Today is the day I publicly thank Rich Johnston, founder of and frequent columnist on Bleeding Cool.
I am a dilettante. This blog is not my job. I do it when I want, as I want. I can make fun of a seventy-year old story in excruciating detail for seven days straight and ignore whatever giant multiverse-shattering crossover DC is demanding I pay attention to. I'm an American!
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| And with my Pointy Toes of Justice I can defy the Petty Tyrants and Would-be Cultural Hegemonists of the World, like freckled football Archie Andrews. |
So I can not-read Batman. There was a time when I didn't exercise this American freedom.
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| A freedom Batman himself shot people to protect for me. Thanks, Bruce! |
That changed.
At some point, I realized there were things I'd rather NOT know. Like what stupidity was being wrought upon Batman by the Favored Hack of the Month.
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| Some people's work (like Tom King's) is like an atomic bomb; you really don't need (or want) to be at ground zero to get a sense of what a disaster it is. |
Which is why I haven't been reading Chip Zdarsky's Batman.
And, therefore, today, I thank Rich Johnston.
Because he has been reading Chip Zdarsky's Batman so that the rest of us don't have to.
Ugh. While I do like the idea that comics are trying to justify Batman not killing the Joker, they're making a mess out of what should be obvious: the entire reason Batman isn't terrifying is because he DOES have lines he doesn't cross. He sees himself not as an instrument of justice, but of our justice SYSTEM, meaning that his role is limited to bringing criminals to trial so society can decide what to do with them.
ReplyDeleteI mean, this is so simple that children can understand it. Or used to, anyway. Certainly through the Bronze Age, Batman's deal was that he brought criminals into custody, and not that he decided their fates.
Argue if you want that the courts should sentence the Joker to death; I kind of think Bruce wishes it would happen. But he abides by the courts because Gotham is not his to rule by his personal sense of justice, and I feel like there is something wrong with this generation of readers that the very argument is alien to them.
Scott Snyder was inadvertently right about something in "Death of the Family" though. If Batman were to kill the Joker, something worse would be unleashed upon Gotham, but it wouldn't be a next-level Joker. It would be a Batman who has decided he can decide who lives and dies. And I'm not sure there'd be any stopping him.
- HJF1
My problem with the Joker is not that Batman refuses to kill him; it's that nobody else does. Joker kills my kid, I'm going to wait until Batman drops him off at police headquarters in cuffs and I'll walk up to him and put a large number of bullets in his skull. That's just me. I'm a cop; Joker kills an entire country. I'm going to walk up to him during intake and put several bullets in his skull. I'm a henchman; Joker kills Bob the Goon right next to me. I'm going to put as many bullets in him as I possibly can because I'm next. I'm a cop and he murdered my partner. The second Batman drops him off I will empty my service revolver into his skull. I'm a doctor at Arkham. Joker has murdered an entire country. I'm going to fill his veins with the most lethal poison I can possibly find. I'm me again; Joker kills my daughter. I will drop him with a rifle. I will wire his car with a bomb. I will drive a dump truck full of explosives into his Ha-Ha Hacienda. I will kill the Joker in a fashion from which he cannot possibly recover.
ReplyDeleteOne of the basic principles of bodyguarding is that it's almost impossible to stop someone who's willing to die to kill your target. Since the Joker's body count is up in the "millions" fictionally speaking, you're going to have people who are willing to die to kill him. Thousands of them. It only takes one, and crazy is not a super-power, despite what fanboys would have you believe.
As depicted, the Joker simply doesn't work. Batman can refuse to kill him, sure. Nobody else would. Not after everything he's "done" in comics.
Once you move past the Cesar Romero Joker that's just a criminal with a gimmick who maybe killed a few people, the concept is utterly untenable. It does not work.
Honestly, that's why I don't read what Chip Zdarsky or anyone else writes about Batman any more. Batman in his current conception is nonfunctional. Humans can't dodge automatic weapons fire. He's either fully armored like Tony Stark or Batman Beyond, or he's dead in seconds. It's not the 1930s and training yourself to "human perfection" will not stop you from dying at the hands of someone like me who occasionally visits the range and is nonetheless more than capable of filling you with holes. Don't get me started on the Bat-Family. They do. not. work.
Sorry, I'm venting. Pet peeve. Batman requires a reboot, absolutely. But every reboot is utterly wrong-headed. He needs to go back to the detective and mastermind working from the shadows, not waging battle with highly armed opponents. And his criminals need to be motivated by money or profit, not body count. But that would take really good writers, which aren't going to show up.
"And his criminals need to be motivated by money or profit, " Hear, hear.
ReplyDeleteBryan - I'm with you. "My" Batman is the Bronze Age one, who was skilled and smart but also fallible and about as squishy as any other mere mortal. Sort of where Batman was in the first season of "BTAS", where it was actually possible to get the drop on him.
ReplyDeleteAnd yeah, you're absolutely right that somebody or other would kill the Joker. If you're writing a story that no longer makes the status quo tenable, then think very carefully about what you're doing and whether it's worth it. Back to BTAS, there was that New Year's Eve story where the Joker was going to poison an entire crowd of people, and they managed to maintain all kinds of tension WITHOUT the Joker actually succeeding. Do that with the Joker and he remains a menace you can plausibly reuse. But actually have him kill masses of people, and letting him go back to Arkham no longer clicks.
- HJF1
Huh. What genre is Batman now-a-days? I can never keep up.
ReplyDeleteMeta.
ReplyDeleteJust wanted to say thank you for doing this wonderful blog. I drop in from time to time, and it's always a pleasure to read.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I've been reading Chip Zdarsky's run on Batman. That issue will probably be my last for some time, though.
THanks!
ReplyDeleteAnd condolences.