A DC Christmas

When it comes to Christmas comics, one publisher, to my mind, has cornered the market, and that’s DC Comics. Over the years, DC has published scores of holiday-themed comics, far more than their competitors at Marvel, and has published them both in dedicated holiday specials and in the regular titles themselves. One of those holiday specials (1980’s SUPER-STAR HOLIDAY SPECIAL, to be precise) featured one of the earlier appearances by Frank Miller on Batman, in “Wanted: Santa Claus – Dead or Alive!” written by longtime BATMAN writer Denny O’Neil. In the story, Batman is on the trail of a longtime thief posing as a department-store Santa, who appears to be having a change of heart. When Batman intervenes to save Santa from his angry accomplices, he receives an assist from an unexpected source: a shining star.

Bob Haney and Nick Cardy tell of a groovier holiday in TEEN TITANS #13 (January-February 1968), in “A Swingin’ Christmas Carol!” Here the Titans find themselves caught up in a modern version of Dickens’ classic, in which “Tiny Tom” tips off the Titans about his father’s boss “Ebenezer Scrounge” and the use of Scrounge’s junkyard by criminal smugglers. Even as parody, it’s a little clunky and hard to take in places, but Nick Cardy’s gorgeous art makes it all worthwhile, particularly his renderings of Wonder Girl in a Santa suit. Yow.

And finally, from the DCU HOLIDAY BASH II (1998), Ty Templeton offers this look at Darkseid’s annual efforts to repel a most unwelcome Yuletide visitor:

For my money, though, the best DC Christmas comic, and maybe the best Christmas comic period, was published in 1995: THE BATMAN ADVENTURES HOLIDAY SPECIAL.

Written with wit and heart by Paul Dini and drawn by an all-star cast of talents from the BATMAN animated series (Bruce Timm, Dan Riba, Ronnie Del Carmen, Glen Murakami, Kevin Altieri and Butch Lukic), the HOLIDAY SPECIAL offers five tales of Christmas in Gotham City and hits one out of the park every time. This book was so good, in fact, that it was later transferred nearly note-for-note into an episode of the animated series the following year, and suffered not one whit for the translation.

The book opens with “Jolly Ol’ St. Nicholas,” with Gotham cops Bullock and Montoya undercover as – you guessed it – a department-store Santa and his elf, investigating a rash of holiday shoplifting. When the kid thieves turn out to be something a bit more intimidating, the cops receive a helping hand from Batgirl, who’d been in the store doing a little Christmas shopping.

Even with Batgirl’s help, Clayface is too much for Bullock and Montoya to handle, until Batgirl gets an electrifying idea. Bruce Timm’s art here is first-rate, by the way.

Next up, in “The Harley and the Ivy,” Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn decide to spread a little holiday cheer by dosing Bruce Wayne with Ivy’s mind-control lipstick. Before he knows it, Wayne is whisked off by Harley and Ivy to the department stores for a shopping spree of truly obscene proportions, and all on Bruce Wayne’s dime.

After the drug wears off and Wayne gets away, he returns as Batman to face off with the evil beauties, and takes his lumps before delivering them a little Christmas cheer of his own.

Ronnie Del Carmen handles the art here, and it’s fabulous, combining the Bruce Timm BATMAN style with a Dan DeCarlo “Betty and Veronica” feel. Just wonderful.

Darkening the mood a little is “White Christmas,” in which Batman contends with Mr. Freeze, who has broken out of Arkham and unleashed a massive, destructive blizzard on the previously snowless Gotham. Batman catches up with Freeze and puts an end to his blizzard device, but stops to ask Freeze why, why Christmas Eve of all nights?

“What Are You Doing New Year’s Eve?” begins chillingly, as Joker interrupts TV transmission on New Year’s Eve to announce his New Year’s resolution: not to kill anyone for an entire year. Unfortunately, that means working extra hard to kill off a whole lot of Gothamites beforehand. Batman has to fight both the Joker and the clock, as the Joker’s sonic bomb is set to trigger with the New Year’s countdown in Gotham Square.

Dark, moody art by Altieri and Lukic complement this slightly more intense story by Dini and Timm.

Finally, in “Should Old Acquaintance Be Forgot,” we get a touching coda revealing Batman and Commissioner Gordon’s holiday tradition.

Page for page, you’re not going to find a better Christmas comic than the HOLIDAY SPECIAL. It’s never been reprinted into a trade or anything, so you’ll probably have to do some digging, but it’s worth the effort. While you’re at it, there’s probably a good chance that someone on cable will be airing “Holiday Knights,” the NEW BATMAN ADVENTURES episode that adapted the comics, in the next day or two, so keep your eyes peeled.

Oh Holy Dark Knight, Part Two

By Wes Calimer

Batman and Christmas! It’s like a peanut butter and jelly sandwich with a slice of pineapple in it! No, seriously, that specific combination is fantastically delicious. We’ve been taking a look back at Batman and his holiday-themed misadventures, starting things off with the BTAS episode “Christmas with the Joker.” Together we watched as Joker flew off into the night sky on a rocket-powered christmas tree, spreading joy and entertainment to all of us and simultaneously tormenting Bat-boy. Now we’re gonna continue things along with…

HOLIDAY KNIGHTS!

Quick note: apparently, to be considered an official Christmas episode, Batman, or many of Bruce Timm’s other DC cartoons, has to have a bell-ringin’, holly, jolly, charitable Santa in it. St. Nick shows up all over the DC animated universe during Christmas time.

The New Batman Adventures: “Holiday Knights” (upper left corner), Batman: The Animated Series: “Christmas With The Joker” (upper right corner), Batman Adventures: Holiday Special one-shot comic (middle right), Static Shock: “Frozen Out” (bottom right corner), Justice League: “Comfort & Joy” (bottom left corner).

But for THIS article, we’ll be focusing on the premiere episode of The New Batman Adventures: “Holiday Knights.”

Paul Dini wrote four vignettes in the Batman Adventures: Holiday Special comic, of which he and Bruce Timm adapted three of those stories for the show. The one tale that was left out involved Mr. Freeze. It was called “White Christmas”, and we’ll save that one for last. So let’s delve into the differences between the comic and episode, some commentary, a bit of reviewing, and a lot of reminiscing.

Whatever. Just happy that I can say that I wrote about Batman and Christmas. Can any of you say that?! Ha! Nope!

So, with that said, I guess we’re starting off with Harley and Ivy. This one’s a fan fave, with these self-proclaimed naughty listers kidnapping Bruce Wayne with hypnotic, mind-controlling lipstick.

I was never a big fan of makeup in the first place, and this stuff makes Bruce do whatever they want him to, like anything… and you KNOW that they end up using him in the most evil, sadistic, inappropriate and twisted ways possible… by making him a unwilling pawn in their horrifically grandiose shopping spree!

Not cool, ladies, NOT cool. These girls unknowingly hit Batman where it hurts the most: his wallet. He loves investing his money into charity, his father’s company, kickass bat-styled gadgets, and vehicles with jet engines in them. Tonight, on the other hand, he is the proud owner of a green and black striped miniskirt, and a stuffed giraffe. Poor disgustingly wealthy bastard.

It’s not until the stuff starts to wear off, and he intentionally falls down an elevator shaft to get away that he has a chance to become the spirit of Christmas vengeance and payback.

They get away from the angry, ever so slightly financially scratched Bats, and duck into a toy store.

Hey, wait! There’s a creepy clown baby on the front! Joker must be hiding there! No? Okay, but Bruce, just to reiterate! Demolish all the creepy clown-covered establishments anyway! Or else, just leave, like, two, then locating the weird and disturbed supervillains will become a lot less complicated.

After the usual fight, Batman catches Harley Quinn and Poison Ivy with a Christmas tree……Awesome.

This episode is probably my second favorite vignette as it’s just fun, charming and adorable. Well, not for Bruce. Oh, here’s a nifty sidenote that’s in the comic but not in the show. Harley’s actually Jewish, but loves Christmas trees ‘cuz they’re pretty.

Next up is “Jolly Ol’ St. Nicholas,” which happens to be Detective Harvey Bullock, and he’s playing a mall Santa…because he’s fat. Bullock and Detective Montoya (the hot elf to the left) are on a stakeout for a shoplifter.

Barbara (Batgirl) is also at the mall shopping for her dad when she catches a juvenile pickpocket out of the corner of her eye. She chases after him and traps him up against the other three pickpockets being simultaneously chased by others, but then…

CLAYFACE!!! It was Clayface the whole time! Of course! It makes perfect sense! He needed to disguise himself as four small children to steal things….wait, what? Why doesn’t he just wreck the store and take whatever he wants? He does do that? Okay, maybe he just got bored or something.

Batgirl proceeds to kick him out a window, electrocute him with some surprisingly powerful Christmas lights, and then leave the incapacitated blob to Bullock, who gets to sift through Clayface’s Play-Doh body for the stolen goods, and all is well.

All in all, this story is kind of the weakest story of all the vignettes, but I think since this was the first episode demonstrating the new look of the animation compared to the old animated series, I’m sure Timm and company just wanted to show off a bit. They had reason to show off, too, because the animation throughout the entire series continued to get better and better! Plus, Clayface looks great.

The episode ends with a bang from my favorite jolly jester, the Joker.

The Clown Prince of Crime takes over the airwaves once again, and he solemnly swears not to kill anyone for a whole year! So, that’s why today on New Years Eve, he’ll work extra hard to kill as many people he can before the clock strikes midnight. Well, you can’t say he doesn’t have fun with it! It gets better…. thanks to a stolen supersonic bomb, when the clock does indeed strike twelve, it will kill anyone within earshot.

The Joker waits at Gotham Square to watch his plans unfold, but he knows that Bats will be looking for him so naturally…

Joker masks! He dispenses them to everyone as a party favor, in an attempt to confuse Batman. But let’s take a moment here to take something into account. There’s got to be at least a couple hundred Joker masks! Who manufactured them? Does he have a wholesale deal with a dastardly plastic molding company? Did he just make them himself?! This guy is always prepared, well-connected, or just downright resourceful! This is a cakewalk for him, and something he probably threw together in a day or so.

If you want to see how big this clown can really go, check out my other article on “Christmas with the Joker”:

So Bats shows up, a fight ensues, the bell starts to rise as the crowd starts to count down to one…

Batman manages to shortcircuit the supersonic bomb and the bell explodes just when it’s about to reach the top! It comes racing down and falls right over our resourceful little clown’s head.

This is a fun story, but what really makes it memorable is what comes next…

After all is said and done, Batman and Commissioner Gordon meet at Joe’s Tavern every New Year’s Eve to bring in the New Year.

Side note: the three drunk patrons singing “Auld Lang Syne” in the tavern represent producer Bruce Timm, and series artists Glen Murakami and Shane Glines, all working on the show at the time.

Batman sits and chugs scalding coffee. He and the Commissioner wish each other well, then Bats does his whooshy Batman thing. Awesome! The holidays really are about new beginnings, hope and friendship, but I think what the holidays and Batman have the most in common are what brings me to the final tale, “White Christmas”

You might know Mr. Freeze from the live-action feature film Batman and Robin, as portrayed by Arnold Schwarzenegger…

Well, stop it! Just don’t do it! The whole thing is terrible and makes me sad.

No, Mr. Freeze is not as campy and silly as you might think. Here’s the backstory that you might not know…

As established in the series, Victor Fries was a brilliant inventor working on creating a safe way of freezing the terminally ill until a cure could be found. He tested this out first on his terminally ill wife, but before he could find a cure, the company that was funding the entire project shut it down before it was complete and in an effort to save his wife, Fries was exposed to his own chemicals, causing him to be unable to live outside a constant freezing environment.

After a series of criminal acts of vengeance, he wound up in Arkham Asylum. When Freeze unexpectedly broke out one Christmas Eve, Batman came to question the staff. The guards all reported that Freeze was acting more depressed than usual, and kept asking about the weather. Freeze breaks into a warehouse that stored all of his old lab equipment, and suddenly Gotham’s a victim of a terrible blizzard, accidents everywhere, and people turning into ice pops.

Batman tracks Freeze to the Gotham Cemetery, where Freeze is going berzerk with the snow machine. Determined to get to the bottom of what seems like an illogical crime spree, Batman intervenes.

He throws a few batarangs into the snow machine gun, it explodes, and Batman approaches a very disoriented and clearly defeated Mr. Freeze, and then says…

“It’s Christmas, so I’ll give you one chance to end this quietly. Why’d you do it? Tonight of all nights?” to which Freeze remorsefully replies, “We were married ten years ago on a snowy Christmas Eve. Nora loved the snow. I thought it…sad… that there should be no snow this year, and I wouldn’t want my Nora sad tonight.”

Guys, I haven’t cried from a comic book since I don’t know when, and I cried like a baby. Maybe when I read this as a kid it was just too much too take. It would’ve been great to see this on the show, but I get it. I’m just happy this story was told at all. Batman shows true compassion for Freeze because he understands and appreciates how much love and family matters. That’s what Christmas and Batman is all about, appreciation of what you have, and appreciation of your family. Bruce and Victor had to find that depth of appreciation from some of the most tragic events possible. It shouldn’t take a freak accident that results in tragic loss to realize what we should be grateful for in this life.

So I hope you enjoyed this, I know I did. I’m going to go watch and read some more of my favorite holiday-themed adventures and share them with my friends and family, and I hope you do the same.

Wes Calimer is a Los Angeles-based geeky writer and director who just realized that he told everyone on the internet that he cried like a baby…

Oh Holy Dark Knight

By Wes Calimer

When I mention Christmas, you automatically think of snow, candy canes, Die Hard, (as you should), eggnog, that jolly fat guy, and Batman, yes?

Not Batman?

Well, shame on you! Our hero has a lot more in common with the holiday spirit than you might think. Let us we revisit all the best Christmas-themed tales from Batman: The Animated Series, where we’ll find the similarities in what Christmas and Batman both stand for, and enjoy the whoop-ass he wholeheartedly hands out every season. So let’s take a trip together, gentle readers, as we look back at the merry adventures of our holy dark knight!

We’ll be delving into one Bat-mas story at a time. Let’s start things off this week with “Christmas with the Joker.” I mean, we kinda have to, right? Christmas is, like, right in the title. Plus, look at his li’l Santa hat! Here are a few things that have always stuck with me about this episode.

A freaking rocket-propelled christmas tree! Yep, that just happened. As a way to escape from Arkham Asylum, the Joker either builds a rocket himself, or hires a crew of inmates that are actual rocket scientists, who also happen to be criminally insane, to engineer a functional Christmas monstrosity of death and transportation.

When the sucker takes off with the Joker on top, the twenty or so people below start to scamper away. But you KNOW that the exhaust must have taken at least half of ‘em out, and who even knows about the aftereffects? The thing might have been nuclear!

By the way, notice: The Joker and Charles Manson are tight. You can see Chuck wishing him well right before Joker climbs that bad boy and splits.

Sure, the Joker is crazy, but he’s a problem-solver as well. Not only did he build a high-powered rocket into a tree, but to do that in a maximum-security prison is pretty impressive. Then, when he was airborne outside of the prison, he had to take his landing projections into account. So many variables!

And dude! Where’d he get all that fuel?! Do you understand how much fuel a rocket has to have to even achieve liftoff? I sure as hell don’t, but the Clown Prince of Crime does! All with a smile on his face! So the guy is either a genius or just disgustingly loaded from all the heists he’s successfully pulled off. Or both, probably both…

Meanwhile, in the Batcave, Dick’s trying to get Bats in the holiday spirit by pitching the idea of watching It’s a Wonderful Life, and Bruce ain’t hearin it. I dunno, I’m not going to retell every second of this episode, mostly because I can’t bear to. Right off the bat (pun intended), the dialogue and dynamics between Batman and Robin feel off. Kevin Conroy (the voice of Batman) also sounds off: “The Joker’s escaped from Arkham Asylum, Robin.”

It’s true that the series was just trying to find its footing (with this offering being from very early in its run), but Eddie Gorodetsky, who wrote this episode, comes from a background of mostly half-hour sitcoms and it’s also notable to say that this is the only episode of Batman that he ever wrote, like, ever. So again, it’s all just a bit off and has a weird tone.

Anyway, Robin bets Batman that if nothing goes wrong on Christmas Eve, they can come back home, eat a goose, and watch It’s a Wonderful Life, all the while KNOWING that the Joker literally JUST escaped from Arkham. Dick assumes that the Joker just has a holiday family vacation to go to or something…

Batman and Robin go out on the prowl, searching for cats up a tree and crap, find nothing, and head back to the mansion. Robin compares Batman to Scrooge a few times, ’cause that’s fair. It’s not like Bruce is a well-known prolific philanthropist or anything. Plus, the whole serving Gotham as a vigilante every waking moment for justice is kinda greedy.

They get back to the Manor, after all that effort NOT looking for the Joker, since he just escaped! Yo, Batman — you JUST said it! They begin to watch It’s a Wonderful Life, then all manners of crazy ensue, as Joker takes over the airwaves with his very own Christmas special! Joker says that Batman and Robin have until midnight to fight their way past his traps and shenaniganery hidden all over town to rescue the kidnapped Commissioner Gordon, Harvey Bullock, and reporter Summer Gleeson (who matters for some reason) — otherwise, they’re dead.

I love the incredibly, ridiculously elaborate measures that Joker goes through every time, no matter what. Procuring a sound stage, a camera, making sure everything works, drawing and cutting cardboard cut outs of all the people he loves to hate for his audience, planning all these deadly traps, outfitting a Nazi Santa tank … it’s the little things that count and he’s a special kind of crazy.

Oh, one side note: Jim Gordon is a decorated police official, but if you put him up against a candy cane, and especially if said candy cane is in between his lips in an attempt to keep him quiet, he is INCAPABLE of speaking! He physically can’t muster up the strength to overcome the obstacle of spitting that scrumptious, jolly, piece of evil out of his mouth.

This is a common motif in film and television, and it never fails to irritate me.

“Oh no! I have a handkerchief in my mouth! What to dooo?!” Well, they’re all muffled so it’d probably sound more like “MMMFFFFFMNNNNTTTFF!!!!”

Back to the plot! Batman and Robin came across six laughing life-sized Joker toys with guns for hands, four deadly model airplanes, three killer giant robot toy soldiers, evade one giant observatory telescope that Joker made into a cannon and a partridge in a pear tree. (which, you remember, he turned into a rocket.)

Wait! Batman and Robin are looking for Joker’s hideout, jumping through all these insane(ly entertaining) hoops for nothing. Robin asks, “What’s our next move?!” Batman says “To be quite honest, I don’t know,” then figures out from a discontinued doll that the Joker’s hiding out at the Ol’ LaffCo Toy Factory.

HEY! “World’s greatest detective!” From now on, why don’t you just take a head count of all the creepy, ABANDONED factories in Gotham that have giant weird clown faces on the front of them, then demolish them all! The Joker would then have no choice but to take over a Wal-mart or something. That’d be weird, though…

After all that, these two henchmen come out from the top of the factory with machine guns and just start shooting at the Dynamic Duo. I guess when all else fails or whatever, just go with what works. When that, of course, doesn’t work, Joker pulls back a curtain to reveal that the hostages are all hanging by a rope over a big pot of lava or something, and he’s got some dastardly scissors.

But all of that is forgiven with what comes next. Joker gives Bats a suspiciously dangerous-looking gift. The tension builds as the hostages are hanging over certain death, desperately gasping for air through those forcefully restraining candy canes. Batman carefully opens the maliciously laced box and…

Pie all up in the face. That’s what makes the Joker fantastic. He’s actually insane and loves nothing more than to get under the Batman’s cowl.

Batman jumps over the pot and saves all three candy-cane victims, catches the Joker and goes home to watch It’s a Wonderful Life. Robin says “It is a wonderful life” and Batman replies “It has its moments.” Again, the writing is still a bit off, but fun. This was clearly meant to be a kid’s episode. There are amazingly deep episodes like “Mad Love” and “Heart of Ice,” then there are some like this that include Robin saying lines like “They don’t call you Batman for nothin’!”

Batman’s not a Scrooge, but he can get a bit grumpy around the holidays, and given everything with that “Jingle bells, Batman smells” song, who can blame him? We all have our humbug moments, but Batman never forgets that giving, and appreciating what he has, is awesome. That’s what we should take from Christmas and Batman. Just give. Don’t get caught up in the killer toys, or Nazi Santa tanks, and screw the candy canes. Just give a little time, compassion and friendship to all the people you love.

Wes Calimer is a Los Angeles-based geeky writer and director who is very grateful to have a hot girlfriend who loves him for it.

A Return to Greatness

By the mid-1980s, the BATMAN books published by DC Comics were mired in what could charitably be called a bit of a slump. The Denny O’Neal/Neal Adams-inspired renaissance the character had undergone in the 1970s, which had restored much of the darkness and mood to the series, had been gradually slipping, with several years of storylines revolving around Bruce Wayne’s involvement in a prolonged custody battle over the orphaned Jason Todd, who would become the new Robin. In addition, many years of overuse of Batman in a “teamup” fashion, whether it was in the monthly Superman teamup in WORLD’S FINEST, appearances as a member in both JUSTICE LEAGUE of AMERICA and BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS, or his monthly teamups with pretty much everyone in the DC Universe in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, had unavoidably drained the character of much of his “mystique.” There were a few bright spots, particularly Mike W. Barr and Alan Davis’ brief but excellent run on DETECTIVE, and the comics weren’t at all horrible, but there was certainly nothing exciting going on. The Batman books were as comforting and predictable as an afternoon nap.

And then Frank Miller woke us all up in 1986 with BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.

Miller, best known at the time for his extremely popular work on Marvel’s DAREDEVIL, delivered a home run with his writing and art on this 4-issue series that would eventually become one of the most read graphic novels in the DC Comics library, having gone through two hardcover reprintings and six print runs in softcover. Moreover, Miller’s conception of a Batman as a tersely speaking urban vigilante with a tendency to play a little rougher than longtime Bat-fans were accustomed to seeing, had such an impact on the popular culture that it forever affected the character in whatever genre it appeared in, whether it be film, animation or the comics themselves. Driving it all was a strong, compelling story, one of Miller’s best, which holds up even 18 years later, and still has the crackle and spark of a brand-new book. Follow along as we take a look at THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.

The book is set 20 years in the future, and introduces us to a 55-year-old Bruce Wayne, retired from a life as Batman for a decade, following the death of Jason Todd, Dick Grayson’s young replacement as Robin. In the intervening years, crime in Gotham has soared with 70-year-old Commissioner Gordon, about to be forcibly retired, doing all he can to keep things under control. Although Wayne has given up his war on crime, it’s clear the desire to punish those who would prey on the innocent is still strong:

Eventually, Wayne’s demons overcome him, and in a harrowing sequence intercutting Wayne’s torment at Gotham’s deterioration with his own memories of the murder of his parents, a decision is reached.

(A digression: the device Miller uses to convey the murder of Wayne’s parents, transposing the firing of the pistol with the thief’s grabbing and breaking of Martha Wayne’s pearl necklace, has become one of the most lifted, borrowed and “homaged” bits of business in the character’s publishing history. I’ve seen it in movies, TV shows, comics, non-Batman material, everywhere; a testament to just how big an impact this book has had over the years.)

Suddenly, Gotham’s underworld finds itself under attack from an adversary that this new generation of criminals has only heard about from their parents. And as seen here, these days he’s playing a little rougher:

As it turns out, Batman isn’t the only one back in business. The supposedly cured Harvey Dent, thought to have completely shed his evil persona as Two-Face thanks to plastic surgery and intensive psychotherapy, is apparently up to his old tricks, or so Batman’s investigation suggests. Meanwhile, news of Batman’s return awakens another old “friend”:

And inspired by news of Batman’s return, Commissioner Gordon has another piece of police equipment hauled out of mothballs: the Batsignal.

Two-Face, still bandaged from the plastic surgery, makes his play soon enough, holding Gotham’s Twin Towers for hostage live on television. Batman intervenes, and in the process even answers the question of why he wears a bright yellow oval on his uniform:

After Batman captures Dent, he realizes that while Dent’s face may be healed, he’s hardly cured, and sees in Dent’s visage a reflection of his own dual nature, against which he’s just as helpless:

Introduced in the second chapter of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS is young Carrie Kelley, a Gotham teenager who takes to wearing a homemade Robin costume and prowling Gotham’s rooftops, inspired by the return of the Caped Crusader. Also moving to the forefront this issue are the Mutants, a vicious and violent gang that’s been terrorizing the city, and has targeted Jim Gordon for execution. Batman’s strongarm interrogations lead him to a cache of military weapons sold to the gang, and he heads off in the Batmobile to where the Mutants are gathering. Of course, this is not your father’s Batmobile…

As Batman scatters the gang members with mercy bullets (as Miller takes pains to retain Batman’s oath against killing), the leader of the Mutants challenges him to come out and face him man to man. Tempted by pride, Batman emerges, and he and the Mutant Leader engage in a truly ugly round of hand-to-hand combat.

In the end, the Mutant Leader’s youth and power wins out, and it’s only through the lucky intervention of Carrie Kelley that Batman survives the encounter. Carrie accompanies the badly injured Batman back to the cave in the Batmobile, and it’s at this moment that she’s officially granted her new role, for better or worse:

While Batman convalesces, Gotham’s mayor makes the mistake of attempting to negotiate with the now-imprisoned Mutant Leader. Gordon, whose replacement has now been named (Ellen Yindel, whose stated first official act will be to put out an arrest warrant for the Batman), is unable to do anything to stop his brutal murder.

Through his new agent Carrie, Batman has the word spread for all the Mutants to meet at a particular time and place, and arranges for one last favor from Gordon, allowing the Mutant Leader to escape, and luring him in front of his assembled followers. This time, Batman fights smarter, using the environment and his years of experience to his advantage, crippling the Mutant Leader in front of his followers, who now swerve their blind allegiance to Batman, adopting bat-shaped facial makeup and dubbing themselves “The Sons of the Batman.”

In Chapter 3, we see multiple threats to Batman’s crusade rising in the distance. The newly appointed Commissioner Yindel makes good on her promise to make the arrest of Batman a priority, while the Joker plots his escape from custody. Meanwhile, a still young and vital Superman warns Bruce Wayne that if he continues his nocturnal activities, Clark will be ordered to bring him in, a threat that Bruce doesn’t seem too alarmed about. If there are any quibbles with the otherwise rock-solid characterization of DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, it’s in the portrayal of Superman, who is seen here as a lapdog to the American government, whom he allows to coordinate his activities because they “allow” him to save lives. It’s a bit of an easy out, and doesn’t serve the character well, but it serves its purpose from a plot mechanics standpoint, placing Superman in the necessary adversarial position.

The threats of Yindel and the Joker converge as the Joker, accompanied by his psychotherapist, makes an appearance on “The David Endochrine Show,” a not-at-all disguised Letterman reference. Batman arrives on the scene hoping to stop the slaughter that he’s sure will take place, but is repulsed by Yindel’s SWAT teams, and again is only saved by the timely intervention of Robin. Meanwhile, the Joker murders his psychotherapist, the talk-show host, and the entire studio audience, thanks to the prearranged arrival of a robot full of his deadly laughing gas, which also provides him with a means of escape.

Eventually, Batman tracks the Joker to the County Fair, where once again he’s too late, as the Joker has already passed out poisoned cotton candy, murdering a pack of cub scouts. The sight of it hardens the now world-weary Batman, who begins to consider more lethal options:

Right away it’s clear the stakes are changed, when the Joker takes a Batarang to the eye. Eeugh.

Their battle makes its way though the House of Mirrors, and into the Tunnel of Love, where Batman puts the Joker down, but still refuses to kill him. In the book’s most chilling moment, the Joker takes matters into his own hands, framing Batman for his own murder:

The art here is both enthralling and repugnant, as Batman and the Joker scratch and claw the life out of each other with their bare hands. While Miller’s storytelling and shot composition does a marvelous job of expressing the narrative pace, Klaus Janson’s finishes add a gritty definition to the figures, and Lynn Varley’s muted colors expertly keep the dark mood of the series while subtly adding the necessary gory detail, such as the blood seeping through Batman’s uniform.

Batman engineers another skin-of-his-teeth escape from the cops, and retreats to the Batcave to recover, while things swiftly go to hell in the rest of the world. In a now unfortunately dated subplot running through the book, the United States and the Soviet Union have been playing a deadly game of nuclear brinksmanship (with the U.S. emboldened by the knowledge that they have Superman in their hip pocket), which finally boils over when the Russians launch a nuclear first strike.

Superman manages to divert the missile over the desert, but the blast sets off an electromagnetic pulse, shorting out all electrical devices all over the world. As a powerless Gotham descends into anarchy, Batman and Robin take to the streets on horseback and mobilize the Sons of the Batman, who then recruit Gotham’s other youth gangs, forming a vigilante army under Batman’s command, quelling the riots and looting, mobilizing disaster relief and restoring peace to the city, with Commissioner Yindel helpless to stop him.

Unfortunately, Batman’s high-profile efforts during the riots prove the last straw for Superman’s government bosses, who order him to bring Batman in. In respect to their long friendship, Clark gives Bruce warning of his orders, and even allows him to choose the place:

And so, at the very place where Batman was born the night his parents were taken from him, Superman and Batman have their final confrontation, it’s a battle comics fans had been waiting to see for years, and Frank Miller really delivers the goods.

Already weakened by the nuclear blast, Superman takes a few shots from the armored Batman (drawing his power from the city’s electrical grid) before getting the upper hand, until the arrival of Batman’s ace in the hole: Oliver Queen, the former Green Arrow, who’s eager to settle the score with Superman over the loss of his arm. Ollie delivers Batman’s secret weapon: synthetic Kryptonite, which weakens Superman enough for Batman to finish the fight before himself succumbing to a fatal heart attack.

Or is it fatal? A visit to the funeral by Clark reveals an interesting sound…

THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS still stands as a high point in Frank Miller’s artistic development. While some of his later work on SIN CITY revealed a singular, more impressionistic style I find more aesthetically pleasing, here Miller is still tempering that with a more traditional mainstream style, which I think is most effective for this particular book. Miller also delves heavily into media influence in DARK KNIGHT, which much of the storyline’s background and exposition being established by the talking heads of network television news anchors and commentators, a device seen so often nowadays as to be almost clichéd, but which was a bold new approach back in ’86. Miller here keenly anticipated the overpowering presence of today’s media, and what seemed like a parody of television back then now can nearly pass by the reader practically unnoticed.

Miller also does a clever bit of sleight of hand with his rendering of Batman. In the book’s opening chapter, Batman looks largely as one would expect him to, in the traditional 1970s-era costume, and not too grossly out of proportion in physicality.

Over the course of the series, Miller slowly alters Batman’s costume and anatomy, until by issue 4, he’s truly become a Frank Miller Batman, one that could co-exist in the world of later Miller works like SIN CITY and fit in right nicely.

Rather than force his vision of the character on the reader up front, Miller slyly brings the reader along compelled by the story, until one barely even notices that changes have been made.

The notion of a cranky middle-aged Batman coming out of retirement, and struggling to do the things that once came so easy for him, is a deliciously appealing one, and one that Miller takes full advantage of, both for humor…

…and for drama’s sake, as Batman’s crusade seems all the more heroic now that it hurts him so much more to continue, and he has to try so much harder.

The impact of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS was felt immediately, all across the media landscape, probably the most obvious beneficiary was Tim Burton’s BATMAN feature film, which, while it didn’t follow Miller’s novel chapter and verse, most definitely bore its influence, both in Michael Keaton’s portrayal of Batman as a quiet, grim vigilante, and in some of its visuals, particularly in the flashback sequence of the murder of Thomas and Martha Wayne, complete with the breaking of the pearl necklace.

While Warner Animation’s BATMAN: THE ANIMATED SERIES showed influences from all versions of the character in its conception of Batman, the producers showed their love for the book quite vividly in the episode “Legends of the Dark Knight,” which features a nearly perfect note-by-note reproduction of Batman’s fight with the Mutant Leader, with the Miller Batman played to perfection by Michael Ironside.

Overall, the success and high quality of DARK KNIGHT, along with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’ WATCHMEN (which had an entirely different vibe to it, but also feature a take-no-prisoners vigilante as a central protagonist), set off a “Grim & Gritty” trend in comics that spread through the industry like wildfire, with nearly every book becoming dark, moody and serious. Even books like AMAZING SPIDER-MAN suddenly featured a tortured Peter Parker cutting himself off from human contact and calling himself “the Spider” in faux-gritty first-person narrative captions. And unlike a lot of trends, this one had legs. It really wasn’t until books like Mark Waid’s FLASH and Kurt Busiek’s ASTRO CITY became popular that we really saw comics move away from the dark side.

As for the Batman comics, they were never the same again after DARK KNIGHT. Not long after the success of the book, DC hired Miller to rethink the character’s post-CRISIS origin with BATMAN: YEAR ONE, and in the years since then a number of Miller innovations have found their way into the mainstream books, such as the use of the bulky pouch-style utility belt, and the introduction of Commissioner Gordon’s wife Sarah (only mentioned in DARK KNIGHT, and later introduced by Miller in YEAR ONE and killed off years later in the giant Bat-event NO MAN’S LAND).

The two elements most strongly embraced by later Batman writers were the death of the second Robin, Jason Todd, and the concept of Batman’s image of himself and his sidekicks as “soldiers” in the war on crime. Killing off Jason and replacing him with a slightly morbid shrine of an empty costume hanging in the Batcave was sheer genius on Miller’s part, and I honestly believe it was the strength and power of that visual alone that first planted the germ of an idea in the heads of the then-Batman writers and editors that maybe killing Jason would be a good idea.

As for the notion of Batman being an emotionless general in the war on crime, I think this is a nice enough idea when handled with a light touch, but in recent years Batman creators often hit it much too hard, leaving Batman looking like a near-pathological control freak, who treats his subordinates so poorly there’s no reason why they would continue to follow his orders. Hopefully they’ll lighten it up a little. After all, Frank Miller wasn’t afraid to let his tough old bastard of a Batman show a little emotion:

Batman may consider himself at war with crime, but a good general still loves his troops.

Comics 101, October 10, 2012 – Getting Your DC Fix

Are you like me? With the new 52 books still not really being to my taste these days, you might be wondering here to turn to in order to get that regular dose of the DC Universe. Luckily for me, there are a couple of sources I can turn to, for brand-new stories (at least for me) that carry all the flavor, epic scope and history of the DC Universe I love. And ironically, neither are found in comic books, but instead on the video screen.

It wasn’t intentional, but due to busy schedules and a misbehaving DVR, I wound up missing the majority of episodes of Cartoon Network’s most recent Batman animated series, THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD. The entire series is now available on DVD, and I’ve recently been making my way through all 65 episodes of the series of producers James Tucker and Michael Jelenic, and it is an absolute joy. With a distinctly Silver Age feel, BRAVE AND THE BOLD, teams up Batman in every episode with a different superhero, from the usual suspects like Green Arrow or Aquaman to the more obscure like Detetive Chimp or Kamandi. With a design scheme that owes a lot to classic Batman artist Dick Sprang and Sheldon Moldoff, the temptation is to write the series off as more kid-oriented fare without much to offer the adult viewer. Don’t you believe it. The series has an epic scope, builds long-term character growth and story arcs over entire seasons, and includes tearjerking scenes of sacrifice by heroes who never come back from the dead in cheap resurrections just for a happy ending.

I also had been watching the series for almost a full season before I realized that the producers were clearly suggesting that this was the Batman of the “Adam West” continuity, from the Batpoles in Stately Wayne Manor to the familiar villains like King Tut and Bookworm seen in the backgrounds of Gotham’s prison. As for Batman himself, Diedrich Bader’s performance is outstanding, combining the darkness and gravitas of Kevin Conroy with the earnestness and enthusiasm of Adam West. You can tell that this is a series made by people who love Batman, all type of Batman, with everything from the Whirly-Bat to Bat-Mite, to Ace the Bat-Hound making an appearance, as well more modern concepts like Nightwing and the Justice League International. Highly recommended.

Speaking of modern, if you’re looking for something a bit more contemporary, You should check out the complete first season of YOUNG JUSTICE, also now available on DVD.

The best way I can think to convey how much I like YOUNG JUSTICE is to say this: if the New 52 were this well plotted and thought out, I’d be buying very book. As conceived and produced by Greg Weisman and Brandon Vietti, the series reconceives the DC Universe as we know it, taking familiar characters and plotlines from the many years of the DCU and reshuffling them in such a way as to best focus on the show’s concept, a team-within-the team in the Justice League, made up of the young sidekicks and protégés of the Leaguers. For example, Zatanna is presented here as a teenage peer of Robin, Kid Flash and Aqualad, with her father Zatara now included as a League member.

The series is as much about the League as it is the younger members, and it has a globetrotting feel that works very well with its “big-picture” style of storytelling. It’s also not afraid to take some risks, such as with its currently airing second season, which takes place five years after its first with no explanation, leaving viewer in the dark and desperately trying to fill in the gaps. Characters dies, long-term secrets are revealed; this series lays for keeps, and it feels more like the authentic DC Universe than anything since Bruce Timm’s JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED. Make sure you check it out.

Scott Tipton wishes BRAVE AND THE BOLD would have had more B’Wana Beast. If you’ve got questions about Batman, Young Justice or comics in general, send them here.

Comics 101, October 3, 2012 – Worth the Wait

Hard to believe it’s been twenty-six years since Frank Miller’s groundbreaking BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS first hit comic-shop shelves. And ever since then, almost immediately upon its publication, fans have been clamoring for a film adaptation. And while elements and influences of DARK KNIGHT RETURNS can be seen in everything from Tim Burton’s BATMAN to the Dini/Timm animated series to Nolan’s Bat-films, a true, faithful adaptation of the work has never seen the light of day.

That is, until now.

Warner Animation’s THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, PART I is a breathtakingly loyal recreation of the first half of Miller’s Batman masterpiece, replicating it in look, tone, design and story nearly without fail. For any of you who’ve been living under a rock and haven’t read probably the single most influential Batman story after DETECTIVE COMICS 38, let’s get you up to speed on THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS’ premise:

Ten years after the retirement/disappearance of The Batman, a fifty-five-year-old Bruce Wayne finds himself drawn back into action as the Caped Crusader, in response to a Gotham City descending into anarchy, not to mention his own demons. With Batman’s return comes new allies, old enemies, broken friendships, and a final battle for the soul of the city.

Wisely, Warner Animation elected to split the story into two films, with PART I focusing on Bruce Wayne’s return to the cape and cowl, his struggle with the not-so-rehabilitated Two-Face, his battle with Gotham street gang The Mutants, and the arrival of Carrie Kelley, the new (and female) Robin.

Director Jay Oliva and screenwriter Bob Goodman stick as close to the source material as they possibly can, with the character designs looking as close to Miller’s style as possible while still allowing for fluid animation. As for the story, there’s not much missing, and certainly nothing important. The one absence I did feel was the absence of the first-person narration for Bruce/Batman. While I can understand the decision to eschew most of it, as an overdone voiceover can really bog down a film, the Batman narration in DARK KNIGHT RETURNS makes up some of Miller’s best writing ever, and in certain places it was sorely missed.

The vocal cast delivered strongly as well. Peter Weller’s deadpan baritone worked perfectly for Batman here, lending an almost defeated sound to Batman’s dialogue that worked perfectly. It will be interesting to see if he’s able to adjust to the more manic, more self-assured Batman of the latter half of the book. Ariel Winter also shines as Carrie Kelley, doing a great job of capturing Miller’s invented futuristic teen slang and making it sound natural. David Selby’s Commissioner Gordon is right on target as well, and although we only hear two words from him at the very end of the film, LOST’s Michael Emerson looks to provide a very new and exciting take on the Joker.

What’s interesting to someone coming to this film for the first time is that anyone unfamiliar with the book might think some of the material here is derivative of other Batman films, such as the sequence of the pearls following to the ground, used to great effect by Tim Burton, or the notion of a young Bruce falling into the Batcave, a trademark of the Nolan films. Yet both of these sequences were originated by Miller in DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, and seeing them in the proper context is a long-awaited joy.

Honestly, the only thing I can really say in criticism of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, PART I is that PART II isn’t arriving fast enough. Highly recommended.

Scott Tipton can’t wait for the Superman/Batman fight. If you’ve got questions about THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS or comics in general, send them here.

Comics 101, September 26, 2012 – Farewell and Godspeed to the Brave and the Bold

Editor’s Note: Once again, I’m behind the eight-ball on deadlines this week (on really exciting new projects for next year that I can’t wait to talk about, but one thing at a time), so we’re going to recover another lost entry from the Comics 101 Archives, this time talking about my favorite Batman artist of all time, the late, great Jim Aparo. From August 3, 2005. Enjoy.

When you’re a little kid, standing at the comic-book spinner rack with a dollar in your hand to choose a couple of comics, you’ve gotta get the most for your buck. This was a situation Li’l Scott was very familiar with down at the Quik Stop back in the day. Sometimes, the decision was easy, though — for example, whenever there was a copy of THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD on the rack. It wasn’t just that it was a Batman team-up book, featuring the Caped Crusader teaming up with a different superhero in every issue (although that was certainly a big part of the appeal). Even back then, when I had little to no cognizance of the role of writers and artists in comic books, I just knew that when Batman was in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD, he just felt creepier, cooler and more real than when I would read his stories in BATMAN or DETECTIVE.

About the same time, (maybe at the age of 8 or 9) I can remember getting a big poster book of DC Superheroes, full of different posters of the various DC characters. The two I chose to go up on the wall? Aquaman and a shot of Batman’s Rogues Gallery.

What I didn’t realize until years later was that both posters were the work of the same man who had been responsible for the Batman stories I loved so much in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD: artist Jim Aparo.

Jim Aparo died a couple weeks back at the age of 72. I thought we’d stop this week and take an all-too-brief look at some of the man’s work from an amazingly prodigious and full career in comics.

James N. Aparo was born in 1932, and was primarily a self-taught artist, with only a semester of art school to his credit. Aparo began his artistic career working in advertising at a Connecticut ad agency, and a lifelong love of comics inspired him to try his hand at getting comics work, starting with the publisher Charlton, a smaller publishing house that was close to Aparo’s Connecticut home. Finding a steady flow of work from Charlton’s then-editor Dick Giordano, Aparo soon quit his job as the ad agency and devoted himself to comics full-time. At Charlton, Aparo worked on books like the teen strip BIKINI LUV, the “Nightshade” backup feature in CAPTAIN ATOM and Charlton’s version of Lee Falk’s THE PHANTOM.

When Giordano moved uptown to DC Comics, he took Aparo with him, and soon Aparo was working on AQUAMAN and THE PHANTOM STRANGER.

Aparo’s work on THE PHANTOM STRANGER prompted editor Murray Boltinoff to use him on a Batman/Phantom Stranger team-up for THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #98, and it was such a good fit that Aparo stayed on the title for much of the series’ remaining 102 bimonthly issues. Let’s take a look at a few of my favorite moments from Aparo’s amazing 12-year stint on THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD.

One of the more frequent guest-stars in B&B was Green Arrow, and probably my favorite GA appearance comes in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #129, by Aparo and longtime B&B writer Bob Haney: “The Claws of the Emperor Eagle!”

Let’s start off by examining this gorgeous splash page:

Unlike most other comic-book artists, Aparo was a triple-threat, in that he served as not only the penciller, but also the inker and letterer as well. This provided him with an unprecedented level of control over page layout and design, as he was able to decide precisely where the captions and word balloons would go (in fact, according to an interview, he would do the lettering first, and rarely had to go back and adjust). Aparo’s motive here was not merely artistic, however, although that undoubtedly appealed to him; by tripling his workload, Aparo was tripling his paycheck as well. As Mark Evanier recently remarked in his weblog, Aparo’s work habits were greatly appealing to his DC editors, as he could complete a finished page of pencils, inks and letters in a day, like clockwork, and if you gave him a script, you knew that in 22 workdays, you’d be getting back a finished book ready for the printer. It’s very telling that in his entire career in comics, Jim Aparo never worked anywhere but DC once they’d discovered what a treasure they’d found. (Which is also a bit sad, as I’d have loved to have seen Aparo versions of Marvel’s characters at least once.)

I’ve often thought that Aparo’s obviously first-rate work as an artist overshadowed his marvelous work as a letterer. Subtleties like giving the words emphasized in bold a slight italic tilt, or the way he would incorporate sound effects into the panel, were uniquely Aparo lettering devices found nowhere else, and they were tremendously effective.

In the aforementioned B&B #129, Batman and Green Arrow face off against the joker, Two-Face and an eastern European dictator for possession of an ancient relic rumored to bring bad luck to its owners. Aparo’s Joker was among the creepiest ever drawn, with a head and jawline so exaggerated as to appear almost inhuman (a tendency we’ll see Aparo continue to exaggerate in his later Batman work).

As for Batman, Aparo seemed to take inspiration from Neal Adams’ redesign of the Dark Knight in the early 1970s, then continued to develop his own style. Trademarks of an Aparo Batman included the longer, almost blade-like pointed ears on the cowl, a smooth, unbroken transition between the mask and the cloaked neck and shoulders, a smaller, oval-shaped bat-insignia, the furrowed brow appearing through the cowl, the squarest of square chins, and narrower, slightly curved bat-scallops on the gloves.

Probably the strangest B&B issue Aparo ever did was THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #124, “Small War of the Super Rifles,” in which Batman and an older Sgt. Rock try to recover a shipment of high-tech assault rifles from the hands of a terrorist group calling themselves “The Thousand.”

However, in order to stop Batman and Rock, The Thousand decides to kidnap Jim Aparo, who’s drawing the story, and make him draw Batman and Rock getting killed. Whaat? It’s like a bizarre mixture of Chuck Jones’ Duck Amuck and Pirandello’s “Six Characters in Search of a Story,” and truth be told, as a narrative, it really doesn’t work that well, as precisely how, metaphysically, the terrorists appear in both Batman’s world and Aparo’s, or how Aparo’s pencil was affecting Batman, for that matter, is never explained by writer Bob Haney. In fact, years later, Aparo confessed that he found the story “corny,” but his disdain doesn’t show at all in the finished work, and it’s a kick to see Aparo save Batman’s life by breaking his pencil…

I could bore you for pages with more great BRAVE AND THE BOLD moments, so here’s just a few, like B&B #177, which featured a truly unique deathtrap in Batman being hanged by the Elongated Man’s neck by a villain appropriately named “The Hangman”…

Aparo’s favorite B&B story, a Batman/Creeper teamup from B&B #178, in which Batman and the Creeper face off against the menace of … the Origami Man…

Sentimental sucker that I am, I’ve still got a soft spot for B&B #184, “The Batman’s Last Christmas!”, a Batman/Huntress team-up in which the Huntress makes the journey from Earth-2 to Earth-1 to spend the holidays with her “Uncle” Bruce (the Huntress’ father being the decades-older Batman of Earth-2, who had only recently died).

During the visit, Batman discovers that his father had secretly been a gangster, and resolves to give up being his career as the Caped Crusader. The story is a fairly typical whodunit, as Batman and the Huntress eventually discover the real culprit, but the emotional subtext is both charming and a touch disturbing. I always really liked the surrogate father/daughter relationship between the Earth-1 Bruce Wayne and his “niece” Selina, not only because it was usually pretty well characterized, but also because it was a refreshing change to see Bruce Wayne relate on an emotional level with anyone. On the other hand, it was always a little odd to see the Huntress relate emotionally on a familial level with someone who looked to be roughly the same age. Aparo’s illustrations show the two being rather physically affectionate, and it’s a little weird, almost incestuous. Not to mention the psychological ramifications of mourning your father by going to hang out with his younger self.

Regardless, Aparo’s art is excellent as ever here, both in conveying Batman’s distress at learning everything he thought he knew about his father was a lie, and in getting across the emotional toll all this plays on the Huntress. Speaking of the Huntress, I think I like Aparo’s rendering of the character even better than creator Joe Staton’s, as he brought (as he did to most all of his female characters) a solid, muscular (yet still feminine) form to the body and an appealing angularity to the facial features.

Another favorite of mine is B&B #191, “Only Angels Have Wings!”, in which the Joker is forced to turn to Batman for assistance, having been framed for the murder of the Penguin. Aparo’s exaggerated version of the Joker has progressed even further here, as seen here, with the Joker’s chin having elongated to completely unrealistic proportions.

What was great about the issue was the new emotional depths to which it took the Joker character (courtesy of a fine script by Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn), as he seeks Batman’s help not because he cares about being framed for murder, but because he wants to find the Penguin’s real murderer himself:

The good thing about THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD’s bimonthly schedule was that it freed Aparo up to take on other jobs for the company as well, such as his famous 1974-1975 series of Spectre stories in the pages of ADVENTURE COMICS with writer Michael Fleisher. Fleisher went back to basics with his version of the Spectre, casting the ghost of Jim Corrigan as the true Spirit of Vengeance, fatally striking down evil men in manners gruesome and outlandish. For example, take this moment from the team’s first issue, in which a murderer find his machine gun melting like wax in his hands, only to find it doesn’t stop with the gun…

Not gory enough? How about this scene from ADVENTURE #432, in which a murderous hairdresser finds it’s time for a trim…

Then there’s this scene from ADVENTURE #435, in which a cop killer is holed up in a sawmill, only to find himself turned into a block of wood and — oh, you can figure it out…

The issues also gave Aparo the opportunity to show off some outstanding splash pages, as seen here:

The Fleisher/Aparo Spectre run was recently collected in trade as WRATH OF THE SPECTRE. Highly recommended.

Another Aparo project done at the same time as THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD was the DC miniseries THE UNTOLD LEGEND OF THE BATMAN, which sought to coordinate and retell the origins and backstory of Batman and all his friends and foes, in the framework of an intriguing little mystery (written by Len Wein). While the first issue was the combined work of Jim Aparo and John Byrne, issues 2 and 3 were pure Aparo goodness. Here Aparo got to retell such famous BATMAN moments as Robin’s origin…

…take a larger look at all the potential suspects in the mystery of who was after Batman’s secrets…

…and even show for the first time anywhere the first meeting of Batman and Commissioner Gordon:

THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD ended with issue #200, not so much because of declining sales as because of changing trends. With team books (like UNCANNY X-MEN and THE NEW TEEN TITANS) outselling everything else on the shelf, the decision was made to cancel B&B and replace it with a new team book, with Batman in the lead role. The B&B creative team of writer Mike W. Barr and Jim Aparo was chosen to create the new team book, which saw its premiere in August 1983 with BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS #1.

Barr and Aparo manned their team with a clever mix of existing characters and new creations. With Batman having quit the Justice League in favor of running his own team, it was only salt in the wound for him to induct as his new teammates the two heroes to have previously turned down JLA membership, Black Lightning and Metamorpho. The three new characters created by Barr and designed by Aparo included Geo-Force, the Markovian prince with the power to control rock and earth; Katana, a Japanese samurai whose blade and honor is pledged to Batman’s service; and Halo, an amnesiac teenage blonde with glowing energy powers.

To face off against their new team, Barr and Aparo hatched up some of the most outlandish and downright goofy supervillains, including Agent Orange, the One-Man Meltdown, the Force of July and the Masters of Disaster. Plenty of folks have made fun of BATMAN AND THE OUTSIDERS for this (present company included), but here’s the thing: it sold. It sold like mad. So much so, in fact, that after just over two years, the Outsiders were given a second monthly book, with the second, more expensive direct-market-only series taking place a year or so after the events of the original book.

In THE OUTSIDERS, the team had taken off to Los Angeles on their own, leaving Batman’s leadership behind, and gaining a new member, Looker, a gorgeous redhead with psionic powers and (sorry, Jim) one of the no-argument ugliest costumes ever to grace a superhero comic. Giant lapels, a shortie cape, eye-shadow applied by the cubic inch, and, in case you didn’t get that she’s supposed to be feminine, a giant floppy bow at the hip. And get this — what was Looker in her secret identity? A fashion model. Ay yi yi.

Barr and Aparo kept up with the madcap supervillains in the new series, coming up with two of my personal favorites. First was a group of atomic-powered androids created by an insane scientist in the form of his own wife and children, lost to radiation poisoning. Enter the Nuclear Family:

They followed that up with a Texan oil magnate whose brain was transplanted into a robotic body following a terrible petroleum fire. Naturally, he was known as the Duke of Oil:

The Outsiders only lasted another couple of years after that, their second series ending in February 1988 with the 28th issue. Aparo’s talents remained in demand, though, taking over the art duties on DETECTIVE COMICS and BATMAN just in time for probably the most infamous Batman story of the 1980s: “A Death in the Family.”

This famous publishing experiment let DC’s readers decide the fate of Jason Todd, Dick Grayson’s increasingly unlikable replacement as Robin the Boy Wonder. As it turned out, readers phoned in by the thousands, and by a mere 74 votes, voted for Robin to take a permanent sod siesta. I’ve written here in the past about how distasteful I found the storyline, and I’ll stand by that. But it’s also got to be said that part of the reason the story had as much power as it did was that it was drawn by the man I most closely associated with the Batman of my childhood — Jim Aparo. Here Aparo drew the Joker at his most grotesque, looking nearly inhuman, as if to accentuate the monster the character would become in this story where he would truly cross the line.

And as for the famous scenes of Batman discovering Jason’s body, as much as I dislike this story, I’ll say this: if it had to be done, I’m glad it was Aparo who did it. As exploitive as the moment is, he manages to infuse it with at least a modicum of dignity and emotion.

Aparo continued to work for DC throughout the early 1990s, including a nice little run on GREEN ARROW, but his workload slowed down throughout the decade as he slowly moved into retirement. I believe his last published work appeared last year, on the cover of the trade paperback BATMAN IN THE EIGHTIES.

Jim Aparo was never a comics superstar like so many of the flashes in the pan of the 1990s and today, who catapult to riches and fame and then vanish, taking their bucks and notoriety and leaving behind a mere handful of comics that seem dated only a few years later. No, Aparo was the artist’s artist, turning in page after page, book after book, year after year, continually striving to improve his craft, and leaving behind a real legacy, of countless readers who literally grew up with his work, and find themselves, like me, wishing they’d had an opportunity to thank him for it.

Thanks, Jim. Rest easy.

Scott Tipton thinks it’s about time DC Direct puts out a Jim Aparo-style “Brave and the Bold” action-figure line. Give me an Aparo Batman, Green Arrow, Spectre, Phantom Stranger and Aquaman, and I’d be a happy camper. If you’ve got questions about Jim Aparo, Batman, the brave or the bold, send them here.

Comics 101, August 1, 2012 – Knightfall

Historically, superhero trilogies in film have not gone well.

Usually, by the time a superhero film series gets to the third installment, either the folks responsible for the original superior films have moved on, or are running out of steam and substitute quantity for quality: more villains, more special effects, less smarts and heart.

SUPERMAN III? An unfunny comedy in which Superman takes a back seat to Richard Pryor. BATMAN FOREVER? Tommy Lee Jones and Jim Carrey competing to see who can overact more, and we all lose. X-MEN 3? Killing off main characters left and right, with no meaning and not much drama. SPIDER-MAN 3? Three words: Dancing Emo Spidey.

So strictly from a statistical standpoint, Christopher Nolan’s THE DARK KNIGHT RISES had the odds against it. Luckily DARK KNIGHT RISES defies those odds, delivering a tense, expansive, epic finale to Nolan’s take on the BATMAN mythology, one that ties together all three films and dares to give Batman something that no one else ever has (and the spoiler-sensitive among you should probably look away now): a happy ending.

Nolan jumps the story ahead eight years from the end of THE DARK KNIGHT, with a peaceful Gotham mostly free of crime thanks to the Dent Act, a near-Draconian series of laws designed to clean up Gotham, pushed through by public reaction to Harvey Dent’s “murder” at the hands of the Batman, a lie concocted by Batman and Gordon in an effort to keep Dent’s name clean and his work not in vain. And this lie has worn down Gotham, a beaten-down Gordon and a now-reclusive and physically broken Bruce Wayne, a virtual shut-in in Wayne Manor and retired from his life as the Batman. Wayne is drawn back into the world by the appearance of an extremely attractive Jewel thief who infiltrates Wayne Manor and steals Martha Wayne’s pearls, as well as the attempted murder of Gordon by the masked terrorist Bane, who’s secretly building an army in the catacombs beneath Gotham’s sewers. And with that we’re off and running.

Christian Bale is great as a slightly haunted Wayne struggling to regain his footing as the Batman, and Michael Caine’s Alfred is as ever the heart of the film, along with Gordon, who’s even more heroic and involved in the action here than he was in THE DARK KNIGHT, which is saying something. Joseph Gordon Leavitt also impresses as John Blake, an idealistic young beat cop drawn into Gordon and Batman’s confidence as Gotham begins to crumble under Bane’s withering assault.

And what about Bane? For all the internet panic about his garbled voice in the original preview trailer, Tom Hardy’s Bane makes an eminently enjoyable villain to watch in screen, all the more impressive by the fact that we never see more than one-third of his face. The juxtaposition of his massive imposing frame against his weirdly mannered voice and delivery makes Hardy’s Bane endlessly fascinating. And the pompous way he walks around with his hands tucked into the lapels of his coat cracks me up. But the real surprise here is Anne Hathaway’s Catwoman, who provides a much-needed deadpan wit to the proceedings, but also is completely believable as both a self-centered thief and a vicious hand-to-hand fighter, counting on speed and brutality to give her the edge against much larger opponents. There’s none of Michelle Pfeiffer’s cartoonish meowing and licking herself here; this is a Catwoman that totally fits in Nolan’s real-world Batman universe.

What I really admired about the film was how it unified all three of Nolan’s Bat-movies, making use of dialogue, themes and even archival footage from the first two to really make this feel like a proper finale (although absent is any mention of the Joker, an understandable omission in light of Heath Ledger’s tragic demise). Is it better than THE DARK KNIGHT? Not quite, as Ledger’s once-in-a-lifetime performance as the Joker makes that film a standout, and extremely difficult to top. But it’s a great film nonetheless, made all the better by the absence of 3D and over an hour of breathtaking IMAX footage. In a summer that had already seen an amazing comic-book film in THE AVENGERS, it’s an incredible treat to get another one so soon, perhaps just as great, but tonally so different there’s almost no comparing the two.

Good times.

Scott Tipton is going back to DKR this weekend. If you have questions about Batman or comics in general, send them here.

Also, have you been to Blastoff this week? It’s Silver Age Marvel month, under a fantastic banner by Elena Casagrande! This week, we take a look at the amazing Ant-Man!

Why So Serious, Batman?

Oh, Batman.

I’ve spent a month digesting trades such as Hush, The Killing Joke, Batman in the 70s, A Death in the Family, Strange Apparitions, Year One, The Long Halloween, and The Dark Knight Returns. I’ve seen Batman at varying levels of gritty, broody, pensive, and serious. However, he doesn’t crack a smile very often. Even though he has deep reserves of compassion – for helpless victims as well as those close to him – and friendships, he rarely seems happy. If he does, it’s just fleeting. In the moment. Gone before he can start the Batmobile.

I realize there are about a bazillion more Batman stories available than the ones I’ve read, but it’s not so limited as far as scientific samples go. I have books and issues by different writers and artists and from different time periods. And yet, no chipper Bruce Wayne or Batman. I’ve seen stories lighter in tone, but that’s not the same. I’ve noticed a sense of humor in Batman: The Animated Series, and many have said to me that’s the most faithful on screen adaptation of the superhero – but I’m missing it on the pages.

Bruce Wayne had a rough past. I understand. He lives a precariously balanced life. Mitch Watson, producer of the upcoming Beware the Batman, was talking about the different sides of Wayne recently at Comic-Con and specifically how the series will focus on the three versions of him. There’s the public Bruce Wayne who is the rich kid, the playboy throwing cocktail parties. He has to maintain a certain appearance, and he does so reluctantly. Then there’s the private Bruce Wayne. He’s very introspective, quiet, and almost like his Batman persona. Very few people see this side of him, mostly just Alfred.

And then, well, there’s Batman. When he puts on the uniform, he has laser focus and will do whatever it takes to get the job done. He uses his brain almost like a computer, putting together clues and solving puzzles. He keeps his body in prime form to be his brain’s back-up. As Batman, Wayne doesn’t waste any words or movements. He’s perhaps a bit robotic. He wants to get the job done; he wants to serve justice and continue trying to meet his ultimate goal of cleaning up Gotham City.

I noticed the demarcations between the different versions of him; I think you’d be blind not to. However, it wasn’t as obvious to me until I heard Watson explain it that way. I also didn’t consider the effects of splitting up your world in that manner until then. I can’t imagine the stress of walking those lines all the time. Superheroes don’t have days off, and they can never let their guard down. Heck, they can rarely share their secrets. The sort of pressure that puts on one’s personality… and all that in addition to the act that caused him to become Batman. Witnessing his parents’ murders had a profound impact on who Bruce Wayne became and how he processes the world around him. I don’t know how he survives and gets by if that and being Batman are all that consumes his thoughts day in and day out.

Actually, I think I just answered my own question. Batman is how he survives. Even though Tony Stark said it (in the Iron Man movie), I think the whole “there’s the next mission and nothing else” is the motto for a few superheroes. Maybe it applies to Batman most of all. He’s committed most of his fortune to fighting crime. He’s primed his body and mind for it, too. It’s what he offers to Gotham City and to the world. I think he’s simultaneously selfless and selfish for it. He doesn’t let himself imagine any other life, and he doesn’t strike me as the sort of guy who sits around and wonders “what if.” Well, not for longer than a second.

He moves forward. He still looks back; he doesn’t ignore the tragedies in his past. He just deals with them by putting on a mask and saving the day. And even though I desperately want everyone to be happy and occasionally less serious, I guess that life – the mission – doesn’t allow for it.

Heroes and Villains

Welcome back. We’re in the middle of our seemingly endless discussion of DC Comics’ Batman, probably the most popular and widely known character in comics. When last we met, we had been discussing the Batman’s long parade of partners, sidekicks, teammates and hangers-on, closing with Dick Grayson’s decision to give up the yellow cape and green shorts , in favor of the somewhat more stylish black ensemble he sports as Nightwing. This, one would think, would leave Batman without a Robin, right? Not so fast…

By the mid-‘80s, the decision had been made to let Dick Grayson finally grow up and no longer operate as “Robin.” As the character was primarily appearing in the pages of NEW TEEN TITANS at the time, his transformation into Nightwing was handled for the most part in that series. To fill this void, Batman editors introduced a new character, young circus acrobat Jason Todd. Jason was given a very similar origin to Dick Grayson, with his parents the victim of murder, in this case by the newly created Batman villain Killer Croc. After Bruce Wayne took in the orphan, he briefly operated under a different name and costume (the truly terrible “Tanager” concept) before Dick Grayson gave Jason the uniform, along with his blessing to operate as Robin.

As the new Robin, Jason Todd was a pleasant enough character, reminiscent of the original Robin, with a youthful vitality that hadn’t been seen since the original conception of the character back in 1940. Unfortunately, it wouldn’t last.

After the events of CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS in 1986, the Batman editors decided the Jason Todd character needed an overhaul, and the pleasant, affable new Robin became a thing of the past, replaced by a moody, rebellious punk who Batman first encounters when the young street kid is trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile.

If the writers and editors were trying to create a wholly unlikable character, they succeeded, as the mouthy, sullen Robin quickly became unpopular with the readers. Just how unpopular even DC didn’t realize, although they’d learn the hard way when they hatched one of their worst promotional ideas ever – “A Death in the Family.”

In “A Death in the Family,” in what can only be seen as a bloodthirsty marketing ploy, DC Comics set up a 1-900 number, in which readers could vote on whether or not the new, increasingly insubordinate and unpleasant Robin would be murdered by the Joker.

In the story itself, Jason Todd runs off on his own to Ethiopia in search of his mother, who, it turns out, happens to be working for the Joker. While Batman is off on the Joker’s trail, Jason’s identity as Robin is discovered by the Joker, who, in one of the more unpleasant and inappropriate sequences DC has ever produced, proceeds to beat him mercilessly with a crowbar.

Bloodied and near death, Jason and his mother are left to die by the Joker, tied up next to a ticking bomb. At the end of the issue, just as Batman arrives on the scene, the bomb goes off, and the reader is left to decide with his vote whether the Boy Wonder lives or dies.

Although the vote was close (within a hundred votes, as a matter of fact), it wound up curtains for Robin, and the next issue saw Batman discovering the lifeless, beaten body of Jason Todd in the wreckage.

The Batman editor at the time, Denny O’Neil, has said that he was taken aback by the verdict, but in retrospect, it was no surprise. DC had gone out of their way to make the new Robin thoroughly unlikable, in a misguided effort to make the character more “edgy,” but instead, all it did was alienate the readers, and ultimately seal the character’s fate. Even worse, the story hit the newswires on a particularly slow news day, and when the word hit the papers that DC Comics had killed off Robin the Boy Wonder, DC began to feel the brunt of some serious bad publicity. After all, the average man on the street had no idea that it wasn’t the original, “real” Robin they remembered who died; they had no clue there had ever been a new Robin to begin with. To these folks, DC had murdered a big part of their childhoods, and what were they going to do about it?

Editor O’Neil later described the experience as profoundly enlightening, in that it forever changed the way he looked at his position. As Batman editor, he wasn’t merely “making funnybooks.” Like it or not, he was the caretaker of what has become modern American folklore, and as such, he had to treat the characters with respect.

But DC wasn’t finished darkening up the Batman character. In the graphic novel BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKE, by writer Alan Moore and artist Brian Bolland, the Joker unwittingly deprives Batman of another of his charges, when he shoots Barbara Gordon at point-blank range, paralyzing her from the waist down, in an attempt to drive Commissioner James Gordon insane, to prove that anyone is just “one bad day” away from madness.

While the book was critically acclaimed at its release, time has not been kind to it. Looking at it now, it seems unrelentingly dark and negative, and very much a product of the times, when “grim and gritty” were the buzzword in comics. The sequences which illustrate the Joker’s origin, showing a frustrated and failing comedian struggling to support his family and then devastated by their loss, hold up rather well, and remain the high point of the book. However, the primary storyline, with the Joker emotionally tormenting Jim Gordon with photos of his daughter’s assault, come across as gratuitous and in poor taste. Even Moore himself admits it’s his least favorite of his DC works, stating that it doesn’t really have anything to say, and in that I’d have to agree. However, the truly gorgeous art by Brian Bolland is reason alone to peruse it at least once.

After the ugly manner in which Batgirl was dispatched in THE KILLING JOKE, Barbara Gordon didn’t appear much in the DC Universe for a while, finally reappearing in the pages of John Ostrander’s excellent SUICIDE SQUAD series, as the wheelchair-bound computer-genius information specialist known as “Oracle.” Barbara Gordon’s new role made the best of a bad character decision, and it soon caught on around the DCU, with Oracle appearing as a supporting character in the Batman books, becoming a member of the Justice League during the latter half of Grant Morrison’s excellent stint on JLA, and eventually getting her own series, teaming with Black Canary in Chuck Dixon’s outstanding series BIRDS OF PREY.

As poorly as I felt the Jason Todd and Barbara Gordon stories were executed, they did serve some benefit to the Batman mythos in the long run. The murder of Robin and crippling of Batgirl heightened the Joker’s standing not only as Batman’s arch-nemesis, but also as a truly deranged and evil individual, eradicating the last vestige of any of the 1950s silliness or the chortling Cesar Romero conception of the character. It can also be argued that Jason Todd is a far more interesting character dead than he ever was when alive, in that, as the first martyr to Batman’s crusade, he remains a perpetual example of Batman’s mortality and fallibility, and of the dangers of enlisting children in his war. The striking image of Jason Todd’s uniform hanging suspended in a shrine in the Batcave (an image first conceived by Frank Miller in the pages of THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNS, anticipating Jason Todd’s death by several years) continually reminds Batman of his failure to protect the innocent.

Before long, the decision was made to try again with a new Robin, and this time the results were far more successful. The stage had been set for the introduction by the portrayal of an increasingly erratic and unstable Batman in BATMAN and DETECTIVE COMICS, taking far too many risks in subconscious reaction to the guilt of losing Jason Todd.

In “A Lonely Place of Dying,” a 5-issue story by Marv Wolfman, George Perez and Jim Aparo that saw print in the pages of BATMAN and NEW TITANS, readers saw Dick Grayson attempt to intervene and make his former mentor realize he needs help. Meanwhile, both Bruce and Dick were surprised by the appearance of teenager Timothy Drake, who stuns the two with the announcement that he’s deduced their secret identities as Batman and Robin. Tim, it turns out, was a child of three or four when he saw the Flying Graysons’ trapeze act at the circus, and saw young acrobat Dick Grayson perform an amazing triple somersault, an image that was burned into his memory. When, years later, he saw news footage of Robin executing the same maneuver, he put two and two together and realized that Robin was the ex-circus performer Grayson. When a little research revealed that Grayson had been adopted by billionaire Bruce Wayne, whose own parents were murder victims, everything fit. After the disappearance from the public eye of the second Robin, Tim had also noticed the increasingly erratic Batman, and decided to intervene as well.

Despite initial resistance to the idea, Tim Drake was eventually enlisted as the third Robin, and after the admittedly convenient kidnapping of his parents (and eventual murder of his mother and crippling of his father – can’t have a Bat-sidekick without some parental trauma) was taken in by Wayne and lived in the Manor for a time, later moving back in with his recovered father in a neighboring estate. The Tim Drake character succeeded with the readers where Jason Todd failed for a number of reasons. First off, in a very smart decision, the Robin costume itself was redesigned. Not only did it look more modern and practical (with a black cape replacing the yellow and green leggings in place of the short-shorts), but it allowed Tim to own his own identity as Robin in a way that Jason Todd never could: in Dick Grayson’s costume, he would always seem like a pretender.

Also, Tim Drake was competent. Unlike either version of Jason Todd, Tim was already a detective, having proven his worth by deducing Batman’s secret identity, a feat few had accomplished. In contrast to the rebellious and unreliable Jason, Tim was dependable and worthy of the Batman’s trust, but also fiercely independent, often going off on his own in search of martial arts training to reinforce and accentuate the training he had already received from Batman. Mostly, he just wasn’t a punk. Readers wanted to like Robin. Imagine that.

The new Robin was a smashing success, earning several solo miniseries before being launched into his own ongoing series by Chuck Dixon and Tom Grummett, the first time the perennial sidekick had ever been given his own book. In addition, Tim Drake was enlisted into the membership of YOUNG JUSTICE, DC’s new teen team book, a successful series which would eventually be replaced with the current TEEN TITANS series, which again features Robin in a starring role.

Batman received another ally, albeit an unsteady one, in Helena Bertinelli, a.k.a. the Huntress, a vigilante who originally focused her attention on organized crime, as a response to her own family’s mob ties.

Later, Batman sponsored the Huntress’ induction into the Justice League, hoping to curb her violent and impulsive tendencies. The Huntress later proved her worth as a crimefighter and was accepted as an associate by Batman, and has recently been seen in the pages of BIRDS OF PREY. The current version of the Huntress is a pale shadow of the character as she was originally conceived, as Helena Wayne, the daughter of Bruce Wayne and Selina Kyle Wayne on the parallel world of Earth-2. (Check out this past column if you’re unclear on the whole Earth-2 scenario.) Helena first became the Huntress to avenge the death of her mother, the original Catwoman, after her father refused to ever become Batman again.

The Huntress costume as originally designed was a clever combination of the Batman and Catwoman designs and color schemes, and the character remained a fan favorite, making many guest appearances and eventually earning membership in the Justice Society of America, before the CRISIS wiped her out of the continuity.

Another of Batman’s uncertain allies was Jean-Paul Valley, who fought crime in Gotham under the name Azrael. Created by Denny O’Neil and Joe Quesada, Valley was the brainwashed protector of an obscure religious sect who crossed paths with Batman, and eventually replaced Bruce Wayne as Batman when the original Caped Crusader was severely injured by the South American strongman known as Bane, about whom we’ll talk more in our forthcoming “Bat-Villains” installment. Azrael’s stint as Batman was somewhat less than successful when his original programming, thought to be broken by the original Batman, resurfaced, resulting in a more violent and bloodthirsty Batman than Gotham had ever seen. Eventually, Bruce Wayne had to forcibly evict Azrael from the Batcave and reclaim the Bat-mantle from his unbalanced successor. These stories are available collected in the KNIGHTFALL and KNIGHTSEND trade paperbacks, by the way.

The most recent recruit to Batman’s team of associates and agents is Cassandra Cain, who has taken up the “Batgirl” identity from Barbara Gordon. Cassandra is the daughter of David Cain, purportedly the world’s deadliest assassin, with whom Bruce Wayne trained as a young man. Cassandra, who had been trained since birth by her father in all forms of unarmed combat and assassination, and with a total lack of human contact or socialization, can read people’s movements like a written language, and can therefore anticipate and counter nearly any form of attack, making her near-unbeatable in personal combat. Cassandra first appeared after Gotham City had been ravaged by a massive earthquake, and had been declared “No Man’s Land” and abandoned by the federal government. After seeing evidence of her abilities and noble intentions, Batman gave Cassandra the Batgirl uniform (which had until then been used by the Huntress, but that’s a different story….).

The new Batgirl can be seen in the pages of her own series, as well as in a supporting role in GOTHAM KNIGHTS and other Bat-books.

Whether deliberately intended by the writers or not, the Batman’s tendency to surround himself with a surrogate family, be it in the 1950s or the 21st century, makes perfect sense: having had his own family ripped from him at such a young age, it would stand to reason that he would subconsciously strive to re-create a family for himself, but only in the guise of his own defense mechanism, the Batman identity, in the hopes that it would protect them as he sees it protecting him. However, as the red-and -yellow shrine in the Batcave reminds him, it cannot always do so.