Spoiler Saturday--When Batman Became Axe Cop?!?

OK, this is going to spoil Dark Knights: Metal #1 a bit, so maybe come back later if you haven't read it yet.

Spoilers commence after the 5 pictures of metal...

Still here?

As you know, I haven't exactly been thrilled with DC's use of Batman the past few years.

Yes, there's room for many possible interpretations of the character. Yes, there's a place for Justice League Batman and International Man Of Mystery Batman and what have you.

But lately, that's all we get, as street-level crime-fighting has been as non-existent in the Bat-titles as thought balloons. It seems each and every Batman story has to involve a city-level extinction event now (or larger!), as bank robberies and organized crime are too low-rent for everyone's favoritest hero. Sad fact: if today's Batman were around in Bruce Wayne's youth, his parents still would have died, because this Batman has no time for mere muggers. No, it's so much cooler and true to the concept that he's killing Darkseid or beating the crap out of Superman or knocking out Solomon Grundy with one punch.

It's almost as if his current adventures are being dreamed up by children, in ever-escalating flights of imagination to make Batman progressively bigger and tougher and badd-asser in a upwards spiral of silliness.

Maybe I'm overthinking this? Sure.

But then again, there's this week's Dark Knights: Metal #1, which reveals the ultimate plot for the latest DC crossover:

Yes, Batman is now the most important being in the multiverse. 

Or, as a 6-year old might describe the plot:

There's this other multiverse, but it's worse because it's the DARK multiverse, and Batman is so cool and tough that he became every hero in this DARK multiverse because he's much better than other heroes but somehow OUR Batman is so badass that he never turned evil, oh, and somehow every special piece of metal that ever existed in the DC Universe is connected and is really from the DARK multiverse and that's what every hero got their powers from and now all those EVIL Bat-heroes are coming to our multiverse to kill everybody and we're going to have an event-within-the-event called "Bats Out Of Hell" because that's so awesome and this event is going to be so cool and at the end every one of our heroes will be beaten but OUR Batman is so super-special and awesome that he'll beat the evil ALL BY HIMSELF!!!!

Yes, that's an entirely accurate description of Dark Nights: Metal (except for the last bit, which is just guesswork on my part, but Scott Snyder is writing it, so you know that's how it will end). And yeah. in it's own demented, throw-in-everything-including-the-kitchen-sink way, it'll be fun.

But it's still not my Batman...and somewhere in Gotham, a kid just got killed by an out-of-control getaway car, because Bruce was too busy being the most important person in the multiverse to notice.

Spoiler Saturday--How The Mediocre Have Fallen

A handy signifier of the state of the nu52:

The Royal Flush Gang...yes, the Royal Flush Gang...goes tooling around town in a pick-up, looking for people to beat up.

Not robbing banks or casinos. No grand schemes. No flying playing cards. Just driving around on looking for a fight. Sheesh, they can't even all fit on the inside...

And they recruit thuggish idiots to fill out their ranks. And acknowledge to themselves that their members are inadequate.

Have these guys ever even read a DC comic book?

Of course, this is also a universe where Superman broadcasts a video threatening to beat the crap out of people who mess with him:

Yup, that's Superman these days. "Truth," my ass.

Of course, this is the same universe where Clark Kent now looks younger than Dick Grayson.

Seriously, if you beamed here from 2010, you'd believe that was Conner Kent on that cover, right? You'd say, "Wait, they killed off Superboy, and then made Superman look just like Superboy used to?!?"

If you want to read a more detailed review of this week's Superman #44, and why it's not a particularly satisfying approach to Kal-El, you should go read Anj's piece.

You know, many (including myself) have given director Zack Snyder crap for saying several times that his movie Superman and Batman "transcend comics." But if you look at the state of Superman today, well, its hard to argue that the comics don't need transcending.

So, Exactly How Demented And Evil Is Scott Snyder's Batman?!?

I have to confess--despite being usually of high quality, I am not a huge fan of Scott Snyder's Batman run.

It's just a matter of taste--I like a Batman who occasionally foils a bank robber or investigates a mugging. Common, "ordinary" street-level crime is beneath the notice of Snyder's Batman, though. The entirety as his nu52 run on the title has been obsessed with long, longer and longest arcs about threats to the very existence of Gotham City.

Who has time to worry about gun-runners when a secret society is about to take over the city? Bodega hold-ups? Please--Batman must be focused 100% on whether the Joker, who might actually be an immortal god, can use mysterious chemicals from his spine to turn every single person in Gotham into a Joker-Zombie, all of whom will die any minute! When the Riddler is transformed into a madman more powerful and successful than Ra's Al-Ghul, who has time to stop drug dealers? Batman has no time for your petty crime!

Again, well-done. Just not to my taste.

But perhaps just as off-putting is how Snyder made (old) Bruce Wayne into a totally evil mother-frakker.

[SPOILER ALERT] In the last apocalyptic arc, Bruce had his entire memory wiped clean by DC Science--and now he's bright, innocent Bruce Wayne, who never experienced the tragedy that drove him to become Batman.

Well, Superman comes looking for Alfred, seeking his help to "fix" Bruce. And Alfred dismisses him, saying that there's no way that Bruce could ever be Batman again without that burning memory of his parents' murder to drive him.

And Bruce evidently thought the same thing:

That's right--Batman actually planned to clone himself, and implant his emotional trauma into each clone, so it would become Batman and continue the legacy.

Not only is that as demented as anyone in Arkham Asylum...it's also the exactly the same plan as the world's greatest megalomaniac tried 30 years ago:

Maybe I shouldn't be disturbed that the plan Batman came up with to continue his legacy is the exact same one that Victor Von Doom used to continue his legacy. It could be that I'm wrong to believe that Batman is dissing the ability of every Robin and other protegee he has had, and apparently determined to create his own line of Kristoffs. Perhaps I'm old-fashioned to think that maybe making your hero a self-absorbed destroyer of lives maybe kind of a little bit warps the definition of hero.

But that's the nu52 in a nutshell for you--where the most popular hero is no better than Doctor Doom.

From Batman #43 (2015) and Fantastic Four #278 (1985)

Manic Monday--Scott Snyder's Zur En Arrh!!

An Anti-Superman and Anti-Batman have appeared out of nowhere, plaguing the World's Finest team:

Well, eventually they're caught, and...

A Commissioner Gordon who looks young and has no mustache? Why, that could never happen--

Oh, never mind.

Anyway, the Anti-Superman turned out to be a similarly de-aged Perry White. How did it happen?

Pure Silver Age. Gordon and White are taking an (unescorted!) tour of the Fortress Of Solitude, when...

Oh, sure, right...a mysterious unknown element that can completely erase and change someone's personality. That could never happen--

Oh, never mind again. Seriously. (That's Alfred and Clark Kent discussing the new, improved but unscarred by tragedy Bruce Wayne, BTW)

It's clear now--Scott Snyder is just trying to outdo Grant Morrison's "every Silver Age Batman story happened" by amping it up to an even more ridiculous level!! Take that, silly Zur En Arrh!!

From World's Finest #159 (1966), as reprinted in World's Finest #227 (1975), and Batman #43 (2015)

Self-Awareness Sunday--Batman #42!!

Apparently, Scott Snyder was reading some of the internet fan commentary on the new "Bunny" Batman:

Still, they did get those new action figures out pretty damn fast, didn't they?

Spoiler Saturday--Another Issue Of Superman Unchained, Another No-Prize

Wow, Scott Snyder seems bound and determined to unhinge me with minor details in his Superman Unchained scripts.

Last time it was with the vagaries of supposedly top-secret space stations. This time, however, I think I'm on somewhat firmer ground, as we raise the question, how big is Smallville?

Terrorists are trying to bring down the world's tallest building, the Burj Kahilfa in Dubai:

As he's trying to save the building, and the people inside, Kal-El thinks captions this little factoid on us:

36,000 people? In Smallville? Really?

All right, game on!!

*Initially, I had been willing to dismiss this as a simple transcription error--perhaps Snyder had written "3600" or "thirty-six hundred," but somewhere between script and lettering it got muddled.

But, it turns out, not so--because the Burj Khlaifa was built to accommodate "up to 35,000" people. (Granted, it has probably never been near maximum occupancy, and probably has no more than 12-15,000 people at any one time. But that's just getting too hyper-picky. Maybe the Dubai Comicon was going on that day...) So credit Snyder for doing the research.

BUT that also means he must have meant it when he says Smallville has a population of "roughly" 36,000. Game still on!

*The town I grew up in--Portage, Michigan--was no Smallville. A largely suburban community, we had two major shopping malls. The worldwide headquarters of Upjohn pharmaceuticals (later Pharmacia later Phizer) was here. We had two high schools, with a total number of students of roughly 2500-3000. My graduating class was nearly 300.

Does any of that sound like your image of Smallville? Because while I was growing up, Portage's population hovered between 36,000 and 40,000. And while we were no Metropolis, we sure didn't feel like "Ma and Pa Kent had a farm and then a small general store on Main Street" territory.

Compare with some of the more rural towns not too far from Portage/Kalamazoo (population numbers from the 2010 census):

Mattawan: 1,997
Schoolcraft: 1,525
Three Rivers 7,811
Constantine 2,076
Paw Paw 3,534
Vicksburg 2,906
Bangor 1,885

Those are all big enough to have their own high schools; don't those sound more like the size you'd envision Smallville to be?

*Taken from a Kansas perspective: if Smallville did have roughly 36,000 people, it would be the 12th biggest city in Kansas, between Leavenworth and Hutchinson. Counting just towns with more than 5,000 folks, there are 48 cities in Kansan smaller than "Smallville." And that doesn't count all of the smaller towns--Kansas law allows cities to incorporate when they reach a population of 300. It also doesn't count the 1400 townships, or the hundreds of unincorporated communities.

Again, all of those smaller towns, townships and unincorporated areas sound a lot more like our ideal of Smallville.

*Of course, this is the nu52, and we've not seen too much of Smallville there. Perhaps it's bigger post-Flushpoint. Maybe it's attracted some big businesses, or perhaps Google Fiber came to town, and the resultant IT revolution made Samllville the regional hub for data centers and the such.

*Maybe Smallville was named ironically, like Greenland...

*Perhaps there's a Smallville county, and "our" Smallville is merely the county seat, so Superman is speaking of the whole county, Smallville plus other towns and townships and unincorporated areas.

*Or, maybe it's the Busiek Hypothesis run amok. Kurt Busiek speculated that, given all of the extra cities, DC Earth must be larger than ours, or have a greater surface area. Given that, perhaps the definition of a small town is different than on our tiny Earth. Perhaps on DC Earth, 36 thousand is a small town...

*Or, like Lois Lane, perhaps Scott Snyder is a big city boy who has never been outside of a burgeoning metropolitan area, and has no idea what the population of a tiny town might actually be. Maybe he thinks thirty-six thousand is small...

Or, maybe Snyder was just trolling me, trying to make me waste my Saturday morning on researching populations and town sizes. Well played, sir...well played.

Spoiler Sunday--Superman Unchained #1

Well, I'm not sure what we have here.

Either we have a) a case of lazy writing and poor editing, or b) snell being ridiculously hyper-picky about a damned comic book. You decide. [SPOILER ALERT--this is me making a mountain out of a VERY tiny molehill]

In this week's Superman Unchained #1, a space station is falling from the sky. A sequence which is so important that Jim Lee decided to present it as a four-page poster. So we know we should pay really close attention, right?

Allow Superman to describe it to us:

So. Secretly developed. Not known to the public. Got it? The big selling point of this #1 issue, this massive furshlugginer poster, want's us to know these things. Important info, right?

Yet, within minutes of Superman saving the crew members, and keeping the debris from killing anyone, Jimmy Olsen calls:

So wait...this was a top secret international space station, unrevealed to the public...and Jimmy Olsen knew about it? Even already knew its name, and didn't have to explain to Clark what he was referring to?

And the next day...

[Jim Lee...master of portraying Clark Kent taking phone calls...]

So anyway, astronauts--military personnel--are giving out interviews to bloggers about secret military projects?

Lois accuses Clark of "burying the lede" by not putting Superman in his headline about the incident. Which is strange, because you might think that the lede was "US, Russia & Japan had secret space station in orbit, hidden for 'political' reasons." Because the press never goes bananas over suddenly revealed secret government projects. You'd think there would be people curious or upset at that level of secrecy, or spending tax dollars on something like that, and calls for congressional hearings, or UN investigations, the works. And the black helicopter crowd would be howling about this as the revealed first step towards a secret plan towards one world government. But no, none of that's even mentioned. The top secret, massive project itself is greeted with a yawn.

Now, I'll grant you, this can be all be easily No-Prized away. Once it was known the station was falling, the governments in question could have revealed its existence immediately in order to get ahead of the story (although that doesn't explain why there was not a scintilla of interest by the press about the whole project the next day). Or maybe while the public didn't know about Lighthouse, the Daily Bugle oops Planet did, somehow, but agreed not to reveal it, because that's how hard-hitting newspapers win Pulitzers. And since the whole punchline of the story is "ooh, look, evil government machinations," how can we take that seriously when our hero and the press and the public and the story itself don't seem to give a tinker's damn about the other just-revealed secret government machinations?

It's just a tiny point in a silly comic book plot, fairly easily explained away. This is just snell over-reacting...again. Who cares?

But for me, at least, that tiny, trivial point completely took me out of the story. When I was reading and got to Jimmy's phone call, I immediately had to stop and go back and re-read (and unfold that verdammt poster again!) to make sure I had read properly, because it sure as hell seemed as if the script were contradicting what it told us just a few pages later.

Am I taking it too seriously? Yeah...but DC themselves hyped the hell out of this project, putting their big guns on it (including a co-publisher!), timing it to come out the same week as the new movie, sending out Crom knows how many press releases, interviews, etc, telling us this project was to taken seriously. DC's the one who said "Look at this big-ass gimmick poster--aren't we great?" So on a project of this importance to them, where are those famously micro-managing DC editors??

I guess that's why there's a "Director's Cut" of this issue coming out next month...so all this stuff will be explained, and make sense, right? Right?!?