Action #17

With next month’s Action#18, Grant Morrison’s run on Superman will come to an end, wrapping up the extended story that redefined DC’s flagship character.

Defining and redefining Superman has been a quagmire for DC over the last 15 years. This was true only three years ago when I expounded on the topic in my review of Geoff Johns’ Superman: Secret Origin #1. That series redefined Superman’s past in a way that summed up changes which had been in progress since Infinite Crisis. It was only to serve as the status quo for two years before being discarded for another, total, reboot. And in fact since then, we have also seen another heavily-sold out-of-continuity Superman origin in J. Michael Straczynski’s Earth Oneversion of Superman, and a fleeting glimpse of a Superman who dies young in DC’s current Earth 2 title. If that’s not confusing enough for fans, the “2” and the “One” in those titles do not serve as part of a sequence, and they are piled on top of earlier Earth Ones and Twos (or 1s and 2s). The nomenclature alone produces vertigo if not nausea. Yet another out-of-continuity story called DC Universe Online (but it was not online) showed yet another Superman for 52 issues.

A new Superman in Grant Morrison’s hands had been long-anticipated. Morrison wrote Superman as part of his Justice League run starting in 1997, and shortly thereafter was part of a pitch called Superman 2000 which did not come to pass. In 2005, Morrison began a 12-issue run on All Star Superman, a fantastically popular mini-siries taking place in its own continuity, which in many ways was a prequel for the Superman we finally saw as part of the 2011 DCnUthat is the main continuity of DC’s stories, for now.

With this series at the pause between the penult and ultimate issues, it stands as a single body of work which does not fail to reflect plotlines we’ve seen in all of those other Superman redefinitions mentioned above, a quilted kaleidoscope of stories and storylines which are rehashes of stores we had just seen. Brainiac double-crossing Luthor? Seen it in Online. General Lane directing a US Army plot against Superman and Superman’s tight association with the Legion of Super Heroes? Seen those in Secret Originand other Geoff Johns stories in then-current continuity. Clark Kent beginning his journalistic career as a poor young man in the slums? Seen it in Earth One. Yet, it is hard to fault Morrison for reworking those almost-current stories: If he avoided every storyline in those several retreads, he would have had to write a story by negation, leaving holes in Superman’s DCnU history just to spite those other works. Morrison did not choose that path, and so we have a maxi-series from Morrison that looks like a blend of half a dozen other recent works.

And that includes Morrison’s own. Morrison’s Action employs elements from his All Star Superman title, including a key role for characters from Mxyzptlk’s Fifth Dimension, which provides the key villain in Action. Morrison has also used the Fifth Dimension in his JLA run and with his use of Bat-Mite in Batman.

Structurally, the run strongly resembles Morrison’s runs on Batman. In Morrison's first run on Batman, in issues #655–681, the hero faces a single dominant threat whose plot is at first hidden, from both the hero and the reader, surfacing in a series of smaller threats, calculated to test the hero without toppling him, before culminating in a final showdown between Doctor Hurt and Batman in Batman R.I.P. Morrison's Action run has a parallel structure, with the Little Man, who appears in the very first panel, proving to be the ultimate victim who confronts Superman directly only in the final issues. Both Doctor Hurt and Vyndktvx make pretensions to be the Devil, using the word "deal" like it's going out of style. Vyndktvx is often drawn three-faced, like Satan in Dante's Inferno. However, while the Batman story was fundamentally the story of a single plot by Doctor Hurt calculated to topple Batman, the Actionstory is a series of Superman adventures primarily featuring independent menaces, a few of whom Vyndktvx recruits for a single assault. Both stories are spread widely over time. Both wrap the events of much older stories into their telling. Both villains have identities held out as a mystery. Ultimately, The Little Man seen in the very first panel of Action #1 is given a complete backstory in terms of Fifth Dimension intrigue. There is no longer mystery regarding who he is, but we await the ending of a climactic battle, which began to crescendo in the final pages of Action #14.

The references to past Superman stories, both prominent and obscure, are more numerous than I will attempt to catalog here. Characters originating in Superman stories from every era from the Thirties through the Nineties have appeared in passing and in the foreground. I will mention, instead of the smaller facets, three larger stories that have impacted the narrative here in a very central way.

At the end of the pre-COIE era, two stories were published the same month wrapping up the pre-Byrne Superman. Both of these stories, on the surface unrelated, depicted a suddenly evil Mr. Mxyzptlk as the villain. By far the more famous of the two, Alan Moore's Whatever Happened To The Man of Tomorrow? also had the structure of a larger villain (Mxyzptlk) throwing secondary menaces (as great as Luthor and Brainiac) at Superman before the hero and villain took each other down in a battle that undid them both, in different ways. A less well-known story by Steve Gerber in DC Comics Presents #97 showed a Mxyzptlk who had been punished by his own kind and who merged with the Phantom Zone and its villains before attacking Superman one last time. In this story, Mxyzptlk achieves a tactical and strategic victory, apparently poisoning the Earth with kryptonite (with the added horror of Argo City's dead bodies showering out of the sky), then leaving a defeated Superman behind in what was, technically, the last moments we saw of the pre-Byrne continuity. Morrison has based his run, thematically, where pre-Crisis continuity ended, with a new Fifth Dimensional villain posing the ultimate threat to Superman, so that Mxyzptlk's inherently benevolent nature can be preserved for future stories. By utilizing the same thematic menace as that of Moore's story, Morrison may be giving Superman a chance to face that threat that ended "him" before, and overcome it, just as he is with the Doomsday threat from yet another continuity. It will be interesting to see if the final issue makes more explicit reference to WHTTMOT?

A subsequent work, mending the pre- and post- Crisis worlds from the other side of the divide, Keith Giffen's run on the Legion of Superheroes dealt with the gaping hole in continuity that the LSH had been inspired by Superboy, but in the Byrne run, there had never been a Superboy. We promptly saw the emergence of another "Earth", the Pocket Universe, which led to Byrne's Superman going through a spiritual ordeal after killing that Universe's Phantom Zone villains. More germane to the present run, Giffen rebooted the LSH not once but several times in rapid succession, with the Legionnaires deliberately rebooting their own timeline to undo histories where one of their villains had triumphed as the undisputed master of the 30th Century. The Time Trapper, Mordru, and Glorith all have the capacity to become dictators of the Legion's universe, and so they reboot the universe until they create a timeline where a "Balance of Powers" leaves a free universe in which the LSH battles these villains, neutralizing them. In Action #17, Morrison seems to utilize the very same idea when the Legionnaires plan to "wipe out [their] entire history" and thus save Superman's life as well as "stop the rise of Universo." Morrison puts the LSH here in the same predicament they faced in Giffen's multiple timelines; this is, incidentally, a device he also used in his JLA story Rock of Ages where heroes overcome a despot villain's rule not by defeating him per se but by rebooting the timeline so that the victory by Darkseid never happened.

Another story serving as the template for this one is Morrison's own Final Crisis and its related crossover, Superman Beyond. The title page of Action #17, like the last page of Action #16, shows the Super-Doomsday creature poised to kill Superman just as the first page of Superman Beyond shows a flash-forward to the fateful battle between Superman and Mandrakk. Like the Bane Batman from Batman #664-665, it shows a meld of the hero with the Nineties villain who broke him. The creature incorporates elements of Mandrakk, the Nineties Doomsday with the armor Superman of Superman Beyond, the evil Superman from Morrison's Animal Man, and more generally every anti-Superman we've seen over the decades. Picking up the theme of Final Crisis as a story about story, the Super-Doomsday creature refers to itself as a "franchise", in a fourth-wall reference to itself as an alternate character that strives to defeat the DCnU Superman. It is a "thought" that we first saw in Action #9, where the Lois Lane of its parallel universe defines to it as the product of selling out, of a Superman "brand" designed by experts to have "maximum cross-spectrum, wide-platform appeal, a violent, troubled, faceless anti-hero... a global marketing icon." It sounds like Morrison has a very specific villain in mind, something that Warner Brothers might be creating and incorporating into video games right now.

In every aspect of this run, we see a Morrison trademark: postmodernism rendered in the terms of the comic genre. In his Batman run, Morrison delivered unconventional narratives that were explained in the story with Batman-appropriate devices such as hallucinogens and brainwashing. Here, as in JLA, All Star Superman and Superman Beyond, Morrison accomplishes the same postmodernist storytelling through Superman-appropriate devices such as time travel and multiple dimensions. The reader's experience, either way, is one of unreliable narration and dramatic irony. The vehicle for creating this is specific to the hero, and ties in with a heritage from past decades when postmodernism was not the aim.

As with Final Crisis and Batman: RIP, the jump-cuts in narration may detract from many readers' enjoyment. In what now makes four consecutive issues, we have seen a cliffhanger with the first two simply put aside as the story picks up in the next issue. As the structure is so heavily borrowed from other Morrison stories, and the conventional payoffs blunted by his sleight of hand, the story is not likely to be remembered as a fan favorite nor as one of his milestones. What is most admirable here is that he worked his tricks, in many ways familiar and well-worn, in ways so specific to this particular character.

On two other levels, the story works assiduously and brilliantly to serve red meat to the fans: It does, after all, reboot Superman in ways that many fans yearned for. It overturns many aspects of the past continuity that overstayed their welcome. Perhaps to greater effect, it shows Morrison's gift for the flourish, the moment of perfection. When miniaturized Luthor looks out of shrunken Metropolis and sees Superman's symbol looming outside the jar, to the call "Look, up in the sky!" Morrison shows Superman winning every way at once. Inasmuch as Morrison has shown that he will let threads drop (or hang), we see Clark's vow to his father to wage a battle for justice.

In what is the final cliffhanger of Morrison's run, just as Super-Doomsday is about to kill Superman, Luthor arrives, saying "Nobody kills Superman but Lex Luthor!" If this seems familiar, it is not an accident. The very first monthly issue of John Byrne's run, in Superman Vol. 2 #1, ends with Metallo about to kill Superman when Metallo is suddenly teleported away. This is explained in #2 when Luthor says, "Of course I stopped you, Metallo. The killing of Superman is a pleasure reserved for myself."

The Morrison run in Action will have a lasting impact. It will serve as the definition of Superman's origin for untold years to come. And it is such an intricate story, it will be a work worth studying. It remains to be seen how much, in conventional terms as a comic, it will be enjoyed. While it is certain that Superman will, with help, triumph over Vyndktvx and Super-Doomsday, it is less clear that Morrison will triumph unconditionally over the commercial Superman that Super-Doomsday represents.

A Christmas Story

This story is not original. Credits at the end.

It came upon the midnight clear, a gloved hand traced over a computer screen, touching names and addresses, as the man who owned the hand made connections, saw patterns in police reports, and planned his nightly patrol so that Gotham City’s criminals would have the least chance of escaping justice. His route was determined, his car fueled, a warm cup of tea drunk, and Batman arose to go into the night, when suddenly he saw another figure, one who had somehow gotten close – here in the Batcave of all places! – without being heard. Batman instinctively ducked into a crouch and drew a batarang to throw at the red-suited man who was standing on a sleigh. It seemed to be Santa Claus, but obviously it could not, and whatever the explanation for this man’s presence was, it could as easily be dangerous as not. Until the man spoke in a calming voice.

“Bruce,” he said, “It’s good to see you. I know you’ve been a very good boy. Merry Christmas!”

Upon hearing the rich, deep voice, Batman lowered his guard. He knew this was no enemy. “Merry Christmas. It’s good to see you. But I can’t stay and visit. My patrol starts now.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “Gotham can always count on you. And I’ve been watching, all these years. All those thieves and muggers, the Joker, Mister Freeze and Penguin and Clayface. I’ve been watching people for a long time, and I don’t know anyone who’s better than you. So tonight, let me give you a present.”

“Leave it over there,” Batman said, striding towards his car.

But Santa Claus said, “I can’t leave the present here, Bruce. The present is that you get to stay. The present is that you get to have Christmas.”

“That’s very kind,” the man in the black cowl answered. “I would like to take a day off. But when I take a rest, crime goes on, and innocent people get hurt. So I have to go out.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, beaming, “That’s what makes you so good, what makes you so deserving. Why you deserve Christmas more than anyone! So here’s your present: You get to stay home all day. And your work, your good work… you can return to it tomorrow.”

“It’s not that simple. I wish it were. But any time that I take off, any, that’s more crime that goes unchecked. This would be the worst day of all for me to stay home and leave the city unprotected.”

“Bruce,” Santa said, a little sadly. “When was the last time you had Christmas? A normal Christmas, opening presents, being with the people you love? Was it…?”

Touched, to the point it stung, Batman hesitated. “It was… then. Before they died.”

“Oh, Bruce. All of this, all you’ve done for everyone, and for them, too. Don’t you think they would want you to be happy? Don’t you think your parents would want you to have Christmas?”

Nothing else could make Batman feel so deeply as the subject of them, of the parents who had loved him, who gave him the only Christmases he’d known. Now, years later, it was hard for him to speak without showing more feeling than he could let himself show to the man in the red suit. “Of course…” Batman answered, and then he had to pause. “Yes. But my work.”

“Bruce,” Santa Claus said, “tonight your work will be done. Call Gordon.”

A moment later, with a red phone in his hand, Batman spoke with Commissioner Gordon. Santa watched with a knowing grin. When the call ended, Batman looked shocked. “He said there’s been no crime since earlier this evening. By this hour, there should have been eighteen crimes reported, but there’ve been… none. Not one.”

“And there will be none,” Santa said to Batman. “You have my word. At midnight tomorrow, you can go back out, go back to your good work. But tonight, and tomorrow, the city will be safe without you. That’s my present to you. Go to bed tonight. And in the morning, join the people you love. Call Dick. Call Tim. Call Alfred. Spend Christmas with them, spend it full of love. They can join you by the fire and together, you can celebrate Batman’s first Christmas.”

The caped crusader was unable to contain his emotion. Freed from his duties, for the first time in years, he was at a loss for how to speak or move, how to be Bruce Wayne, how to be himself, on Christmas. After a long pause, he answered, “I will.”

Santa Claus laughed his famous laugh. “I’m so glad, Bruce. Everyone deserves Christmas, but nobody…” he paused, and stretched out his hand “…nobody deserves Christmas more than you.”

His head down, Batman could not speak, not without showing more feeling than he could bear to let the other man see. He nodded, and while he was looking down, the other man and his sleigh disappeared.  When a minute has passed, Batman’s composure returned. Then Batman looked up in the direction of the faraway sky, and in a soft voice that only the man in the sleigh could hear, Batman whispered,

“Thanks, Clark.”

Acknowledgements

No idea in this story is mine. Most of the credit belongs to ItsJustSomeRandomGuy, who posted a video called Twas The Dark Knight Before Christmas in 2007. I saw the video and found it wonderful. It returned to my thoughts many times afterwards.

At some point, at least a year or two after my first viewing, I watched it again and found that one key idea that I had remembered from the story is not actually in the story at all. I was perplexed until I thought harder and realized that my foggy notion of Superman watching over Gotham City on Christmas was actually something about Supergirl, and then my memory lead me to the DC Universe Holiday Special with a cover date of February 2009. In that issue, a 5-page story by the great Joe Kelly contains the rest of the inspiration for my mis-remembered version of RandomGuy's video. Kelly's story has Gotham devoid of sirens on Christmas, an event largely narrated from Jim Gordon's perspective, with a cameo by Batman. At the end, we find out that the combined efforts of Barbara Gordon and Supergirl had kept Gotham crime-free for a single day. In Kelly's story, this gift was given anonymously, with no advance notice or explanation after the fact, to make Gotham's protectors believe that a miracle had given it a day without crime.

My memory had unconsciously worked that detail into my memory of the video, with Superman convincing Batman to take Christmas off, not merely with a "pep talk" but with the guarantee that Gotham would be safe during Batman's holiday. It seems more Batman-like to me that he would need that guarantee before canceling his Christmas patrol.

Almost all the rest of how I rendered the story here is from the video, particularly the twist ending. And part of what I found wonderful was imagining Superman's Christmas over Gotham, swooping down to stop crimes here and there, hustling back into the sky to watch for more crimes, beaming with the grandest smile, knowing that he was helping ordinary citizens, and doing something truly special for his friend.

What I find especially touching about this is the history of the Superman-Batman friendship, cemented in decades of comics, but later erased in stories by Frank Miller and John Byrne, before being revived in stories by Jeph Loeb and others. Because you don't know the continuity of a story like this one, you can't be sure what the status of the two superheroes' relationship is, but in a brilliant twist, you find out that they are friends in precisely the last word, which is the only place in the story that indicates that Superman is in the story at all.

Apologies to RandomGuy and Joe Kelly for co-opting their ideas. I felt that the mash-up of their stories was more powerful than either alone. I hope people enjoy.

Batman, Inc in the DCnU

Batman, Incorporated began on the final pages of Batman and Robin #16, a postscript to that story and a prologue to a new one. The publication history is torturous: Batman: The Return introduced the menace of Leviathan, then eight issues of Batman, Incorporated ran before plans were altered or postponed by the DC Universe's reboot in Flashpoint. Then what should have been two issues was run under the title "Leviathan Strikes." Since then, six other issues have been published, restarting the numbering of a series which had barely begun. So five numbers have been used twice, there were two one-shots, and we have an issue #0 which was, if this bit of confusion means anything, presented with a splash page saying it was "Before the new 52" although it was published in the middle of the other numbers and there are no identifiable glitches in continuity between then and now. To muddy the waters a bit more, Batman, Inc #5 (in the new numbering) hearkens back exactly or approximately to a timeline from 2007's Batman #666, published five and a half years ago and yet another look at that possible (and possibly same) future in Batman #700. Confused? You should be.

We should presume that Morrison's telling the same story he was telling with or without the DCnU reboot, give or take minor glitches (such as, perhaps, Jason Todd being free from prison; Dick Grayson taking back the Nightwing identity; and Bruce using Damian as his Robin, despite an earlier pronouncement to the contrary). Perhaps the other Batman titles are navigating an altogether different course -- the Court of Owls is sufficiently similar to the Black Glove, how could they have coexisted without warring or merging? But Morrison's never had much coordination with the other writers on the bat-titles, and even if Inc is shunted to a tertiary position while Scott Snyder and others take the higher-profile titles, it appears that Morrison's tale continues on, with no sharp delineations from the time it began in Batman #655 over six years ago. To be sure, his plans have evolved along the way, considerably, but Morrison loops the story backwards with flashbacks to the John Mayhew plot, and his rendition of the night Bruce rang a bell to summon Alfred almost as seamlessly as though it had all been planned in advance.

We've known since February 2012's Leviathan Strikes that the villain of this extended story is Talia after Morrison's two previous long maxi-arcs (running in three different titles) both centered around Doctor Hurt.

Once we dispense with the confusion of reboots and how it fits with Snyder, et al's work, the story remains tangled in time. Batman, at the very end of time in Return of Bruce Wayne #6, saw backwards to the vastly earlier time (the mid 21st century, it may be safe to say) when Talia's putative plan played out, a look back first mentioned in The Return when Bruce says he has to protect his allies from "what's coming, what I saw." Apparently, we see that vision (or a slightly more detailed version of it than Batman himself saw) in Inc Vol. 2 #5. It is a vision which Bruce believes will not come to pass (and given its level of horror, we may be sure will not come to pass), which puts into play that the future is malleable: Bruce was at the end of time looking back, but for reasons contained within Morrison's story (and not, likely, within Flashpoint, which was driven by other forces), Bruce believes he can alter it, but not completely. It is also clear that his vision was not complete (in Inc Vol. 1 #1, he calls it "a glimpse of the big picture", and he was despite that glimpse surprised to learn that Talia is Leviathan). He also calls the upcoming struggle with Talia "the fight of my life." And as he says in Vol. 1 #6, "Something big, something bad is coming. And no. Not everyone is going to survive it." So while he believes some portion of the vision can be addressed, he believes that some deadly portion of it cannot.

After extensive foreshadowing that the death of Damian is at stake, we receive a vision of a future in which Damian is Batman, which has featured in three full stories: Batman #666, Batman #700, and Inc Vol. 2 #5. Add in a non-incidental similarity to a reference in Batman #665 when Bruce awakens from a stupor to imagine a grinning Damian telling him that the third Batman is the worst of them all, and remembers a previous dream in which a Batman "sold his soul to the Devil and destroyed Gotham." At the time that served as an elaboration on his first foggy meeting with Michael Lane (the third "Replacement Batman" trained by Doctor Hurt). It also seemed possibly prophetic in Batman and Robin #15, when Doctor Hurt tried to deal for Damian's soul. And it very obviously hearkened to a scenario seen in Batman #666, when Lane and Damian fought a showdown using devilishly-provided longevity. I've previously written up that issue here.

The story in Batman #700 seemed to tell a story (tied in with three others in that issue) of the real future with Damian as Batman, one less haunted by apocalyptic overtones, and no indication that Damian had gained longevity by dealing with the Devil. And yet, it has a striking similarity to Inc Vol. 2 #5 in a baby who is infected with Joker virus. In that telling, Damian obviously does have such powers (rising again after being mowed down by machine gun) and the panel showing him mourning the death of Batman (apparently Bruce, but again see my earlier write-up) indicates that we are back in the #666 timeline, one which was never assured to happen, but which shows what might. Morrison didn't plan this far ahead in 2007, but here we are, and that timeline with the ultimate grim outcome – the total destruction of Gotham suggested back in #665 – coming to play, with Doctor Hurt, as good as the Devil himself, standing by the shoulder of the President, whispering bad confidences to destroy what was once his home city when centuries earlier he was the 1760's Thomas Wayne. This seems to validate that Doctor Hurt remains in the wings for future use, living until he's freed from the coffin near Wayne Manor.

Now, the story in the present takes a strange turn. Damian is cast out from Bruce's shelter, seemingly left to a high risk of death without such protection. We still have a flash forward teaser from Inc Vol. 1 #1 showing Bruce, looking over graves, seeming to quit his Batman identity before being arrested by Commissioner Gordon. With Inc. agents set up around the world, it seems as though the fight of Bruce's life is to begin, and with Damian's death perhaps the tragic end of a story being written so far with the prophetic power of Greek tragedy.

Close To Home

Two fisherman trawling the bay near a large American city pull their net out of the water and bring up a dead man's body. Examining the nearby water, they see three more bodies. It's later learned that smugglers bringing in workers from China for what is apparently slave labor, and throwing sick men into the water to drown. Grim business and not, probably, a fit story to tell children. But this story did appear once in Detective Comics. In the first issue, in 1937.

A week ago, an American carried guns into the premiere of The Dark Knight Rises and fired bullets into seventy of his fellow citizens, killing a small child and eleven others. He styled himself, it is reported, after the Joker. In many theatres, but not, it is said, that particular one, a trailer for the forthcoming film Gangster Squad showed gunmen shooting from behind a cinema screen into the audience. I was watching this at very nearly the time that the Colorado shootings took place, thinking of what the filmmakers intended: To make audiences think, this violence is coming for you. To break down the barrier between art and life and emphasize, "to you."

This week, the planned sales of Batman, Inc. #3 were put on hold due to a perceived similarity between a scene in the issue, almost certainly the panel which is shown above, and the events in Colorado. There's no denying a similarity. And yet, by the standards of this long-running story, the scene is mild. Even if the gun were fired, it would still be a far cry from the face-eating scenes in 2009's Batman and Robin #5 which coincidentally preceded a face-eating attack in the real world.

Comics have long intended to represent realistic tragedies, so their heroes might face them. Lex Luthor debuted in a story that depicted a fictionalized version of the German-Polish war that soon became World War Two. That war soon became part of countless comic stories, and no one can deny that its accumulated horrors make anything happening lately seem small in comparison.

But there's a disturbing circularity in the last week's events. The shootings in Colorado happened at a Batman film, and bore some similarity to events in previous Batman fiction, and then immediately an image in the comics bore some similarity to the real event. It could have been aligned even more strikingly if, say, Batman #676's "Green Vulture" had debuted this week, with a red-dyed hack of a criminal aiming a gun at a family, shouting "Body count!" and eventually giving himself up easily. There is no shortage of older scenes one might read and wonder if they inspired some details of the real-world tragedy. So many, in fact, that the possible connections get lost in the noise. Gangster Squad didn't invent the idea of a film showing the audience of a film being shot. A berserk gunman may imitate a work of art accidentally or quite on purpose, but the tragedy is simply the act and not the style. Acts like this have been periodic events in American life since one occurred in 1949. Months after America's first spree killing, a similar tragedy unfolded some 60 miles away. Life can imitate art, and it can also imitate life.

The Dark Knight Rises (2012)

Note: This review is structured in two distinct parts. The first part describes the film without revealing details of fact beyond what could be easily deduced from the trailers and other pre-release promotional materials. The second part includes full spoilers in a more complete review.

I. Non-Spoiler Review

Eight years have passed since the final moments of The Dark Knight. Harvey Dent, his crimes hidden by a lie that Batman and Jim Gordon agreed to, has been remembered as a martyr. Some tough anti-crime legislation in his name has allowed the city to put most major crime away. Batman has not been seen since then, and as we all know very well, that absence must end when a new threat arises.

The first of the movie's many acts is stolen by Anne Cathaway as Selina Kyle. She's as confident and glamorous as any Catwoman you've imagined, without ever for a moment trying too hard. She may have been tacked to the plot as an add-on or even merchandising gimmick, but at times the gimmick exceeds the main story in worth.

Though whatever shortcomings the movie may hold, it's not for a lack of inspired performances. Tom Hardy's performance as Bane is brilliant, as is the character himself. One imagines many action casting decisions over the years where a powerfully-built brute is chosen and capable acting is sacrificed. Not here. With a megaphone-like voice emanating from his mask, Bane intimidates you in your seat in three ways at once, for his diabolical evil, his great power, and the quickness of his mind. Neither the script nor Hardy try to make this role bigger than the last movie's Joker, but there is nothing to apologize for in the choice of villain.

Christian Bale gets to play Bruce Wayne / Batman many ways in this one. As a scraggy shut-in, a man of uncertain will to live, and with - in comparison to the earlier films - more (and more comprehensible) time in the bat mask itself.

This is a film with many, many nods to comic books and graphic novels. Fans will challenge one another to see who can catch more sly references, though some of them are exceedingly obvious to anyone who knows anything about Batman. More front and center, fans may ask themselves which previous Batman opus is the most important inspiration for this plot. There is no one right answer.

For me, and I suspect for by far most viewers, this film will languish in comparison to The Dark Knight because it lacks, for the most part, that film's moral complexity. TDK, as I argued in my review, transcended the super hero genre entirely, and served as a workable crime movie of the second, if not the first, rank. The Dark Knight Rises is an action movie. Even in comparison to Batman Begins, this is a movie of the pre-Nolan genre of super hero movie, and no matter how well it carries off that task, it will have people second-guessing the Joker's line from TDK: "You've changed things. There's no going back." This is an epic story, in more ways than one. But all of the things that made Nolan's Batman remarkable were put back on the shelf. One wonders how, having earned the plaudits he did for the previous movies, he could be so willing to go back. This film might have served as a good third movie in the previous Batman series. If it had come then, no one would have complained. Coming after TDK, the appeal will have to be in just how well it does as an epic.

II. Spoiler Review. Very big spoilers follow. After a few blank lines, they begin. You were warned.

For eight years, Bruce Wayne has been shut in his home, reclusive and so beaten up from his days as Batman (perhaps just that last fall that killed Harvey Dent) that he cannot walk easily. Gotham has moved on and it thinks it's doing fine. It seems fine, but that's because nobody knows that Bane is coming. Like a freight train he's coming, and in a sharp distinction from the comics' Knightfall, he's not after Batman. He's simply after Gotham. Like R'as al-Ghul and the Joker before him, destruction is his goal, not profits. In fact, we will learn early on, he like Bruce was trained by the League of Shadows. As we learn while his plan is underway, he in fact wants to pick up precisely where R'as left off. Destroying Gotham so it may begin a renewal is his only aim. He is perfectly willing to overcome Batman when that proves to be necessary, but that is an afterthought.

In the first of many events shocking in terms of the Batman comics' mythology, Selina steals Martha Wayne's very pearl necklace right in front of Bruce's eyes. She's very skilled, morally gray (a thief, but not a destroyer), and she helps wake Bruce from his long sleep. In fact, she's working for Bane, although she doesn't appreciate the evil she's serving.

Bruce somehow manages, after years of hobbling on a cane, to rush out to challenge Bane's gang and end up escaping the police. The speed of his recovery is inexplicable; was he insufficiently motived to walk normally during the last eight years? The dialogue of the police officers is drawn right from Batman's reappearance in The Dark Knight Returns; moments later, when Selina disappears on him, he says, "So that's how that feels," a line Bruce says about Superman in Kingdom Come. So we see the homages are in full force. Even more so when we find out that Bane's first caper served simply to bankrupt Bruce.

As Bane's evil plan moves forward, Jim Gordon works through a Nolan favorite, Joseph Gordon-Levitt's Detective Blake, who gets a curious amount of screentime. Bruce gets in bed with another Nolan regular, Marion Cotillard as Miranda Tate. Both of these serve very well all film long before escalating dramatically in importance during the final minutes.

Bane of course breaks the poorly-conditioned Bruce in a fight which is no fight at all. He keeps Bruce in custody, in a death trap that's almost impossible to escape from, which of course means that he escapes from it. The mood here has a touch of Batman, R.I.P. to it in that Bane wants Bruce to suffer psychologically, broken, and watch the harm he does to Gotham. The harm he does is brilliantly effective. Using a nuclear weapon to hold the whole city hostage indefinitely, Bane creates a city cut off from the United States, clearly a nod to No Man's Land, right down to the chalk bat-symbols written on walls.

Of course, Bruce gets back into shape, escapes his prison, and goes back to Gotham to stop Bane. It is in carrying out these obligatory steps where the film is by far the weakest. It is so formulaic that this all must happen, we wonder where the brilliance of The Dark Knight went. It is obligatory, and takes a long time in unfolding. The scenes of Bane's destructive three-month dictatorship over Gotham (with Jonathan Crane returning as a judge in a kangaroo court) come as a refreshing break between scenes of Bruce getting in shape which may as well have had the Rocky theme playing over them.

Bruce does return, and he does get the best of Bane in a fight. As soon as he threatens to kill Bane, the movie becomes something else entirely. Suddenly, Miranda (note, the wizard's daughter from Shakespeare's The Tempest) drives a dagger into Batman's ribs, and the comic fan may recall that in Bane's second attack on Gotham, he was allied with Talia. So here, where their backstories are intertwined in a bit of explication with scenes of a child whom we thought was Bane in flashback was actually Talia. Her knife attack seems fatal, and given the movie's promotional claims that the legend ends, we wonder if it might be. In fact, being bled by a woman is Robin Hood's death, and this simple act resonates with a vast web of comics (and meta-comics) lore: Alan Moore cited Robin Hood as the sort of legend that Batman ought to be, and Neil Gaiman gave Batman such a death (among several) in Whatever Happened To The Caped Crusader? That story comes back in yet another reference as Batman escapes the injury to lash the nuclear bomb to his flying "Bat" vehicle and soars off to sea, getting far enough that the detonation spares the city, but takes him with it, very like a sacrificial death Batman chooses in Gaiman's story. By this time, Bane and Talia are dead. The city is saved.

More twists await. While Bruce (whose secret was at last made known to Gordon) has gone, we see that Detective Blake, himself an orphan, is preparing to play a very Batman-like role which will begin in the near future. The kicker: We learn that his real name is Robin. And for the twist of twists, a la The Dark Knight Returns, we see a final sighting, real unless it's Alfred's wishful thinking, of Bruce and Selina romancing one another in Florence.

This is a movie full of wonderful elements, but for the reasons I've already noted, it sags terribly in the middle act, and aspires to something so much less than it could have been. This will not be remembered as the best movie of the series - more likely the worst, but the worst of a very good trio. And though it endures poorly, it ends well. And isn't that what a super hero story is supposed to do?

The Dark Knight (2008)

When a rabbit is chased by a dog, it zig-zags, making abrupt, unpredictable deviations to its path. This is good work by Nature. Dogs, with their larger stride, can run faster than a rabbit in a straight line, while the smaller rabbit has a shorter turning radius. Each turn is executed as soon as the rabbit thinks of it, but the dog has to observe the turn and react, beginning it later, then completing it more slowly. The randomness is key to the rabbit's success. If the dog could predict each turn, it would make it sooner. Unpredictability is a valuable thing for the weaker party.

This dynamic has been part of the Batman-Joker relationship since the start in 1940, except the Joker is the predator. He knows he can't win face-to-face. "You didn't think I'd risk losing the battle for Gotham's soul in a fist fight with you?", Heath Ledger's Joker asks Batman. He notches all of his successes with the things he does when Batman's not around. He, like the Joker in Batman #1, conceals death traps so sneaky that they kill his intended victim even when the cops are standing guard nearby. He consistently plants bombs where he needs them, and when he delivers an ultimatum, he conceals reality, creating reverse appearances. His thugs are really hostages. The address where he says Rachel is being held is actually where Harvey is. His phone is a detonator.

Reversing course is built into his goals as well as his means. He twice hopes for Batman to kill him, and once puts a loaded gun to his head while someone with excellent reason to shoot him has his finger on the trigger. He accumulates a mountain of cash, then burns it. How does he get the upper hand on Batman in the locked room interrogation scene? By not minding how badly he gets beaten.
How does he walk into a room full of mobsters and walk out unharmed? With explosives under his jacket. The Joker is a suicide bomber who wants to watch the world burn. Yes, this movie was made with the September 11 attacks in mind. The Dark Knight shines in part because of the haunting performance by Ledger, who didn't live to see the film debut, giving demonic conviction to Christopher Nolan's vision of a Joker for the post-9/11 world, and to beat him, Batman has to employ the wiretapping tactics of the post-9/11 authorities, with all the moral uncertainty that Morgan Freeman voices as Lucius Fox.

But the Joker, like Batman, is a comic book character, and The Dark Knight succeeds most because it is the first comic book movie to completely cross genres into the crime thriller. There are brilliant comic book moments along the way, not least when Batman snags a criminal mastermind from a skyscraper in Hong Kong.

But for a large fraction of the film, there is no masked crimefighter or crazy clown on the screen, and in those scenes, this is not that kind of movie. When Aaron Eckhart portrays a district attorney and Gary Oldman portrays a cop, these are performances that could fit right into a Martin Scorsese film and no one would doubt the actors' or the script's or the direction's credentials. This is a good film without asking us to forgive the pandering to comic book conventions. Never better, in fact, than when Christian Bale's Batman stands on a rooftop with the aforementioned pair and brings a moment from the graphic novel The Long Halloween to the cinema and makes it work when Commissioner Gordon reacts to Batman's sudden disappearance by explaining to Harvey Dent, "He does that."

Bale succeeds again by playing Batman smart, and playing him sane. He has no wild compulsion to play Batman and is driven more than anything else to find a way to stop having to be Batman, by finding a better hero, a non-comic-book hero, in Harvey Dent, whose nickname The White Knight provides the real foil to the title. It's a heady moment when a super hero film ends with the hero telling the man with the gun, "You were the best of us." And as Batman takes the rap and flees the scene, we get a murky ending where Batman, with inspired fisticuffs and a couple of lies, won the battle for Gotham's soul, but is now on the run, and has begun a disappearance from his hero identity that will give the Nolan films an opportunity to conclude by showing us what happens when the Dark Knight returns.

Batman Begins (2005)

In every version of Batman, a wealthy man with almost mystical resolve and unrealistic abilities dresses up like a small winged mammal to wage a personal war on crime. All of the contradictions in fact and in tone are there in that sentence, and everyone who creates a Batman story may choose whether they want to make the tale light or dark. Both ways have worked.

Christopher Nolan has adopted a dark tone to pronounce the simplest morals that the lighter versions of Batman uphold: Overcome your fears; get up when you fall; refusing to kill is what makes the hero better than his enemies. And Bruce Wayne's erstwhile love decides from mere minutes around him that he's not the boy she once loved. As an adult, why is she still that same girl? The shallow depths of Bruce's and Rachel's missed romance portrays the contradiction at the heart of Batman Begins: Platitudes scripted for children are the take-home messages of a movie children shouldn't see.

As the title indicates, this is a fictional how-to manual for a fictional sort of man, the superhero without super powers. With some guidance from the League of Shadows, Bruce learns the methods he needs to become a legend. He doesn't wear a batsuit out of a flamboyant compulsion: His theatricality, never so evident as when he blasphemes "Swear to me!" is a calculated means to an end. This is a sane Batman, selfless and self-possessed. He is sometimes off-balance physically, but never -- in his adult life -- mentally. We see the pain it causes him to sacrifice the pleasurable life his vast means and kind heart would have allowed.

The story arc allows Batman to deliver an epic salvation that Gotham may never appreciate, that it had been scheduled for destruction on a par with Constantinople or the Great Fire of London. Co-opting actual historical catastrophes as misdeeds of the fictional R'as al-Ghul is a subtle way to add a touch of reality to the myth.

The cast of characters is largely populated with those from the comics, altering a few key relationships, but drawing directly from some of the best-regarded stories. Lucius Fox and Alfred converse with Bruce in the film's few comic moments, trading light jests that leaven the tone and remind us that Bruce still knows what a joke is. The audience knows that Batman is Bruce Wayne. Enthusiasts realize that super heroes have a third personality, who the hero is when he or she isn't acting, around confidantes. Christian Bale excels in his portrayals of all three of these personas, with wit as the real Bruce, pompous delight as spoiled playboy Bruce, and the intensity of a carnivore as Batman.

The Nolan series of Batman films, which culminates seven years with its third and final installment this week, forges a new continuity with numerous Easter eggs that draw upon the Batman comics tradition. And it has done something more. Just as Liam Neeson's Ducard presses Bruce Wayne to become something more than a man, a legend, the Nolan series has had the opportunity to build Batman up into something more than a three-film action character. Perhaps there is something more to Batman, a true American legend. Just as in this film an imperfect man made himself a symbol, the Nolan series has contributed to the existing quality has of Batman as something more than an action hero who dresses up like a bat to fight crime. Batman Begins is the story of a fully-actualized man, and how he got that way. So for whatever flaws, simplicity, and eccentricity it bears, it feeds the pop legend of self-improvement and self-actualization so that in our culture, a person accomplishing any victory at all may be understood if they comment with pride, "I'm Batman."