POBB November 11, 2024

Pick of the Brown Bag

November 11, 2024

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag a comic book review blog by yours truly Ray Tate.  Writer Tom Taylor begins his run writing Batman in the latest issue of Detective Comics.  

Taylor’s been Batman’s director before.  

Batman: The Detective

ISBN-13: 9781779519870
ISBN-10: 1779519877

I heartily recommend that collection.  Click on the link for my in depth review.  The book may look like DC’s version of What If.   Instead, Batman in modern day London investigates an attack on two of his colleagues: The Knight and The Squire.  The art by Andy Kubert adds to the worth.

Taylor also refined his take on Batman when the detective frequently guest-starred in Nightwing.

Awwww…Dude…

In Detective Comics, Tom Taylor offers readers a fresh start.  Taylor demonstrates who the Batman is.

Batman is a haunted individual forever wondering if he could have changed things back in the day.  In a way, his behavior reflects the greatest of all detectives Sherlock Holmes.  

Holmes left to his own devices sought the needle.  He detested being bored.  Solving crime gave Holmes succor.  When Batman doesn’t have a crime to solve, he turns to his tragic past.

Thankfully, yet unfortunately, a crime distracts Batman.  Only, it’s not what one expects.

With this scene, Taylor draws on Batman’s hatred of guns.  The cowardly Joe Chill used a gun to murder his parents.  Ever since Batman reserves extra anger for those who commit crimes with guns.  He also doesn’t like to work with people who use them.  

Batman controls himself.  He slaps the baby criminal with his open hand.  That’s however not enough restraint in his opinion.  In fact Batman would have been better off slapping Sam harder.  Knocking him out.  Preventing him from running.  A forgivable error from the man who is ten steps ahead.  

Batman gives chase.

This scenario combines Batman’s role as protector and his unmatched knowledge of Gotham City.  It’s subtle.  Taylor makes every word count, informs yet makes it all sound natural.

Sam is quite dead.  With Sam’s death Taylor begins the main detective story.  Batman seeks out the White Musk Killer.  

Batman is rueful over his actions.  As well, he begins feeling the realities of age hampering his want to save innocent lives.

Batman’s age is always a touchy subject.  Historically, Batman’s eighty-five.  He’s perpetually thirty to forty in the comics.  I usually pin-point him at thirty-five in context.  Giving Batgirl a twenty-five on the index and Nightwing twenty-three.

Taylor has enough wiggle room in the subject of Batman’s age to generate a new theme in his story.  He does this by first introducing a new character into the mythology.

I sometimes simplify comic book narratives.  In this way, I can better review a book and immediately argue its worth to the reader.  Or the opposite.  Taylor’s narrative jumps around time.  Comic books being a visual medium are really good for writers using this technique.  You always know where you are in the story.  You can see it.  

When Batman as Bruce Wayne speaks Scarlett’s full name, he’s referring to the flashback Taylor and artist Mikel Janin unveiled earlier in the story.  The idea of a character speaking another character’s full name is usually, usually, a lazy device countering realism.  In this case, Batman likes to say Scarlett’s full name because she honors his mother.

 

Taylor portrays the Waynes as wonderful people.  

This fits the longstanding history that when Joe Chill ruthlessly slays them, Gotham City starts to rot.  The area where Chill kills the Waynes known historically as Park Place is renamed Crime Alley.  

Taylor creates comic book writing I like.  On the surface Taylor’s creation is as open and clean as the artwork by Mikel Janin.  So easy to read.  So simple to comprehend.  Within the apparent economy of storytelling lies recursive complexity.  

Some bit of characterization is important to the plot.  Some bit of plot is important to the characterization.  Continuity feels like history.

Scarlett apparently grew up to become a genius.  She now offers that genius to Bruce Wayne.

Alas…There’s a chance Scarlett’s the mysterious villain Batman faces in the book’s time out of joint opening.  

Back in the Bronze Age of Comics, Batman would on occasion lose an ear to an opponent.  He later turned them into welding torches for escapologist purposes.

Though I can’t help thinking that’s where my mind is supposed to travel.  The book is titled Detective Comics.  Taylor I expect is leading me to the dead end of a maze.

POBB October 14, 2024

Pick of the Brown Bag

October 14, 2024

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag.  For this missive, I look at the DC one-shot All In.  No hyphen, which is really annoying.

All In leaves you with the feeling of biting into a hollow doughnut having unsweetened frosting.  

This is simply put a bloated, empty and repetitive explanation for Bruce Timm and Company’s Justice League Unlimited, adjusted for whatever Big Stupid Event Mr. Terrific refers.

Mind you.  I like Mr. Terrific.

Timm and Company wanted to do something different for the third season of the animated favorite Justice League.   

They needn’t worry about proprietary editors.  Often not allowing characters to participate in team books.  

So boom.  Justice League Unlimited stormed onto the airwaves.  No muss.  No fuss.   Every DC hero now counted themselves amongst the founding seven members.

For those not in the know, from left to right, The Crimson Avenger, Green Arrow and Speedy, Green Arrow’s long-suffering side-kick.

Writers Joshua Williamson and Scott Snyder start the square ball rolling with Superman narrating the construction for the new JLA Satellite.  None of this breaks any new ground.

The original Justice League Satellite was a combination of membership tech.  Either mentioned in dialogue or depicted in panels.

Snyder and Williamson then shift Superman’s focus to Booster Gold--our point of view character.  

Booster Gold was a self-serving crap protagonist created in the waning days of the pre-Crisis.  

Keith Giffin's and J.M. DeMatteis' Justice League redeemed Booster as the comical partner of the Blue Beetle in the Blue and Gold double-act.  

Booster finally became a decent overall hero in the New 52.  

Mainly because writers Jimmy Palmiotti and Justin Gray needed a decent time traveler for All Star Western Comics.  No hyphen, which is really annoying.

If you are a fan of Booster Gold, All In is a special one-shot that you really can’t miss.  He’s everywhere in the story.  Everybody else can sit this one out. 

All In is not a character builder.  It’s got some nice art from Daniel Sampere and Kaya creator Wes Craig.  All In though is more like a catalog with a narrative.

All In doesn’t really set anything into motion except for a Doctor Who rip-off.

A pretty blatant one at that.

What caused the crack?  Darkseid suddenly attacks the newly refurbished JLA satellite, but his attack lacks excitement and true threat.  

He’s done with it all.  It’s a suicide run, or so it seems.

Darkseid has “concepts of a plan.”  Concepts I can’t really fathom.

This version of Darkseid isn’t the cunning mastermind obsessed with hunting the Anti-Life Equation.  He seems to be a shadow of himself, suffering from a mid-life crisis.

Everybody also keeps calling him Uxas.  That’s just ridiculous.  Nobody thinks of Darkseid as Uxas.

Darkseid is an evil New God.  This cosmic deity rules a world where suffering is the way of life.  He literally feeds on woe.  Any hope he allows to cultivate on Apokolips, is all a ruse to season the utter demoralization of the people he lords over and allows to exist.  I mean when it comes to pure villainy.  Darkseid is easily number one.

Blast from the past courtesy of Darkseid creator Jack Kirby.

Flip the book over and you get the story from Darkseid’s point of view.  For some reason, Darkseid wants to bind to the Spectre in order to…to…I have no idea why.  Even after reading.

The Spectre created by Jerry Siegel and Bernard Bailey in the 1940s was the alter-ego of murdered cop Jim Corrigan.  

Empowered by the Christian god to be the ultimate form of vengeance against murderers.  He did things like growing to Godzilla size and crushing a car full of live, screaming hoodlums, then casting it into the Pacific Ocean just for good measure. 

Covers are often metaphors or ballyhoo.  This scene actually happens in the comic book!

He never mellowed either.  In the Bronze Age of comic books, the Spectre enlarged a pair of scissors to snip a murdering hair stylist in two.  Point being.  Don’t.  Cross.  The.  Spectre.

Darkseid detaching the Spectre from Jim Corrigan, a literal walking dead man, and temporarily possessing the force, even when using the genius of the New Gods’ Himon, is way too hard for me to swallow.  

Alas.  I’m stuck with it.  What is the point?  After Darkseid is beaten by the Justice League, spoiler ahoy, I guess.  Darkseid somehow coalesces into a new universe where he is the deific force.  

Don’t ask me how this happened.  I haven’t any idea.  Even after reading.  If you glimpse the captions, Darkseid specifically states he wants to be free of the Kryptonian.  Yet what does he do when having the option of creating a universe without Superman.

More evidence that All In’s plot was hashed out 

over a poker game.

Since All In borrowed from Doctor Who, it’s fair to point out that the creators completely missed this exchange from the next Doctor, who forms the misguided hypothesis that Robin Hood is a fiction enhanced by convincing robotics.

“Why would we create an enemy to fight us? What sense would that make? That would be a terrible idea.” The Sheriff of Nottingham.

“Yes! Yes, it would. Wouldn't it? Yes, that would be a rubbish idea. Why would you do that?”  The Doctor realizing Robin Hood is a true man.

Yet, this appears to be Darkseid’s “concept of a plan.”  Create a bubble universe, a concept which used to be hated, hated, hated by the Powers That Be at DC, inhabited by the very enemies that just defeated him.

Oh, but this time.  It will be different.  For these heroes are different.  

So…what? It’s the mid-nineties again?

I have considered this plan very carefully.

POBB September 30, 2024

Pick of the Brown Bag

September 30, 2024

by

Ray Tate

Welcome to the Pick of the Brown Bag.  My name is Raymond Tate.  I review comic books.  The good, the bad and the ugly.  This week I look at a book that comes as a complete surprise. 

Who knew? Right? The Zero Hour is a mostly forgotten DC crossover.  The series attempted to repair some of the blunders that evolved from convoluted writing from the previous comic book era.  The one-shot doesn’t actually go into any of these details and neither shall I.  Most such fixes are so old that they lack even a scent of pertinence.

Books in the vein of this one-shot usually operate under the conceit that they are retrofitted chapters or actual sequels.  The 30th Anniversary Special doesn’t follow the same game.  Plain and simple, this is a guest-packed Green Lantern adventure. 

I’ve always found Kyle Rayner to be one of the better earth Lanterns.  He was never smug about wielding the ring.  He always considered it a gas and/or a privilege.

Kyle is a nineties creation by Ron Marz and Darryl Banks.  These creators combine forces once again to bring Kyle to life.  The result is throughly enjoyable.

On the whole, I found most of the Zero Hour one-shot a rewarding experience.  Especially when not thinking too hard about multiverses, plural, and the implications of the same.  You’ll also be better off if you actually know the characters, but it’s not an absolute necessity.  

Most of the time the writers spotlight the most familiar players from pop culture such as our star Green Lantern, a slightly altered Batgirl, Supergirl, Donna Troy and Fatal Five classic.

The artwork from the Zero Hour 30th is uniformly pleasing.  Even fashion whipping boy Azrael wears his least alarming costume.

The story begins in New 52 continuity proper.   

Relocated from earth, Kyle Rayner is surprised when his historical old pal and Justice League colleague Wally West shows up.

 Even more surprising, Wally doesn’t know him.

Kyle investigates the conflict, and he finds himself smack-dab in a bubble universe created by Parallax, who escaped the original multiverse-trimming Zero Hour.

You may consider this a spoiler, but it really isn’t.  On the other hand you may be asking yourself what’s a Parallax.

Parallax is the ultimate evil version of Silver Age Green Lantern Hal Jordan.  He shouldn’t really pertain to the start-from-scratch New 52 universe.  Yeah.  Comic book terminology can be complicated.  

The Big Bad reveal isn’t one because Parallax is a copy of a copy of a copy.  

Kyle suggests that in the New 52 Hal Jordan briefly became a version of Parallax, but not this one.  Much of  Parallax’s written history, like Hal Jordan’s, simply could not survive the transition of multiverses.  

That’s because all the heroes returned younger.  One of the necessities of DC’s multiverse.  Batman and the Batman Family can only age a certain amount.  Superman is an alien.  Wonder Woman an immortal.  You can fudge a certain amount of aging through science fiction or magic, but Batman is supposed to be a mortal man.  Tied to him are Batgirl, who must at least be five years younger than Batman and all the Robins.

As I said, better not to think too hard about it.  I used this phrase as my mantra while reading the Zero Hour one-shot.  Stressing the comic book part.  

Anyway.  Parallax is the Big Bad.  He created a bubble universe, presumably somewhere and when in the interim between multiverse generation.  This area is also a locus in time and space that’s navigable.  Yep.  Just don’t go there.  

The Fatal Five also managed to escape the multiverse-trimming Zero Hour.  

Parallax quickly found a use for them.  Unfortunately for Kyle.

The Fatal Five, created in the Silver Age of comic book history, became so powerful an idea that the band of villains withstood transition mostly intact to the Bronze and Platinum eras of comic books.  The Emerald Empress furthermore faced off against the modern age Supergirl.   So, the Fatal Five concept is still very much alive in the New 52.

Kyle soon realizes that he’s not in Kansas anymore.  This realization catalyzes the introduction of the alternate versions of the nevertheless familiar co-stars.  Batgirl comes onto the scene first.

As familiar readers of the POBB may expect, her presence predicated my buying the Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special in the first place.  Blue eyes a bonus.

Batgirl was still crippled during the Zero Hour.  In Hal Jordan’s Bubble Universe, she apparently never had been.  Batman on the other hand never recovered from the damage done by Bane.  So Batgirl took over the family business.  

After meeting Batgirl, Kyle reacquaints with Supergirl.

The original Supergirl sacrificed herself to save Superman and the multiverse during The Crisis on Infinite Earths.   

As she died, she ripped the Anti-Monitor a new one.  

Supergirl was more powerful than her more delicate cousin Superman. 

Supergirl fans such as myself laugh at naysayers.

The Zero Hour version of Supergirl appears to be based on the classic model.  Parallax shouldn’t be aware of her.  During the Zero Hour, Supergirl was the last survivor of another bubble universe created by the Legion of Super-Heroes’ villain the Time Trapper via comic book architect John Byrne. 

By now, you must be scratching your heads.  Given these question marks regarding origins, given this shaky multiverse piling, you may be wondering why on earth I’m recommending the Zero Hour 30th Anniversary Special.  Why am, I once considered one of the harshest critics on the Internet, why am I willing to forgive?

It’s the art.  It’s the characterization.  It’s the fun of the whole exercise independent of the multiverse musings.  It’s the surprises that actually make sense.  These facets give the book wind for the sails.

Green Lantern and the Flash met during the Grant Morrison era of the Justice League.  I don’t know if that era exists in the New 52.  The friendship between Wally and Kyle survives, and Kyle would race into the unknown for his friend.

It’s a kick to see Batgirl and Supergirl deck Kyle.  As I said I like all three of them, but the duet of the World’s Finest overcoming the Green Lantern ring’s defenses and surprising Kyle is pretty damn hilarious.

The one-shot doesn’t explain what happened to Wonder Woman.  Numerous possibilities given her nineties run of comics.  Suffice to say, it makes perfect sense that Donna Troy would be next in line to bear the Magic Lasso.  It’s power to force anyone bound to speak the truth is the most logical means to end the fight.  

What impresses me most is that the writers make Donna’s and Kyle’s history together more than just a tactic and/or plot device.  Instead their interaction a combination of dialogue and beautifully expressed, subtle emotion genuinely touched me.

Then there’s the authenticity in these analogues.  Their conviction makes them more than mere ciphers.

Sincerity in heroism is one of the main reasons why I read comic books.  

When you winnow away the ultimately superficial multiverse facade, the book becomes an entertaining treatise on what it means to be a super hero.  That’s why this book should be in everybody’s collection.