Julian Lytle’s Ants has a special guest star this week. You should click through and check it out. Open this youtube video and have it playing in the background while you read. Props to Julian.

Awards exist to make people mad. I mean, honestly, has anyone ever gone “Wow, those Oscars sure were on point this year?” Sandra Bullock won an Oscar and a Razzie in the same weekend, for the same role. She knows what’s up. This goes double for comics awards. Superhero fans speak out against indie bias. Indie fans feel eternally underrepresented. Everyone else is mad that they didn’t get nominated. Fans wage war like their life depended on it.

With that said, hey, Harvey nominations are open for the next twenty-four hours! Last year was interesting. Nascar Heroes #5 was nominated for Best Single Issue or Story, alongside Kyle Baker’s Nat Turner, a Love and Rockets, and The Amazing Remarkable Monsieur Leotard. Witchblade Takeru was nominated as one of the best manga of the year. So, you know, these aren’t perfect. I’m sure we’ll see some curveballs this year. But, at Deb Aoki‘s urging, I’m going to put my King of the World hat on and sit in my I Am Always Correct chair and tell you who should be nominated for what, as long as I’m familiar with the category. “Best Original Graphic Publication for Younger Readers?” I dunno, what do kids read these days? Amelia Bedelia? That should win it.

And before you tell me how wrong I am, or that I left off some book… look at this hat. Look at this chair.

C’mon, son.

BEST WRITER
I know you’re probably expecting Grant Morrison here, but he completely underwhelmed me in 2009. Ed Brubaker, another great writer, wrote Captain America: Reborn, which felt like a stumble in an otherwise great 50-issue run. So, who gets the nominations? Johnathan Hickman has managed to make intrigue and relatively new characters work in Secret Warriors to a fantastic degree. Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto packs all the emotional punches you need, just 500 zeus a body. John Arcudi and Mike Mingola’s BPRD: The Black Goddess is the best comic you didn’t read. Ed Brubaker’s Criminal: The Sinners, unlike his mainstream Marvel work, was good fun. Dark horse candidate: Zeb Wells for Dark Reign Elektra. Considering my apathy toward, or active stance against, the Dark Reign status quo, Dark Reign Elektra told a great tale, and is easily the best Elektra story since Frank Miller killed her.

BEST ARTIST
Amanda Conner is the first name that pops to mind– she’s done some impressive work on Power Girl, particularly in terms of facial expressions and body language. Add in obvious front-runner JH Williams III for Detective Comics (overall page design/versatility), Takehiko Inoue for Vagabond (intense emotional work), Daisuke Igarashi for Children of the Sea (amazing seascapes), and Naoki Urasawa for Pluto (Atom’s hair) and you’ve got a great line-up. Tough to choose.

BEST CARTOONIST
Last year was a strong year for cartoonists. Simple, off the top of my head, nominations should go to Darwyn Cooke (The Hunter), David Mazzucchelli (Asterios Polyp), and Naoki Urasawa (Pluto, 20th Century Boys) right off the bat. Inio Asano’s What a Wonderful World! was particularly strong, despite being older than 2008’s Solanin, but I don’t know that it’s award-worthy, at least not in this category. Stan Sakai’s Yokai, however, was fantastic, a veteran artist just having fun. Final spot goes to… Takehiko Inoue (Vagabond, Real). No one else flips styles like he does, and the story in both those titles is excellent.

In the end, I’d say that either Inoue or Mazzucchelli should walk away with this one. Both showed an absolutely appalling range of talent in their books. I’d be hard pressed to choose between the two.

BEST LETTERER
I’m having trouble thinking of much lettering that knocked my socks off in 2009. Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp was inventive and enhanced the storytelling in the book, making it the front-runner for this section. 99% of Big Two comics last year had completely generic lettering. Some of the DC stuff used the old default lettering templates that used to be on Blambot. I love Viz’s books, but none of their lettering was anything but functional. Nothing fancy. Paul Pope’s lettering on Wednesday Comics stuck out and was distinctive. John Workman did a fantastic job on The Winter Men Winter Special. Clem Robins turned in quality jobs on 100 Bullets, BPRD, Wednesday Comics, and Unknown Soldier. Final spot goes to Jared K. Fletcher for co-lettering The Winter Men Winter Special (?) with John Workman, doing solid work on Young Liars and the criminally underrated Renee Montoya backup in Detective Comics.

BEST INKER
Anybody but Danny Miki, I guess. Art Thibert on Mark Bagley looked okay, Kevin Nowlan inking Jose Luis Garcia-Lopez in Wednesday Comics was a treat.

BEST COLORIST
Just throwing out some names here: Melissa Edwards (The Winter Men Special), Jose Villarubia/Lovern Kindzierski for their work on Paul Pope’s Wednesday Comics story, Paul Mounts for his work on Power Girl, Dave Stewart for BPRD. Laura Martin for her Rocketeer recoloring job.

BEST COVER ARTIST
Dave Johnson wrapped up 100 100 Bullets covers. JH Williams III got me to buy Detective Comics. Sean Phillips is doing amazing work on Criminal. Darwyn Cooke’s The Hunter stands out on the shelves. Inio Asano (and the Viz design team, I assume) had frankly spectacular covers for What A Wonderful World! 1 and 2. Pow. This one was easy.

MOST PROMISING NEW TALENT
The problem with this one is how you judge new talent. Does new mean actually new, like began working in the past [period of time]? Or does new mean new to the mainstream, for whatever value of mainstream you subscribe to? Give this one to Kate Beaton or Jay Potts.

BEST NEW SERIES
Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner’s Power Girl (DC Comics) takes this one in a walk. Or they would, but there is some stiff competition from Naoki Urasawa’s Pluto, Daisuke Igarashi’s Children of the Sea, and Johnathan Hickman’s Secret Warriors. I think Mark Waid and Peter Krause’s Irredeemable just barely missed the cut. The first three or four issues were a little too “Mark Waid vs the Internet” for my taste, though the later issues picked up considerably. Batman & Robin‘s first three issues were fantastic, but the next three were terrible. C’est la vie. Number five is Brandon Graham’s fantastic King City.

BEST CONTINUING OR LIMITED SERIES
Captain America, Spider-Man Noir, Power Girl, Pluto, or Real? Take your pick.

BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM – ORIGINAL
You can probably guess three of the entries here: The Hunter, Asterios Polyp, and Gogo Monster are the obvious picks. Empowered volume 5 was excellent, with a sublime blend of action and character work. The last entry for this category… Marian Churchland’s Beast. I loved it and said so, and I’d even say that Churchland deserves both a nomination and a win for this one.

BEST GRAPHIC ALBUM – PREVIOUSLY PUBLISHED
The Complete Essex County, The Life and Times of Martha Washington in the Twenty-First Century, Vagabond volume 5 (Vizbig Edition), and I Kill Giants Titan Edition were all spectacular repackaging of previously collected material. The Martha Washington hardcover was beautifully designed, with a great red, white, and blue theme. Vizbig manga is the best kind of manga– three books at a time in a large size. The Titan Edition of I Kill Giants added a ton of pages to an amazing book, with gobs of special features after the story ended. Though I’m not a fan, I have to give it up to Absolute Promethea. The large pages really make JH Williams III’s art pop.

BEST AMERICAN EDITION OF FOREIGN MATERIAL
Most of the “foreign material” I read last year was manga. But, Abouet & Oubrerie’s Aya: The Secrets Come Out was great. Taiyo Matsumoto’s Gogo Monster was worth the cash. Urasawa’s Pluto was one of my favorite works. I’m going to point you in David Welsh’s direction for more suggestions. I read a lot of manga, but have very specific tastes. I love One Piece,, but I don’t know if it’s actually award-winning material.

SPECIAL AWARD FOR HUMOR IN COMICS
Everything I read has people dying or cursing in it. I’m singularly unqualified for this one. The Muppet Show should definitely be nominated, though. Dinosaur Comics, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, GastroPhobia, and (obviously) Kate Beaton. Webcomics are funny. Comic books generally… aren’t.

BEST BIOGRAPHICAL, HISTORICAL, OR JOURNALISTIC
PRESENTATION (ANY BOOK, MAGAZINE, FILM, OR
VIDEO THAT CONTRIBUTES TO THE UNDERSTANDING OF
COMICS AS AN ARTFORM)
4thletter! is the best, death to the rest.

I quit the Avengers books. Bendis’s plotting was dragging, Dark Reign was bugging me, and I was honestly bored since some point around the middle of Secret Invasion. Billy Tan on art didn’t help. I also quit pretty much every DC comic. I love Jimmy Palmiotti, Justin Gray, and Amanda Conner’s Power Girl, and I check in on Batman & Robin once in a while (when Quitely and Stewart are on art, mainly), but that’s where it stops.

I didn’t quit Marvel’s cosmic books.

Over the past four years, Dan Abnett and Andy Lanning, with a strong assist from Keith Giffen, have quietly carved a stale and stagnant corner of the Marvel universe into a vibrant and fascinating sub-franchise. I’m not particularly a sci-fi guy, but DnA have written some frighteningly consistent books over the past four years, ones of such great quality that when you get an issue that’s merely “good,” you feel a little disappointed.

Ed Brubaker’s Captain America is a consistently good comic. Good, but a little too much of the same thing, month-in, month-out. You run out of things to talk about. Not so for this cosmic stuff. DnA plugged several shake-ups into their plotting, keeping their heroes rocking from status quo to status quo without feeling jarring. It fits together almost like a series of movies. You can hop in wherever you like, though some points are obviously better than others. But that’s okay. I’m here for you. Let’s talk about lame characters gone good, terrible concepts turned interesting, and nobodies turned heroes.

Let’s talk about outer space.

Annihilation

It began with Annihilation. An army of bug monsters from space, the Annihilation Wave, set about the destruction of all that is not them. The story is one thing. What’s important here are the characters.

There is Thanos. He was born on Titan, Saturn’s moon, to a race of godlike beings. He was born twisted and deviant, and lusts after the personification of Death. He’s committed genocide and attempted omnicide to gain Death’s favor, to no avail. When Death senses the Annihilation Wave coming, she describes it as “something wonderful.” Thanos allies himself with Annihilus so that he can partake and impress his love.

Drax the Destroyer used to be strong and dumb, an outer space version of the Hulk. Then, he died. When he came back, he was lean, smarter, and less strong, but doubly lethal. Drax was created for one reason, and one reason only: to destroy Thanos. The need to wipe Thanos off the face of the universe is in his genes. That is his goal, and when faced with his target, he can’t help but pull the trigger, and damn the consequences.

Before Drax was Drax, he was Arthur Douglas, father to Heather Douglas. On a trip through the desert, the Douglases witnessed Thanos landing in a spacecraft. Deciding to preserve his secrecy, the Mad Titan blasted their car. The blast instantly killed Heather’s parents and accidentally threw her clear. Thanos’s father took Heather to his homeworld and trained her to be one of them. Now she is Moondragon, a master martial artist, telepath, and scientist.

Imagine being the child of the greatest hero in space. Now, imagine being the genetically-grown kid sister of the heir to that legacy. And then, imagine that heir dying, and being the only one left alive to continue the family business. Phyla-Vell of the Kree, daughter of Mar-Vell, better known as Captain Marvel, knows exactly how that feels. Her father was a hero. She is nowhere near as popular. When Moondragon, her girlfriend, is kidnapped by Thanos, she’s forced into the spotlight.

The Silver Surfer, Norrin Radd, is a former herald of Galactus, the world-eater. He has little interest in seeking out worlds for his former master to find, but once Annihilus’s forces begin attacking Galactus’s heralds in an attempt to secure and weaponize Galactus himself… well, the Surfer is forced to make a decision.

Ronan the Accuser is a Kree warlord with a giant hammer. Desperately loyal to his people, even when placed on trial for treason, Ronan is forced to battle his own government to prove his innocence and expose the rot inside the Kree empire. When you are accused of a crime by Ronan, it is best to simply take what’s coming to you.

Unless you are Gamora, the most dangerous woman in the universe. She is Thanos’s adopted daughter, and part of a race with the unlikely name of “Zen Whoberi.” Thanos raised her to eliminate the Magus, the evil aspect of Adam Warlock. She worked with and for Thanos for years, and betrayed him when he revealed himself to be a threat. Lately, she’s been mind-controlled and her reputation has diminished. With the aid of Godslayer, her newfound sword, she wants to get back out there and make people fear her name once again.

Adam Warlock is the messiah. No, really. He’s here to save us all. The problem is that at some point in the future, he becomes the Magus, a religious demagogue, and works to enslave the universe. His loyalties shift and blur because of this, making him particularly untrustworthy. Messiah or doom–which is it?

Imagine Peter Parker joining the Green Lantern Corps and you have the basic building blocks of Richard Rider, better known as Nova, the Human Rocket. He has more or less the same origin as Hal Jordan, but at the point Annihilation begins, he’s just a foot soldier. He’s five years in to being a Nova Centurion, one of thousands, but forty-eight pages later, he’s the only one left. And since the Nova power is shared amongst the entire Nova Corps, what happens when Rich is forced to contain all of it? What happens when you send a man to war?

That’s all you need to know to get started. The story begins in Annihilation, which is composed of three volumes (Book 1, Book 2, and Book 3). Annihilation tells the complete tale of the Annihilation Wave, as well as laying the foundation for the revamping of Marvel’s cosmic universe. Later was Annihilation Conquest, which told of an opportunistic invasion by a crappy X-Men villain turned fearsome. This was collected in two volumes (Book 1 and Book 2), and told the story of a race that was bent on turning sentient beings into slaves. Annihilation Conquest set up two series. Guardians of the Galaxy was about a group of heroes who banded together to protect the universe from an oncoming threat. The galaxy had been rocked by two incredible threats, back to back, and enough was enough. Someone had to put a stop to it. In Nova, Rich Rider is faced with the daunting task of rebuilding the Nova Corps from scratch and policing a galaxy on his own.

While all this was going on, a mad earthling assumed control of the Shi’ar empire, a race of bird people. Others did not take kindly to this, which led to the War of Kings. The aftermath of the war, called Realm of Kings, left a hole in space, and that hole leads to something akin to hell. In another universe, life has completely defeated death. Lovecraftian elder gods and infected versions of heroes we know lurk in the darkness, waiting for their chance to push through.

At this point, DnA are dragging the cosmic heroes into another catastrophe. Their solo series are on hold for The Thanos Imperative. The Mad Titan is back, pissed, and stronger than ever before. Complicating matters is the incursion of the Lovecraftian monsters from the other universe, but when you pit the ultimate manifestation of life gone wild against a god who worships Death herself… well. We’ll see.

I can’t stress how solid DnA’s cosmic work has been. They’ve taken perennial z-listers like Star-Lord and Nova and turned them into multifaceted, interesting characters. They’ve taken goofy concepts like Annihilus and the Phalanx and made them into believable threats. And they have done it month-in, month-out, since 2006.

That kind of dependable quality isn’t anywhere else in comics right now, save for Mike Mignola and John Arcudi’s BPRD. This cosmic stuff where the great stuff is hiding out at Marvel right now. There have been a few mis-steps. CB Cebulski’s two-issue Darkhawk miniseries was perfect deleted scene material and entirely missable. Some of the art has been questionable, but never for too long. But, if you don’t read Marvel, or you don’t read this part of Marvel, you’re missing that good stuff. Get familiar.

Booze, Broads, & Bullets was not going to be a week at first. It wasn’t going to have posts by other people, either. No, I had the great idea of reading Frank Miller’s entire collected body of work and doing a post on every single book over the period of– well, I don’t know how long. I know I own almost all of his trade paperbacks, save for things like Bad Boy and his ’80s charity/one-off stuff, and that’s like 19 or 23 books. At that point, writing that much over a short period of time, essentially doing with Tim Callahan did with Grant Morrison: The Early Years, would leave me dead, depressed, or worse. I think a book on Miller’s work like Tim’s book would be fantastic, but not writing it myself over a short period of time. So, instead, I drafted some friends, turned it into a week, and we went at it. Booze, Broads, & Bullets speaks for itself, I think. What you see is what you get. We had a team-up. You were great.

About three weeks before BB&B, I began the process of rereading every Miller book I owned. I put my already sizable to-read stack on pause, making occasional breaks particularly enticing new purchases, and breathed Frank Miller for a few weeks. At some point during this process, I think during the first week, Tucker Stone emailed me and told me that I absolutely had to read James Ellroy’s American Tabloid trilogy. I quote: “This was made for your brain.” He was right. Tucker is a guy who knows good books. He takes bad ones to task, yes, but when it comes to recommending books, Tucker doesn’t steer you wrong. And he didn’t this time, not even close.

My days were Frank Miller. Lunch breaks at work, that week I had to ride the bus because it was raining too hard to bike, and a bit of the evenings were dedicated to reading about hard men and harder women. That hour I usually spend in bed staring at the ceiling before I fall asleep was given over to James Ellroy, Kemper Boyd, Ward Littell, the Beard, and Jack Kennedy. I knocked out American Tabloid in two weeks, longer than I usually take for real books, and moved on to The Cold Six Thousand. I’m about halfway through it right now.

I’m addicted to Amazon. I’ve got Prime and I make an obscene number of orders a year. I made an order during BB&B, round about halfway through the week. I pick up One Piece 24-27 (four for three? shoot, I’ll take advantage of that all day), the beginning of the Skypiea arc, and Usagi Yojimbo volumes one through three. It wasn’t until I got them and looked at them that I’d realized what I’d done. I’d ordered four violent children’s books and three violent rabbit samurai books, but ones with an all-ages kind of violence.

I needed a break from crime, bastards, and brutality, apparently. And those are pretty much my favorite ingredients in fiction.

The same kind of thing happened last year. I was doing regular reviews of Lone Wolf & Cub from spring to summer. I made it almost exactly two months in, writing up six volumes of Lone Wolf & Cub, one of Path of the Assassin, and then a few miscellaneous posts that weren’t focused on anyone book, before quitting. I own at least nine of these books, and I was burning through a book a week or so, so I know I read several I didn’t write about.

The thing about Lone Wolf & Cub is that it is very… dry. It’s fairly formulaic, you can guess story beats once you make it to volume three or so, and it is just a miserable read. It’s good, don’t get me wrong, but absorbing all of that in a short period of time? It’s not very pleasant. By the end, I didn’t even want to think about the series again. Ogami Itto was too perfect, and his setting too horrible. It was a Debbie Downer, is what I’m saying. So, I took a break. I found something else to do. I took a few days off and came back talking about Asterios Polyp.

I was actually talking about detoxing from comics to Esther the other day. She’s frustrated with the direction of DC in general, with a specific focus on the Green Arrow family. DC has several books that have been piling misery upon misery for years at this point. The Teen Titans franchise, whether Teen Titans proper or the grown-up and trashy Titans, has been toxic since long before Geoff Johns left in 2007. The Green Arrow titles have been tripping from tragedy to tragedy ever since Green Arrow and Black Canary got married.

It gets old. At some point, you’ve got to have some kind of a release for all the misery and pain. I’ve read that Ian Sattler and Dan Didio have been saying that Cry For Justice “worked” because people are upset about the book. And well, no, it didn’t work. People are mad at the book and what happened in it, but not because it’s sad. They’re mad because it’s just another body on the pile. Ted Kord’s death was sad. Lian Harper’s death was pointless, cheap theatrics meant to shock you, rather than make you actually feel anything. But hey, yell “BOO!” at someone often enough and they stop caring.

Why did one straw break the camel’s back? Here’s the secret: the several dozen dead or maimed bodies underneath it. Lian’s chilling with Gehenna, the girl who was tortured and killed so that Black Firestorm could live in White Firestorm’s head in a bunch of comics I’m not going to ever read.

Daredevil’s life has sucked for years. Brian Bendis and Alex Maleev’s Daredevil helped draw me into reading monthly comics again, but I quit the series sometimes during Brubaker’s run. I got tired of watching Daredevil’s life spiral into misery, over and over and over again. I’m tired of that story. I’m numb to it. No, that’s not right. I don’t care. Spider-Man’s life sucks. The writers throw him curveballs every couple of months to shake things up. But, there are issues where he hangs out with his friends. There are horribly sad issues. There are happy issues. There are bittersweet issues. There is a mixture of content, which makes sure that each punch to the gut actually feels like a punch to the gut.

I got my first tattoo back in March. I was asking about how much it’d hurt, and the guy told me that after a certain amount of time (or trauma), the body goes into a kind of shock and you barely feel anything. That didn’t happen with the tattoo, but it absolutely happens with comics.

I’m supposed to feel bad for Roy Harper when he’s imagining his daughter screaming and crawling and dying slowly in the rubble of her house. But hey, guess what! I don’t. I don’t care at all. I’m more amazed/offended/appalled at how blatantly emotionally manipulative and inept all of it is, like the comics had been written by and for people who only had superhero comics as a reference point and had never seen a good movie or read an actual book. Hysterical melodrama-infused superhero decadence in the worst way. It’s a sob story, only the person telling it doesn’t know when to pull back and stop layering in unnecessary details.

But hey, wack writers tell wack stories.

Storytelling is essentially lying. It’s making up a new truth and hoping people believe it. The trick to being a good liar is to keep it simple and effective. When Crossed, Garth Ennis and Jacen Burrows’s incredibly violent and obscene zombie miniseries, treats the death of a child in a more reasonable and mature way than a DC Comics-branded comic book, you’ve got a problem. Your emperor has no clothes. We don’t believe in you or your stupid stories.

You want to know my review of Cry For Justice and Blackest Night and all these other comics that keep banging that one drum and then go “GOTCHA!” when you go “Ew, what is this?”

“Who cares.”

Amazon’s running a 71% off deal for the Realm of Kings hardcover that drops later this year. Summary:
Collecting three Realm of Kings series in one power-packed hardcover. In Imperial Guard, one hazardous mission may be the solution that everyone is praying for, but are the opinionated and fractured Guard tough enough – and united enough – to accomplish it? And in Inhumans, now led by Queen Medusa, the battered and bruised royal family struggles to maintain their grip on the reigns of power. Courtly intrigues and external threats are beginning to erode their rule, but the biggest threat may lurk within the family itself! Then in Son of Hulk, meet a new monster for a new age, and a challenger to the warring Kings of the Cosmos…he is Hiro-Kala, Son of Hulk, and this young apocalyptic visionary has a destructive destiny: obliterate the Universe! Collects Realm of Kings: Inhumans #1-5, Realm of Kings: Son of Hulk #1-4, and Realm of Kings: Imperial Guard #1-5.

These were all pretty good, and eleven bucks for 330+ pages? That’s a great deal. Preorder it if you like.

Art by Jim Calafiore, and I think that this is a fair assessment of the issue and what happened in it. Here is an alternate take on the issue.

4thletter! Fading comic books like bleach since 1983.

Informal poll time. What books are you regularly reading? I buy a lot of stuff off the wall or via Amazon, so my pull list is kept fairly short. Right now, the books I buy regularly are
Amazing Spider-Man, Captain America, Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers, Hellblazer, Joe the Barbarian, King City, and Unknown Soldier. I got One Piece 28-31 in today, as well as Vagabond, Vol. 7 (VIZBIG Edition). Tomorrow, though, the first Power Girl: A New Beginning trade gets in, replacing the singles and hooking me up with ones I skipped. I don’t normally get so much from Amazon at once, but a couple preorders came due.

So, what do you read weekly? What do you buy later?

-Continuity Off! Namor vs Aquaman!
-I take the lead, again, with Namor.
-Esther has Aquaman, husband to the most popular DC Comics character ever.
-Yes, I do confuse Master Man with Maxi-man. Hush.
-It was raining while we were recording, so when I’m talking about how it sounds like Namor’s invading outside… pretend like you can hear the rain.
-I don’t regret my “haters gon’ hate” joke. Haters gonna hate on Atlanteans, that’s why they’re always getting invaded and destroyed.
-Also Atlanteans are SUPER racist, Marvel and DC both.
-This is the fantastic Roger Jr ending from Tekken 5:

-Yep, Esther made a “shave and a haircut, two bits!” joke.
-Here is the final word on Namor vs Aquaman. Aquaman has never been in as great of a story as Michael Kupperman’s “Fed Up With Man” from Strange Tales. Beat this, fishface:

-A hook hand, a popular wife… ridiculous.
-We talked for a long dang time about some fish.
-6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental for the theme music.
-See you, space cowboy!

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Chad wants to talk about Booze, Broads, & Bullets. Sean wants to talk about Daredevil: Love and War and Dark Knight Strikes Again. Me? I’ve just got an index and some words about Miller’s second-most hated.

Behold, I teach you the Batman.

Batman’s story is fundamentally about revenge. He was wronged as a child and dedicates his life to the get-back. Joe Chill, for various reasons, is beyond his grasp. He can never have his actual revenge. Either Chill is dead, too old, or simply doesn’t exist. So, instead of having an explicit goal for his revenge, something he can point to when finished and have some sense of accomplishment or closure, he’s left with a phantom, something he’ll never be able to grasp. The object of his hatred is transferred to “crime” itself, and thus begins his never-ending quest to get back at the world for the death of his parents.

Batman would not be a pleasant person to be around. He’s been training to fight crime since he was a teenager, at the latest, and that kind of focus does not lend itself to being a particularly good friend. He has focused his life on figuring out ways to solve mysteries, memorizing facts about decomposition, learning ways to hurt people, and make them fear him.

Now imagine if, after being brutalized on his first night out fighting crime, he found a lens to focus his vengeance. A variation on the last happy moment from before his life was ruined. Zorro re-imagined in a blood-soaked haze. “Yes. Father. I shall become a bat.” He is rich enough to do anything, save for overcome the heartache that infected him as a child. So, he lashes out.

A child’s fantasy becomes corrupted due to unimaginable pain. The moment his parents died, Bruce Wayne’s childhood stopped and the seed that would grow to be the Batman began, nourished by blood and anger. He’s going to become a force of nature, something that strikes from the darkness and has no more substance than a shadow. But, not the swashbuckler with a sense of humor from the movies. No, when the Batman laughs, it is a bad thing. That just means the pain is coming. And he’s going to hurt you because he was hurt as a child. This is the Batman.

All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder is the story of how Batman learned to be human. Follow along.

One thing I haven’t seen anyone address is how Batman is treated in the text. The Batman of the early ’00s, who alienated his friends and allies simply because he could, was still treated as a hero and morally correct. The Batman of ASBAR, on the other hand, is actively disliked by everyone he interacts with. In the first conversation he has with Dick Grayson, age twelve, Dick realizes that Batman is putting on a voice. “It’s like he’s doing some lameass Clint Eastwood impression. That’s not his real voice. He’s faking it.” Later, when Batman tells him that the car is called “the Batmobile,” Dick rolls his eyes and says, “That is totally queer. :rolleyes:”

Alfred, after being ordered to let the boy eat rats, declares that he is not Batman’s slave. He vehemently objects to Batman’s treatment of the child. Jim Gordon, the closest thing Batman has to a friend, mocks him after doing him a favor and receiving no thanks in return. “Of COURSE not,” he thinks. “That’s hardly be GRIM AND GRITTY, would it?” An inexplicably Irish Black Canary echoes Dick’s opinion of the name “Batmobile,” and even goes so far as to say that maybe, just maybe, Batman “could find some wee benefit from speaking to a person or two, now and then– of course not while you’re so busy punching somebody senseless?”

Hal Jordan, Green Lantern, gives him the treatment on behalf of the Justice League. Wonder Woman wants Batman dead and shown as an example of the cape community policing their own. Superman, showing signs of the ending of Dark Knight Strikes Again decades ahead of time, declares that “this is my world. These are my people. These are my rules.” He overrules her. The only person in the JLA who likes Batman is Plastic Man, who is insane.

The dislike, or grudging acceptance, is nearly unanimous. Vicki Vale dodges a direct meeting with Batman, but calls him a “flying rat.” The only person in the entire book who meets Batman and is anything less than completely unimpressed with him is a woman he rescues from rapist muggers in an alley. She says, “Thank you. I love you,” as Batman is leaving. His monologue: “Nobody loves anybody, my darling. We just survive.”

Think it through. No one in the book likes him. He’s playing a role that is so obvious a recently-traumatized twelve-year old can see through it. He has flashes of darkness, where thoughts of his parents come unbidden to his mind. He repeatedly calls grief the enemy, because grief leads to acceptance and forgiveness. “Grief forgives what can never be forgiven.”

Issue nine. He unleashes Robin on Green Lantern because it’ll be a laugh and he needs to show the JLA he means business. The anger and grief inside Robin spills over and he nearly kills Green Lantern. Batman is suddenly forced to realize that he’s been going about his quest wrong. He was forcing the boy into the steps he followed to become Batman, not realizing that grief and closure are vital to growth. The issue ends with them weeping over the graves of Dick’s parents.

That is the first step toward Batman becoming an actual hero. ASBAR is the story of why Batman needs a Robin. It brings him back down to Earth and forces him to acknowledge his own flaws and humanity. It shows him that you can be young and adjusted, and that crime fighting doesn’t have to be about revenge. The mean one-liners and Eastwood fade. The fun of crime fighting doesn’t. “Striking terror. Best part of the job.”

Of course, the tragedy of ASBAR is that Dark Knight Strikes Again lies in its future. After being fired, Dick Grayson went bad. Batman has to kill him, and while he mocks him, he still marks his passing with a sad, “So long, Boy Wonder.”

Make no mistake: the Batman is a child’s fantasy. Batman’s defining moment is tragedy, and it has effected his adulthood in a way that, say, Spider-Man’s tragedy didn’t. Uncle Ben’s death taught Spider-Man that heroism is a requirement, not an option. The death of Thomas and Martha Wayne taught Bruce that the world is a cruel place. He took Zorro, a character his father enjoyed, and stepped into his boots. It is telling that Miller revises Robin’s origin to include the fact that Dick’s father was a Robin Hood fan and often took Dick to see the movie. Dick chooses his name in honor of his father. Batman does, too. But the difference in the two of them is astounding.

But, for now, ASBAR is the last lesson of the Batman. He’s mastered ways to hurt, maim, kill, investigate, deduce, and solve. This is where he learns to feel. I assume that next year’s Dark Knight: Boy Wonder will wrap the story and show us how Batman and Robin work together in their first bout against the Joker.

All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder is grotesque and exaggerated. It’s not a satire, and there’s definitely a point to all of the glorious excess.

Chad’s talking about Family Values while Sean is over here making connections between That Yellow Bastard and Who Framed Roger Rabbit. Booze, Broads, & Bullets: we got it covered from all angles. Start at the index, work your way down.

Page 63 of 9-11: Artists Respond features a story by Layla Lawlor. It’s a one page story about the impermanence of things, but also about the way things live on and on in new forms. It’s a hopeful piece, about the way life ebbs and flows and then becomes great again. Pages 66 and 67 are about Peter Pachoumis’s memories of 9-11. Frantic phone calls, live television broadcasts, a slow return to normalcy. It has the iconography of most 9-11 related tales– firemen, cops, flags, and dust. It’s about shock, rather than Lawlor’s hope. And then you have pages 64 and 65.

An atom bomb of anger and cynicism dropped into the middle of a book filled with stories about unity and tolerance and sadness. The rest of the book is your mother comforting you and putting ice on your black eye, while Miller’s two pages are your father asking you if you gave as good as you got, and if not, you better do better next time. It’s a mood-killer, a bug crawling across your dinner plate on the night you want to propose to your lady.

It’s cynical and ugly and I don’t know that he was wrong for doing it. Something about the sparse art and jagged lettering makes me think that this is just as personal and honest as the rest of the stories in the book. Miller is a big fan of New York City, whether it was the mythical one in his Daredevil run or the city he moved to with a portfolio full of art in an attempt to make it big.

There’s anger and hurt in these two pages, these fourteen words, but there’s also a love. Most of all, though, there’s hurt feelings. Miller’s reaction is short, curt, and mean. It’s a slap in the face. Miller uses a star and a cross, specifically American symbols of church and state, to symbolize the ideas that he’s disgusted with. It’s a very pointed choice, and feels like a backlash against the reactionary patriotism that swept the country in the wake of 9-11. “They weren’t right, but we aren’t right, either.”

His views have changed in the years since. 2006 saw him deliver an impassioned essay on the subject of how his belief in the flag turned around. He’s a supporter of the war on terror, and considers it to be vitally important to the survival of the country. Holy Terror, Batman! was going to be a “piece of propaganda” that will “offend just about everybody” before it changed into something else entirely.

I don’t know enough about Miller’s political views to accurately judge him. He’s libertarian, I’m not. He supported the War in Iraq, I don’t. But this quick blast of anger, this “Get real!” in the middle of “It’ll be all right!”, is fascinating to me. You can see where he was coming from and exactly how he felt, and it’s all in three panels and fourteen words.