It’s time to take another trip to the Graphic Audio well, this time for the audio book based on the novelization of Crisis on Infinite Earths. I’ve dealt with the Graphic Audios for Infinite Crisis and 52 on this site, which were both adapted by Greg Cox. I don’t think I’ve ever shown that guy the respect he deserves, since he’s done a rather good job with what he’s been given. He’s able to translate from art to text very well, while making the right decisions on what to cut for space reasons. I notice this mainly because he didn’t write the CoIE adaptation.

Rather, it was Marv Wolfman, the man who wrote the original comic series over twenty years ago. My feelings on Crisis is that it was average. It has its moments and the art is very nice, but it’s very boring most of the time and centers around some mostly mediocre characters. Still, it’s one of the first major epics of comic book storytelling and an important part of comic history.

You might think that having Wolfman adapt his own comic could only be a good thing. Who knows more about what was going on in Crisis than the man who wrote it? Sadly, this isn’t the case. The novelization of Crisis comes off like it’s being retold by a guy who read it once twenty years ago, but keeps getting it confused with how much he loves Barry Allen.

If you’ve read the original comic, you might be wondering what I mean by that. The Flash only got captured, died blowing up that machine and then inspired Wally West to take up the mantle. As important as the story is to him, he’s only a supporting character at best (which could also be said for Supergirl’s role).

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DC Comics’ Wednesday Comics and David Mazzucchelli’s Asterios Polyp are the two big books of the past week. We sat down on Saturday to talk about the former, since I’m probably going to be writing about the latter. Here’s the breakdown of our 7th Fourcast!:

-The volume is a little low on this one, because I suck. Slight issue with our recording process, and one which I’d fixed halfway through the show. However, so that we don’t blow your brains out (we just want to blow your mind), I kept all the volume at the same level. So, crank it up to eight or put some earphones on!
-We waffle on which number we’re up to on the Fourcast!, finally deciding on seven.
–Other people are cheating.
-Our anthem is going to be 6th Sense’s 4a.m. Instrumental until Four Minutes to Lockdown becomes free.
-We lay down our verdict on Wednesday Comics: It’s fun, regardless of whether it’s a gimmick or not.
-Why is that? Because Mark Chiarello is a genius, that’s why.
-Remember SOLO? That was Chiarello.
-Remember Batman Black & White? Chiarello, baby.
-We’ve got another You Made Me Read This!, this time featuring Superman: A Nation Divided, about Superman fighting for the Union in the Civil War.
-I thought I won because it was a war comic. Naw.
-Wouldn’t it be awesome if Superman fought for the South in an Elseworlds, though?
-We wrap it up with a few anecdotes about kids in comics. Do bad guys really have daughters while good guys have sons? Comics are messed up, man.

Next week! San Diego.

If you’re new to the Fourcast!, subscribe to the podcast-specific RSS feed or subscribe on iTunes. Our full-blown RSS, with space-age things like “text” and “images” is here. I hear that the kids like Facebook, too, so if you’re so inclined…

Batman doesn’t care about sex.

I mean, sure, he’ll have sex sometimes. He’s had a series of short-lived relationships, the most popular of which involve an easy escape hatch. Benefit of dating criminals, right? It’s pretty clear to me that he doesn’t care about sex. He’s got a mission, he’s been trained, and guess what! Sex is entirely beside the point. He’ll do it when he has to, but you won’t see Bruce at a bar talking to Bonita Applebum.

Parker is the star of more than a few of Richard Stark’s novels. He’s a no-nonsense thief and strong-arm, very expert in planning and even better at putting a stop to any funny business. If you cross Parker, he’ll lean you before you even get a chance to think about what you just did. He enjoy sex, but only at specific times. If he’s on the job, or planning a job, he’s got no drive at all. After, though, he can spend several days horizontal. His drive slowly fades away after that, until he’s practically a monk in the run-up to the next job.

Ogami Itto? Don’t even. I’m six volumes in, and I don’t think he’s had sex for pleasure once. He’s done it to save someone’s life, and to grease some wheels, but never because he chatted someone up. It’s entirely possible that he’s just respecting his dead wife’s memory, but it’s much more likely that it’s because he’s walking the path of the assassin and has no time for physical pleasure.

All three of these guys are focused, motivated, driven, and paragons of self control. They all approach sex on their own terms, blatantly ignore it when they feel like it, but are still considered virile. It’s definitely fair to say that they are all generally portrayed as Real Men, even across cultural barriers. Ogami is a hop from Parker, who is in turn a skip from Batman, who is himself a jump from Ogami. They have very similar characterizations, despite having some fairly irreconcilable differences between them. Ogami murders for a living, Parker isn’t opposed to slapping a woman around if it’ll help a heist, and Batman is a manchild who sates his desire for justice by beating up criminals.

Together, I think that these three say something pretty interesting about what it means to be a man. They all fit the basic stereotype of a Real Man. They’re physically attractive, be it in a pretty boy sort of way or a more rugged manner. They’re physically capable, able to demolish most men with a single move, be it a punch, gunshot, or swing of a sword. They’re intelligent enough to create complicated plans that always come off perfectly, human error aside. They’re witty enough to be able to think on their feet when a situation goes south and to come out on top. They aren’t afraid to use violence when the time comes, either. That sounds like a Real Man, doesn’t it?

The sex thing is what makes it interesting. Virility is tied up in violence and physical strength, and all three of these guys have it in spades. Ogami kills dudes by the baker’s dozen, Parker is a machine, and Batman is a highly trained non-lethal ninja. When they do have sex, it’s never shown as “making love.” It’s something fast, primal, rough, and vaguely taboo. There’s a thrill to it, particularly when it comes to Batman and Parker. Parker is only interested after he re-establishes his manhood by making a lot of money and breaking a few heads. Batman’s biggest flame is Catwoman, the object of many a late-night chase and cowled makeout session. To borrow a line, they keep the masks on because it’s better that way. Ogami himself only indulges, or lowers, himself in sex when it fits into his quest. The first time he has sex in volume 1, it’s to show exactly how little he cares for the samurai customs of the day. In fact, he proves his manhood by rejecting the traditional notion of it.

I think it comes down to control. Men are supposed to be in control of themselves, their emotions, and the situation at all times. What better way to show this control than to refuse sex, one of the most primal needs of human beings? Ogami treats most women he encounters, and definitely the prostitutes, with something approaching contempt. They, like anyone else, are beneath his notice. It seems like every Parker novel has him refusing the advances of an appropriately attractive and willing woman until he decides he wants to bother with her. Batman’s celibacy is practically a superpower, considering that a couple of his villains are outright seductresses and the rest are openly sexy/sexual.

This occurred to me after finishing one of Stark’s Parker novels, one in which Stark has Parker question his sexual habits. It got me thinking, and I soon realized that Ogami Itto was similar in execution, if not in tone. It all really clicked into place once Batman came into the picture, and I realized that it was more of a trend than I’d expected.

I’ve written before about how, when following a character, you generally have to throw out the continuity you don’t like and read the continuity you do.

What I’ve noticed, though, is this trend tends to cultivate pockets of people who see very different characters.  This depends on a lot of things.  One is when you got to know the character.  People who are used to the warm and cuddly Batman of the 70s, do not like the colder Batman of today.  People, on the other hand, whose first impression of Bats was The Dark Knight Returns, wonder at how cuddly he’s gotten in the past year.

There are also different incarnations of each character.  Catman started out as arguably one of the more noble Secret Six characters.  But in Legends of the Dark Knight he was introduced as a psychotic murderer who slashed up women.

But things get a bit contentious when people drop or keep continuity based on how much they like a character.  We are all inclined to give more credit to those we like, in fiction and in life, and serial fiction gives us a convenient excuse for bad behavior.  I’ve gotten into arguments in which I can write off a character’s fall from the path of righteousness with an airy, “Oh, that wasn’t X-character, that was Y-writer.  You can’t trust Y’s writing.”  If I don’t like the character, however, Y-writer’s character choices seem perfectly trustworthy, and fair game to use in an argument.  Ah, the capriciousness of the reader.

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?