One Undone

Now that our long national nightmare is over and Chip Zdarsky is no longer writing Batman, I thought I'd check back in again on the title, now that Matt Fraction, a writer I have good impressions of, is writing it.

I have read that his team's immediate intent to do to "one and dones" (or,  as we used to call them, "stories") rather than The Next Arc That Will Push Batman To His Limits And Change Him Forever And Everything You Think You Know About Him And Gotham City.  Of that, I certainly wholeheartedly approve and this first issues is exactly that. Bully.

However, I am less approving of the execution of the idea.

Some of the problem lies with the stupid situations bequeathed by Zdarsky: Alfred is still dead, Jim Gordon has been busted to beat cop, and Vandal Savage has taken over both Bruce Wayne's and Jim Gordon's lives because he's now living in Wayne Manor and serving as Gotham City's Police commissioner.  These developments that feel like lunchtime schoolyard improvisations ("Yeah, well, now MY villain is the police commissioner, so there!") and wouldn't pass the Laugh Test on the Batman '66 television show.

It's substantially LESS credible than the Commissioner Nora Clavicle story, which really says a lot.

It has zero basis in Vandal Savage as a character.  Granted,  he's always been a sonic screwdriver; not a 'real character' with his own motivations (there is no way you don't get over your emotional need to Rule The World after 50,000 years), but a simple plot device to create very specific challenges. 

You know how you can tell Frankenstein's Monster isn't a "real" person?  Because you can see the stitches. So, too, Zdarsky's use of Savage is so transparently ad hoc as to be uncanny (in the bad way).  "I want ONE villain who can cause BOTH Batman and Jim Gordon to suffer peripety. Can't be a bat-villain; can't be too strongly associated with another hero's rogues gallery; needs to be one of those powerful, generic, schemers. Ah! Vandal Savage! No one will get upset about misusing Vandal Savage because no one cares about him!"

You'd think DC might have jumped at the change to retcon away Zdarky's silliness with renumbering of Batman at #1; alas.  I wouldn't expect Fraction himself to reboot all this nonsense away overnight, and I think it likely he has plans to undo it all at some point. Meanwhile...

Fraction's commitment to one-and-done seems to have boxed him into an unfortunate need to have Batman undergo a character arc within one issue.  To do so, however, has him mischaracterizing Batman on each end of the story.

Batman starts as a cynical ****, which is absurd considering how many criminal reformations he has personally bankrolled.

Apparently Batman is one of those absolutists who never recovered from reading Aristotle.

By the end, he's unmasked and is chilling with a newly neotonized Killer Croc.  
Am I the only person who misses when "Killer Croc" was just a gangster with a skin condition?  

Anyway, these extremes of characterization are, well, too extreme.  Batman as Bipolarman has already worn out its welcome.

Speaking of Batman being crazy, he seems to have created an AI version of Alfred who follows him around acting as a virtual sounding board that only he can see and hear.

Except for butterflies, 'cuz they're magical.

No, AI-fred. You asked Batman a literal question ("where are we going") and he replied not with a literal answer ("to the vivarium") but with a figurative one ("playing a hunch").  That's the exact opposite of being "literal", which, I suppose is also exactly the kind of mistake you'd expect an AI to make (but certainly not an accomplished writer like Matt Fraction!).

This is too ludicrous for Fraction to have introduced without comment, so I can only assume that it's a Zdarskyism.  It sure is wacky, but I guess it gives Batman someone to talk to without Robin by his side.

An AI assistant for Batman;
what could possibly go wrong?

Fraction is committed to helping us understand what Batman is doing and how.

TOO committed.

The story is littered with these tech-splanation boxes that remind me of "The Batwave" from "The Batman" cartoon.

 I never DID figure out what the Batwave was.

To me, they seem more interruptive than helpful.  But maybe because I'm such a studied expert on Batman Stuff, that when I see Batman issue commands into a communicator and then the Batmobile obeys the commands, I am brilliant enough to deduce that he's using a voice-command connection to control the Batmobile.

Or maybe I just have four Brother AIs in my house.

It doesn't help that Fraction uses these to explain obvious tech we've seen before while ignoring the techn-ephant in the living room:

"Please state the nature of the butlering emergency..."

I will forgive Fraction's heavy-handed use of THE BUTTERFLY as a metaphor for change, because comics, after all, are not generally a subtle medium.  What I will not forgive however is the lazy use of television news to delivery exposition:

Looks like someone never recovered from reading Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns.

Well, as long as the overt Millerisms end there it should--

Balls nasty. Licken Chegs in danger.

Ouch. Yeah, I don't know whether that's a knowing parody or an unknowing pastiche, but what I DO know is that I don't want to see any more of it. 

Miller did ONE thing that was wholly positive which everyone does and should imitate (even though almost no one remembers that Miller is the writer who did it):
MILLER made Alfred a dead-pan snarker, thus completely revitalizing the character.

So, there are definitely some hiccups in the #1 of this new "Batman" character. But I am still optimistic that Fraction will do the character more justice than his predecessor.  Am I wrong to think so...?

The Dark Knight: Commissioner Gordon

Gary Oldman is so good as Commission Gordon that you don't really notice him at all. And, yes, that's a real compliment.

You can tell Oldman is outstanding, in short, because he doesn't stand out. It's a good trick, since of all the characters in the movie, his is perhaps the moral center.

Like Harvey Dent, he's a law and order kind of guy. Like Batman, he's not afraid of unorthodox approaches to a problem. But the closest character of comparison for Captain, er, I mean, Commissioner Gordon, is Assistant District Attorney Rachel Dawes.

Both Dawes and Gordon are civilian law enforcement officials who are faced with a choice between ordinary and extraordinary methods of justices, as represented by Harvey Dent and the Batman, respectively. For Rachel, a choice must be made; you can't have your cake and eat it, too, and her romantic relationships with Harvey and Bruce highlight this dilemma.

But, for all his being a good guy, Gordon isn't an idealistic; he's a pragmatist and an opportunist. He doesn't see Harvey Dent and Batman, and what they represent, as two things between which he must choose. He sees them as two useful tools for accomplishing his mission, each with its pros and cons. To Gordon, Harvey Dent (ordinary justice) and Batman (extraordinary justice) are just two sides of the same coin.

The script makes a point of positioning Gordon as more flexible, less extremely hard-nosed than Harvey Dent. It's kind of subtle, but several times he and Gordon are in conflict about the fact all the men is Gordon's hand-picked unit don't have exactly spotless records. That's unacceptable to Harvey Dent; after all, you're either all-good or all-bad, right? Small wonder the cops call the unforgiving Dent "Two-Face" behind his back.

Gordon's a bit more practical than that. The issue is underlined later when Detective Montoya, oops, I mean, Ramirez, confesses how she was suborned by the gangsters when in desperate need for Money For Her Sick Aunt May (or some such). Is Ramirez a bad guy? No, she's essentially a good guy trying to cope with bad circumstances (like many citizens of Gotham). Gordon understands that better than Harvey does.

Gordon's real test isn't choosing between Harvey Dent and Batman (which he doesn't do). It's in deciding to fake his own death and in cooperating with the conspiracy of silence about Two-Face's misdeeds. But even in those decisions it's just about having to hurt his family and his friend Batman in the process, not any intrinsic moral principles.

James Gordon, pragmatist; he bends his principles, so he doesn't worry about breaking them. That's what makes him successful in the films and makes him the character most immune to the Joker's various machinations in the film.