Patchwork Earth Purposeful Solipsism, Nostalgic Ephemera

Review – Batman: Dark Knight, Dark City

You know, I held off as long as I could with The Unwritten. Other people have spoken out against the book, and opinion has dropped quickly on the title since its launch, and there have been some serious flaws--the first arc was a mishmash of character introductions and both of the following arcs would get things going only to turn around and massacre all of the characters except for the book's lethargic protagonist--but there was the germ of a solid idea in there and occasional grasps further up the ladder. Unfortunately, the most recent issue is where I get off the train.

The plot point of the current arc revolves around a fake novel released in the "Tommy Taylor" series, and the publisher admits in the latest issue that the fake is poorly written cobbled together from stolen ideas, including from J.K. Rowling, and the real author of "Tommy Taylor" would never stoop so low. Except that "Tommy Taylor" is an unabashed pastiche of Rowling. That Tommy Taylor and Harry Potter are basically the same character works fine for the conceit of the series, but only if Rowling doesn't exist in the book's world, which until now seemed to be the case. But to say that Harry Potter exists in this world and the Tommy Taylor series is the exact same material, but written better and for longer, leading to an even more rabid fanbase, with no acknowledgement of their similarity--it shows a lack of self-awareness that I honestly thought writer Mike Carey was above. A shame.

Anyway, a real review:

***

Batman: Dark Knight, Dark City (Batman # 452-454) - Peter Milligan/ Kieron Dwyer

This old Batman arc has been talked up quite a bit lately, as it serves as direct influence and prologue for Morrison's current Batman saga (along with the divisive Starlin/Wrightson Batman: The Cult and Morrison's own Batman: Gothic - actually, Dark Knight, Dark City has never been collected, and it would fit well in a bound volume with Gothic, as they share similar ideas and conceits). It's a pretty well-liked series--even Tucker made a point of telling me on Twitter that he thought it was pretty rad when he read it.

And there's plenty to recommend it: the premise is a solid one, that there is a demon ("Barbathos") whose invocation cursed the fledgling Gotham City in the eighteenth century, leading to Gotham's blight of madness today, and also that the demon, as personified by Gotham City, created Batman as a means to free itself. That's some solid stuff right there, and the demon possessing Riddler as a means of getting Batman to go through the ritual that will free him is also a nice touch--could this be retconned as the reason that Riddler started taking the venom drug, to deal with his possession? Does the chronology work for that?

Milligan makes some missteps, however, which detract from the story's now-classic status. That Barbatos makes Riddler into a more bloodthirsty villain is fine, and it seems like it's fed into Morrison's current thesis--we're leading up to, one would think, a final confrontation with Barbathos via Simon Hurt, representing the reason for the poisonous darkening of Batman stories (cf Batman #666 via Seven Soldiers & Final Crisis)--but it's not established until the second of the three issues. In the first issue, Riddler's casual amorality comes off less like a mystery than a mishandling of the character that is explained after the fact, when Milligan is clearly smarter than that. Also, the literary reference motif he uses falls flat: In Cold Blood, The Trial, Seduction of the Innocent, The Crying of Lot 49, and A Clockwork Orange are all referenced in ways that feel out of place--the Pynchon one may be the worst offender, since it muddies the themes that Milligan seems to be getting at. More petty complaints come with John Costanza's lettering--there are overlapping sources of narration here, and in differentiating them, he uses an overly-muddy handwriting for the eighteenth-century diary and an oddly formal typeface for the demon/city. Also, in the classic "connecting dots on a map" bit, one of the dots appears to be in the wrong place in one panel, so that the pattern gets temporarily confused.

That said, what's fascinating going back to the story now is how fully prescient it seems to be. The Barbathos ritual is all about washing in blood, threatening babies, and battling zombies--2010 superhero decadence in microcosm. What Milligan does, of course, is make a point about the whole thing being out of character, out of tone, and poisonous, something Morrison is still trying to get across twenty years later. There's a distinct impression that Milligan, though, can't quite take the whole thing seriously to begin with, given the black humor that pervades (zombie robots, the bit where Batman almost can't brake the Batmobile fast enough to avoid running over a baby, and Dwyer has one panel with a Batarang held out in a phallic way which I hope is coincidence).

The similarities between the story and Gothic are notable, as well, and they came out in the same year. Both posit that Batman was formed by something from the underworld and despite his noble aims carries something of the avatar of evil. What's interesting, though, is that each ends the story differently--in Morrison's story, Batman casts the whole thing away and on some level denies the metaphysics of what he's gone through, and given the fact that some part of Gothic exists as a response to Arkham Asylum, which went so far (or too far) in the other direction, that makes sense. But Milligan's Batman largely just resigns himself to what may be true, deeming it unimportant in the face of his obsession. It's probably a more accurate take on the character for that, and I wonder somewhat if Morrison agreed, given the denial or acceptance of mystery is a large part of what fueled the whole "Black Casebook" bit and thus the core of Morrison's "incorporate it all" take on Batman in his current run.

***

Also: I recently put up a comics newspost on Mediaelites, regarding the Pat Lee thing and the webcomics app embarrassment and such--the permalink is here--but the site appears to be wacky as all Hell right now, and links aren't working right. Hopefully it'll get cleared up soon, but I'm not sure what's going on there.