessened. This has often been doubly true of superhero comics, wherein the hero not only must survive, but also win. When this constraint is lifted, the results can be shocking and powerful. And that's just how Blackest Night #1 ended.

The Silver Age Hawkman and Elongated Man represent a decade and a half of the prime years of the Justice League of America; they were among the first and the last, respectively, JLA members to have joined during the Satellite Era when the comics showed a bit more complexity than in the feel-good early Sixties, but were still a venue in which the good guys always won. Moreover, Elongated Man was always a very light-hearted hero, smiling and wisecracking his way through cases. When you put a character like that into a dark situation, the darkness is felt all the more so. This added to the impact of the Dibnys' victimization at the hands of Doctor Light in Identity Crisis. And to the impact of the Black Lantern Dibnys attacking Hawkman and Hawkgirl as the first appearance we'd seen of a Black Lantern in action. We didn't know what the rules were, but it proved to be about as dark as possible: Black Lantern Ralph Dibny spoke with whimsy ("Hiya, Winged Wonder!") while his actions spelled bloody murder. Carter Hall's bloodied face and Ralph Dibny's rotted, grinning maw turned the whole genre from superhero to horror.

However, this affair ends (potentially, any of the foursome could end up resurrected; but then again, they could remain dead), this scene will never be forgotten by DC comic fans.

At #6, we'll see a scene that plays the opposite end of our expectations -- a story that sold us an unhappy ending all the way, and then showed us just what the hero was made of.

Best of the Decade #8

A common story structure is to introduce a complication early in a story, then to resolve it at the end. Superhero stories tend overwhelmingly to have happy endings. Detective #826's "Slayride" adhered to that general structure, but it had a middle that was uncommonly horrifying. When Tim Drake, the current Robin, is in trouble one night and flags a ride, he has the poor luck of riding shotgun with the Joker. Writer Paul Dini racheted up the dissonance by setting the story during Christmas.

The psychological aspect of the story starts with the fact that the narration places us in Tim Drake's thoughts. The genius of the scene is that it begs us to hope for some mercy -- the Joker claims at first that he will play by some rules, according to a code of honor. Then, with a number of murders and revelations of yet more, he pulls that hope away sharply. It works as well as ever a scene that I've read has in putting the reader's sympathy into the role of the victim of a supervillain, and in facing his cold wrath. Inevitably, Tim escapes, but not before we ourselves felt hope recede multiple times. Unmistakably, this comic is to be remembered not first and foremost for the heroism of the hero but for the look we get into the eye of villainy.

#7 has something in common with "Slayride". We look in the eye of pure evil and feel the pangs of the hero who faces it. But this time there's no escape.

Best of the Decade #9

Doctor Fate began as an almost disembodied entity, telling us early on that he'd always been Doctor Fate and had never lived as an ordinary mortal. That was soon retconned with one of the great origin scenes of the Golden Age, with the channeling of Egyptian magic into a young Kent Nelson, on the occasion of his father's death. Created in 1940, back in the day when superheroes always won, Doctor Fate lived long enough to die on the printed page, passing away with his wife Inza after a post-COIE career.


Brave and Bold v2 #30 revisits Kent Nelson's death, telling a story set entirely in flashbacks, retroactively explaining Nelson's death as a consequence of vanity, heroism, and fate. Green Lantern Hal Jordan
plays two roles in the story, both unusual for him -- one, as a victim to be saved, with Kent playing the savior; and the other, as a compassionate friend of Nelson (in original continuity, they met during JLA/JSA crossovers, but since COIE, they have always existed on the same Earth together). While the story skips about through time, showing, for example, the late Eighties Black Canary in cameo, the pivotal scene of the story features Hal begging Kent not to lend his assistance to Hal but to save himself. Things get philosophical, with the man of free will, who in Nelson's future knows of his eventual death, debating the man of fate. Nelson's adamant heroism and espousal of predestination make it no argument at all; Hal can't hope to convince his friend not to save him. And in an almost biblical moment, Nelson tells Hal to rejoice, for at that moment, they get to be together. Michael Straczynski's one-issue tale is deep and touching. It happens to be at the moment the most recent new comic I've read; my favorable opinion is no artifact of that recency -- it's poignant, builds on a rich history, and is a true story of heroism.


So far both of the scenes on my list have come from the same title; rest assured, that streak will not last. #8 is from another story that is long on talk and short on action, but this time between a hero and a villain.

Best of the Decade #10

Brief explanation: Top 10 lists are fun, and I've pondered a few possibilities: Scenes, comic books, stories, characters. Of all time, of the year. But since the odometer is about to roll on the decade of the 00's, I decided to run a countdown of my personal favorite scenes of the decade. (Of course, there are two Wednesdays left in the decade, so my apologies if one of the best scenes occurs in the next fortnight.)

Making this list taught me something: It hurt to leave some of the next-best entries off the list. And that tells me how much I enjoyed reading the stories I did. I wasn't reading comics basically at all from 1992 to 2004. I went back and read some of the ones I missed, but of course there are huge gaps in my reading overall; I can only include the comics I read. It also struck me how some really great issues didn't make this list, because they were good, but the quality was spread out over the whole issue; no shame there.

Seven writers made the list, and it pained me to leave a couple of other writers off. Once again, a sign that there was some top notch material out there and that my comic-reading time was well-spent.

#10 was in Brave and Bold v2 #6, the finale of a very fine story written by Mark Waid. An ensemble cast revolving around Batman fought against the Luck Lords, some bad guys who had the Book of Destiny (which debuted in Weird Mystery Tales, a comic I used to read in the Seventies). Because they had total knowledge of the future, they were a match for the heavyweight team pitted against them, including Supergirl and Hal Jordan. But they were scared of Batman, and the world's greatest detective used that knowledge to find the only way to beat them, to pit them against the Challengers of the Unknown. This worked because the Challengers have always been, by their tagline, living on borrowed time, and therefore live outside of Destiny.  Once the Challengers showed up, the Luck Lords lost their advantage, and the Challengers made their omniscience evaporate simply by running around and doing things.

Regardless of who was throwing the punches, it was Batman's victory, and the moment when he realized who could beat the Book of Destiny was one of those "stinger" moments that make heroes worth rooting for. Kudos to Mark Waid for tying together several non-superhero characters and concepts into a tight story that is great in many places, but culminates with the kind of moment that makes writing Batman so hard -- the writer has to touch upon a stroke of genius.

Next post: #9, the most recent scene to make the list, featuring two very powerful superheroes just standing around talking.

Batman and Robin: The Big Bad

Halftime


In Grant Morrison's sprawling run in Batman, a series of minor threats proved ultimately to have been directed at the Caped Crusader by one central cause, a villain whose plan spanned many years and many comic book issues. As the run progressed, many smaller things were eventually revealed to be joined in a towering hierarchy of evil topped by Doctor Hurt, the Devil.


From the first issue of Morrison's current run in Batman and Robin, we've known that the story here would also unfold in the form of several, shorter arcs, and that a culminating event -- as seen in a one-panel preview -- would be the return of Doctor Hurt, who was seen proudly holding the keys to Wayne Manor. Let there be no doubt: This series is also building to a crescendo, with the same villain waiting, maybe not much longer, in the wings.


Besides the preview showing Doctor Hurt, we also have a Newsarama interview with Morrison telling us quite directly that he "will be making a comeback to finish what he started." And if you think that this run on Batman and Robin is more literal, less full of symbols and hidden meaning, than Morrison's run on Batman, look at the panel from Batman and Robin #3, presented at right. Behind the flames of Professor Pyg's lab, we see a very obvious Devil face, partly obscured by flames, with two bats flying over it (and a third, partially seen, by the real Batman's foot). Do the three bats stand for Bruce, Dick, and Damian? Does their position over the Devil indicate victory? Is this a symbol that Dick will prevail in his coming confrontation with El Penitente? It's hard to know how to read into the image, but it's a sure thing that bats flying over the Devil is not a haphazard detail.


Roll Call


In only six issues, the number of potential villains to consider has been daunting. All the more so given that Jason Todd, the front-and-center villain of the second arc, is probably not part of the bigger picture. But we have the following entities, some of whom are probably the same. Others are surely just background figures of no great importance (particularly those whom Jason Todd killed).


Mr. Toad
Professor Pyg
Phosphorus Rex, Big Top, and Siam
Lightning Bug
Sasha, her father, and her uncle
Jason Todd in his Red Hood guise
Flamingo
Santos
Tony Li, Bullet Nose Dmitri, High Rise Romero, Gentleman-G Merriwether, Aitch-Eyes, Rodney Fidget
The Penguin
El Penitente
Le Bossu
Oberon Sexton
The "globetrotting serial killer" that Sexton is allegedly tracking
Whoever killed Cardinal Maggi
The Domino Killer
Doctor Hurt
The Joker
Talia


That's a lot of suspects in only six issues.


Why do I mention the Joker? Both Morrison and Dan Didio have said that the Joker is going to emerge in the story. Morrison also said that Talia would return, and she was referenced at the end of #6.


So how does this all fit together?


El Penitente surely is Doctor Hurt. Even if the metaphysics are strange, they somehow or other represent the same entity. And he's at the top of a huge hierarchy that comprises much of what Batman is up against. Because some escapades in the story are linked to the Doctor Hurt identity and some to El Penitente, I use both names separately in the discussion below, but that they are one entity is presumed from here on out.


Given the match between Professor Pyg's contagious addiction and what Santos said about El Penitente's plan, it seems clear that Professor Pyg is an agent of El Penitente. We even know that Pyg's addition is a virus and Santos says that El Pentitente believes that the new model of crime is viral. Moreover, we have been told that both Pyg and Flamingo were essentially made -- Pyg through some sort of harrowing psychological programming, Flamingo through brain surgery. And they have opposite fascinations: Pyg adds false faces to his victims, while Flamingo removes their actual face. The importance of faces and masks is a likely metatextual comment on the superhero genre as a whole. The notion of a mastermind creating villains out of good people is a known part of Doctor Hurt's repertoire -- he did so with the three Gotham policemen who became the Replacement Batmen. We know that this merry band turns on itself in the future, with the Replacement Batman Lane killing Pyg and Phosphorus Rex in Batman #666, but recruiting Flamingo as a would-be weapon against Damian.


Oberon Sexton is almost surely opposed to El Penitente, or would like to be. He receives the menacing phone call in Batman and Robin #6 that indicates that while El Penitente expects to have Sexton's help, it's not coming voluntarily. I mentioned in a previous post that this is all consistent with the past interaction between Hurt and Mangrove Pierce seen in Batman #667. It is worth retrieving a quotation from Batman #681, when Gaucho says that everyone involved with the Black Glove film had been "murdered, gone mad, or vanished". Mangrove Pierce was the star of the film, so which was he? We know that he was framed for a crime he didn't commit, that doesn't necessarily match any of those three outcomes that Gaucho mentions. Did Pierce end up murdered in the events of Mayhew's attack on the Club of Heroes? Or did he vanish after leaving prison? I think that is the most likely outcome, with his scarring being the face-skinning suffered at Hurt's hands. Although we also know that Flamingo, El Penitente's enforcer, likes to remove faces.


The Killers


A giant part of the rest of the story turns on two mystery killers: Who killed Mr. Toad? And who killed Cardinal Maggi?


From the moment we saw a newspaper in Batman #681 mentioning Cardinal Maggi's death, we had reason to suspect the Joker and Talia as possible culprits, because both of them threatened the members of the Black Glove. Seeing the same headline in Oberon Sexton's hotel room, we may wonder what his role is: Is he the one tracking down the members of the Black Glove? If he's Mangrove Pierce, then he would have reason to want revenge, too. On the other hand, Sexton could be investigating the murders that someone else is committing. Sexton shows empathy for Dick Grayson in their first meeting, and verbally defends the Dynamic Duo while being interviewed on television. So he outwardly shows a good-guy vibe, but appearances can be deceiving.


Since Toad's death resulted in a domino in his hand, it's reasonable to assume that the Domino Killer (who, otherwise, seems not to have killed anyone) was at work there. The name "Domino Killer" only occurs in solicits and interviews. The solicit for #1 indicated that Batman and Robin were on the case of someone abducted by the Domino Killer. Only Sasha was abducted, and she was abducted by Pyg, who also had a domino in his lab, and who mentioned dominoes in a soliloquy. Toad was killed despite being in a locked cell, so perhaps Pyg's other comment from the soliloquy, that "Pyg's crept in" has some meaning. But Professor Pyg seems to be a mortal man who's insane, not a spirit or mist or shapeshifter. Moreover, a domino appeared in Santos's hand while Pyg was incarcerated.


If Professor Pyg is merely working for the Domino Killer, then it becomes easier to explain. The Domino Killer could be El Penitente, or even someone in the hierarchy between El Penitente and Professor Pyg. Absolutely everyone who's ended up with a domino has been in that hierarchy who is apparently working for El Penitente. But if Pyg's people were working, apparently, to free Toad, why would someone on the same side kill him? Toad failed to execute a drug deal correctly, and was perhaps operating outside of Pyg's authority in doing so -- his murder may have been punishment, as was Pyg's action against Sasha's father. There is fundamentally nothing known about the Domino Killer that doesn't implicate Pyg.


Consider how Toad was killed. Note that the police commented that he started to stink before he was found dead. Maybe no killer entered the cell at all. Maybe some chemical killed him, possibly on the domino in the first place. Note that killing someone under lock and key with a chemical is a trick up the Joker's sleeve from way back in Batman #1. Could the Joker be attacking Doctor Hurt's interests, having investigated enough to connect the El Penitente drug operations to the villain who talked down to him in Batman, R.I.P.? Morrison has said that his plans for the Joker include "an idea I don't think has been done with him before". That increases the likelihood that one of the characters in the story already is the Joker, acting out of character. He could be fighting crime by lashing out against either the Black Glove members (the "globetrotting serial killer") or the Penitente/Pyg operations (the Domino Killer), or both of those, and he could even be Oberon Sexton, if the good-guy vibe is a ruse. It would be ironic that Sexton alluded to the Red Hood in his television interview, if he is in fact the former Red Hood.


Loose Ends


There are, of course, many other things looming in the title, including the upcoming Blackest Knight storyline. Whatever else goes on is likely to be a backdrop against which the bigger plot unfolds. There will be plenty to say about them before we see issue #7 hit the stands. The solicit for issues #8-9 says promises that while Dick is in the UK, "Meanwhile, back in Gotham City, Alfred and a recuperating Robin are at the mercy of someone both fearsome and familiar…" That could mean that the preview with Doctor Hurt holding the keys to Wayne Manor plays out very soon.