Between Batman & Robin and Batman, I realize that while I do enjoy Dick Grayson as the newly-christened Dark Knight, what really seals the deal for me is his relationship with Damian Wayne. The big selling point is that now the roles of Batman and Robin are reversed. Batman is now the light-hearted one mentoring the brooding, moody badass. Without even mentioning him, Damian is the best use of Jason Todd since his resurrection, as Dick is trying to make sure that, against all odds, Damian doesn’t end up either corrupt and crazy (like Jason) or dead (also like Jason). I feel that the Dick/Damian dynamic is what’s going to define this episode of Bat-history and may ultimately make it one of the more interesting duo dynamics in comics, alongside Cage/Iron Fist, Booster/Beetle and Wolverine/Cyclops.

Then I remembered something. This isn’t the first time the two of them have crossed paths in comics. In fact, they helped lead to one of the few bright points of the Kingdom Come sequel Kingdom. More specifically, Kingdom: Nightstar, written by Mark Waid and drawn by Matt Haley ten years ago. Following up on the plot thread shown only in background shots from Kingdom Come, Nightstar — the daughter of Dick Grayson and Starfire — has a romantic relationship going with Ibn Al Xu’ffasch — son of Bruce Wayne and Talia Al’Ghul. Bruce, being a delightful asshole in this continuity, decides to let Dick know.

There you have it. The next time Robin gets all indignant at Batman, imagine that inside he’s thinking, “I’m so going to nail your daughter in an alternate timeline for this, Grayson…”

Lately DC has been adding an eight-page back-up story featuring a new character to existing comic books.

The Question has been appearing as a back-up to Detective Comics, and the Blue Beetle has been added to Booster Gold.  I love the double feature, both because it gives me a chance to get to know new characters and because it allows ongoing stories of characters who, for reasons that pass understanding, don’t sell well enough on their own.

And now that I’ve pushed some minor characters, let’s get back to the five-hundred pound gorilla; Batman.  This is a guy who’s passed around to any title that needs a boost, from The Outsiders to the Blue Beetle.  (Tough beat on that last one, Battsy.  We all felt it.)

But what would be a different way to present Batman, considering he’s already in at least five books at a time?  I don’t know.  But I know what I want, and that is a return of the Batman: Black and White series.

Batman: Black and White, pitched by Mark Chiarello, was a series of 8-page Batman stories written and drawn by different artists.  The stories ran singly at the end of the newly-created Batman: Gotham Knights, and as 4-story collections.  The art and the writing are superb, the stories wildly disparate, running the gamut from gothic horror, to poetic meditation, to cutsy bat-with-a-baby stories.  There is a story in which Batman frees a genetically-engineered mermaid.  There is one in which Batman threatens someone’s life for killing his son’s cat.  There is one in which Batman is futuristic freedom fighter, and one in which he and an early Catwoman/Batgirl mash-up fight nazis, and one where he bleeds in an alley.

The stories are collected into three volumes, all of which are well-worth getting.  They are a must-have to any fan, partly because of the talent involved, but mainly because they add up to more than the sum of their parts.  The many takes on Batman, his motivations and his effects, his different eras and his absurdities, end up building something far more epic and sweeping than any planned Batman story I’ve ever read.  If I wanted to argue that superhero comics can be moving and artistic, these are the books I would present as evidence.

And if something like that were to come back, I would clamor for people to read it, no matter what book it was stuck to.

Some people believe I always go out of my way to search for weird comics. Not always. The truth is that most of the time, weird comics go out of their way to find me.

For instance, one day I’m flipping through some back issues, when I find a batch of issues for a Honeymooners comic from the mid-80’s. I didn’t even know there was a Honeymooners series. I’m still not certain why there was one in the 80’s, considering the show was long dead and gone for decades. Now that I think about it, it does give me hope for one day reading Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon’s Perfect Strangers.

Okay. So now we have an old sitcom re-imagined into a comic years after the fact. That’s a good start. I looked through the covers and found one that completely stood out. It’s the kind of comic that makes you question the industry and reality itself for allowing such a thing to exist. Ralph Kramden in a comic book? I guess I could buy that.

Ralph Kramden in a comic book, wrestling alongside Captain Lou Albano?! Welcome to flavor country.

Much like the epic battle of Superman and Muhammad Ali, there are plenty of cameos in that crowd. I notice Frankenstein’s monster, Gumby, White Spy, Groucho Marx (obviously not amused by rest-hold spots), Alfred E. Newman and Gorbechaf.

Also note the top right corner. Not only is this issue #7, but it’s #7 of 24. That’s… odd. I guess Triad must have had a two-year contract and decided to flaunt it. Though from what I’ve found, the series didn’t make it past the twelfth issue. No other wrestler cameos, from what I’ve gathered.

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Might as well finish off the garbage post trifecta we have playing today.

In other news, I’ve finished off the Crisis on Infinite Earths Graphic Audio set, based off of Marv Wolfman’s disappointing novelization. Stay tuned for that review.

The receptionist knew that no one was supposed to come behind the desk. If anyone tried to without permission, she was to push the button on the floor under her desk. But this time she didn’t even think of the button. She reached, instead, for the package. Suddenly, the mailman grabbed her wrist, yanked her from the chair, and hurled her into a corner. She landed heavily on her side, knocking her head against the wall. When she looked up dazed, the mailman had an automatic trained on her. “Can you scream louder than this gun?” he said in a low voice.

She stared at the gun. She couldn’t have screamed if she’d wanted to. She couldn’t even breathe.

The outer door opened and the four men came in, two carrying shotguns, and two machine guns. The girl couldn’t believe it, it was like something in the movies. Gangsters carried machine guns back in 1930. There was no such thing as a machine gun in real life. Machine guns and Walt Disney mice, all make-believe.

The mailman put his gun away under his coat, and removed the mailbag from his shoulder. He took cord from the mail sack and tied the receptionist’s hands and feet. She gaped at him unbelievingly as he tightened the knots. They were in the wrong office, she thought. It might be a television show shooting scenes on location, they must have wanted the office next door and these men had come into the wrong place. It must be a mistake.

The mailman gagged her with a spare handkerchief as one of the other men brought the two musical instrument cases and two briefcases in from the outside hall. The mailman took the briefcases. The men with the machine guns led the way. They all walked down the inner hall and stopped at the door next to the book-keeping room. The mailman opened the door, and all five of them boiled into the room.

This was the room where the alarm buzzer would have rung if the receptionist had remembered to ring it. Four men in brown uniforms wearing pistols and Sam Browne belts, were sitting at a table playing poker. They jumped up when the door burst open, then they all froze. They believed in machine guns.

-Richard Stark, The Outfit.

True story. I did the Newsarama post and promptly went on vacation. I came back from vacation, ready to respond, and bam, laptop’s power cable dies. I don’t know if any of you own Macbooks, but their battery is for crap. So, I’m waiting on a replacement cable. Super suck!

I’ve got a few things coming, including a look at Richard Stark’s Parker books (since I’ve read 9 and a half of them over the past two or three weeks) and how Parker relates to Batman. The podcast should go up Monday as usual, but blogging from me is going to be light until I get this sorted.

Esther and Gav got you covered, though.

Yeah.  It’s a cheap, divisive, artificial question, but I’m still asking it.

DC or Marvel?

In Secret Six #11– oop, spoilers.

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Fans of our Continuity Off, or insert your favorite term for the bit where we talk about how dumb certain comics characters are here, are gonna be super happy at us after this Fourcast.

-Theme music? 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental
-Special guest? Jeff Lester of Savage Critic(s)
-Characters? Green Arrow vs Hawkeye
-What’s it lead to? Marvel vs DC

This is a fun one. Talking about the two premiere archers of the Big Two ended up dovetailing nicely into a conversation about the differences between the two universes, and a few of the similarities. We even get into dorky stuff like geometry.

As an aside– the webcomic I mention at the end of the cast is The Dark Cat’s Batman and Sons. It’s fun, and since I probably sound like a jerk when I mention it, I figured I’d at least link it so you’d know what we were talking about.

Bam! Back in two weeks, folks. Apologies for the short shownotes, too. I’m in Los Angeles taking a vacation from everything.

Last time on We Care a Lot, I talked about Daniel Way’s Venom on-going. Hitting the halfway point, I decided to stop and give myself a break to recuperate. It’s good to know that while that series was going on, Venom started to appear elsewhere. And why wouldn’t he? The reason he was turned into a full-blown bad guy again was so he could go back to being Spider-Man’s threat of the day.

Venom would make his return to Spider-Man’s world in Spectacular Spider-Man #1 for a five-issue story called The Hunger. This isn’t to be confused with the super-awesome four-issue story from years earlier called Venom: The Hunger, but it usually is. It’s kind of funny how although it’s obvious Paul Jenkins probably didn’t read that Len Kaminski story, he more or less wrote the same story, only with Spider-Man and without the happy ending.

As Paul Jenkins writes the story, we get Humberto Ramos on art. This is rather interesting, considering Francisco Herrera is doing the art on Venom at the same time. A little research shows that Ramos mentored Herrera and that really shouldn’t come to a surprise of anyone. Case in point:

Which came out a month apart.

Though there are parts that annoyed me, The Hunger isn’t so bad. If anything, it’s easily the most important Venom story in the past 15 years, so you have to give them that. Really. While it introduces some ideas that don’t go anywhere, it still gets the ball rolling and leads us to where we are today.

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Path of the Assassin volume 1: Serving in the Dark
Writer: Kazuo Koike
Artist: Goseki Kojima
Publisher: Dark Horse Comics
ISBN: 1593075022
320 pages

Yeah, I didn’t finish this one.

The biggest problem with Robert Kirkman and Ryan Ottley’s Invincible is the inconsistent tone of the series. Invincible veers from pretty enjoyable JRsr-era Spider-Man superheroics and drama to early Image blood-n-guts fairly regularly. And, well, the bits I like are like old Spider-Man comics. The bits that are covered in blood and severed limbs? Not my thing.

Path of the Assassin has a similar problem. It has a really interesting premise. It isn’t what I expected at all. Rather than being about a ninja steadily and stealthily killing dudes, it’s almost a goofy buddy movie. Hattori Hanzo is assigned to protect and serve Tokugawa Ieysasu, future ruler of Japan. Hanzo is a ninja, from a clan of ninjas, and is ordered to “serve in the dark.”

Pretty heavy, right? I thought so, too, up until Ieyasu plays with his wisp of a mustache in a mirror, frowns, cuts off a few of his pubes, and then fastens them to his face. Ieyasu is 16. Hanzo is 15. Ieyasu is pretty ineffectual and awful. He isn’t a bad person, exactly, just inexperienced. Hanzo isn’t all that much more experienced, but he’s a ninja, so he gets to do a lot of cool things.

I was digging it until the big tone shift came. Ieyasu is due to be married in a couple days, and he has no idea about sex. He asks his new ninja servant to show him what a man does with a woman. Not with a hooker, because you pay them to do whatever you like, but with a woman. So, Hanzo jumps in a river, drags a woman to shore, and rapes her. Later, after lying to and killing a few dudes Ieyasu still has questions. (Hanzo and the girl are still nude.) Hanzo gives Ieyasu some old fashioned knowledge from back home (“Sleep six times and listen to the woman’s bosom.” After that, you’ll know whether or not she loves you.), and then the girl, who actually saved Hanzo’s life shortly before, decides that not only is she going to take the fake name Hanzo made up for her when the guards approached, she is going to stick with him because now no man will have her. That’s amore, right?

Ieyasu later tried to apply those lessons to his new wife, who by the way had a previous lover he doesn’t know about, but found that he could only do it from behind. He pondered the reasons why, wondered why it worked fine for Hanzo, and blah blah blah this chapter is called “Oppressive Night of Ass” and is boring.

It’s not even the rape or dumb (and surprisingly explicit!) sex scene that really did it. I mean, they helped by being so terrible, but they were just a part of the problem, rather than my biggest problem. By now, about a third of the way through the volume, I’d realized that I was already getting bored, and a ridiculous twist like that wasn’t happening. The goofy interactions between Hanzo and Ieyasu were pretty good, if overly cute. But the switching between stiff samurai drama (which includes LW&C-style violence, rape, sex scenes) and the goofiness doesn’t work for me.

Like Invincible, it feels like a couple different books mashed together. The samurai stuff wouldn’t be out of place in Lone Wolf & Cub at all, and I think the relationship between Hanzo and Ieyasu has legs. The two halves of the story just don’t mesh well. The serious bits are too serious, the goofy bits are too goofy. I mean, every page of the fifteen page sex scene between Ieyasu and his new wife features Ieyasu pulling awkward faces, and he’s a George Costanza-looking chubby awkward guy.

Path of the Assassin can’t decide between being a light action comedy tale and a hardcore samurai drama. I’m open to either of the two styles. The mix of styles, though, doesn’t work for me. Lone Wolf occasionally does a goofy story with Daigoro, but it’s never quite so off the mark as the image of Tokugawa Ieyasu, of the brief pubic hair mustache, creepily observing his pet ninja raping a girl and taking mental notes. Path went on for fourteen more volumes, the latest of which was just released, so there must be some merit to it. Perhaps it improves later on.

Next week, we’re back to Lone Wolf & Cub, I think.