"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
Well you are preaching to the choir. Snyder had Gordon become Batman! Thats pretty nuts. Not to compare this run with other runs too specifically but I do think both Snyder and Morrison were even so, less radical than what King was attempting with the marriage. Odd that marriage can engender so much controversy, but we've all seen it before in comics and other media.
Looking forward to discussing it. About 90 percent of it I liked.I think HiC is still a good book, though it caused more anger than pleasure in the fandom, and thus was not a good move. I am curious to know what would have happened if Didio had given King a different character than Wally. But I can't think who wouldn't have had a fanbase really mad about it.
Every day is a gift, not a given right.
There's an inherent anti-marriage bias in a lot of pop culture. See also, the longtime theory that you can't let characters get together in TV shows.
It's because a lot of writers are bad at writing long term relationships. They are okay with writing a new romance, because it has natural milestones. The natural milestones of marriage are a lot more difficult to pull off - children, buying houses, getting better jobs to pay for these things. That doesn't fit as well with "doing noble deeds to win the heart of your beloved".
Yes, it's because so few writers are willing to do the harder work here.
Just try the New 52 Superman. Or better yet, don't. It was horrid for Lois and Clark.
I also think that it's a misperception of what teen boys actually like. I was also a teen when Spider-Man was married, and I loved it as well. I was so angry when they split them up that I didn't buy a Spidey comic for the 10 years they were split up. (Well, not main universe)
I liked some of the tie-ins. I think the real problem was that the hype didn't fit what was happening in the book itself. No one else was really hyped in the book besides Batman and Catwoman, so the big production felt false in an "in universe" way.
That being said, I did love a lot of the stuff I could get, like the Wedding Album with all those gorgeous covers.
I am hopeful that since Batman/Catwoman will be a future fic, we'll get to see whatever he wants to do. Including a wedding, since Annual #2 says they are married.
I quite liked Gordon Bats! But I do agree that King is doing something to try to give Batman something more - whereas Snyder and Morrison were trying to describe what Batman had already.
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
One of the reasons I'm excited for Bat/Cat, and love the pre-50 stretch of the run, is how well King writes a long-term relationship. It's a breath of fresh air when it's done well because usually it's bad or not attempted, as you said.
It's also why I find 50 to be so frustrating. This is where the overall shape of the story starts to come into focus, and it's a choice I still find to be weaker than the alternative (even despite generally enjoying what's ahead), because it removes King's one of unique strengths as a writer to instead tell a more typical structure of boy gets girl / boy loses girl and knightmare complications ensue / boy gets girl back forever the end.
50 includes a lot of King-ism hallmarks but all of them are kind of off the mark here.
—The letters / splash pages are not as effective as earlier and later examples of integrating flashbacks with letters... too maudlin, too corny. And a lot of the art looks rushed.
—The plotting and pacing is illogical to emphasize theme, but none of it really adds up to any kind of original honest insight. It's all contrivance.
—There's a cliffhanger twist ending that doesn't make any sense but has you intrigued nonetheless
King's oft-repeated premise for his story is, paraphrasing- "Batman turns pain into hope. Every villain always gives Batman pain, but what if you gave him hope?" - it's a great observation and an interesting question... and it feels like 50 punts on it, rather than exploring an answer. The break-up just gives him pain. We know what that looks like, it feels very ordinary even despite unique execution. In the end, Bane and Thomas were sort of manipulating him and Cat to get together just to break up so that Bruce would spiral like never before, breaking his heart instead of his back.
I think the more interesting story path would've paired them together in marriage, whether it's legal or not, and continued exploring the ramifications, perhaps even in the face of a devastating and debilitating attack from Thomas and Bane. It seems like something King would write very well.
So yeah 50 is frustrating. But then Cold Days is so good, so.
Well observed indeed. King's writing of the marriage in Vision was so well done, I know he could make it powerful (and will) in Bat/Cat. But I think, much as I like the 18 pages of main story in 50, that it was the less interesting choice he could have made. If you get rid of all the letter stuff (which I mostly do - just skipping over it to read the beautifully parallel sections), all of the insight that King puts into the letters are much better expressed in Knightmares.
What could have been...and what hopefully will be, when Bat/Cat finally comes (probably no sooner than June, sadly )
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
I think the letters also interrupt the flow of the issue while in other cases, such as I Am Suicide, I see them more integrated into the narration, part of the story. It’s also interesting that in IAS the letters work as some sort of Voice-over and tell a different story that the things that are transpiring in Santa Prisca, while usually narrators in comics have more to do with the thoughts of the protagonist about the stuff he is facing. The letters in IAS help you reshape your view of the events that are being developed, but in issue #50 the letters are used to emphasize in the feelings of both characters but I think in a less natural way and in this case the text isn’t as powerful as it tries to be and it isn’t adding anything new to what we have already seen in much better developed stories of the pairing such as Annual #2 or Rooftops
Last edited by Chubistian; 03-01-2020 at 01:28 PM.
"The Batman is Gotham City. I will watch him. Study him. And when I know him and why he does not kill, I will know this city. And then Gotham will be MINE!"-BANE
"We're monsters, buddy. Plain and simple. I don't dress it up with fancy names like mutant or post-human; men were born crueler than Apes and we were born crueler than men. It's just the natural order of things"-ULTIMATE SABRETOOTH
Well said.
I personally think the IAS letters are the apex of this particular form of King-ism — whenever the narration V.O. is displaced in time from the actions depicted, as a letter or recording or speech.
It reminds me a little bit of Miller in Year One, even though his narrative boxes generally do run concurrently with the action, there are times in Year One when Bruce's journal is more abstract and less descriptive of the moment. Batman seems to live 48 hours for each day, but I do like the idea that he always makes time for journaling and writing letters. Bruce is a compulsive creative. It's funny that he's sort of portrayed as being emotionally withdrawn in a lot of ways, and yet he's also expressing himself constantly... writing logs of each case and adventure, game planning for war game scenarios, keeping detailed files on every person he knows, and poetic love letters. Not to mention the creative aspect of inventing Batman as a character he'll theatrically portray for a career in anonymous freelance police work.
Might be run to rank those. Off the top of my head...
1. I Am Suicide / Cat's letter in 10 and especially Bruce's letter in Batman 12
2. Claire's epilogue in I Am Gotham
3. Alfred in Batman Annual 4
4. I Am Bane finale / Mom
5. Kite Man interlude in War of Jokes & Riddles
6. Alfred's recording in City Of Bane
7. Thomas's recap in Fall And Fallen / "how can I help?"
8. KGBeast and the Russian children's story of animals in the pit
9. There's others I'm forgetting
10. The Wedding in 50
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
"The Batman is Gotham City. I will watch him. Study him. And when I know him and why he does not kill, I will know this city. And then Gotham will be MINE!"-BANE
"We're monsters, buddy. Plain and simple. I don't dress it up with fancy names like mutant or post-human; men were born crueler than Apes and we were born crueler than men. It's just the natural order of things"-ULTIMATE SABRETOOTH
And we get into my personal favorite part of the run: the last third (though we originally thought it was the second half):
Cold Days, The Better Man, Beasts of Burden (51-57)
Cold Days is quite simply, a masterpiece. Lee Weeks and Elizabeth Breitweiser just put their whole hearts on the page, and even though it's primarily a Bruce story, it's still got some of the most exciting Batman action scenes in the run through the flashbacks. The 12 Angry Men references are also really fun, with the final reveal in the last issue being a very nice piece that makes the other pieces fit together.
The Better Man is a good story - perhaps a bit sentimental (but I'm not the world's biggest Dick Grayson fan), but very sweet and heartfelt. However, I'm really not a huge fan of the art, and I don't quite see how the coloring could have made it better, given the coloring of the original artist on the cover. Ah, well.
Beasts of Burden I didn't like much the first time through, especially the fairy tale - but the way the fairy tale came back, and the image of the pit became more and more powerful in the run, I appreciate it a lot more now. Plus, of course, all the references to the original KGBeast story. There is a sense to which King played the same game as Loeb in Hush, using all the biggest villains and toys in a single story - but over a much longer period, and much more unevenly (even though I much, much prefer King's work to Loeb's).
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
Huh. Good point on the Hush comparison (and come to think of it, Bane's master plan does seem like it could make just as much sense coming from Tommy Elliott). I agree on preferring King's work to Loeb overall; I had noticed a connection between them before, but I was thinking of The Long Halloween (minimalist and repetitive dialogue to emphasize theme; Bat/Cat; and liberal use of the full rogues gallery).
Cold Days is A+++
The Better Man is nice but it's frustrating that this is Dick's send off; frustrating that he had to be shot in the head at all, and doubly frustrating that the story thread was left dangling and almost entirely unaddressed again within King's run.
It might be worth it if the story that resulted was worth it. I don't feel like Beasts of Burden justified the callous breaking of Nightwing. It seems like there could've been any other reason to get Batman to go to the ends of the earth to take down KGBeast... off the top of my head: say instead KGBeast shoots Batman in the head; he's protected by the cowl's helmet but you still get the splash page and the horrific ending. Of course Batman recovers and goes after him, refusing Nightwing's help because this is personal. In confronting KGBeast he'd get his first hint of Bane's master plan, which he'd follow up on in the next arc of Tyrant Wing.
I know that King has some responsibility for Dick getting shot and Alfred dying, but I think it's not really fair to blame him for that, since he has pitched, multiple times, storylines that would come out of those events instead of what we got that I think would have been really good.
I do think that Beasts of Burden, other than the really cool thematic foundation it lays, doesn't really need to be there outside of shooting Dick, which doesn't really need to be there for the whole plot to work. Tyrant Wing is much more important, plotwise.
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord
Yeah it's not great when an entire story can be removed from a run like this, where everything is contributing to the "one big story", and having it not really matter.
I know it was editorial and not King that used the bullet to segue into the memory loss direction, but it's all just unfortunate and unnecessary. Looking at it only in the context of King's run, there's just not really any satisfying payoff to such a major character suffering such a major fate. It's just not ever mentioned again, really, aside from one or two passing references to Ric. It feels unresolved.
It'd be like if Bane snapped Alfred's neck, but then there was no issue with the recording, and the payoff is just beating Bane.
"We're the same thing, you and I. We're both lies that eventually became the truth." Lara Notsil, Star Wars: X-Wing: Solo Command, Aaron Allston
"All that is not eternal is eternally out of date." C. S. Lewis, The Four Loves
"There's room in our line of work for hope, too." Stephanie Brown
Stephanie Brown Wiki, My Batman Universe Reviews, Stephanie Brown Discord