| Posted: 09 March 2013 at 2:10pm | IP Logged | 7
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I'm onboard with Lars and Thomas. Batman is the character with whom time has played the most havoc, flinging him carelessly between incarnations, characterizations, motivations, and such. My Batman is the Batman of the Brave and the Bold era, dressed in skintight blue and gray, with an array of clever gadgets and a serious, often grim approach to crimefighting, but not lacking in objectivity, hope, trust, or a sense of humor. More than just the character, though, is the world in which he lives. The story of Batman Inc. or Talia bringing Bruce a cloned son, trained by the League of Assassins could have been written in 1979. A five-part story, mostly played in the background, with art by Irv Novick and Don Heck, inked by Frank Chiarmonte. Captions abounding, thought balloons over every character's head. You could even show young Damien killing opponents, albeit just off-panel. But he would have to be stopped. And if the story resulted in his death, it would be mourned, but the real villain would be Talia or her father, for having raised the boy in the League. And then next month, someone would build a bunch of remote-controlled motorcycles to rip off the proceeds of a racing event. Or the Gentleman Ghost would steal the crown jewels of London, and wear them on his future robberies. Why? It would be a mystery only Batman could solve... It isn't the events themselves that we regret in recent books. It's the hopeless, mesmerizingly gory, unapologetically blatant approach to evil that defines modern comics. Arterial spray decorates every wall. Innocents die by the thousands, if not tens of thousands. Every villain is a serial killer. Every hero is a murdering bastich. Oh, wait. We can say bastard now. The killers of yesterday (Lobo, Wolverine, Hitman, Punisher, etc.) are just a bit less fru-fru in their work than the headliners. Everyone kills. A lot. Because the bad guys deserve it. A lot. Turning back the clock on one hero, even our favorite, isn't going to wash the blood off the pages or lighten the "every tick of the clock is another zombie-filled apocalypse" tone of today's books. The problem is that it is not 1979, and by that I do not mean that the stories themselves would be set during that year. I mean that no one today can or wants to craft stories in that mold, within those "limitations." Writers and audiences today would wail at the "creative restrictions" placed upon them. Why can't they have the Joker tear off his own face and wear it as a mask?? Why can't there be an array of Robins, each with their own separate antagonism with Bruce?? Why can't they Grow, and Shape, and forever make the character more Real and Impactful and Meaningful??? The insertion of an "Archie Comics Mandate" would loudly be decried as the death of creative endeavour in comics and the time when editorial fascism was allowed to run off every writer with guts and integrity and the characters were destroyed for all future generations. "Sorry, readers. Sorry, literature," the letter drafted by Morrison, Ellis, Snyder, Bendis, and co. might read, "We wanted to give you stories you could give a damn about. Stories that were relevant to you. Sadly, the codgers have gotten hold of the industry and there will never be a 2014 Batman. Never a 2015. All you'll ever get is 1979, over and over and over again..."
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