Batman, Volume 6: Graveyard Shift (Review)

Batman, Volume 6: Graveyard Shift

I suppose it was inevitable. After five truly stunning volumes that have reinvented the Batman mythos in unprecedented ways, there was sure to be one volume to come along that's just mediocre. This isn't a criticism directed toward writer Scott Snyder. The truth is that Batman, Volume 6: Graveyard Shift suffers from being a collection of short stories told by a variety of writers displaced from the larger story Snyder has been telling in his Batman epic. None of the stories are really given the appropriate amount of space to evolve into truly gripping narratives, though most of them are perfectly serviceable standalone tales that make for quick reads.

The first story in the collection, "Bright New Yesterday," is penned by Snyder with art by the usual crew of Capullo, Glapion, and Plascencia. Jumping back to a point in time before he'd become Batman, the story details one of Bruce Wayne's earliest encounters with the Red Hood Gang. The events play more like deleted scenes cut from the Zero Year storyline covered in Snyder's previous two volumes. The next story, "Tomorrow," by James Tynion IV, covers the whereabouts of the members of the Bat Family (Tim Drake, Jason Todd, Dick Grayson, Barbara Gordon) the night the famous Bat signal was first activated.

"Resolve" is penned by both Snyder and Tynion IV, and is easily the most effective story of the bunch. Bruce is pushed to his breaking point in dealing with the death of his son, Damian, which occurred in a separate Batman title and not by Snyder's pen. Split into two chapters with Snyder and Tynion IV halving it up, the story is given enough room to breathe and invest you emotionally as you watch Bruce cope with his pain by turning all that hurt into rage and fury. The shame of it is that no story dealing with Bruce's grief over his son could ever hope to top the textless masterpiece that is issue 18 of the separate Batman and Robin title by Peter J. Tomasi and Patrick Gleason.

Next up is "Nowhere Man," another Snyder and Capullo short story. This one's a compelling mystery that sees the return of classic Batman villain Clayface. There's a touching moment at story's end which sees Bruce and Alfred mourn Damian together, but it's short-lived. The following story, "Ghost Lights," by Tynion IV sees Alex Maleev take over art duties, which is fine because he consistently knocks it out of the park. This one's a detective story by way of the old occult detective stories that frequented the pulp magazines. The strange primary plot marries with a secondary story that sees Clark Kent visit Bruce in the wake of Damian's death. Bruce doesn't want to talk about it, of course, but Clark deals with his friend both thoughtfully and in a way of understanding. I really hate that the more compelling story was knocked down to secondary plot status. I would much rather have had Bruce's grief and his friendship with Superman front and center here.

"Ages" is a longer story written by Marguerite Bennett that sees Batman testing security in the latest wing of the infamous Arkham Asylum. Bennett introduces a seriously compelling character in the Anchoress, Arkham's oldest living inmate with the fascinating ability to pass through matter using quantum tunneling. She's a character straight out of gothic horror. As a young woman, she was fascinated with quantum mechanics and the human body, which she studied against her parents' wishes. After a lab accident claimed the lives of her parents, she checked herself into Arkham, racked with guilt. Interestingly, she calls herself the Anchoress after the religious Anchorites of early Christianity, who were known to withdraw from secular society to live a life of seclusion. She's an entirely unexpected and truly frightening character.

Following "Ages" is easily my favorite story of the volume: "The Meek." Written by Gerry Duggan with astounding art by Mateo Scalera, this one's a straightforward mystery that pits Batman in a cat-and-mouse game with a gruesome serial killer. This time, the killer isn't a super villain, he's just a regular guy who has ceased to believe humans are deserving of dignity, and kills because...well, just because. The story makes a profound statement regarding the worth of a human being, the importance of human dignity, and offers a stern warning against dehumanization. To a degree, these are the kinds of straightforward stories that I wish Batman writers would tell more often. At his core, Batman is a detective. And though he captures the villain, there's no punch he can throw that will hit hard enough to resurrect the dead. Justice is done, but the echoes of evil still linger heavy on the page. The final image revealing all of the killer's nameless victims is absolutely haunting, bordering on disturbing—as it should be.

The final story, "Gotham Eternal," is meant to tease a separate Batman title that Scott Snyder worked on during the New 52 era. I didn't fully understand what was happening, which I think is the point, as it's just meant to preview the storyline of Batman Eternal. Beyond raising some interesting questions about a few characters, I didn't find the story to be all that compelling, probably because the one that preceded it was still lingering in my mind.

Overall, Graveyard Shift is a collection of hit-or-miss short stories that deal primarily with Bruce's grief over Damian. The unfortunate reality is that Peter Tomasi penned the ultimate take on this particular narrative, and that story isn't included in this volume. Interestingly, writers Bennett and Duggan pen the best stories of the volume ("Ages" and "The Meek"), and I'm glad the volume chose to showcase these talents. I would love to see further stories deal with the tragic Anchoress character, and the pairing of Duggan with artist Scalera is a revelation of dark sublimity.

John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (Review)

John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum (2019)

What began as a sleek action film seemingly destined for low box office figures and cult status has expanded into one of the most original and innovative film series of the modern era. Drawing from the deep well of classic western and samurai film iconography, and wrapping bloody but elegant action sequences in a context of literary tragedy, the story of John Wick is a new incarnation of the tragic anti-heroes of the folk tales and fairy stories of old.

Not since Star Wars has a series of films invested in such original and intricate world-building and myth-making, creating a dreamlike fantasy world that looks like ours but behaves very differently. A dark, mirror universe that exists in the shadows of our own. A world in which all the people to whom you and I never give a second thought, people like the cab driver, the homeless man, and the street urchin, are all let in on the big secret. A world in which both lavish hotels and seedy bodegas are actually havens for the most ruthless assassins. Where the economy runs on mysterious gold coins bearing Latin inscriptions, where the criminal underworld is more organized than ours, and the lawless abide by a code of honor ruthlessly enforced by a governing body known as the High Table.

I think most people who have followed the films will, like myself, go into John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum expecting the conclusion of a trilogy. Instead, the film expands the world's mythology on an unprecedented scale. Parabellum pulls together all the disparate threads from the previous two films to weave a vast tapestry of assassins, their employers, and their targets. We glimpsed the extent of this mythology in John Wick: Chapter 2, when John goes off to Rome. But Parabellum takes us further, dealing with the history of both John Wick (Keanu Reeves) and the assassins themselves. We get to see where it all begins, where the assassins and their order first emerged, and we learn a bit about John's origins under the cold guidance of the Director (Anjelica Huston) along the way.

Many reviewers are quick to label the John Wick films as exercises in style over substance, as mindless action, or bloody art films. These profoundly miss the point. The world of these films is actually rich in lore, in history, in legends. The action sequences play out more like intricate dances, and it is no coincidence that John's mother figure is revealed to also run a ballet school. And though the films have built their reputation on these bloody, complex dances of death that threaten to seduce us through violence, we must always be mindful of the fact that it's the film's plot, the scenes in-between these action scenes, the connective tissue, that grounds the action scenes in their proper context. The plot reveals the movie's themes, which continue to take the form of mythic tragedy with each film.

Perhaps it is a fair criticism to say that these films suffer from a have-your-cake-and-eat-it-too syndrome, trying to make profound and lofty assertions about the futility of violence while simultaneously reveling in the bloodshed. But it's also worth noting the the classic literary works the John Wick films evoke spend a shocking amount of time chronicling bloodshed. Consider The Iliad, which spends an inordinate amount of time detailing how certain soldiers were killed and by whom. Or the biblical stories of Israel's judges, which, among other accounts, includes the story in which Jael drives a tent peg through the skull of Sisera. Simply because a story contains a copious amount of bloodshed and violence is not necessarily license to write it off as mindless, but it's the context in which the violence happens that should determine whether we deem it acceptable. It is important that we begin to rescue how we interpret these things contextually. In The Iliad, men who die in battle are heralded as heroic figures because it is considered an honorable death. The book of Judges details the violence as God's judgment on the nations, yet it is Christ himself who will tell one of his disciples to "Put your sword back in place because all who take up a sword will perish by a sword" (Matt. 26:52). While violence on the page and on the screen certainly translate very differently, the point here is that violence can, when viewed in correct context, be both futile and nonetheless redemptive.

John Wick: Chapter 3 — Parabellum probably understands this better than any other action film out there. Every last body that John leaves in his wake is simultaneously a moment of judgment enacted upon the story's villains, all of whom deal in death, and a futile attempt by John to outrun his past life. The film even understands that John himself cannot escape this inevitable fate. At one point, the beautiful and deadly Sofia (Halle Berry) blatantly tells him that one day, all this violence is going to catch up with him and he's going to die. At multiple points in the film, John is confronted with the question of why he keeps fighting, of why he keeps running, and his answer is actually quite profound: to keep the memory of his dead wife alive. Having known love once, and having encountered a deeper sense of happiness and bliss, he now seeks to live for the singular purpose of enjoying the memory, because of how it has changed him. And we see how this has moved him when John is given the task of killing an old friend by the Elder (Saïd Taghmaoui), who is the one man capable of giving John a new start by bringing him back into the fold of the assassins that now want him dead. Faced with ending the life of someone whom he cares about, a task that should have been so easy for an assassin of John's caliber, he cannot bring himself to do it. This, of course, invokes the wrath of the High Table, and John is back to fighting for his life once again, while the specter of Sofia's words linger on: one day it's all going to catch up with him, and one day it's going to get him killed.

The point of these movies could be ripped straight from Christ's words in Matthew. There is a sense in which John's endless fight is inevitable, because it is the life he chose. It echoes Winston's words in the first film, where he warns John against killing out of vengeance, because he might find himself dragged back into this world of death and dying. John's story can only really end one way.

The question is how many films it's going to take us to get there.

Baba Yaga: John Wick as Dark Fairy Tale

John Wick (2014)

Young, arrogant Russian gangster Iosef Tarasov breaks into the home of a grieving widower, kills the man's dog, and steals the man's car. Iosef proudly returns to his father, Viggo, the head of the Tarasov crime family, only to have his father berate him for his actions. In a state of shock and disbelief, Iosef listens as his father spins for him the dark fairy tale of "Baba Yaga," a mythical creature worse than the boogeyman. And to his horror, Iosef learns that the grieving widower is John Wick, a highly trained former assassin who was known throughout the criminal underworld as the Baba Yaga, the one person you could send to kill the boogeyman. This is the man that Iosef has offended. This is the man who now comes for him.

This is the inciting incident of 2014's John Wick, a violent and beautifully shot film that caught the imaginations of viewers and critics alike and gave us our first glimpse into the dark, neon-noir phantasmagoria world inhabited by criminals and the assassins they employ. When we first meet the titular protagonist, John Wick (Keanu Reeves) has left the shadowy world of assassins behind to settle down with his beautiful wife, Helen (Bridget Moynahan). But Helen's unexpected death disrupts that peaceful existence. Before she dies, she buys John a puppy named Daisy, and leaves him a note telling him that he still needs "someone, something to love." John comes to love Daisy, his wife's final act of kindness to him before her passing. And life goes on...right up until the moment Iosef Tarasov (Alfie Allen), believing John to be just another "nobody," breaks into John's home, kills Daisy, and steals John's beloved '69 Mustang.

Out for revenge, John carves a bloody trail through the criminal underworld in his pursuit of Iosef. But every action has consequences, as his old friend Winston (Ian McShane) warns him. "Have you thought this through?" Winston asks him. "I mean chewed it down to the bone? You got out once. You dip so much as a pinky back into this pond, you may well find something reaches out, and drags you back into its depths." This warning becomes the propulsive force that drives the overarching narrative of the film series. What begins as a mission for revenge becomes a fight for survival, as the consequences of John's return to the world he left behind continue to pile up, bringing him into contact with a plethora of menacing figures like Viggo Tarasov (Michael Nyqvist) and Santino D'Antonio (Riccardo Scamarcio), each one worse and more monstrous than the one before.

John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017)

There are many valid ways of looking at the story of John Wick. Brutal revenge tale, stylish action flick, bloody art film. But perhaps the most profound reading of the films is one that sees the overarching story as a dark, modern fairy tale. Consider first the character of John Wick. He is, in his most essential form, the archetype of the anti-hero. As an assassin with a dark past, he is akin to the tortured Byronic heroes of classic literature. He is a mythic figure caught up in an epic tale of revenge. Then there are the overt references to Greek myths throughout the story. His wife's name is Helen, who, in Greek mythology, was the most beautiful woman in the world, and whose abduction sparked the beginning of the Trojan War. The criminal underworld John returns to maintains an intricate structure that runs on fundamental rules that everyone understands and abide. The Continental is a hotel that acts as a neutral ground for all the assassins. Entry to the hotel is monitored by a concierge named Charon (Lance Reddick), and gained only through the paying of gold coins. The suits the assassins wear are treated like armor, their guns like swords. John Wick: Chapter 2 (2017) even locates a portion of the story in Rome, one of the world's most ancient and important historical cities.

The John Wick film series is known for its practical effects and high-octane action, but perhaps the most significant contribution of these unique movies has nothing to do with glamorized combat, and everything to do with how the films choose to tell their story. There are literally hundreds of revenge-driven action movies out there, but the black-clad character of John Wick, a modern day black knight, has captured the popular imagination in ways that dozens of other lesser characters have failed to do. This is because the John Wick films are not merely brilliantly-choreographed action sequences; rather, they fill a void that the popular imagination has yet to realize has been lost: that of the dark fairy tale. Each film stands alone as a kind of dark fable about a man who set out searching for revenge, only to have lost his way and now must continue to run in order to survive.

The world-building in these movies is subtle and nothing short of brilliant. These films break every rule in terms of what the modern Hollywood machine tells us should be popular nowadays. There's no "cinematic universe" here. Instead, the secrets to John Wick's world are piecemealed out a little at a time, in a line of dialogue here or a quick shot of a happening there. The films are set in a neon-tinted reality so much like our own, but there is an order to the darkness, a reason to the chaos of the criminal underworld. They exist in an almost dreamlike fantasy world that mirrors our own. In fact, the first film could very easily have begun with the words, "Once upon a time" flashing across the screen, and we would continue to respond to these films in the same way. And each movie ends with a shot of the bloodied man and his dog walking away, continuing their endless trek through the darkness as John learns and relearns the lesson contained within Winston's initial warning: every action has consequences.

John Wick deals in catharsis. We come to these movies in the same way we come to the Byronic heroes of literature, in the same way we come to the black knights of old. We come to see these lonely, wandering anti-heroes do battle with old gods and monsters, trying to keep their internal darkness at bay by fighting against the external darkness with all their might. We resonate with John Wick because we all have something we're running from and continue to run from, and we fight all of our battles telling ourselves this will be our last, having to learn and relearn that every action has consequences. We turn to these heroes and these stories because on a fundamental level, we all intuit that, if we're not careful, the darkness can swallow us through wrong choices, no matter how noble our initial motivations. These stories allow us to breach the darkness and find the worst parts of ourselves there, to navigate the underworld, to sift through the dirty glass that is the dark underbelly of the human spirit. The John Wick films work as that dark, modern fairy tale haunting the popular imagination. They tap into the darkest parts of wonder and fear to issue a warning: every action has consequences. To so much as flirt with the darkness is to be dragged back into its depths. And to be dragged back in is to doom us to forever run, mistakenly thinking that the next battle we fight yields that moment of catharsis, of release, of deliverance from the darkness once and for all. This is what sin does to us, the life sin beckons us to live. A life forever on the run. How do you think John's story ends? He can never settle down again. He can never be content. We can't run our way out of sin and into deliverance.

The darkest of fairy tales offer this bleak truth: that we can't clean up our own mess, someone has to come in and do it for us. And when that mess is the human heart...well, to clean that up requires an act of God. We, like John, are haunted by an image of beauty—that great and good external thing that does not well up from within, but comes breaking in from without.

For John Wick, beauty wears the face of Helen, the woman who died and now haunts him. For us, beauty wears the face of a man who died and rose again, and now haunts the world.

The Man of Steel (Review)

The Man of Steel

To say that Brian Michael Bendis arrived at DC Comics with no fanfare is like saying the moon crashed into earth and nobody noticed. For years, Bendis was one of Marvel's biggest writers, but in 2018, he made the jump to DC and landed on Superman. For months, I saw the posters in comic book store windows depicting the Man of Steel himself with the words "Bendis is coming!" plastered in big print. But before Bendis was given the keys to Superman, he first crafted this miniseries titled The Man of Steel.

Acting as Bendis's introduction to the character, The Man of Steel is everything that should be expected from bringing in a superstar comic book writer and putting him on a character like Superman, the original and most iconic superhero of all. It's a big, bombastic story that both oozes classic appeal and dares to revisit established Superman mythology in new and interesting ways.

The introduction of Rogol Zaar adds a compelling wrinkle to the established mythos, and acts as the inciting event that sets the plot in motion. Superman's backstory is widely known—born Kal-El, he's the last son of the distant planet Krypton, jettisoned from the planet moments before it exploded in a last ditch effort by his parents to save their infant child's life. With alien warrior Rogol Zaar, Bendis puts front and center the creature who claims responsibility for destroying Krypton. And he's just learned that Kal-El, the last son of Krypton, is still alive and living on Earth as Superman. Rogol Zaar arrives on the planet with a singular purpose: wipe out all remaining traces of Krypton.

By introducing Zaar as the one behind Krypton's destruction, the stakes are immediately raised and Superman's fight has never been more personal. Breaking into Superman's famed Fortress of Solitude and devastating a number of the Kryptonian artifacts there, Zaar is immediately established as an incredible force to be reckoned with, attacking Superman physically, emotionally, and psychologically. Bendis should be given credit for creating an imposing villain, but he wisely doesn't reveal every little detail. He doesn't try to force certain aspects of his story into the existing Superman canon. He gives Zaar motives, but those motives aren't fully explained, leaving room for further development in later stories.

There is certainly a "dark night of the soul" element to this miniseries, with Superman having to reckon not only with the emergence of Rogol Zaar, but also with the unexpected absence of his wife, Lois, and their young son, Jon. This crisis brings Superman to an emotional tipping point, and there's a particularly powerful scene that sees him finally break down in the Fortress of Solitude. It's an emotional and very human take on the character, and it really works on a number of levels. These are the kinds of honest character moments that imbue these inherently mythic and outlandish stories with a dimension of reality. The human drama transcends the cosmic conflicts to lend the story a literary quality that gives us a glimpse at what comic books can be when they're thoughtfully written. But the drama doesn't curb the classic appeal of superhero antics. There are heroic feats aplenty to be found within the book's pages, and Superman wears his trademark smile here much more than a frown.

This is not merely Bendis's book, however, and that's also worth noting. The art team compiled for this work is something of an all-star lineup, featuring the likes of Jim Lee, Ivan Reis, and Ryan Sook among many others. Superman looks absolutely phenomenal here, especially when drawn by Ivan Reis, his character design reminiscent of that vintage Jim Lee style, depicting him as a hulk of a man. Every punch practically sends shockwaves off the page. It's a marvel that the different art styles all come together and complement the singular story told by Bendis, and this is a testament to the quality of the book and the intentionality of all those involved to deliver a worthwhile Superman story.

Perhaps the best thing I can say about Bendis's work here is that The Man of Steel is compulsively readable. This is quintessential Superman: a fun, big story with high stakes, dealing in both tragedy and hope. The literary quality is a breath of fresh air, and makes me eager to see where Bendis takes the character from here.

Shazam! (Review)

Shazam! (2019)

I am a sucker for "coming of age" stories. It probably has something to do with my own warped childhood, which was a valiant attempt at the ordinary on one hand, and a catastrophic failure to acknowledge the twisted on the other. Stephen King's short story "The Body" and Rob Reiner's film version of the same story, Stand By Me, have rescued my psyche in profound ways, and probably in some ways I've yet to fully understand. So I have a pretty high bar for what a good story about the loss of childhood innocence entails.

I'm happy to say that David F. Sandberg's Shazam! clears that high bar, for the most part. The story begins in 1974, when a young Thaddeus Sivana (Ethan Pugiotto) is summoned by an ancient wizard (Djimon Hounsou) to test whether or not he is "pure of heart" and therefore worthy of receiving the mantle of the wizard's champion and the gift of his immense power. Thaddeus is tempted, however, by the Seven Deadly Sins, powerful demons imprisoned by the wizard, who seek a champion of their own. Thaddeus nearly succumbs to them before the wizard intervenes and deems him unworthy, sending Thaddeus away and beginning his search for a champion anew. We flash forward over forty years to the present day, and meet Billy Batson (Asher Angel), a troubled youth running from foster home to foster home, and the least likely candidate to receive the mantle of "champion" from anyone.

Billy is haunted by a particular memory, one that saw him losing his mother (Caroline Palmer) in a crowd when he was very young. He spends his time searching for his mother, determined to find her and restore what was broken by what seems to be freak accident. Billy's story is intercut with the story of an adult Thaddeus, now played by Mark Strong, who has spent the last forty years trying to locate the wizard. He succeeds, and chooses to become champion of the Seven Deadly Sins. The wizard, now desperate, finds Billy, and selects him as his own champion. With the utterance of the wizard's name, "Shazam," Billy is immediately granted the form of his fullest potential as an adult with superhuman abilities played with hokey charm by Zachary Levi.

And this gimmick, the superhuman with the mind of a child, becomes the central conceit of the film. Billy must learn what it means to be the wizard's champion, which is just another way of saying he must learn to become an adult. This kind of genre-blending shows the true potential of the superhero archetype. This isn't so much a movie about a superhero as it is about a boy who must reckon with his dysfunctional childhood and come to grips with his circumstances. I appreciate how the film refuses to indulge in sentimentality—there's no happy reunion between Billy and his mother, nor does the film take the easy way out and try to surprise us by revealing she's been dead this whole time. The truth is actually quite sinister, a fact made all the more pronounced when we realize that the truth is quite close to reality. Billy's mother simply left. She saw an opportunity to shrug off the burden of having to raise a child, and she took it.

In 2019, that concept isn't nearly as taboo as it should be. It should shock us like it shocks Billy. We should feel as betrayed as he does. We don't, because this kind of behavior is a cultural norm. "I was seventeen," his mother tells him when they finally meet, meaning, "I was too young and didn't know what to do." So she gave him up. And I commend the film for not trying to lessen the blow, for not catering to the numerous mothers and fathers who have had children out of wedlock and were far too young and used this same excuse to sidestep their own responsibilities as parents. I appreciate that the film doesn't try and patch it all up, either. Billy recognizes his mother's decision, and walks away. There's no forgiveness here. There's great offense taken, the kind of offense one just doesn't shrug off and forget. When Billy returns the little compass she gave him as a child, the trinket that has defined his life and his search for her up to this point, she doesn't even recognize it. "You'll need it more than I will," he tells her as he leaves. She doesn't even realize what she's done, and can't see the damage she's caused.

The film balances this kind of earthy human drama with traditional superhero antics and a healthy dose of comedy. The kid-trapped-in-an-adult-body gag is appropriately played for laughs, and there's a particularly hilarious scene that sees Billy use his new adult body to acquire beers for himself and his best friend/sidekick Freddy Freeman (Jack Dylan Grazer), only for both of them to balk at the taste and decide to indulge in junk food instead. It's this kind of good-natured charm that makes Shazam! a joy to watch. It's certainly not the biggest film of the year, nor is it the best film ever made. But the point is that the film doesn't try to be. It takes an old Fawcett Comics character now owned by DC Comics and stays true to the character's campy essence while updating the conceit for a modern world. It's old fashioned and rustic in the best of ways, and doesn't try to push the envelope or reinvent the superhero genre as much as it blends one genre with another, showing how versatile and iconic the superhero archetype truly is.

Shazam! is a movie about the loss of childhood innocence and the mythic hero. It's about accepting the state of things without accepting the evil behind it all. It's about learning humility and sacrifice, and naming our sins for what they are. It's about a boy who is abandoned by one family, only to be found by another that acknowledges its dysfunction, yet tries for normalcy in spite of it all. I suspect for many young men and women, Shazam! will resonate with them more profoundly than they realize, even more than a large swath of the superhero films that have been churned out by the Hollywood machine in the past decade.