Mad Men 401: Public Relations

There is true audacity in beginning the fourth season of a television series asking a question that one might expect to have been answered long ago or not be worth answering ever. "Who is Don Draper?" When the episode begins, we don't know who's asking it, but know that the question is being asked not merely for the interrogator's benefit, but for ours as well. Long seconds tick by, allowing us to consider the significance of the question. He's a poor boy who stole another man's name and used his talent to become successful, really. Is that the question? No, the deep question is: What motivates this man? What makes him tick? What does he want?

Audacious. It asks us to forgive that the show has run so long and left this an enigma. And also, that it expects us to care. The pause after the question runs nine seconds before anyone speaks. If the viewer gets to the end of those nine seconds wondering, then the question, the episode, and the series thus far have been validated. If one gets to the end of those nine seconds still looking for an answer, then the first three seasons have succeeded. And when Don doesn't answer directly we can wonder if it's because he doesn't want to provide clues to his secret past, or because he's a Midwesterner who was taught not to talk about himself, or if it's because he really doesn't know.

A year has passed since the narration of the last season ended, and in that year, Don scored a signature success with a campaign for Glo-Coat Floor Wax, a product that is designed to coat a surface with an invisible shield that prevents it from picking up any marks while it is in use -- an apt metaphor for Don's impregnable "dignity of movement of an iceberg" demeanor. His behavior in the first three seasons has shown us only that he likes what one expects a man to like, and that he doesn't terribly like making choices that limit his future choices, which is to restate: He likes what one expects a man to like.

The viewer who cares about the answer to that question is in luck: This episode tells us more about Don Draper than the rest of the series up to this point. The events in this episode don't really illuminate the man's character by showing us how he responds to the professional debacle that results from his failure to answer the question. This is predictable, within bounds: He takes his anger out on his subordinates, his ex-wife, and unsympathetic clients; he works overtime even while his children and Ivy League football occupy the background; he overcompensates by giving a better answer in a follow-up interview. And in the interim, he spends Thanksgiving alone (having declined more conventional invitations) for an afternoon tryst with a prostitute; and, that his request of her is to slap him while he occupies the lower position during sex.

The slaps are borne of Don's request, not real anger. This is one act of many we see throughout the episode. Acting is the central theme in the episode, and how the acts fail to hold up. Don's date is an actress, but she only looks pretty and doesn't say anything. In real life, Bethany's pretty smart -- smart enough to know that Don's offer to walk her to her door is also an act.

Besides the prostitute, two other women take money to act: Pete and Peggy hire two actresses to fight over a ham as a backhanded means of boosting a client's sales, which they hope will be attributed to their ad campaign, not the stunt. The act turns too real when the actresses really feud and almost expose the act to the public. Peggy's friend Mark tries to cover her embarrassment by pretending to be her fiancé. Don sees through this act.

Relations in the office are full of artifice: Harry asks Joan not to reveal his good news. Don asks his secretary to get him out of a meeting by paging him with a phony call. And two repeated acts are used as laugh lines: Peggy and Joey's flirtatious recitation of Stan Freberg's two-word "lyrics" to his sly recording "John and Marsha". And, more deviously, covering up the spare budget of Sterling Cooper Draper Pryce is the cause of frequent references to a fictitious "second floor"; Bert Cooper and Don are both above making that false claim. Later, Don turns it into an in-joke hiding behind the slogan that Jantzen Swimwear rejects: "So well built, we can't show you the second floor."

And so, when Don is on the hot seat for the nearly disastrous consequences of his first interview, his reponse under pressure yields the most revealing moment of the episode, discounting the aforementioned moment in which no one is clothed: In a second interview that is scheduled to make up for the first, Don shows no hesitation in embracing every lie put before him, and in the episode's final words, he garrulously boasts of the fictional second floor.

For a series whose slogan was once "Where the truth lies", it is not a great overhaul of the earlier themes to show people acting and lying for the sake of a buck. This is why Don's mention of the second floor finishes a distant second for the episode's largest revelation. When Don asks the call girl to slap him, he's not motivated to make a buck or impress anyone outside the room. That's just him. That's the most information we've gotten yet about "Who is Don Draper?"

Batman 701

One day in Gotham City, a thug wearing a gargoyle mask stabbed Batman in an otherwise futile attack. The blade of the knife was coated with a chemical that made him susceptible to psychological attack. Visual exposure to the trigger phrase that was to bring on an attack on his mind had worn away at his well-being for months, but due to the influence of the drug, Bruce Wayne fell unconscious when he heard the trigger phrase aloud. As he lay on the floor, Bruce was injected with heroin and methamphetamine. Then a tracking device was surgically inserted under one of his teeth, and Bruce was dumped unconscious in a Gotham alley. After a day of wandering the city sick and amnesiac, Bruce managed to activate in himself the blunt, hyperactive Batman of Zur En Arrh personality. In this identity, Batman tracked down criminals, winning some tactical battles, until he had to fight his way through a large number of henchmen in Arkham Asylum. Upon sweeping the Joker aside, Batman had to break through glass, upon which, he was dosed with the Joker's lethal nerve gas. Surviving because he had administered himself an antidote, Bruce woke up in a coffin underground. Once he escaped from that and he tunneled to the surface, he fought another round of thugs, resisted more mental attacks from Doctor Hurt, and then entered the city harbor in a helicopter crash. Batman #701 begins the next moment, with Bruce underwater, needing to surface and swim out to survive.

Because we already knew that Bruce would talk with Alfred in the Batcave, then partake in the events of Final Crisis, the general trajectory that Bruce follows in this issue was largely what one would have expected. The added details are, however, very meaningful. Or, enigmatic, but indicative of something important, lacking only clarity as to what they mean.

One mystery is cleared up right away. At the end of RIP, it was a curiosity (in my mind) as to why Bruce would remove his cape and cowl during his face-off with Hurt. When he tells us that he was not aware that his cape and cowl were missing, we can conclude that he did this as a partial response to the mental command Hurt attempted to trigger by telling Bruce to "put away his Batman costume and retire from crime-fighting" (a line originally from Batman #156). Bruce doesn't remember taking his mask off because he didn't do it voluntarily: He began, as Hurt asked, to "put away his Batman costume", but his will was too strong for him to retire from crime-fighting. According to the RIP backstory, this command affected Bruce for "a couple of weeks" the first time Hurt employed it, back when Dick Grayson was Robin. This time, it hardly affected Bruce at all.

Bruce's swim is a kaleidoscope of minor, but intriguing details. We see in the form of charts showing the weather, the value of stocks, and the stars in the sky (Sagittarius -- no, this does not mean that Green Arrow is in the story), that the world continues to go on while Batman is submerged. The first person whom Bruce sees upon reaching land is Ellie, the former prostitute who was last in the story right around the time that "devil ears" and an "enemy as old as time and bigger than all of us" were invoked back in Batman #665. She has taken the job with Waynetech that Batman offered her back then; her return symbolizes things coming full circle as well as redemption.

Much of what we learn in this story concerns Bruce's reaction to and interpretation of the villain who had just made the past five days of his life a living hell. He at once tells himself that swimming away from the crash is, for anyone less than himself, impossible. Lane, one of the three people in the helicopter, is a serious athlete on the superhero level. Hurt has never proven any physical ability, and Bruce deems his escape impossible. But Hurt never surfaces. More than five minutes go by in addition to the time that it took Bruce to swim out. And yet, when he later checks the wreckage, there is no body. And so, Bruce cannot explain Hurt -- he remains for Bruce "a ghost" as well as a threat.

Alfred, paraphrasing the opinion that Morrison attributed to some readers, doesn't want to accept the supernatural explanation. We already have Morrison's reply to this, when he said "For me, this is the ultimate supernatural Batman story." Alfred gets another shadowy form of that reply when he sees that the clock in Wayne Manor had stopped at the precise moment of the helicopter crash.

Bruce himself expresses uncertainty when he says that Hurt "may or may not be some manifestation of the Devil, or my dead father." But he takes the curse absolutely seriously, calling it "a death trap".

Many of the small details in the issue reinforce, conveniently, details that we saw for the first time quite recently in Batman and Robin. Bruce goes to the Barbatos shrine under Wayne Manor. He knows that Hurt had been there, and he sees the paint that Dick Grayson told us was relatively fresh. We find out that Bruce's parents knew about the room, and it becomes increasingly likely that it was the scene of a Black Glove party. So we find out that Bruce knew about the things that Dick Grayson discovered so recently, but only partially. He knew that those things were there, but not why.

Bruce enters that room through the library in Wayne Manor, standing almost on the exact spot where Doctor Hurt shoots Dick Grayson. He looks at the paining of his parents that is to overlook Dick's shooting. Martha is again shown with lighter hair, so we know that it is Martha, because Bruce does not react in any unusual manner. There is a figure before them, an art piece whose strangeness -- a large knight from a chess board -- suggests that it has some special role. It, too, is to look down upon Dick's shooting.

The "three days" reference to Easter from Batman and Robin #13 also appears here. Bruce tells Alfred that if he sleeps for three days, not to wake him. Sleeping for three days then rising -- Bruce will be resurrected.

The most important symbol in this issue, though, is the one that represents Hurt. In his own words, a hole. Bruce ends the issue looking at a hole. But more important, he calls Hurt a hole. An empty space. An absence. Bruce has an empty space in his life -- maybe in that sense, an enemy who is an absence represents not Bruce's father but the hole in his life where his father should be. Bruce suspects that Hurt goes back in his own family tree. An anti-father. An anti-Bruce as well. As Bruce is the one who sleeps for three days then rises, an anti-Bruce is symbolically an anti-Christ.

The story ends with questions. Part two of this story within a story is yet to come.

The Van Derms

A casket bearing the bat-symbol appears to be, as Dick Grayson says, "the key" to everything big in Grant Morrison's intertwined runs in Batman and Robin and Return of Bruce Wayne. We know that it contains the writings of Bruce Wayne from his stint as a witch-hunter in the 1640s and papers he narrated to Jack Valor in 1718. As of 1734, it contains something else -- something Valor finds unspeakable and unsettling. It seems to make him feel as though he had participated in an awful rite, and makes him think of the end of the world. Maybe something else is placed in it after 1734. But whatever is in there, the sight of the casket makes the 99 Fiends say "Barbatos".

This casket has to be the handiwork of the Van Derm family, who have come up at least four times in the story, despite the extreme shortage of any actual text describing them. Martin Van Derm is seen c. 1645 as the keeper of the register of Gotham Colony. He is also a painter, and comes to win the trust of Bruce Wayne -- a trust which seems to extend to his entire family. At the end of ROBW #2, he seems to be handing Bruce's writings to his offspring while his narration tells us that "The Devil was not yet done with Gotham." Martin must finish his natural lifespan long before the alleged devil worship in the 1760s, so there is an important part of the story missing where devil worship begins in Gotham, perhaps sometime around the 1670s. The only person we know of who might be in the prime of life at this time would be the nameless person to whom Martin hands Bruce's book.

Later, in the 1730s, the Van Derm family has seems to be helmed by a "wealthy brother and sister", because it is they that Valor visits, and Van Derm is the name Bruce used to give him a destination. By this time, the casket has already been assembled and has the unsettling item inside. Devil worship has taken root sometime in the past century, with characters who have not yet been named.

According to Alfred's comment in B&R #12, Wayne Manor was built in 1795 by a Nathan Van Derm, who is thereby the fifth Van Derm to whom the story has referred, but only the second with a name. Once again, a role of great potential to affect the story falls to this one family. And one where knowledge of what is beneath Wayne Manor seems to have been necessary.

We know little more than this: That this family has been mentioned repeatedly, when there is no narrative reason to do so that has yet been made clear. The only Van Derm whom we have seen clearly has the same hairline as Doctor Hurt. And the names Martin, Nathan, Simon [Hurt] seem to fit in a sequence. The Van Derms have worked to serve the Waynes. Way back in Batman #678, Doctor Hurt relishes his expected victory and offers that the broken Batman might return to Wayne Manor, "perhaps as my butler." This line seemed like a clue at the time, that Hurt was someone who had been under the Waynes in the past, and wanted his family to take the upper hand.

It has been supposed, from the missing painting of old Thomas Wayne, and the allegations of devil worship, that Doctor Hurt is simply that ancestor of Bruce's, kept alive by some sort of satanic pact. But we already know that Doctor Hurt's current desire for the Waynes is to ruin their reputation with lies and then adopt a false identity as one of them. Is he one of them -- or a Van Derm who has used ill-gotten immortality to fight a family feud with them? Is the story about old Thomas Wayne's devil worship a lie to smear his name? RIP took place because Bruce wrongly trusted Doctor Hurt in the Army isolation experiment. Is the backstory in the past that he also wrongly trusted the Van Derm family, with Hurt being one of them?

Aside from the disproportional mention of this one family, we don't have any facts with which to answer that question. He feels that the Wayne fortune is "rightfully" his -- was it something he lost, or something he stole -- or planned to steal? He calls Gotham his home, and Bruce an usurper. But he also makes the direct lie that he is Bruce's father Thomas Wayne. We can't determine the facts of a largely untold backstory. But the Van Derms seem to have brought the Devil into this story. The story has told us just enough about them to make it seem likely that we need to be told more. The last two installments of ROBW have touched upon them near the end of the issue, and avoided using the family name when possible, as though Morrison wants to tell us just enough to keep them in the story, but outside of the glare of full attention. Perhaps because the big villain of the whole story is named Simon Van Derm.

Batman and Robin 13

The story in Batman and Robin #13-#15 is the sequel to 2008's Batman, R.I.P. Now as then, a chess match between Doctor Hurt and Batman has moved past the opening and the midgame and on to the endgame. But this isn't Bruce Wayne -- it's Dick Grayson. Bruce, we ultimately found out, was prepared for Hurt all along. He was playing a bigger game. Dick Grayson comes into this conflict at a disadvantage. He doesn't know what Hurt's scheme is. He's figuring it out in parts as the situation comes to a boil. Just as he figures out what danger Gotham City is in, he is personally overwhelmed by Doctor Hurt's forces and subdued. Then shot in the head. But that hasn't happened yet. It will happen three days from now.

Batman and Robin #13 is told in three different timeframes. The first to appear in the comic is the past, but it's a past that could not have been real. In two and a half of the most blood-curdling pages in Batman's history, we see Thomas Wayne gleefully celebrate the deaths of Martha and his son Bruce, contract killings that he had arranged. Then he goes on to a life of utter decadence, painted more than adequately in a single wordless panel -- in RIP's red and black -- showing an orgy, reminiscent of "Eyes Wide Shut", with "Wayne" in the bat-mask from Detective #235, and RIP, and all of Hurt's most recent appearances. Echoing a gesture from RIP, Wayne/Hurt pours champagne on one of several crazed participants in the throes of sexual depravity. The masks on the attendees depict various demons and animals, including the pig mask we have seen, and see again in this issue, on Professor Pyg. It should be noted that the direction of Thomas' parted hair reverses in precisely that panel. It switches to the part that Simon Hurt has always worn.

That past cannot be real because Bruce did not die and Thomas did not stand in public and attend a funeral after the shooting. In other respects, the story resembles the lie that Hurt told at the end of RIP to a disbelieving Bruce. Hurt's lie then, in Batman #681, was factually consistent with a cover-up, stating that Bruce was supposed to be shot, but that Chill had "lost his nerve" and that Thomas Wayne, surviving that night, went into hiding. Under the assumption that the actual mythology of the Waynes will not be altered (and we already know, even by Hurt's admission, that the dossier attesting to Thomas Wayne contracting Martha's death was faked), we actually have three stories concerning the Waynes' last night: The traditional account of the Waynes as victims; the dossier lie that Hurt repeated in #681; and, the opening of B&R #13, showing Thomas living on, openly, after that night.

Under the strong presumption that the Waynes were good people who were victimized (even Batman #673's story of Joe Chill reinforces the idea that Chill was supposed to kill Bruce and did kill Thomas: "Three for three."), what do we make of this dark fantasy? The newspaper clip seen in #678 tells us that Hurt was in Gotham before the Waynes died. He obviously wanted to be Thomas. But he wasn't -- it's just a fantasy. And if Hurt is really an evil spirit that inhabits the bodies of real men, then Thomas Wayne might have been his host if only he could have made it happen. He didn't -- he went on to order Thomas' death and to become Doctor Hurt -- but he still dreams about how it could have been.

This is another variant on "the couples plot" that has been turning up in Morrison's Black Glove stories since Batman #669. A man has his wife or lover killed. There is a lie, a frame-up, or a cover-up. John Mayhew, Mangrove Pierce, Dorothy Lamarr -- their reality and a frame -- and two different incriminating stories about the Waynes. And, as we learn later in this issue, the real Oberon Sexton has killed his wife, too, and it is covered up with a lie. Why does this plot keep repeating? It's not for lack of imagination on Grant Morrison's part -- it just gets more insidious with the suggestion that some dark force is making this play out over and over again. Without this context, it might seem like Oberon Sexton were just a bad man who happened to get into the Joker's path. But we've known that Doctor Hurt makes slaves of good men: Sexton is perhaps another one, whom the Joker found as he followed Hurt's path. Even in the "Darkest Knight" story, Dick Grayson kills a woman: Batman kills Batwoman, as part of a bigger plan to save her.

A detail in the art of the fantasy/flashback reveals a stylistic connection that has previously been elusive: The pips on the dominoes, when seen in reverse color (white on black) resemble the pearls that fell from Martha Wayne's necklace. We see this because the dominoes (figurative, presumably) are shown in line, standing, during the fantasy/flashback. Later in the issue, we see that they have begun to fall. In reverse color, we see them mirror the pearls shown in the issue's first panel. Recall, also, that pearls were the theme of Pearly Charlie English, who was the good version of a [more] evil double.

When the story cuts to the future (three days from now), we see Hurt arrive in Gotham as Thomas Wayne, under the pretense of having lost his memory for the intervening period. A short but highly meaningful quip tells us that the city is in chaos three days from now. Hurt takes control of Wayne Manor and the 99 Fiends (recognizable thanks to their hip party-goer attire) have captured Dick and Damian. Hurt insinuates -- again -- that he is a Wayne and thereby superior to Grayson. With the same bluntness that Boss Dark Side showed when he had Shiloh Norman as a captive, Hurt dispenses with the "Bond villain" theatrics and does the obvious. He shoots Dick Grayson in the head.

With astonishing density, the dialogue refers to the black sun / eclipse motif from Return of Bruce Wayne and to the devil-deal that Damian makes in Batman #666. A small but portentous detail is a portrait that shows what seems to be Thomas Wayne with a woman who seems -- a blonde or a redhead -- not to be Martha.

And so, having opened in medias res, the story flips back to the present, with the scene previewed on the Internet a couple of days earlier. In a brilliant departure from the usual uses of the Joker, this time the Clown Prince of Crime (who doesn't feel like he deserves that name recently) is in captivity, physically harmless (Dick fears that Damian will kill the clown) but dangerous because of what he knows. It seems clear that the Joker's investigations as Oberon Sexton have given him advance knowledge of Hurt's plan. He asks for Batman's confidence. But he wears a disguise to try to get that trust. Dick is so certain that anything the Joker says is a trick that the Joker can probably perpetrate a trick just by telling the truth. The role that the white-faced archnemesis plays here is like that which Qull plays in the life of Abin Sur in Alan Moore's classic story "Tygers". Dick may lose his battle with Hurt if he doesn't listen to the clues that the Joker is offering. But if he does listen, he gives the Joker an opening to betray him. No situation could strike the Joker as funnier.

The rest of the present-tense plot shows how things start to unravel on the path to that dark future awaiting three days out. With Bruce Wayne likely to return on the third day, the numerology is that of the Easter story. Dick Grayson and Commissioner Gordon are shot down in the flying Batmobile by bazooka-wielding thugs of the 99 Fiends. This is when the dominoes start falling figuratively. Dick is unconscious as Pyg is, across town, sprung from Blackgate Prison. We see in a preview for next time that Pyg is about to operate on Commissioner Gordon, a fate that would bring him to the opening of Morrison's entire run, when Gordon was laughing from Joker toxin exposure in the opening pages of Batman #655.

As for the main threat that Hurt constitutes, it is indeed, as postulated here earlier, the antidote from #3 that carries the threat that Dick thought he was alleviating. The poison has already been delivered (a Joker classic since Batman #1, and played out again with Toad's death in B&R #2) to a huge number of people and Jim Gordon's sneezes tell us that he's obviously going to be one of the first victims to succumb. The city faces, when or before the eclipse happens, a plague similar to that seen in "Gothic", matching the fear expressed by Phosphorus Rex in B&R #3 when he says "They'll kill all of us." The Joker refers to "all fall down" time, which plays on the same children's nursery rhyme that "Gothic" quotes.

Dick is doing his best as a detective. He sees a "Mexican Train" being drawn on Gotham's map by the location of the Joker's crimes. Moments later, he places the image of a virus on the same portion of the same computer monitor. Did the Joker draw a picture of the molecule that actually cures the disease that Hurt is spreading?

This issue is magnificent, giving us a taste of a new future for the Batman characters as well as a new history of the Waynes' past and a portentous story in the present tense. Frazer Irving's art earns very high marks. When the four-page preview was released to the web this week, some fans found fault with his style. But that was the least "creepy" portion of the story, plotwise, The creepier the story gets, the more his work approaches sheer perfection. As the Joker crumbles during Damian's interrogation; as Dick is brought down from the sky with explosives; and, in every satanically sinister depiction of Hurt's face, Irving's art makes a perfect nightmare of the predicament that Morrison has scripted.

Bruce Wayne would have been ready for this. Dick Grayson wasn't. The Joker's grin mocks Dick when he tells him that to stop everyone from dying, he'll have to be as good as Bruce was. He certainly doesn't plan as well. With him, it's all in the timing.

Return of Bruce Wayne 3

The covers of ROBW hint that the individual episodes, like the Silver Age mysteries they mirror, focus on Batman winning the kinds of fights he usually wins in Gotham, but in each of several past eras known for colorful action. Halfway through the series, it is clear that these issues do contain such interactions, but it's equally clear that these fights are window dressing to several parallel larger agendas. ROBW is telling, also, the interlinked stories of Bruce Wayne accomplishing the following:

1) Beating Darkseid's plan to destroy the 21st Century
2) Playing a role in his own family history, and that of Gotham as a whole
3) Starting an underground hero movement which continues far forward towards our own present
4) Sending, via artifacts from the past, messages to Dick Grayson in the present that will prove decisive in a coming showdown with Doctor Hurt

Issue #3 shows each of these plots advance even while key facts remain mysterious. It is remarkable that this series can juggle so many distinct mysteries and tie in with the concurrent events in Batman and Robin, which is also, of course, scripted by Morrison.

#3 may show us a bit of how Bruce is working to defeat Darkseid, but does not pick up directly with the End of Time scenario shown in #2. In #3, the JLA remark that Superman and the others (Hal Jordan's presence in the JLA meeting may be an oversight) have not returned from their rescue mission. Wonder Woman describes our hero, in his present situation, as a "world-threatening rogue Batman". It remains unclear why the JLA suspects that the world is threatened when they are only beginning to figure out other key facts of the scenario. It is also unclear what is meant by "rogue". Presumably, they expect their most capable ally to be unaware of what they know. We have already seen by #2 that Bruce Wayne is, predictably, the one who is a step ahead.

#3 showed us another surrogate for a present-day character, with the youthful Black Pirate acting as a sort of Robin, and continuing on as a cowled crime-fighter on the high seas. Perhaps more significant as a force carrying on the bat-work were the Miagani, who had been converted into a bat-army, reminiscent of the Sons of the Batman in The Dark Knight Returns. The duration of their memory is apparently 11,000 years, spanning the whole time since ROBW #1, with no refresher in ROBW #2, where Annie says of the Miagani's presence merely that it came "before us". In the seventy or so years since then, the Miagani moved into the future Batcave, where the hero-symbol cave art remains, and forged a movement that will either prove to continue to the present or meet a spectacular end in the meantime. Given that Bruce's name in #1, "Man of Bats" is the name of the Native American Batman in the Club of Heroes (original appearance: Batman #86). It may already have ended by the skip-ahead showing Bruce in the late 19th Century, aimed for a showdown with Jonah Hex. Because the narration is now over a hundred years past the alleged devil worship involving Old Thomas Wayne in 1765.

The adventure in #3, and the steps that Bruce takes to pull of a triumph in each of the many ongoing plots carries the issue more than capably. But the issue was also packed with subtle surprises -- backhanded suggestions that the plot has considerably more depth than it seemed to one issue ago.

One key piece of narration tells us that the doomsday -- what the Deer People in #1 called the "All-Over" -- will apparently be triggered if Bruce's cowl is removed from the Batcave. (Perhaps they are quite incorrect in that belief, but it's the kind of foreshadowing that feels like it's true.) But removing the cowl happens to be exactly what the JLA intends to do, so on the surface, it now seems that the JLA is poised unwittingly to end the world, with Bruce knowledgable in his 1718 adventure of the stakes. He has directed Jack Valor to pass on the message, and it will seem to get to the heroes somehow as needed. Given this piece of information, it may be that Darkseid's plan was not to make Bruce Wayne a doomsday weapon at all, but to make the JLA think so. This may mean that the end of #2 showed Bruce trapping Superman and Green Lantern to help even the odds if he has to take on the JLA alone. We could have a confrontation where the two sides each believe that the other needs to be stopped. If so, it is of course Bruce who will prove to have been correct. Remember that the Deer People in #1 already had an "All-Over" legend stating in so many words that the end would result from the return of the shining ones, i.e., the New Gods as represented by Metron.

Another seeming surprise is that the Barbatos carving found by Dick Grayson in Batman and Robin #11 -- thoroughly evil looking, and there related to the devil worship of Old Thomas Wayne -- is seen in ROBW #3 to be the handiwork of the Miagani who are verifiable Good Guys loyal to Bruce -- look at how they copy his body language exactly when he examines the utility belt. The consequences of this may be that when Barbatos is unleashed in Batman and Robin that he/it proves to be a force for good and not for evil, and will thus tip the tide in favor of our heroes, and not in favor of Doctor Hurt. Note that the giant bat fought Vandal Savage before the events of ROBW #1. Is the enemy of Bruce's enemy his friend?

We also got a partial answer to the mystery of the casket and the book seen in the Mordecai Wayne portrait. Indeed, Bruce's book is inside the casket. But something more portentous is inside, something that Jack will not describe in his journal. His phrasing hints that the "final thing" is something from the event with Bruce in #2, and that it also reminds him of the All-Over. It is not clear, though, if these are general associations or if he saw something that was present. We know that Bruce left Jack with a message about the "hunter's belt" (the stars of Orion, which made an appearance in the woodwork in Batman and Robin #10).  The utility belt which Bruce examines closely in #3 is absent when Dick finds the cowl in B&R. Was Bruce looking at it, reminiscing, or did he remove something? One other change in scenery: The cowl's surroundings. The eclipse in B&R #12 is total, but the one in ROBW #3 is partial, showing a sliver of sun. Is this an art discrepany or meaningful?

We skip ahead (with a depiction of an eclipse which, for what it's worth, did not actually occur on the East Coast of the future U.S.A. in the months before Blackbeard's death). Now the action is sometime after the start of the Civil War, if we can trust the reference to the death of Joshua Wayne (who disappeared in 1860 according to Batman Secret Files and Origins). An apparent showdown between Bruce and Jonah Hex would be a good match: Hex helped beat the JLA in a Bronze Age adventure and killed Superman in an alternate timeline in Superman/Batman: Absolute Power. However, note that he disavows superstition right before the men who seem to hire him refer to "bad luck", and had earlier acted scared of the "haunted" surroundings; he may not take their job. If he does, he's got some omenous symbols at his fingertips: the Dead Man's Hand from DC Universe #0, with the cards all black (the color of the Devil, according to Bruce in Batman #680) and the joker card as creepy as the one who frequents Arkham. That's the same Joker whose confrontation with Dick in Batman and Robin #12 may not have happened yet when Dick and Damian explore the bunker in which Bruce faced Darkseid.

One thing we've seen of Bruce's jumps is that he arrives when a person in need asks for assistance from the spirit plane. First Annie, then Jack. If the pattern continues, then someone else is that person in #4 -- perhaps Jonah Hex is looking for Bruce's help, not his death. Good guys tend to patch things up after an initial clash; that's a likely guide to the action next issue.

Finally, a figure from #3 is mentioned in a meaningful way. Van Derm, the Flemish painter who shares Doctor Hurt's hairline, recorded his thoughts in a journal whose words appear at the end of #2. He refers, from his older years well after Bruce beating the dragon, to the Devil making an appearance in Gotham sometime after the 1640s and presumably no later than 1700 or so, if it's still within Van Derm's natural lifetime. This is the man who seemed to have passed Bruce's book on to his son in #2, and Bruce tells Jack to find him (or some other descendent of Van Derm) in #3. This is a family whose fate seems to be related to the coming Wayne-Hurt interactions. With the next two issues of Batman, the next three issues of Batman and Robin, and the next two issues of Return of Bruce Wayne all taking Doctor Hurt's story forward, this enigmatic and supremely evil villain is about to take center stage in Morrison's story and hold it right through the summer.

Mad Men and Bad Men

In the years between the world wars, a tradition grew of fiction portraying tough guys and detectives as they existed in modern American society. These stories filled the airwaves, the cinema, and pulp magazines. Comic books devoted to this sort of story brought this kind of story to readers, boys aged about twelve we might imagine. As of 1937, a kid could pick up a monthly issue of Detective Comics and read ten or so stories of tough, fair white male heroes taking on gangsters, foreigners, and other killers. More often than not, there was a woman to win – or overcome. The same kinds of stories found their way to the big screen in the years to come, founding the genre known as film noir. Stories like this have remained popular to the present.

Seventy-one years ago, a new kind of hero was launched in Detective Comics #27. At least in subtle ways, he was different than any character who had come before. He wore tights, a mask, and a cape, and sought to inspire fear. But beneath the guise he was an ordinary man – in fact, a rich socialite – who was simply impeccably trained. The stories were as light in depth as they were dark in tone, but the tradition of Batman has gone on to see admirable success and longevity. An original copy of his first comic book appearance has recently sold for over $1 million. The 2008 film The Dark Knight has grossed just over $1 billion. Batman's home base has always been in the comic books and animated programs that targeted a younger or nerdier audience than the mainstream, but beyond the two thousand comic books with Batman stories, there have been live action television shows and movies that percolate attention to the Caped Crusader to general interest. Batman is integral to American culture and is, moreover, big business.

Eleven years ago, a different innovation in storytelling hit cable television, portraying a charming sympathetic villain as the central character. Drawing on organized crime stories whose cinematic renditions had a collosal impact, The Sopranos attracted millions of weekly viewers and revolutionized television. From its first season, the show won such overwhelming critical praise that it seemed to have utterly defeated its competitors in dramatic television, forcing other shows and networks to decide whether to adapt or wallow in mediocrity. In comparison to the longer-lived Batman franchise, The Sopranos has no apologies to make for being for children. By universal consensus, children should not watch The Sopranos, even for a single episode, and the subject matter as well as the execution (no pun intended) is utterly adult in nature. Neither does the show require disclaimers for the intelligence or sophistication of the approach. The most respected voices in television criticism gave the show their full approval and the show garnered so many Emmy nominations that in certain categories it choked off opportunities for its rivals to collect any. The New Yorker, from behind the monocle it holds as it turns up its nose at the world, called the show "a transformative journey" for the viewers.

More recently, another cable television program has taken the reins as the deep culture-defining drama of our times. Mad Men has completed three seasons of its story of Madison Avenue advertising in the early 1960s, frequently creating perspectives that comment on our current world: what we as a society are like and how we got this way. It shares some of The Sopranos' pedigree (Matthew Weiner pitched the show before becoming one of The Sopranos' main writers; this stint earned him the recognition that put Mad Men on the air) and is in some ways a vehicle for similar enlightment.

I present these three fictional worlds and therefore their central characters together because of their commonalities and their differences. They are similar enough to suggest a common source of interest; understanding what they have in common is therefore a way to understand their viewers. The contrasts with the two television shows – serials with a lifespan measured in years – moreover says something about the prospects for the Batman franchise, whose endurance is sure to go past a century.

We can note first that all three of these fictional worlds centers on a white, American male of noteworthy resources. In different ways, Batman, Tony Sorpano, and Don Draper are capable beyond what the viewer can imagine. Tony is not particularly polished (though he looks good in a suit), but he is clever, and he is powerful. Things that men value in life fall to Tony in abundance. He eats well, he is always with attractive women, and among a certain circle, his word is law. In those ways, Don Draper is also successful. Without being able to (or wanting to) have his enemies killed, Don has all of the things Tony has, and more. He's perfectly good-looking, as is his wife, and he has legally come by as much money as he could want. He's universally praised for skill in his profession, which happens to translate to a verbal fluency that makes him the winner in every social setting. Like Tony, he enjoys – if enjoying is the right word – a string of highly attractive mistresses.

The winning ways of Tony and Don are surely not incidental to their series' success. While their shows are successful thanks to great acting, thoughtful directing, and deft looks into everything that life is about, they are unquestionably more successful than series about plain-looking, ignorant nobodies have tended to be. (Perhaps Taxi is a useful foil, but even there, most characters were either smart or good-looking, though rarely both.)

If the best shows on television can be forgiven the indulgence of giving their protagonists soap-opera levels of charm, wealth, gravitas, and talent, then is it a crime of unsubtlety for the Batman mythology to make Bruce Wayne the paragon of those qualities? To be clear: Bruce Wayne is richer by far than Tony and Don put together. He's at least as good-looking as Don (John Hamm could easily be cast as Bruce Wayne, were there a vacancy), and he could take down Tony Soprano backed by any platoon of Cosa Nostra gunmen ten times out of ten. A billionaire, detective, escape artist, chemist, acrobat, and self-made commando, Bruce Wayne is impossibly skilled in more ways than Tony and Don and anyone they ever met put together. Does this starting point automatically disqualify a Batman story from being of general interest? Tony and Don manage to drive compelling stories that the New York Times admires despite their larger-than-life lives. But is this because they are just barely larger than life? There are, after all, mafiosi and talented creative minds in this world. Even though Tony and Don do not exist in the real world, people like them surely do. Or near enough like them. Nobody like Bruce Wayne has ever existed. If one of the world's strongest men were also one of the fastest, most agile, most intelligent, and most wealthy, he would also have to be the very most driven to resemble Bruce Wayne. Does that fact make Batman a character outside of general interest? Is the thread of interest snapped when the outstanding protagonist is made unrealistically talented?

I don't think so. Because neither Tony nor Don is interesting because he is realistic. Tony and Don are interesting because of the way their exceptional qualities become irrelevant in the face of everyday concerns. This is the point of both characters, and much the point of, say, The Godfather, Part II's Michael Corleone – to take someone exceptional, at the verge of improbability, and ask: how does this exceptional man interact with reality?

Tony, despite being successful to an extent that all men would like to be (in an enterprise that many men would stay far away from), is bogged down by exactly the same concerns in life with which law-abiding men struggle. That is the starting point of Tony Soprano's existence. Chris Albrecht, the then-President of HBO Original Programming who received the pitch for the Sopranos reflected upon Tony's ordinary life problems and concluded "The only difference between [Tony] and everybody I know is [that] he's the Don of New Jersey."

Everything in Don's life is what almost any man would choose, and without the violence and risk of Tony's life. The only real flaw in Don's life is... Don. Unlike Bruce Wayne, Tony and Don have families. Bruce's defining moment in life was the loss of his family, a tragedy that left him with a world of grief but no "problems". Tony has no end of problems – ones that are easy to see and, were he not a sociopath, ones with which to identify. Don has relatively few problems save those he and his wife Betty make for themselves. His needs come from his lack of satisfaction and satisfiability. His crisis is existential.

And in that one sense, Bruce is more like Don than Tony. Because Bruce has absolutely no problems native to his own existence. However, while Don has the perfect job, perfect house, and perfect wife, Bruce has the perfect house and fortune, but otherwise lacks the relationships one would have in a normal life. Tony and Bruce share a life on the front lines of the war between law and crime; they are on opposite sides of it, but the action it entails, the scheming, the generalship – that much, they share. But Tony goes home to a strong-willed wife and two difficult offspring. Until the death of supporting actress Nancy Marchand, Tony dealt even more with the looming presence of his mother, Livia. Bruce, in contrast, goes home to no family at all.

For in all that a strange and cataclysmic event involving his family shaped Bruce Wayne's life, in doing so it left him without a family. Orphaned at an early age (8 to 10, in many tellings), Bruce never again (in most tellings) has an older relative telling him what to do. Nor does he take a wife who would require him to balance his superhero role with the trappings of ordinary life, nor – in the most everyday sense – does he ever have children to raise. When a boy comes ito his life, it's another orphan who also begins fighting crime, with Bruce, as his main pursuit in life. And it is exactly the lack of family that gives Bruce Wayne the space to be Batman. Not just in the world of the story, where heroes have such demands, but in the way readers apprehend him: For the early years of the Batman franchise, in which the character became popular, Batman was the man an adventure-craving boy might seek to be. Everything he did was exciting, morally upright, and skillfully done. He was the moral center of his own universe, and the one perfect man in it. These aspects of the Batman narrative are so compelling that one flinches from remembering the more obvious biographical details – that a man wears a bat mask and dons a cape to fight crime. This part of the premise is so strange and absurd that the Sixties television show could climb the ratings by making fun of it on a weekly basis. But the billion-dollar Batman, the film's Dark Knight, has so much weight to him that the silliness is forgotten.

Batman, in most tellings, is a man engaged in a war, and completely defined by that war. When a story introduces conventional domestic realities (such as a girlfriend) into his life, the goes on to bring those things to an end due to his single-minded focus. So almost all Batman stories are stories about a man opposing enemies, and inhabit the border between crime drama and war drama. Historically, this has proven a success basis for a highly regarded film. And The Dark Knight makes good on that potential, making Batman the central character in the top-grossing crime movie of all time.

Tony and Don both have things in their lives that one (particularly, perhaps, a man) might seek to emulate. Present one's self like Don. Be decisive and insightful like Tony. See the small details. Be prepared. Earn respect. Don't show vulnerability or doubt.

They both also, inarguably, have things in their lives that one would be wise to avoid. And so the great power of television serials depicting them is that they provide an ongoing series of life lessons. Both experience the pitfalls of making others look bad, or in showing others up. (It wins Don an enemy in his boss Roger. It wins Tony attempts on his life.) Both imperil their marriages with serial affairs. A weekly viewing of Tony or Don is a weekly lesson on how to be, and how not to be.

In contrast, there is really only one thing to learn from Batman: Try harder. The things that Batman does are not the things that virtually anyone else does, ever. If Batman comic books and films served as a training resource for Delta Force or SWAT teams (and they are not accurate enough to serve in that respect), then he would have an audience who could sympathize with him. People who could watch and think, "Oh, so that's how you disarm twelve opponents in fifteen seconds without being shot." Batman doesn't fit into a viewer's life except for escape (incidentally, "escape" being just another thing that Batman is incredibly good at). A hundred million people are willing to parcel a couple of hours out of a summer night to consider the issues entailed by a vigilante war that threatens to tear a city apart with its collateral damage, if the narrative is done just right. The Dark Knight did that. On Monday morning, the viewer goes back to school or work. They go back to being a spouse or daughter or member of a clique.

Tony and Don tells us something about how to live those lives. When they aren't being exceptional (which they do about half the time), they face what we face. Both of them lament that fact. In Tony's "Test Dream", he cannot tear himself away from a suspenseful movie to meet his daughter's fiance's family. He explains to his wife that it's "so much more interesting" than life. She points out, referring to his Mafia existence, "What, are you kidding me? It is your life." But only half the time, and for Tony, that's not enough.

Don may not know what he wants in life. It's not the wife and children and the big house. He tells a woman who is about to be his mistress that he wants her, but this is only true when he doesn't have her. Maybe Don would like to be Batman. We haven't seen anything that Don's contented with. And so, Don's life is like that of many viewers.

With two gunshots, Bruce Wayne got Tony's wish, the adventure, all the time, with no "life". Maybe Don would like to be Batman. Bruce drives very fast, spends a lot of money, hangs out with anyone he wants to, fights and always wins, and garners boundless praise from the whole world while he shows everyone else up. It keeps Bruce Wayne from ever having the doldrums that plague and consume Tony and Don. It also keeps him from being the protagonist of a widely-watched serial. He's too much what one might wish to be and not enough what anyone is.

Batman 700

Grant Morrison has written forty issues about Batman in the last four years. A large number of those have tied in to a single plot line: The contest between Doctor Hurt on the one hand and Bruce Wayne and his proxies on the other. But Batman #700 is a standalone story, self-contained, unrelated to the main story of the last few years.

Well, somewhat.

It begins, though, very much like the struggle between Batman and Doctor Hurt began: Bruce Wayne submits to the experiment of a man he trusts, a man of science, and that trust is turned against him, subjecting him to experiences for the sake of evil, turning the experiment into captivity that he has to break out of. That is chronologically how Morrison's Batman story begins, although we found it out no sooner than Batman #674. We also see a good man's glasses broken (which happens in the first "shot" of Morrison's run, in Batman #655) and the story ends with a good man (just a toddler) dosed by Joker venom (which is also in the first "shot" of Morrison's run).

This time around, the scientist is a good man whose experiment is taken over by a quintet of prominent Batman villains). Professor Carter Nichols debuted in Batman #24, back in 1944 -- the year after Alfred's first appearance. Nichols was the vehicle for a number of time travel stories taking the Caped Crusader (something, we learn, he doesn't like to be called) into times and places where fanciful stories pit Batman against just about everything a young boy might read about in history class (when that boy might wish he were reading, instead, about Batman). And here we have another parallel with Morrison's main Batman stories, which currently have Bruce Wayne on a serial time travel adventure thanks to Darkseid's Omega Effect. Return of Bruce Wayne is a modern take on those Professor Nichols stories. By putting these stories into continuity, Morrison is performing a similar task to the one he did by putting other sci fi stories into continuity by explaining them as hallucinations (which was the explanation offered by some of the older stories themselves).

The story is a mystery, and it throws down the gauntlet early, asking on the splash page if the reader can solve the "impossible crime". A related challenge is offered early in the first part of the story, "Yesterday", when the Riddler, not referring to that crime, asks a question that is not directly answered, but is repeated in the tripartite story's final panel. The impossible crime itself appears in the first panel of the second part of the story, "Today", when an older Professor Nichols is found shot dead in a locked room with no weapon. Is this really a mystery? Much of the explanation seems obvious from the start: His age is a giveaway that the body is from the future, and in the "Tomorrow" story, we even see that Future Nichols has been shot with the weapon that caused the death wound. Dick Grayson ends the "Today" story providing an explanation which is not inaccurate but also not complete. We see all we need to know in the "Tomorrow" section, but the lines between the dots are not drawn. They go like this:

In "Yesterday", the villains' raid demoralizes Yesterday-Nichols to the point that he can never again serve as the time travel service for Batman. It leaves the man traumatized. He destroys his equipment.

In "Today", before the main action begins, Today-Nichols-1 finds the mortally wounded Tomorrow-Nichols in his basement. He finds out from Today-Nichols-2 (the same man, maybe minutes or hours older) that he must go into the future to recover Tomorrow Nichols (himself) on the day of his death and bring him back to "Today". As soon as Today-Nichols-1 goes on that short jaunt into the future, he is Today-Nichols-2, who loops back to have that chat with Today-Nichols-1. Then he goes back to make a crucial phone call to the police in "Yesterday". Then Today-Nichols goes on to an unstated, but happier, life that eventually ages him to become the older Tomorrow-Nichols who is shot by Two-Face-Two.

Nichols lives the last fifteen years of his life with restored confidence and purpose. His final moments are spent lucid enjoying some happy dream that the Maybe Machine produces. Then, with a smile on his face, he succumbs to the mortal wound.

The larger purpose of this spaghetti-tangled time travel is to save the child Terry McGinnis. It's that boy, eventually the fourth Batman, to whom Today-Nichols is referring when he tells Damian, "I only came to rescue him from all of this." Today-Nichols learns about this precisely because of the arrival of the dying Tomorrow-Nichols. And the body of Tomorrow-Nichols is what tells Damian (as a ten-year-old Robin) precisely which house he has to get to as a twenty-five-old Batman, to save his eventual successor. Here we have another recurring element in Morrison's work, the time loop. (Also seen in Red Son (story by Mark Millar; creative assist from Grant Morrison), Seven Soldiers, and as both the bullet and superhero sigils in Final Crisis.)

Nichols explains the mystery to Damian with a note that repeats the Riddler's question. When the Riddler says it, he's referring to Batman and Robin, whom the villains had beaten, but cannot defeat. When Nichols says it, he's referring to... The Clock. One might variously say he's referring to "fate", "time", "destiny", etc., but "Beat the clock" is a definite phrase in the language, and it is highlighted when Dick Grayson, as Robin, on the first page says "I'll clean your clock, Joker!" The emphasis on your implies that "clock" had already been referred to. It had not, explicitly. And therein, Morrison calls attention to the word, answering the question (another time loop) one page before it is asked. Does Nichols beat the clock? Yes, every time he employs his technology. He, and Batman, get everywhere they need to, just in time... which is the actual meaning of "beat the clock".

...but never defeat. Nichols faces the same conundrum that Batman does in having a destiny he cannot escape. The Joker proposes to undo Batman (and himself) by preventing Batman's origin, and Bruce observes to Dick at the end of "Tomorrow" that this is not possible. Nichols cannot, either, defeat the clock. This is one of numerous instances that one part of this story reflects another part of it. And gives us still another possible parallel to Morrison's main Batman story, if the detective Bruce Wayne in ROBW #5 is faced, as I suspect will be the case, with the possibility of preventing the Waynes' murder -- precisely what the Joker proposes in "Yesterday". (And the topic of a famous Batman story from another anniversary issue -- Alan Brennert's "To Kill A Legend" from Detective #500.)

The story has yet another relationship to the main Batman story in progress, with a book serving as a MacGuffin -- the Joker's Jokebook arising in all parts of the main story in #700, just as the book that "Mordecai" Wayne begins in the 1690s has yet to reveal its significance in ROBW and Batman and Robin.

#700's main yarn is a richly textured story, with the first two parts each foreshadowing the next twice, with each Batman telling his respective Robin that the future will make the mystery clear, and with each of the first two parts positing (but not seriously) that its respective Robin will go on to be Batman. (The laugh line of the issue is Dick Grayson telling a bragging Damian "You'd be the worst Batman ever." Given the extraordinary quality of Batmen, that may actually be correct and not particularly something to be ashamed of.)

The story is filled with lots of little reflections of Batman lore. The prostitute seen in "Today", Holly, shares a name and profession with the younger one from Batman Year One and may be Morrison's appropriation of the character Holly Robinson. The first man seen with her resembles, perhaps coincidentally, a taxi driver who gives a ride to a prostitute and her pimp in The Dark Knight Returns. Dick and Damian then fight a version of the Mutant gang from DKR. The pimp himself is Lone-Eye Lincoln, the drug dealer seen in Batman #678 when Bruce is at his lowest moment during Batman, R.I.P.

And the story is self-reflective. The villain, Two Face Two, has a good, larger, older face, who is sleeping (like the almost-dead Nichols, who wakes up later, and knowing the story asks if it's time yet... for his death) and a "bad little face" (the issue's most fun line) that mirrors the temporary state of the hostage Terry McGinnis. And in another note of self-reflection, Morrison names a neighborhood of Gotham for himself, Granton.

While I have referred to #700's main tripartite story, it also moves into fast-forward in showing us three more futures with three more Batmen. And this proves the Riddler's complaint true and echoes the first line of RIP: Batman and Robin will never die.