In the first part of Neil Gaiman’s Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader, two disembodied voices discuss Batman’s funeral.  One of them is, apparently, Batman.  The other is an unknown guide.  Given the fact that I’d burned out on the hallucinogenic tone of much of Batman RIP I expected to dislike this story.

I have to say, I dig it.  The overall playfulness of the story makes it work. 

First there are the weird, funny little messages in the art, such as a giant typewriter billboard with the slogan, “Don’t Type It . . . Finger it!”  There’s the fact that Two-Face drives around in a half-trashed car.  There’s Batman, in the coffin, in his full uniform.  There’s the ridiculous cat mask that Selina wears when she and Batman fight during  a flashback.

I also like the different eras and obvious lack of continuity of the story.  It reminds me of the Legends of the Dark Knightseries, in which any nutty thing could happen, from Batman starring in a vampire version of Sunset Boulevard to a supervillain a fashion show.

Of course the fact that the entire tone of the story is funereal puts a damper on my spirits, but overall I enjoyed Gaiman’s take on the Batverse.  It’ll be interesting to see how he makes sense of the situation he sets up, but if he’s up to that challenge this could be a more memorable Bat-story than several of past few years’ big events.

Obviously, the winner, as previously suggested on this site, should be Ted Kord, who I am assuming is not in the picture in order to preserve the element of surprise.

But if it ends up being Alfred?  In that uniform?  It’s all been worth it.

I had a fascinating conversation with Esther a few weeks back about how most superhero characters, if taken as a whole, are pretty much entirely unlikeable. Batman has let dozens of people die, made plans on how to disable his friends, and been a jerk to everyone under the sun. Spider-Man’s hit his wife, tried to kill her, had nervous breakdown after nervous breakdown, and lies to everyone he loves. Superman took over the world at some point in the past eight years, even.

But, you can’t have consequences for these actions in corporate comics. These characters are intellectual properties, which means that they must be available for exploitation. So, Batman does not go to jail for his killer spy satellite, nor for his plans to destroy the JLA. Spider-Man is “hunted” but never really has to pay for anything he’s done, despite the whole world believing he killed Gwen Stacy. Superman has destroyed half a dozen government task forces geared toward his capture but whoops he’s Superman and he was the good guy and just defending himself.

These characters make the same mistakes, over and over, in a cycle of mean-spiritedness and myopia. It makes reading comics without being extremely picky kind of a hard thing to do, doesn’t it?

Well, the way they draw Luthor creeps me out, but in general I liked the comic.  It has the same zany energy as the show.  The pace is fast and action-oriented.  Seriously action-oriented.  Of twenty-two pages, fifteen of them show something being smashed.  That kind of action-oriented.

This comic also has the sort of kitschy villains and monsters that enlivened the old Batman TV Show, and that you can’t really get away with in today’s gritty, more realistic comics.  The result is the triumph of imagination; fun, creative, outrageous and interesting.

The one main weakness of the comic is the same weakness of the show.  There seems to be a Very Special Lesson to be learned in each comic, and no subtlety in the teaching of it.  I realize that this comic is meant for children, but it frustrates me a little, knowing that if a character talks about their love of strength in the first five minutes, they’ll lose all their strength in the next five minutes.  What is most irksome about it is the show lays the groundwork for each Special Lesson well enough that it never has to be said out loud.  With the deletion of a few lines, each Lesson could be a character trait, each predictable reversal a fresh plot twist.

Still, the energy, the creativity and the joy that is shown all make this comic shine.  If you’re thinking about giving a young child a good education in all the DC characters, and, incidentally, entertaining them, this is a great comic to pick up.

You ever read the Geoff Johns and Jeff Katz run of Booster Gold? It was pretty good stuff. The majority of it dealt with Booster’s personal quest to use time travel to save the life of the 2nd Blue Beetle and Booster’s 1st best friend, Ted Kord. Rip Hunter kept insisting to Booster that this was an impossibility and that it would mess up time something fierce. Booster didn’t listen and with the help of Dan Garrett, Jaime Reyes and the mysterious Black Beetle, saved Ted’s life.

Wouldn’t you know it, everything went wrong. This was all some kind of scheme by Mr. Mind and the present was reduced to Max Lord and his OMACs laying waste to almost all the superheroes. Ted saw that his death had a role in the grand scheme of things and seemingly killed himself in some kind of time travel clusterfuck with the use of Black Beetle’s scarab. Booster was broken up about it, but got over his failings with the help of Batman’s compassion.

Despite Ted’s redeath, we were given a happy ending. But wait… what’s this?

Hey! Ted’s alive after all! Johns himself said so. Good for Ted.

Not all good. What’s he going to do now? Ted Kord is supposed to be dead. Blue Beetle is supposed to be dead. He can’t go back to the blue and lighter blue. Even if you ignore there already being a Blue Beetle around (in a sadly cancelled series), an arc in Manhunter shows that Ted being alive would ruin Wonder Woman’s defense for killing Max Lord. It would make her look even worse in the public eye.

It’s a shame. A young guy like himself given a second chance. He’s rich, he’s brilliant, he’s a gadget wiz, he’s got his own secret hideout and you know he’s just raring to go back to fighting crime. Blame it on the economy, but sometimes a talented guy just can’t find a job.

Wait a minute… Wasn’t there a job opening this week?

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“All right. It’s conceivable you could beat me, Avenger. But it would take you a very long time. Tell me this, though – do you want to?”

“No. You’re not the enemy. We’re all just pawns, in a larger scheme.”

“Then we might be better off letting the others play out the events according to the desires of whoever’s pulling the strings – while the two of us try to find some real answers.”

“You’re on. Let’s go.”

— Batman and Captain America from JLA/Avengers #2

I remember back when Marvel and DC had their Marvel vs. DC back in the mid-90’s, it was my first real introduction to Captain America. Sure, I had seen him pop up in Maximum Carnage (wow, I read some shitty stuff when I was that age), but I didn’t understand what a big deal he was supposed to be until they said that he’s supposed to be Batman’s counterpart.

It was weird, since they didn’t seem to have much in common. When they did that Amalgam event and they merged Batman and Wolverine, it seemed to make some sense more based on the two of them being scowling badasses with kid sidekicks and psycho killer (qu’est que c’est… fa-fa-fa-fa fa-fa-fa-fa-fa-far better) bad guys. Even the idea of Batman being the counterpart of Iron Man worked out better, since their secret identities were virtually the same guy.

Yet Marvel and DC, despite all their differences, has written in stone that these two are not only counterparts, but equals. They’ve gone far enough to show Superman beating up the Hulk and Thor, but even when the fans vote on it, they refuse to show an actual winner in Batman vs. Captain America. I always found that interesting.

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Know what sucks about character death?

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Basically, this is a pretty good way to show that retcons are pretty much a lame storytelling device. Nine times out of ten, it’s just another way of saying, “Welp, we screwed up and we don’t want to have to deal with the consequences.” Sometimes it’s something like, “We need this character to be in this position for this story to work and don’t want to do the in-betweening.”

Retcons can be used well, but by and large, they are about sidestepping consequences. Hal Jordan murdered a whole bunch of people, and so far, it seems like his punishment is to get called a stupid earthman and sneered at once every eight months or so. Why? Because he’s Hal Jordan, Hero, and DC Comics needed him to be a Green Lantern for some reason. Sinestro? He ain’t dead! Why, he faked his death! Why? Because Hal Jordan needs Sinestro as a villain. Jean Grey isn’t dead, she’s just in the bottom of a bay. Why? Because we need a team featuring the original X-Men. Prometheus? He hasn’t been looking like a buffoon all over the DC Universe for years. He’s been all locked up, who is that other guy? He’s just some guy who acts just like him, has the same gimmick, costume, personality, and powers.

This is stupid. There’s dozens of other ways to get around Prometheus being an idiot. Faulty tech. A deep-seated fear of Batman (it worked for Deadshot). Slumming it and trying to stay off the radar. Anything but “it wasn’t him, nope.”

That’s just lazy.

The things you learn when you mess around with the subtitles on your Batman: The Animated Series DVDs.

Although in Spanish, Batman is still called Batman, Bruce Wayne’s name has changed to Bruno Díaz.

I’m guessing this is an across-the-board name change, and not just a blip for the animated series.  Does anyone know why it was necessary?  Does ‘Bruce Wayne’ mean ‘Your mother’s a whore,’ in Spanish?