POBB August 17, 2021

Pick of the Brown Bag

August 17, 2021

by

Ray Tate

"What are you!"

"I'm Batman."

We interrupt the August Wonderpalooza for exciting news.

  Batman Returns! 

Batman's screenwriter Sam Hamm once again visits the comic book medium for an action-filled mini-series depicting the world of Michael Keaton as Batman.  

Imagined by stellar artistic mimic Joe Quinones and cinematic colorist Leonardo Ito, the familiarity hits you immediately.  

"A Hero in Black."

Saving Gotham City from criminal terrorism.  This time on Halloween.  

Exactly!

The main continuity Batman comics are confusing and annoying as all hell.  Batman's poor enough to own several townhouses beneath which lie several Bat Caves.  Caverns?  Accessible through the sewers, a lovely way to travel.  He's got a house boy-partner named Ghost Charmer and a plethora of uninteresting cast members.  

Relish in the comfort of Batman 89.  Harvey Dent visits Wayne Manor.

Where lives Bruce Wayne and Alfred his loyal, but exasperated  butler.  Essayed by the late Michael Gough.  

You may note that some time passed since Batman Returns graced us with brilliance.

If you think Batman 89 wipes out the Nipple Man films of Joel Schumacher.  Hell yeah! Decisively.  This series suggests linear time flowing from Batman Returns to the present respective day.  

Allow me to exalt something obvious.  

Nipple Man Forever and Nipple Man and Nippled Robin never were part of the canonical duet.  They were missing the most crucial element.

All right.  Enough of this fanboy worship.  Time to get down to the critical, objective eye that you're used to seeing in the Pick of the Brown Bag.

Heeeeeee! Heeeeeeee! Heeeeeee! Heeeeeee!

Oh, "I'm filled to the brim with girlish glee!"  

Hamm's story opens at a restaurant installed in that crazy Anton Furst architecture of Gotham City.  Quinones is one helluva draftsman.

District Attorney Harvey Dent wines and dines Sergeant Barbara Gordon of the GCPD.

Note that Harvey Dent is played by Billy Dee Williams.  As he loses his marbles throughout the adventure, Two-Face will also be portrayed by Billy Dee Williams.

I don't know who would be portraying Barbara.  Perhaps a young Margaret Colin.  I've always liked her since Foley's Square, and she made a good Watson for CBS' Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Something interrupts Harvey Dent's dinner date with Barbara Gordon.  The chaos of crime.

Clown names and outright pandemonium indicate the survivors from the Joker's gang banded together after their boss met his timely demise.  Batman however is onto them.

Batman took advantage of the slipshod PG-13 rating.  As such, murder, mass murder, sex, realistic and ghoulish violence, even drinking and gambling made Batman a decidedly mature crime drama.  Its centerpiece a power struggle amidst the organization is a complexity not often found in teen-rated flicks.

Like the film, Batman 89 is much riper in tone.

In addition to the swearing, you'll find Batman less concerned with the lives of criminals.  Alternately, Harvey Dent's political ambitions generate convoluted schemes that defy tradition and escalate the plot out of teen territory.  

Batman and Dent, before he became Two-Face, were allies during the post-Crisis.  In the short-lived comic strip and Batman The Animated Series, he and Bruce Wayne were good friends.  In Batman 89, he and Bruce Wayne are merely acquaintances or friends of convenience.  Harvey Dent is no fan of Batman.

The snipers present to kill Batman.  Dent wants to murder an innocent man rather than arrest him and put him on trial.  He furthermore hates Batman's pull on the populace and how the kids love him.  Dare I say that Dent is jealous of Batman?  He is the one person you would think least likely to turn into Rupert Thorne, but there it is.  

Keaton's and Hamm's Batman is more than a bad ass.  Above all, Keaton's Batman is "the world's greatest detective."  We see that when Batman deduces exactly how the Joker randomly poisons people.  That's no mean feat.  Batman simply makes it look easy.  In the last scene of Batman 89, Hamm demonstrates Batman's depth.  How he doesn't jump to conclusions and becomes a detecting shadow to reveal the truth about situations that may lie in gray areas.

In this last scene, Hamm introduces a new character the way you should.  He doesn't assume you know what he's doing.  He creates a surprise encounter, where Batman is just as confused by the newcomer as you are.  

What about being twelve steps ahead of everybody you may ask? Batman's not omniscient.  Hamm suckers Batman through the Dark Knight's true aim.  Batman is a protector.  This allows Hamm to plausibly throw Batman off balance and place him in a precarious predicament for the cliffhanger.