Batman and Robin #18: "Undone" (Retrospective)

Batman and Robin #18

Comic books are a fascinating medium. Blending two traditional forms of storytelling, prose and image, these stories are often scorned by the upper echelons of literary criticism—and much of it is deserved. But every now and then, one comes along that transcends genre conventions and catches the eyes of even the literature snobs. These tend to come packaged as "graphic novels." Much harder to do is tell a story in a single issue that warrants serious critical evaluation. Yet Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, and Mick Gray pulled it off.

Tomasi and Gleason's Batman and Robin title, part of DC's New 52 initiative, was a book that prioritized Bruce Wayne's relationship with his mischievous son, Damian. The title nailed their dynamic perfectly, rising above the conventional genre fare to become a thoughtful study on the relationship between fathers and sons. So, when Damian was killed in the pages of another Batman title—an odd creative decision I continue to bemoan—the status quo for Tomasi and Gleason had to undergo an obvious, serious change. Whereas the usual expectation for comic books is to brush such traumatic deaths aside with little more than a passing mention (after all, no one is ever truly dead in this medium), writer Tomasi had something else in mind entirely. And with issue 18 of his run on Batman and Robin, he delivered what can only be described as a masterpiece of the genre in a single issue.

Even more impressive, the story, titled "Undone," is told entirely without text. Usually comic books have speech bubbles that indicate dialogue between characters, or thought bubbles to indicate a character's internal thoughts, or words to indicate sound effects—there is none of that here. It's just Gleason's pencils and Gray's ink on display. Though textless, this particularly story loses nothing in the way of narrative force, as Tomasi chooses to tell this one with a total reliance on emotional beats rather than a traditional plot structure. The payoff is an unexpected emotional resonance.

Readers of this remarkable issue are carried through Bruce's very authentic procession of grief via hauntingly beautiful imagery that makes his emotional turbulence all the more palpable. As he struggles to cope with his son's death, he sits alone in complete and total darkness. He curls his fingers into his palms so fiercely the skin breaks. When he goes out on patrol as Batman, he stalks the night with unusual menace and ferocity. But try as he might to find ways of escaping his pain, he constantly sees reminders of Damian all around him, even as fleeting glimpses in the reflections of building windows. These are simple images that work on a gut level and are sure to resonate with anybody who has lost someone close to them. This is the kind of hurt that only subsides with time and distance—and even then, it subsides only because memory is a funny thing, and because something else in life will always come along to demand emotional investment. Were it not for those things, then it's likely this kind of hurt would never go away. And it all culminates in a brutal, heartbreaking final panel that will shatter even the sternest of resolves.

If the old adage that "a picture is worth a thousand words" is true, then Batman and Robin #18 is an epic of intimate scale that lays bare the darkest corners of the Batman's tormented soul. For being a completely textless issue, this comic is anything but silent.

Batman, Volume 8: Superheavy (Review)

Of all the daring storytelling decisions Scott Snyder made during his run on Batman—and there were quite a few—perhaps none were more risky than seemingly killing Bruce Wayne and letting longtime Batman ally Jim Gordon don the cowl (sans cape).

Batman, Volume 8: Superheavy

Superheavy begins some months after the events of Endgame, which saw the Batman supposedly killed during a final confrontation with the Joker. These days, there's no Dark Knight protecting the streets of Gotham. Yet the people have come together to collectively acknowledge Batman's importance, and leading the charge is Geri Powers, the head of Powers Tech, who has a bold new initiative. By combining both Wayne Enterprises and Powers Tech resources, she proposes a joint enterprise with the GCPD that would see the creation of a new, technologically-advanced bat-suit to be worn by a hand-picked member of Gotham's finest. She's effectively giving Gotham a new Batman. And the selling point? This Batman has the resources and backing of the GCPD. A vigilante no longer, this Batman would operate within the confines of the law.

Her pick for the role? None other than Commissioner Gordon himself. Throughout his run, Snyder has shown a lot of affection for this classic character. And with Superheavy, we are given the opportunity to see Gordon in a new light. We get to know his personal doubts and fears, his insecurities on full display as he attempts to settle into the role. The question of whether or not this works is probably a matter of personal taste. For my money, there's just enough lightness of touch here that you can tell Snyder understands what a hard sell this is. Gordon himself admits to this not feeling right and being a little too different from the usual status quo. Yet Snyder uses this as an opportunity to confirm the things we love most about the stalwart police commissioner: his tenacity, his doggedness, and his no-nonsense and matter-of-fact approach to crime fighting. He's not as strong as Wayne, he knows that. Nor is he as quick. But where Wayne preferred theatrics and used the fear of his enemies against them, Gordon will just as easily shoot his target with his nifty stun gun than try and scare them.

Now, there's a longstanding tradition in comic books that revolve around this sort of big event storytelling. Some of the greatest storylines in comics history have spun out of these kinds of stories, like The Death of Superman or The Infinity Gauntlet. But what readers have wisened up to over the years, is that the powers that be in the comic book industry cannot allow the mainline titles to change too much. The status quo is always reset. Superman must always resurrect. Humanity must always be saved. And, with Superheavy, Bruce Wayne must inevitably return from the dead. Snyder knows this. He knows his readers know this. So, wisely, Jim Gordon's time as Batman parallels a plot which sees Bruce Wayne, alive and well, having taken refuge with his childhood friend Julie Madison, who runs a clinic for underprivileged youth. Bruce is helping her there, but seems to have no memory of who he actually is. Ever Bruce's concerned friend, Clark Kent shows up to get to the bottom of this mystery, only to have Alfred warn him off. Alfred sees this as Bruce's opportunity to finally lead a normal life, free of the childhood trauma that led him down the path to becoming Batman in the first place.

We all know how the story will end. Bruce will return. Somehow, someway. And Snyder knows this too. In fact, he's building toward it. And it seems his philosophy is to have as much fun as possible in getting there. There's a lot of comedy here, from the intentionally goofy design of the new bat-mech armor, to Gordon's personality while wearing his own sleeker version of the bat-suit. The action is big and bombastic, which at this point is just Snyder's modus operandi. These stories feel tailor-made for a big screen adaptation somewhere down the line.

What I continue to find most interesting is Snyder's understanding and use of symbols. He's constantly exploring what Batman represents within the context of Gotham. Now, we're a long way from the mythological underpinnings of The Court of Owls or Death of the Family. I feel as though I can make a compelling case for those storylines being the equivalent of pulp fiction elevated to the level of good literature. Superheavy is a different beast altogether. This is pulp fiction knowing exactly what it is, and choosing to play happily within the confines of its genre. You'll glean some insights into characters like Gordon, but you're not going to find the sweeping, mythological elements present in those earlier volumes making keen observations about the nature of humanity, goodness, and evil. But what this shows us is Snyder's versatility as a writer, and just how malleable the Batman character really is.

Capullo's art is part of what makes the volume so fun to read. His pairing with Snyder is one of those rare comic book couplings where both writer and artist play to each other's strengths. His artwork perfectly captures the tone of the story, and Snyder is more than willing to write in these crazy sequences that let Capullo really go to work creating stunning, instantly memorable imagery.

At the end of the day, Batman, Volume 8: Superheavy is the beginning of a new kind of Batman story. And this story more or less tells you from its earliest pages just how the tale is going to end. If you're a "purist" in the sense of holding that certain Batman fundamentals never be touched, this probably isn't your cup of tea. But if you can accept the story for what it is, see the course that has been charted, and come to this story on its own terms, you'll likely find this a breath of fresh air, a fun and different take on the Batman mythos.

Batman, Volume 7: Endgame (Review)

Batman, Volume 7: Endgame

In Scott Snyder's Endgame, the Joker returns to Gotham with a vengeance. Having been rejected by Batman in the previous story to feature the mad clown, Death of the Family, Joker feels the time for cheap laughs and elaborate parlor tricks has passed. Like a deranged former flame who comes back to key the car to let you know they're not happy with how things turned out, Joker slips back into Gotham and begins making Batman's life a living hell, turning his allies against him, and ultimately unleashing a deadly toxin upon the entire city. Worst of all, it's clear that Joker has deduced Batman's identity—Bruce Wayne is compromised. Reconciliation is not in view here, and Joker isn't subtle about it. Whereas before Joker staged an elaborate madhouse that led Batman through a dark and twisted version of medieval legend in an effort to make a point about the symbiotic nature of their relationship, here Joker comes out with knives and a chainsaw. The point of it all? Batman rejected him, and now he's going to make the hero pay.

Snyder recovers his mythic touch, opening the volume with a story about the ancient Greek tragedy of Orestes and how, at the end of the play, Apollo descends from the heavens to save the characters from destruction. This motif of the "god coming down to help" is the through-line of the story, and is first paralleled in the early pages when Batman is pitted against Superman, the god-like alien descended from above, who has been infected with a particularly virulent strain of the Joker's toxin, turning the iconic hero into a madman. It is here that the seeds of Batman's mortality are planted, as he is nearly killed by the Man of Steel. Though he survives the encounter only through his wits, the point is made quite clearly: the idea of Batman, of all that Batman represents, might be immortal, but Bruce Wayne most certainly is not. Batman can, in fact, be killed. And if there's one character who thinks he has earned the right to do the dirty deed, it's the Dark Knight's greatest foe.

In Death of the Family, Snyder portrayed the Joker as a kind of forlorn, demented lover. He took that peculiar relationship between Batman and his archenemy and explored it in ways both fascinating and disturbing. Endgame is the fallout of that twisted relationship, the sifting through the pieces of the broken glass and trying to figure out the state of things now. And his take on the Joker here is something truly sublime. Because the story moves so quickly—the whole thing is a race against time as Batman tries to reverse the effects of Joker's toxin on the city's residents before it's too late—it is easy to miss the incredible work Snyder has done with the Joker character. Again, Snyder makes astonishingly good use of myth and symbolism here. As the sleuths work to figure out how to stop him, they begin to uncover hints that the Joker is actually much older than anyone could imagine, that he might just be immortal. There's a particularly arresting sequence early in the story in which Batman's ally James Gordon discovers an old photograph, and believes that he sees the Joker's face shrouded in the shadows. Greg Capullo draws this scene and others like it brilliantly, inching the genre into something closer to horror. There were several points at which I was gritting my teeth in nervous anticipation.

This question of the Joker's immortality is set against the realization of Batman's mortality. This is the Dark Knight's dark night of the soul, as he is faced with the horror that the Joker might always be there and has always been there, while he himself will not. Suddenly the Joker is no longer a not-so-funny man with bad jokes in need of therapy; instead, he becomes something like the literal face of evil, the devil incarnate. In Death of the Family, the Joker shows up wearing shabby work clothes with the skin of his old face buckled onto his skull. In Endgame, he shows up wearing a simple black suit. He's got a new face and a no-nonsense haircut. It's everything you might expect from the devil in sleeker, slimmer form—if he decided to turn his skin a chalky white and dye his hair green. There are several panels rendered in jaw-dropping detail by the art team that suggest the Joker is something more than human, that he is an evil as old as time itself, or at least its representative on earth.

Cover art for Batman #40 by Greg Capullo

This imagery is intentional. Take, for example, the brilliant cover art for the original issue #40 of Snyder's Batman run. The image, done by Capullo, uses the old Christian motif of St. George slaying the dragon, only the Joker is cast as the dragon, and Batman is the spear-wielding St. George. The story is clear: Batman is going up against evil itself—and there's only one way this story can end. Snyder is a darn good storyteller who knows how to spin his yarns around themes. There's not a wasted page, as every panel serves to further the plot, and all the literary motifs are brought to the fore. This is the story of how the Batman dies, sacrificing himself to ensure that the Joker, the embodiment of evil, will not rise again. Throughout the story, Bruce Wayne comes face-to-face with his own mortality, and must come to accept his own death. The final brawl feels more like a clash between titans than a scuffle between men. But this is not just pure spectacle, as there is a certain emotional heft that comes with Bruce knowing he is likely going to die here. The question is whether or not he'll be able to stop the Joker from rising again.

Endgame very much feels like a period at the end of the sentence Scott Snyder began way back with The Court of Owls storyline. There are some unresolved plot threads involving a mysterious substance that may be the key to immortality that come back into play here. Much in the same way the Court of Owls are able to raise their Talon assassins from the dead, the Joker seems to have found a way to preserve his life, or at least put himself back together, considering how he met his apparent end back in Death of the Family. So Batman ventures back to visit with the Court of Owls and battles another Talon, all in an attempt to find out how to stop the Joker and his deadly toxin. His investigation also takes him back to the research done by Dr. Karl Helfern, a villain Batman battled during the Zero Year storyline, which puts him on the trail of Dr. Paul Dekker, a genius in regenerative sciences. Dekker's research becomes the key to helping Batman understand the significance of "dionesium" (named after Dionysius, the ancient mythological figure associated with rebirth and ritualistic madness), the substance that has been present in all of Snyder's stories, and the apparent means by which Joker has managed to regenerate.

It is, admittedly, hard to see where Snyder could take the story from here. He has explored Bruce Wayne's early years as Batman, put his own definitive stamp on the character's life with the introduction of the Court of Owls and Lincoln March, and now he has told the tale of how the Batman sacrifices himself to ensure that evil is finally beaten. But anyone who is a student of myth knows that something feels incomplete. Though it appears that the Joker is gone, evil will rise again. The people of Gotham are left without hope. Indeed, the story cannot end here. There must be a resurrection.

Batman: Endgame is a crackling good story, propelled with a sense of urgency and made emotionally resonant by pulling together the threads of all that has come before. It works both as Snyder's most literary story yet involving these characters, and as a stunning finale to his Batman epic, even though we know there is more to come. As always, the art by Capullo, Miki, and Plascencia is wonderful. By using this team of four consistently, there's a kind of visual continuity present in Snyder's run that isn't common to ongoing comic titles like this one. It's a nice thing to see, and helps readers really immerse themselves in this unique world that has become its own kind of modern mythology, complete with its own tropes and iconography. But by taking a literary sledgehammer to the Batman status quo, Scott Snyder has taken an icon of pop culture and reinvested him with a sense of mythic scope and purpose. The end result is a brilliant piece of literature that can stand in the annals of comic book history as one of the greatest Batman stories ever told. In many ways, Snyder's work here is the answer to both snobbery and cynicism, as the former doubts that comic books can be taken seriously as works of literature, and the latter suggests that one must only look to Alan Moore or Grant Morrison and "postmodern deconstructionism" to find solid literary reflection in the world of graphic novels and comics.

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.

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year - Dark City (Review)

Batman, Volume 5: Zero Year - Dark City

The fifth volume of Scott Snyder's Batman epic, Dark City, concludes the Zero Year storyline in suitably grand fashion. I've pointed out before that one of Snyder's strengths as a writer is his ability to blend genres, and Dark City is perhaps the best showcase of this. It's a tricky thing to tell an unexpected story, especially with a familiar character. Yet Snyder continues to defy the odds by spinning a new and interesting origin story that hits all the right character beats, demonstrating just what makes the Batman a complex and serious literary character.

The previous volume, Secret City, was a fun, pulpy narrative that began with its foot on the gas pedal and never really let up. Those same high points of breathless adventure are present in Dark City, but here they're more subdued, and really occur toward story's end, where they function more like a traditional climax. Instead, the story opens with a mystery. One of my frequent complaints about the Batman character is that so often his "core" is lost. The character got his start in a pulp magazine called Detective Comics. He is given the mantle of "World's Greatest Detective." But more often than not, Batman stories—on both page and screen—tend to lose this element of his character. Batman is first and foremost a detective, and a darn good one at that. So it's a welcome thing to have this volume kick things off with a good ol' fashioned detective story.

We begin in the aftermath of Edward Nygma's attack on Gotham City. With Gotham in a blackout, first responders are working tirelessly to get the city's power back online. Things take a turn for the gruesome and bizarre, however, when the police begin discovering bodies with their bones having burst from the skin and twisted into something more like beanstalks. While Gotham's only honest cop, James Gordon, works the crime scene through proper channels, another detective begins investigating from the shadows. The Batman is a relative newcomer to Gotham City, and people are still trying to figure out his role in things. The current police commissioner, Loeb, is adamant Batman is a threat. Gordon isn't convinced, and continues to try and see the big picture.

Batman's investigation leads him to mad scientist Karl Helfern, who has taken the moniker of Doctor Death since his experiments to try and develop better bone structure in humans failed. Doctor Death is a nice throwback to one of Batman's original 1939 villains, and a clear indicator that Snyder is working to honor Batman's rich legacy as much as he is telling an updated origin story for modern readers. Batman's investigation into Helfern takes up much of the first half of the volume, and the story unfurls like a moody detective story straight out of the old pulp era. The shadows are long, the terror is real. But as Batman uncovers the true threat, the man behind Helfern's descent into madness—Edward Nygma, now calling himself "The Riddler"—the story changes gears into something unprecedented. When Riddler blows up the nearby reservoir, flooding the city, we jump forward some weeks in time to find that Gotham is now something more like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. Batman is believed to be dead. Riddler holds the keys to the city, having cut off all access points, and controls things from an undisclosed location. Gotham City stands on a knife's edge.

But, of course, Batman must return, and he does so in glorious fashion to rescue the city from destruction. This is a story we've seen told a thousand times. Gotham City is threatened by a megalomaniacal super villain, and Batman must stand in the gap to battle the villain and ultimately save the day. In one sense, there is nothing special here, nothing new. In another sense, though, there is something to be said for a familiar story well-told. And that's what Snyder does here. In a way, this is Batman stripped down to his bare essentials. Gone are the gadgets that usually give him the edge in combat. When he can't solve the problem with his fists, he is forced to rely on his cerebral powers instead. Often forgotten is the fact that Bruce Wayne is a kind of genius, on top of being a physical powerhouse. In many ways, his mind is his ultimate weapon. You might beat him in fisticuffs this time, but he's always thinking, learning, calculating a way to turn the tables on you in the next encounter. Snyder understands this, and in Dark City he gives us a Batman who is as quick as he is strong, as sharp as he is deadly. Beating Riddler doesn't take much strength. It's hard to fight the man who would rather just drop a building on you than face you himself; on the contrary, it takes a brilliant mind to outthink the man who is always plotting ten steps ahead. You beat him by outwitting him—and that's exactly how Batman finally beats Riddler.

Perhaps the most satisfying element of Dark City is how Snyder gives us a Batman who learns. Bruce Wayne is young, only in his mid-twenties or so. He's new to this caped vigilante business, and he makes mistakes aplenty. He fails to anticipate Doctor Death using Wayne's friend, Lucius Fox, against him. He fails to stop Riddler from flooding Gotham City. These are devastating, costly mistakes. But he learns from these mistakes, and that's what makes him dangerous. It's absolutely fascinating to watch this angry young man morph into a hardened crimefighter, learning all the lessons that will be crucial in his later battles. Most of those lessons come through in the story's quieter moments, which are easy to miss thanks to the pure spectacle of the action scenes.

For example, Batman learns that allies are necessary. He must rely on people like Lucius Fox and Jim Gordon to help him bring down Riddler. There is a subplot running throughout the story that focuses on Gordon, who is perhaps one of the most underrated characters of the entire Batman mythos. In a slight twist, it turns out that Bruce Wayne harbors great disdain for Gordon, believing that Gordon is just as corrupt as the rest of the cops in Gotham. But as the story unspools, it's revealed that Bruce has misread things, and that Gordon is anything but corrupt. He's stalwart and ineffably straight, a true cop who cannot be bought, bullied, or outdone. Snyder deepens Gordon's character, and makes a real case for the value of uncompromising virtue. In a world where pretty much every character has some serious flaw or psychological disorder, Jim Gordon is a constant. His unwavering commitment to justice as well as his will to fight in Dark City makes it clear why he will go on to become Batman's greatest ally in the fight to save Gotham for many years to come.

All these heroic feats make this story a comic book classic, but Snyder's most profound insight into the character of Batman comes at this volume's conclusion. In the weeks following Riddler's fall, as Bruce Wayne steps in to help rebuild the city, Gordon is finally made police commissioner, and the status quo we're accustomed to begins to fall into place, Bruce's trusted butler, Alfred Pennyworth, tries to set Bruce up with Julie Madison, an old girlfriend. There is a touching sequence in which Alfred envisions Bruce's life with Julie, where Bruce gives up being Batman and elects to settle down and raise a family, having finally escaped from the darkness. But Bruce rejects Alfred's attempt to reintroduce him to Julie and steps fully into his role as the city's dark protector. Batman, Bruce argues, must become a symbol for the city, to show people that they do not have to live in fear of evil men. And this, Bruce insists, makes him happy. Alfred counters his assertion by saying, "You say that because you don't know, Master Bruce. You don't. There are joys you haven't experienced. Deeper types of happiness." But his words fall on deaf ears, and Bruce simply, tragically, replies, "Not for me."

The irony, of course, is that Alfred is very right. He is the only one who sees the Batman for what he truly represents. Whereas Gotham City might look upon Batman as a hero, as a symbol, Alfred understands that there is a human being behind the mask. That Batman is actually Bruce Wayne. And Bruce Wayne is a young man still traumatized over witnessing the death of his parents, still hurting at having grown up alone. Batman, Alfred understands, is not so much a hero as he is the manifestation of one boy's wanton act of self-destruction, a dark alter ego that Bruce indulges to numb the pain. If there is one complaint I have about this Batman story, it is that Snyder does not devote more time to exploring this notion. Alfred is noticeably absent for a good majority of the story's latter sections, and seems a bit underused. Then again, it could be his absence that makes his insight so profound. While Batman is off saving the city, Alfred waits alone in the darkness, for Bruce Wayne to reemerge and come home again. And when it's necessary, Alfred will step in and do what needs to be done to keep Bruce Wayne alive. He tells Bruce at one point, "I might not agree with you, ever...but I'll always be there to patch you up."

There is a dimension of sacrifice to Alfred's character that goes unsung all too frequently. Alfred is understated, and remains at Bruce's side because of the sense of commitment he has to the Wayne family. He is a man of honor, but he is intelligent and caring enough not to play into Bruce's delusion that Batman is somehow good for him. He understands that Batman is a choice, a choice Bruce makes to remain on life support, a choice that offers temporary relief, but does nothing to heal the pain. He speaks to Bruce of "deeper happiness," and I cannot help but think of C. S. Lewis and the "deeper magic" of The Chronicles of Narnia. Out here in the real world, we all must face our personal tragedies. And in the process of doing so, we run the very real risk of putting on a cape and a cowl, of convincing ourselves that sometimes our darkness is the best we can hope for. And that darkness doesn't necessarily manifest itself in stereotypically bad ways; in fact, most of the time our darkness works its way out in glittering vices as we indulge the things we like. These are the things that keep us on life support, the things that keep us numb to our pain, the things that keeps us from a deeper happiness—happiness defined as a thing that doesn't always wear a beaming smile. Following Jesus Christ is not always a happy venture. As any honest Christian will admit, it's usually one marked by a deep sense of loneliness, profound loss, and great and terrible pain. But there is a kind of resoluteness to Christianity, a strong resolve to make the hard but necessary choice to let Christ tear into our wounds in order to heal them.

See, our tendency is to think that Bruce makes the heroic choice by choosing to remain as Batman and forfeit his chance at a normal life with Julie. But the truth is—and Alfred sees this—the choice to remain Batman, for Bruce, is the easy way out. It's just another way of closing himself off, of remaining numb, of avoiding the human element. This truth is what makes the Batman such an important and profound character. He has as much to say about the human condition as any of the great literary figures throughout the ages. And like the best of those characters, Batman provides us with a strong warning. We, like Bruce, need allies in the midst of our own little battles, each and every day. It's not impossible to go at it alone, and in many ways we would prevail. But the real cost, the loss of the human element, ensures that the darkness that will eventually consume us is one of our own making. This is the great warning Alfred puts before Bruce. It's the great warning that Batman puts before us all.

With the Zero Year storyline, Scott Snyder tells a rollicking tale that seems tailor-made to be adapted for the big screen, offering up big, bombastic action sequences over against quieter character moments that are easy to miss. As always, the art by Greg Capullo is second-to-none. Batman has never looked better. And no small amount of credit goes to inker Danny Miki and colorist FCO Plascencia. The colors splash and electrify in hues of purple and red, and there are some truly stunning panels that plaster a silhouetted Batman against a sky marred by forks of lightening. This story is sure to go down as another classic, as Snyder continues to outdo himself with each subsequent volume. I'm eager to see where he takes the character from here.

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City (Review)

Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City

Scott Snyder shakes up the Batman mythos again with Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City. With the New 52 initiative, the DC Comics universe underwent a soft continuity reboot. The slate of character histories was wiped clean in favor of establishing new and updated stories, effectively bringing their pantheon of heroes into today. Being one of DC's biggest properties, Batman's well-known backstory was one of the many that came under new penmanship. How fortunate that Snyder was the one wielding the pen.

After three quintessentially dark and murky Batman stories, the bright splash of color that greets readers on the first pages of Secret City is both a jarring and welcome shift in tone (having Danny Miki and FCO Plascencia on ink and colors, respectively, is nothing short of a revelation). The very first panel establishes that this is Gotham City, but six years ago. And this is where things take a turn for the surreal. The city lies in ruins, a kind of hellscape where fish swim in flooded subway tunnels and the buildings are overrun with overgrown shrubbery. Into this strange, post-apocalyptic world comes a child, who is almost immediately assailed by thugs. Enter the Batman, like you've never seen him before. Instead of his trademark cape, he's packing a rugged rucksack and crossbow. Instead of the classic Batmobile, he's mounted on a mud-slicked dirt bike meant for navigating harsh terrain. This is Batman by way of Mad Max. He saves the child, who proceeds to tell him that a mysterious "he" has been telling everyone that Batman is dead, "ever since he killed the city."

"Good," Batman retorts. "Then he won't see me coming." And suddenly we're off again, jumping back in time another five months, where we meet a younger Bruce Wayne—before he becomes Batman—who has an axe to grind. He has only recently returned to Gotham City after some years of being away, and everyone believes him to be dead. He wants to keep things that way. See, even though Bruce has yet to become the Batman, he has wasted no time getting his hands dirty as a street-level vigilante, working to infiltrate the vicious Red Hood Gang. Bruce is a young man, looking to be somewhere in his mid-to-late twenties. While he's full of piss and vinegar, as the old codgers say, he's a tad unrefined and takes ballsy but unnecessary risks.

The story established here is poles apart from Snyder's two previous narrative arcs. Which is an intelligent storytelling decision. After the dark subject matter of Death of the Family, having something a little lighter in tone gives readers who are in for the long haul some room to breathe. Snyder executes these kinds of genre shifts with a kind of flawless perfection. He has such an understanding of both the Batman character and classic genre tropes that he can flip between horror, thriller, adventure, and even science fiction with ease, exploring Batman through a multitude of lenses. If the first two volumes were action-thrillers, and the third flirted with horror, then this volume is firmly planted in the pulpy, adventure-thriller genre. For a retelling of Batman's origin, this is completely appropriate, given that the character was originally conceived by Bill Finger and Bob Kane in 1939, at the height of the old pulp fiction era.

Noticeably absent from this volume is Snyder's trademark use of mythological themes. This isn't necessarily a criticism, as Snyder is a master of genres, and he puts the storytelling emphasis not on symbolism, but on character development and big, bombastic set pieces. It works for the more adventurous feel that this volume is going for.

There are three major relationships Bruce develops throughout the narrative. The most obvious one is with his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. Ever the caretaker, Alfred is quite opposed to Bruce's harebrained schemes, and early in the volume the two have a rather startling confrontation. Alfred has serious issues with the fact that Bruce refuses to reveal himself to the world and reclaim all that he is entitled to as the sole heir of the billion-dollar Wayne estate. He even goes so far as to accuse Bruce of behaving as a coward, and tells him that his parents would be ashamed. When Bruce turns physical, Alfred gives him a much-needed slap to the face—it's a jarring moment. After Alfred storms away and refuses to help Bruce further, Bruce flies into a fit of rage. This is a young man full of anger and defined by his pain, specifically the pain of having lost his parents to a senseless mugging as a child. This singular moment from his past is what drives him. Every criminal he faces down essentially wears the mask of the man who murdered his father and mother. There's very little selflessness here, and Alfred is right to walk away.

Another relationship of note is the one between Bruce and his maternal uncle, Philip Kane. Not long after Bruce's return to Gotham, Philip finds him. In Bruce's absence, Philip has been running Wayne Enterprises, the company that is the Wayne family legacy. With Bruce now back in Gotham, Philip approaches his nephew and asks him to reveal himself to the public and to return to Wayne Enterprises as the golden boy of Gotham, since the company never really recovered in the wake of the Wayne murders. Bruce refuses Philip's proposal, but is disturbed to learn that the Red Hood Gang has been stealing non-lethal arms manufactured by Wayne Enterprises. As the story unfurls, it becomes clear that Philip's not the most honest businessman, being that he has actually been negotiating with the Red Hood Gang to sell them small arms, in hopes of deterring them from stealing the more dangerous weapons. Caught between a rock and a hard place, Philip is drafted into the gang and is looking for a way out. The man he turned to in the past, a strategist with his own sordid history, is one Edward Nygma. It's clear that Nygma is Philip's confidant, and when Bruce refuses Philip's request to return to the public sphere, Nygma suggests that Philip should have him killed in order to gain public sympathy. While Philip's difficult position is to be appreciated, he is clearly a weak man who always looks for an easy way out and who is now paying dearly for it.

The third (and most interesting) relationship Bruce forms in the story is with the leader of the Red Hood Gang. As the name suggests, the gang is identified by the crimson masks each member wears when carrying out gang-related activities. There is implied to be a system of rules in place within the gang that prohibits the members from divulging information about their personal lives to one another. So each member is assigned a number, which becomes their gang callsign. As such, the leader of the gang is identified as Red Hood One. Now, this is where being a bit of a serious Batman reader pays off. One take on traditional Batman mythology tells us that before the Joker became the Joker, he was a small-time criminal known as the Red Hood, and only becomes the Joker after a confrontation with Batman leaves him boiling in a vat of chemicals. In Snyder's rewriting, it's clear that Red Hood One is the modern incarnation of the classic Red Hood villain. Though we only ever glimpse the man under the mask and never see him outright, Capullo brilliantly ensures the Joker's trademark hook nose is present, as is a penchant for unsavory jokes and a dark fascination with the Batman. It's a subtle thing that unfamiliar readers are likely to miss, but it's worth pointing out that Red Hood One and the Joker are likely one and the same, if only because of the nice parallelism with Snyder's previous yarn. As Bruce Wayne evolves into the Batman, Red Hood One evolves in the Joker. The hero and the villain are intricately tied together, even in origin. In a turn of sinister poetry, this provides a basis to the Joker's codependence on Batman, which was the highlight of the previous volume, Death of the Family.

The story forward is by the numbers, yet there's something to be said for doing something familiar, and doing it well. It gives the things we're accustomed to a new sheen, and that's exactly what Snyder does with Secret City. After Philip chooses to go public about Bruce's return on his own terms, his strategist Nygma goes behind his back and hires the Red Hood Gang to kill Wayne, and they nearly do. Broken and alone, Wayne heads to the only place he has left to go—Wayne Manor, where Alfred is waiting to patch him up. His brush with death giving him a new perspective, Bruce reconciles with Alfred and resolves to fight this war on crime in a different way. In a powerful moment, beneath the cold stare of Thomas Wayne's statue, Bruce resolves to "become a bat."

As Batman, Bruce begins dismantling the Red Hood Gang through fear tactics and guerrilla warfare. When he uncovers a plot involving the ACE Chemical Processing Plant, he chooses to combat the gang on two fronts by finally going public and announcing his return to Gotham, reclaiming the Wayne legacy. The story's climax involves a battle at ACE Chemical between Batman and the Red Hood Gang, during which Philip sacrifices himself to save Batman, and Red Hood One is dropped into the vat of chemicals despite Batman's attempt at saving him. Again, this is all pretty familiar territory for Batman fans, but the execution is done well enough that it's a thrill to read anew.

The biggest twist comes in the final pages of the main story. Batman and Alfred are discussing the outcome of the battle at ACE when Edward Nygma—now calling himself the Riddler—causes a city-wide blackout. This, of course, sets the stage for the story told in the first few pages of the volume, which depicts Gotham as a devastated cityscape. It's definitely an interesting wrinkle in Batman's backstory, but one that will have to wait until the next volume to pay off. The backup stories collected at the end of this volume give snapshots of Bruce's training sessions around the world. These are smaller, self-contained stories that are equally as fun as the main plot. One short story that stands out is titled "The Pit," and depicts a 24-year-old Bruce Wayne who has battled in a death match in Norway for 28 hours straight, simply because he refuses to kill his opponents. His instructor, a cryptic woman identified only as the Queen, tells him that the lesson he has yet to learn is that the only way to win a war is by finally killing his opponent. Sparing lives only leads to battles being won, not wars. Or so she preaches. But after hours of fighting, it turns out that no man is willing to set foot in the pit, having been frightened into submission. Bruce wins, having conquered his enemies with fear. It's a nice touch, demonstrating the beginnings of the scare tactics the Batman will eventually use to keep the villains of Gotham in check.

This volume is certainly not as deep as Snyder's previous work on Batman, but deep is not exactly what this particular story is going for. Batman, Volume 4: Zero Year - Secret City is a fun, adventurous romp through Bruce Wayne's earlier years, that provides an interesting context for the relationship between Batman and Joker. It drips of pure, pulpy goodness and fist-pumping excitement, with a zinger of an ending that promises a bigger and more unexpected story to come.

Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family (Review)

Scott Snyder's Court of Owls storyline dealt with themes commonly found in Greek mythology, from the Court's labyrinth to Bruce Wayne's long-lost sibling. Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family shifts gears, taking the Batman mythos into territory that is positively medieval. This book is not Snyder's first foray into writing the Joker, as he penned a take on the character in an earlier Batman story, The Black Mirror. But the character's appearance in that story was tantamount to a memorable cameo. With this volume, Snyder finally gets to dig his fingers into the character's guts, and the yarn he spins here surpasses the previous two volumes (excellent in their own right) in terms of sheer storytelling prowess and mythological power.

Batman, Volume 3: Death of the Family

The Joker is a character that, at first glance, should never have worked. A thin, demented clown should in no way, shape, or form become the biggest threat to a grim and hulking protagonist like the Batman. Yet the character has become Batman's greatest antagonist, growing into a comic book icon in his own right. And this has nothing to do with the physical threat he poses to Batman; in truth, Batman can (and often does) manhandle him. Instead, Joker poses the greatest threat to the caped crusader when he attacks Batman psychologically and emotionally. Snyder understands this, and writes the Joker accordingly. The effect is darkly sublime, causing Death of the Family to read less like a superhero story, and more like a spine-chilling psychological thriller.

But Snyder's brilliance is not merely in his well-written characters; rather, what makes his work on Batman a modern classic is the way he imbues his stories with mythological symbolism, which has quickly become his trademark. While the Court of Owls storyline evokes the themes of classical Greek myths, Death of the Family taps the vein of medieval archetypes.

The story kicks off with a zinger that could have been lifted from a horror film. Joker, having previously had the skin of his face filleted off, has been absent from Gotham City for a year. Reborn, in a sense, he heralds his return in monstrous fashion by stalking into the GCPD where the face is being kept as evidence. He retrieves the face, leaving a body of dead police officers in his wake. Batman arrives on the scene, and the plot unfurls as Joker's horrors compound and Batman races to stop him. The key lies in Joker's twisted machinations, which sees him reenacting a number of his former crimes. With his allies quickly becoming victims, Batman follows the trail of destruction to a reservoir, the site of his first encounter with the Joker. Of course, Joker is waiting for him, the decayed flesh of his old face strapped onto his skull, giving him a hideous and truly frightening visage.

Here at the reservoir, Joker makes his intentions more pronounced. He has returned, he explains, to bring Batman back to form. He reasons that Batman's reliance on his numerous allies, known as the Batman Family (Nightwing, Batgirl, etc.), have made Batman soft. And Joker sees it as his job, as the "court jester," to make Batman, the "king," strong again. "And that's all I've ever tried to do for you," he says. "Bring you the worst news of your own heart so you might survive it, laugh at it, even, and become strong." To do this, Joker explains that every member of the Batman Family must die. And that shouldn't be a problem, because Joker claims to have acquired each Family member's true identity, which he has written down in a small notebook that he keeps on his person.

This initial encounter at the reservoir lays the groundwork for the themes Snyder's story will ultimately deal with. The imagery of Batman as a kind of mythological king is recapitulated time and again throughout the book. Interestingly, the voice of this particular mythology is the story's villain. The Joker sees himself as the only one who truly "gets" Batman as this mythological figure—a king, of sorts. And this fixation underlies his motivations to wipe out the Family. Batman's allies make him weak, Joker believes, precisely because they humanize him. But to Joker, Batman isn't human. He is representative of something more primal—a myth. And Joker's goal here is to wipe out Batman's allies so that the cat-and-mouse game he plays with Batman can go on into a harrowing eternity. Batman as the mythological king, and Joker as his court jester who spices up the king's dull, mundane existence.

The middle act of the story takes place in Arkham Asylum, the legendary psychiatric hospital where Batman's rogues' gallery are often taken after he has captured them. This old gothic structure plays as the king's castle, the perverted Camelot to Batman's dark Arthur. As Batman stalks the hallways, which look more like dungeons and crypts with every panel, he encounters numerous villains from his past, dispatching them with a ruthless efficiency on his trek toward Joker. There are several powerful moments here that arrested my attention. The first is a surreal one. As Batman navigates one particular hallway, he is nearly struck by a burning horse that Joker had turned loose in the Asylum and set afire. The image of the flaming horse racing down the dark hallway is not easily forgotten. The second finds Batman flanked by a number of Arkham inmates that Joker has freed and dressed in a kind of pseudo-medieval armor using police gear. Equipped with riot shields and flaming batons in place of swords, Joker refers to them as "Galahads and Gawains," an obvious reference to the characters of Arthurian legend. One of them even rides a horse. After dispatching them, Batman mounts the horse and travels deeper into Arkham, encountering a series of live bodies suspended from the ceiling, all stitched together to create a stomach-turning "royal tapestry" upon which Joker has painted scenes from his and Batman's previous encounters. Batman passes the human tapestry to the hellish chanting of "Hail the bat king!"

When Batman finally encounters his nemesis, Joker plays the ace up his sleeve. He reveals that he has captured the Batman Family, and the only way to save them is for Batman, as the mythological king, to take his place on the "throne," which turns out to be an electric chair. Of course, to save the Family, Batman does, and is shocked into unconsciousness.

The scenes taking place in Arkham are the most memorable of the entire volume because of their powerful symbolism and imagery. Capullo's art really shines here, painting one gruesome scene after another that plays like a descent into madness the deeper Batman ventures into the asylum. Snyder's use of the villain to develop the mythological conceits of his story is a tactic already seen in his previous two volumes, but it is even more effective here because of the subtle shift in genre and tone. Most any good Batman story is fueled by elements of the noir and thriller genres, but in Death of the Family, Snyder takes these elements to the extreme while throwing in a dose of horror for good measure. It's a chillingly effective concoction, and the dialogue boxes that give the reader insight into Bruce Wayne's internal thoughts are the real gems of the issue, demonstrating the psychological toll Joker takes on even the stalwart protagonist. A vision of Batman may haunt every criminal who prowls the streets of Gotham City, but it is the disturbing image of the Joker who haunts the Batman.

When Batman awakens, he finds himself lashed to the same chair in a familiar system of caves—the caves leading back to Wayne Manor and Batman's base of operation. In the caves, Joker has prepared a nightmarish dinner party. The Family is also present, bound to their own chairs. Joker explains that the cave has been doused in gasoline, and whenever Batman grows tired of the Family's company, all he has to do is escape from his chair. This will ignite the gasoline, burning his allies to death. When Joker threatens to set fire to the Family himself, Batman escapes, trigging the ignition. But, ever the thinker, Batman blows the ceiling of the cave, allowing a torrent of water to wash in and quench the flames before the Family can be harmed. Joker attempts to escape, but Batman pursues him to a dangerous precipice in the cave system. At the edge of the sheer drop, Batman claims that, during Joker's absence, he had managed to deduce the history and the true identity of the man who had become the Joker. As Batman threatens to whisper the man's name, Joker unexpectedly hurls himself over the edge, falling into the black nothingness below. Batman recovers the little notebook that Joker claimed contained the identities of all the Family members, but its pages are blank.

There are at least two other themes of note here that make Snyder's take on the Batman-Joker relationship worth exploring. The first is the notion of family. A major plot point of Death of the Family has to do with how the Joker managed to locate the caves beneath Wayne Manor in the first place. After his initial encounter with Joker at the reservoir, where Joker claims to have uncovered the Family's identities, Batman confesses to his allies that there was a point in time, years earlier, in which he suspected Joker could have traced him back into the cave system. Bruce had kept this piece of information from the Family, and justified his decision to do so as an attempt to protect them. He assures them that he worked and reworked every possible scenario, and is confident that Joker never made it far enough to learn their secrets. Still, his allies confront him for never telling them of even the potentiality that their identities had been compromised. This theme of familial secrets is nothing new; Snyder already treaded these waters in the earlier Court of Owls arc. In that story, the emphasis was on the value of keeping certain painful truths from those whom the truth might hurt; however, in Death of the Family, this theme is explored from the opposite side. By the story's end, the Family remains upset with Bruce for having kept this from them. In keeping the secret, Bruce was less concerned with protecting his family than he was simply not trusting them to handle the truth well.

This is a small but significant detail that resonates with anyone who has had to deal with a particularly difficult kind of family member. Bruce rationalizes away his inherent mistrust of the people closest to him by saying that he kept the secret to protect them. The truth, though, is that this was a critical choice that allowed him to retreat within himself, a seemingly simple choice to remain silent, which turns out to have dire consequences in the long run. Despite the Joker's brutal assault on the Family, at the end of the day, it's not the Joker's attack that cuts Bruce's allies the deepest. Instead, it's their patriarch's lack of trust in them that wounds them profoundly, and drives a wedge between them and him. Joker's accusation that the family makes Batman weak by humanizing him actually has a bit of truth to it. Specifically, the family humanizes Batman precisely because—as all families or close-knit friends tend to do—the members bring out the flaws in the hero's very human alter-ego, Bruce Wayne. The people with whom we are close are always the first to feel hurt by our actions, and the people who know us best are the ones who can pinpoint our deepest insecurities and character flaws. Wayne's reliance on his allies, even when he wears the cape and cowl, reflects a very human component to the character of Batman. They keep him from stumbling over the brink, from being swallowed up by the darkness that is inherent in bearing the mantle of the dark knight. During his final confrontation with Joker in the caves, Batman states that it is actually his trust in his family that makes him strong. In other words, it is his trust in others, in someone other than himself, that keeps him grounded and ultimately saves him from his own darkness.

The other theme of note is an interesting one, and concerns the relationship between Batman and Joker. A codependent relationship is a sometimes-controversial psychological concept in which one individual's thinking revolves almost entirely around the other individual in the relationship. It is a kind of addiction that frequently rears its ugly head in dysfunctional families, unhealthy friendships, and romantic entanglements. This is a particularly sinister kind of addiction that masquerades as being other-focused, but is actually a deep-set caliber of narcissism in which the codependent says to the other individual, "You are what I say you are, because that is precisely what I need you to be." I've seen this strong, manipulative kind of relationship play out with friends, within my own family, and have even been guilty of it myself. It is the antithesis of genuinely caring for another human being, of giving that person the freedom to fail or to be better on their own terms. It's a closed-fisted way of dealing with others, fueled by an inward bend of the spirit that operates under the pretense of being concerned with and sacrificial for the sake of the other. And this is the very same type of relationship the Joker espouses in regards to Batman.

There are bound to be some critics who want to focus on the strange eroticism that is laced throughout the Joker's portrayal in this story. Indeed, the Joker's scenes with Batman are tinged ever so slightly with a loose sexual tension. To be sure, I do not believe this is a political statement on Scott Snyder's part. The point of portraying the Joker in this way is not to make readers scrutinize these scenes in an attempt to ascertain whether or not these characters are homosexuals. Rather, what Snyder seems to understand and to write extremely well is that codependent relationships always come entwined with a kind of erotic energy. I use erotic here not to denote explicit sexual tension, but in a more Lewisian sense, to denote eros, the extremely desirous parts of the human being that is ignored only to one's detriment. In short, what Snyder understands is that true eros, as Lewis advocates it, is actually a good and healthy desire to know and to be known by another, be it in a romantic relationship, or merely a good friendship. But what the Joker exhibits is eros gone horribly, horribly awry.

Upon their initial meeting at the reservoir, Joker greets Batman with a bizarre "Hello, darling." During their battle in the caves, he rages against Batman's trust in the Family, screaming, "They're not your real family! We are! I am!" And right before throwing himself into the abyss, Joker says, "This isn't what you want! You know it, I know it, and now they know it, too! In the end, the real end, the only ones left will be you and me." For Joker, his relationship with Batman is symbiotic. One cannot exist without the other, because Joker, in his own mind, completes Batman. He believes that he makes Batman stronger by continually pushing the dark knight to the brink of his humanity over and over again. Perhaps the most telling thing, though, is how Joker reacts when Batman threatens to whisper his true name. By throwing himself into the abyss, Joker effectively says that he would literally rather die than face reality.

This same warped psychology is found all throughout the narrative. When he accuses Batman of having grown dull because of the Family, this results from his refusal to see Batman as a human being. In Joker's mind, Batman is a myth. In his delusion in the caves, he says the reason he removed his own face was to show Batman that "Beneath my grin, though, is just more grin! Ha ha! And beneath that face of yours is something snouted and fanged and lovely and that's what this is about. Reminding you of the bond we share, you and I!" Only with him, Joker insists, does Batman truly become transcendent. In Joker's mind, Bruce Wayne doesn't even exist. There is only the Batman. And when Batman turns the tables on him, by claiming to know Joker's history and true identity, he essentially threatens to crack Joker's delusion. In giving the Joker's name, Batman would shatter the illusion that they are both these mythological figures caught up in some cosmic hunt. It would prove that Joker is just as vulnerable as Batman, that both of them are actually mere mortals who are in need of serious, serious help.

The story ends as Bruce Wayne converses with his butler, Alfred Pennyworth. He explains to Alfred that, years earlier, just after he realized the Joker could have slipped into the caves, he had traveled to Arkham Asylum, where the Joker was an inmate, and visited him. Only he had gone not as Batman, but as Bruce Wayne. The Joker, it turns out, did not acknowledge him. In that moment, Wayne says he knew that the Joker did not care about Batman's identity beneath the cowl. Joker, he realized, was ultimately a narcissist who had become transfixed on the idea of Batman, thus removing him from all reality. To him, it was all one big fantasy. The Joker didn't have categories for facing Bruce Wayne instead of Batman. "It would," Bruce says to Alfred, "ruin his fun."

This dark, moody, and absorbing thriller is a brilliant character study. Snyder's take on the Joker is unique and completely unnerving, elevating the character from homicidal maniac to true monster. Greg Capullo and Jonathan Glapion craft some truly stunning art, effectively capturing the tone and mood of the story. With Death of the Family, Scott Snyder has written another instant classic.

Batman, Volume 2: The City of Owls (Review)

Batman, Volume 2: The City of Owls continues the story that Scott Snyder began telling in Batman, Volume 1: The Court of Owls. The first volume introduced us to the Court of Owls, a ruthless cabal of powerbrokers who have been operating in Gotham City for centuries. The Court kicks off the plot when it targets both Bruce Wayne and his alter ego, the Batman. Severely underestimating the gravity of the threat, Batman is beaten and Wayne is nearly killed by the Court's deadly assassin, the Talon. While Wayne recovers, the Court unleashes an army of Talons upon an unsuspecting Gotham City, and the first volume ends with the Talons emerging from the shadows, ready to ensure the streets of Gotham run red.

Batman, Volume 2: The City of Owls

The story picks up as the Talons assault Wayne Manor, where Bruce is still recovering with his trusted friend and butler, Alfred Pennyworth, by his side. What ensues is a harrowing sequence in which the Talons attempt to finish what they started, killing Wayne and therefore ending Batman. But never to be outdone, Wayne discovers a means of defeating the seemingly invincible Talons through sharp detective work, dispatches them, and quickly returns to his role as Batman. For the remainder of this horrifying night, Batman and his allies battle the Talons across Gotham, successfully staving off their attack and saving a number of their targets, but the victory is not without casualties. Many of Gotham City's most important political figures are killed in the attack, including the promising mayoral candidate, Lincoln March.

This is a rather straightforward conclusion to the story begun in the previous volume, standard comic book fare. What's interesting is that this portion of the story is wrapped up early in this second volume. For a twist in the narrative propels a story threatening to stall out into personal territory with incredibly high stakes. Previously, Snyder dealt with the theme of pride, framed in the mythological context of Theseus and the Minotaur. Here, he pushes the thematic envelope even further, dealing with the concept of forbidden knowledge, in the mythological context of brotherhood. The story even goes so far as to reference Romulus and Remus as underpinning the narrative, itself a mythological construct pointing back to the account of Cain and Abel.

It has been a long-held belief in the Batman mythos that Bruce Wayne was an only child. His parents were killed in front of him when he was just a boy, the defining event of his life that put him on the road to becoming Batman. But Snyder subverts expectations once again by revealing that Bruce's parents, Thomas and Martha, had another child that had been born with defects due to a car accident, and had only lived for twelve hours. But through the usual comic book outlandishness of secret serums and other such things, Snyder suggests to both Batman and the reader that perhaps the child had survived. Perhaps that child had been found and raised by the Court of Owls, honed into a lethal weapon who, when the time was right, would ascend to the top of Gotham's social hierarchy as Thomas Wayne, Jr. and effectively depose Bruce as the city's golden boy—the jealous brother who attempts to kill the honorable brother. We learned in the previous volume that the Court's assassins, the Talons, had remarkable healing abilities. This Chekov's gun fires on all cylinders in the second volume, as the supposedly dead mayoral candidate Lincoln March is revealed to not only be alive, but a member of the Court of Owls with regenerative abilities—more than this, he claims to be the long-lost second son of Thomas and Martha Wayne.

This is certainly an interesting wrinkle in the Batman mythos. Wisely, Snyder never actually settles the issue of March's parentage definitively. Of course, Batman and March have a fierce battle that sorta-kinda ends in a stalemate. Batman escapes with his life, and March's body is never recovered, suggesting that he is still alive. But as Bruce reflects on these apparent revelations, he points out that the Court of Owls could very easily have taken in any orphan and brainwashed him into believing he was the younger Wayne brother. Usually, this kind of ambiguity bothers me, but in this case I think it works to benefit the story. See, another major theme running through both volumes has to do with secrets and trust. Early in the first volume Wayne learns that his first adopted son, Dick Grayson, was originally slated to become a Talon for the Court of Owls. Wayne elects to hide this information from Grayson, until the two have a heated argument. Dick, angry at Bruce for hiding this from him, walks away. At the end of the second volume, as the storyline featuring the Court of Owls is wrapped up, Grayson returns and talks with Wayne again. This time, it is Wayne who is certain that, had his brother actually survived, his parents would have told him, that they would not have kept hidden from him the truth that they very well might have sent the boy off to a children's home. But Grayson tells him that he now understands the value of keeping some terrible, painful truths a secret from those whom it might hurt more, and suggests to Bruce that his parents could very well have kept that secret simply because Bruce was, at the time, too young, and it was not his place to know.

The themes of pride and forbidden knowledge are admirably interwoven in Snyder's tale. Bruce's pride in knowing Gotham City better than anyone is undone by the existence of the Court. By the story's end, he comes to learn that not only did he misjudge the city, he could very well have misjudged his own family. Some secrets are worth being left in the dark, some knowledge is better left unlearned.

But perhaps the best illustration of this theme comes not from the main plot. Interestingly, after the main storyline has wrapped up, this volume features a collection of shorter backup stories that help to flesh out the world and events surrounding the main story. One of these stories, entitled, "The Fall of the House of Wayne," is written almost completely devoid of dialogue. Instead, the story is recounted in the context of a letter penned by Alfred's father, Jarvis Pennyworth, who was the butler to Wayne's own parents. In the story, which flashes back to when Bruce was just a boy and Thomas and Martha were still living, we learn that Jarvis was present during the car accident that injured Martha and supposedly resulted in the death of the youngest Wayne. In fact, Jarvis suggests the car accident was no accident at all, that it had been orchestrated by someone who wanted to see Martha dead because she was willing to stand up to corrupt city officials. Jarvis believes the Court of Owls is responsible, and the story ends with Jarvis being hunted down and murdered by one the Talons.

This backup story by Scott Snyder, James Tynion IV, and Rafael Albuquerque, is economically and thoughtfully written, and beautifully illustrated. It is also surprisingly moving, penned as a father's final words to his son, revealing himself to be the keeper of dark secrets concerning a noble family. There is a nice little coda at the story's end that finds Alfred standing at his father's grave, wondering whether or not the Court had anything to do with his death. Bruce comes out to comfort him, and we get a nice contrast between the two men. Bruce, younger, fueled by rage, is concerned about finding the "truth" behind Lincoln March and the Court of Owls. In other words, he just can't seem to let it go. When he says as much, Alfred quips, "You'll find the facts. The truth is that even if you and Lincoln share the same blood, you still lost your brother in a car accident when you were just a boy." Alfred, older and wiser, suggests that the best thing for both of them to do is leave the past buried with their lost loved ones, to grieve in all the necessary ways, and to move on. It's a heart-rending moment that one does not expect to find when picking up a comic book. It's enough to make one wish the whole affair had been framed and penned in this way.

So, the second volume wraps up the story begun in the first. There is closure here, an ending that leaves the plot pretty open (it's the nature of the comic book medium), while offering a satisfying resolution to the story's emotional beats (a harder trick to pull off).

To make a personal connection here, I recently learned that my mother miscarried before I was born. It was something of a surreal experience. I was shocked to have learned it, and my mother was shocked I hadn't known. So much of my life has been defined by my only-childness. I do have a half-sibling, but she and I agree that our childhoods were so vastly different, our experiences so opposite, that we do not think of ourselves in the way, I would assume, normal siblings with common experiences do. We are our own people, more like childhood friends. And, for what it's worth, I think our relationship is stronger, better for it. I have often wondered what different trajectory my life might have taken had I lived in the shadow of a true, full-blooded brother or sister, present in my life from either my birth or theirs. But those kinds of thoughts were flights of fancy until that conversation with my mother. I eventually asked one of my older friends (she's basically my second mother) exactly how I should feel about it. But she, like my own personal Alfred, reminded me that processing such things could elucidate some worthwhile emotions, but in the end, some specters are best left to rest undisturbed. I would be a very different person, probably a bit less self-absorbed than I am, but probably a lot more of a jealous person as well.

I remember reading this Batman story years ago, when it first arrived on store shelves. It seems to me to carry even more significance now. Like all good myths, this is a story that ages gracefully alongside us. A story to come back to time after time, if only to rediscover something that catches us all over again. For now, it's going back on the shelf. I look forward to rediscovering it later on down the road.

Batman, Volume 1: The Court of Owls (Review)

In September 2011, DC Comics rebranded and relaunched its entire line of comic books under "The New 52" initiative. Scott Snyder, having finished up his stunning run on Detective Comics, was moved over to the mainline Batman title. While his previous storyline, The Black Mirror, featured Dick Grayson beneath the cape and cowl, with The New 52, Bruce Wayne was back as Batman, the status quo was restored, and I was eager to see how Snyder chose to reintroduce the dark knight to the world.

Batman, Volume 1: The Court of Owls

The story Snyder chose to tell effectively laid the groundwork for themes that his Batman epic would go on to explore. From 2011 to 2016, Snyder and his team took the Batman mythos and catapulted it into the realm of truly mythic storytelling. And this all began with The Court of Owls.

The story begins, as most good Batman stories do, in Gotham City. Bruce Wayne, the billionaire bachelor and reigning crown prince of Gotham's socialite upper class, leads a dangerous double life. By day, he runs Wayne Enterprises, a multinational conglomerate and his family legacy. By night, he stalks the city's dark underbelly, investigating heinous crimes and pummeling any number of deranged criminals while dressed as a bat. He is the Batman of Gotham, and he prides himself on knowing his city inside and out. Positively nothing catches him off guard.

Until a man is murdered in a particularly gruesome fashion, and the Batman is called in to investigate. Working alongside GCPD Commissioner James Gordon, Batman begins to peel away the layers of a mystery darker and far more odious than he could have ever imagined. It turns out that there exists a cabal in Gotham City that has remained buried in the shadows, hidden even from Batman himself. This cabal of powerful men and women—known as the Court of Owls—essentially controls Gotham from the shadows, and has now set it sights on the Batman. The Court lures him into a dangerous game that makes for one thrilling story, rife with mythological undertones.

Most obvious, at least at first, is the storyline's focus on pride. And, true to mythological form, pride is conceived in the acquisition of knowledge. Just as Satan tempted Eve using the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil, Batman takes a dangerous amount of pride in knowing Gotham City, its history, its secrets, better than anyone else. This, he believes, is what makes him so effective as the city's dark protector. But numerous times throughout the story, he is warned by two of his closest friends, Alfred Pennyworth (Wayne's butler) and Dick Grayson (his protégé), that perhaps he does not quite know Gotham as well as he thinks. This, of course, only fuels his desire for knowledge, and Wayne takes it upon himself to dig deeper into the mystery, if only to prove what he thinks he already knows. But as he peers deeper into the darkness, his long-held convictions concerning his city begin to crumble as he learns a truth that has been sealed up for centuries: the Court of Owls, once believed to be nothing more than an urban legend, is real, and Batman has been a pawn in the Court's game. Bruce Wayne, it turns out, does not know his city. The Court, the city's best-kept secret, has remained hidden this entire time.

His pursuit of the Court lands him in the middle of a mysterious labyrinth. The mythological connection here is not to be missed. In Greek mythology, Theseus ventures into the Labyrinth at Knossos and slays the Minotaur. Much in the same way, Batman is dropped into the Court's labyrinth and stalked by one of the Court's assassins, called a Talon. A vicious killer, the Talon hunts Batman inside the labyrinth for several days. But rather than kill him outright, the Court wants to first teach him a lesson: Batman operated in Gotham insofar as the Court allowed him to do so, and now it is time the Court called him to heel. There is a deep history to this dangerous consortium, and we are told time and again that they are much older than Batman, that they were there in Gotham first, and to them, he is just some Johnny-come-lately to a dangerous party that's been raging since the city's foundations were established. Wounded, starving, and fighting for his life, Batman wanders the labyrinth, clinging to the shadows, slowly losing his grip on sanity. The Court tempts him with water that is likely drugged with hallucinogens or worse, and attempts to break down his mind by showing him numerous pictures of previous victims, all of whom died while trying to escape the labyrinth. It's all somewhat disturbing to read, my pulse was pounding the entire time.

Of course, Batman manages to escape. Because he's Batman, and because this story must go on. And the remainder of the book, smartly, deals with the emotional and psychological fallout. I don't know if it was the intention of artist Greg Capullo to draw Bruce Wayne in this way, but in the opening pages, Wayne seems younger, with a hint of that reckless Harrison Ford-esque look about him. But after he emerges from the labyrinth just a few days later, it's as though he has aged years. Wayne is a darker, more grim individual because of what he has gone through. It's a subtle but strikingly effective touch that is a testament to Capullo's skill as an artist. It's those kinds of nuances in detail that I appreciate when reading a comic book. And Jonathan Glapion's inking keeps the world of the book appropriately moody without being dull, yet is still vibrant in certain places to allow for some truly stunning panels. Capullo's art and Glapion's ink really jive with Snyder's storytelling, synthesizing perfectly so as to give the book a distinctive and—more importantly—consistent tone.

What Snyder illustrates so well in his opening salvo is the oft-discussed lesson of Proverbs 16:18, which states that "pride goes before destruction, and a haughty spirit before stumbling." The real daring in the way he has chosen to tell his story, though, is that the prideful character just so happens to be the protagonist. And that protagonist just so happens to be one of the grandest icons of pop culture. But the true brilliance of Snyder's Batman lies in how Bruce Wayne deals with his time in the labyrinth in the aftermath. This is a Batman capable of accepting defeat without resignation. Though he escaped the labyrinth with his life, he did so barely. And he accepts this. Bruce acknowledges that he had misjudged the situation from the start, that the reality of things had been concealed behind what he'd wanted to believe, and what he wouldn't allow himself to see. It's a quieter moment amidst the fury, but this instance of reflection and self-awareness on Batman's part is the kind of thing we need to see in those to whom we look as mentors and in whom we put our trust, even if those individuals exist only on a page or on a screen. It teaches us the value of admitting when we are wrong, that we've missed a step, of accepting that we were mistaken, without resigning ourselves to despair, which itself is a way of looking at sin without recognizing the possibility of forgiveness. But this belies the grander point, one that is too often misconstrued by our culture. Namely, that Bruce Wayne's heroism is not found in his willingness to dress as a bat and battle psychopaths in the dark; rather, true heroism lies in one's ability to recognize one's own errors, and in one's ability to make the difficult but necessary changes going forward. This cuts the heart out of pride, and echoes Christ's words in Luke 14 in which he casts a vision of the eschaton by explaining that those who exalt themselves will be humbled, but the ones who humble themselves will be exalted.

Batman, Volume 1: The Court of Owls is worth reading on the strength of its convictions concerning pride alone. It is a rare gem of pop culture that spools a yarn of mythic proportions dealing with a classical theme. Effectively paving the road for what lies in store for Snyder's Batman epic, this is a rip-snorting thriller that ends with a pretty suspenseful cliffhanger, making it nigh impossible to not look forward to what's coming in the next chapter of Snyder's epic.