Too Much Batman.

[ladymirth]

Urgh. Now I remember why I never got into Superhero comics.  

1) It's like Days of Our Lives, only more bizarre and it never ends. 
2) The writers have something deep and fundamental against heroes remaining happy. 
3) All that Earth 2, Earth 1, Infinite Crisis of Earths shit. How does anyone keep them all straight? 
4) All the brightly colored spandex. Even Superman can't live that down. 
5) Moral ambiguity and the fact that every single psycho has some kind of sob story for why they turned out the way they did. I never thought I'd see the day when I would relish the idea of somebody who just liked being evil for the fun of it. 
6) Nobody can fucking stay married or dead. Again, like Days of Our Lives. 

Also, Batman is a lot more fucked up in the comics than even Chris Nolan could begin to comprehend. I'm not sure I like him very much. He's too aloof and intimidating and emotionally retarded. 

For me, the only good stories are the ones  that know when to end. 

I think I'll stick to Nolanverse from now on, thanks. Comics are all well and good, but they should be consumed occasionally and in small doses. 

I might feel differently in the morning, though. Right now, it's 1.30 am, I have a headache and I feel  rather traumatized after reading about the plot of Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker.

*gets Zantanna to mind-wipe all memory of DC comic storylines from mind* 

Comments

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

1 & 6 - Comics have different styles. And eras. Yeah, there's a definite soap opera feel to modern comics, but they're not all like that and it wasn't always that way.

2 - Yes. There's this idea in writing that happiness is boring. It's not just comics, but it is a problem that shows up more in comics, where you have these ongoing storylines and characters who have to continually interest readers for years. So they'll let them be happy, but not for long. Always has to be a conflict or a crisis or something to drive the story. It gets overdone, especially with Spider-Man and Batman.

3 - That's precisely the reason for Crisis. Things were getting out of hand. Too many universes. Too much backstory. Too many people who jumped from one universe to another or came forwards or backwards in time. Crisis was the DCU's cosmic reset button. It "rebooted" continuity and (for a while) did away with alternate universes entirely. But things got clogged again and so they had to reboot it again. And... they're trying. But they don't want to stifle the writers' creativity too much, either...

Marvel used to be better about things. Not always now. But you might want to try Ultimate Marvel. It's published by Marvel, written by the guys at Marvel, and features versions of the familiar Marvel characters, but it's a separate universe. Created about 10 years ago, with the idea of starting fresh and doing things the way they should be done. There's only one universe they write about, and major events in one book (are supposed to) impact other books, and for quite some time they managed to keep people dead (there are still only a couple of people who have come back).

4 - Things have to be colorful. It's the way the medium works. Also, it goes back to the printing process they used to use. There were four layers - red, blue, yellow, and black. Each page would be printed four times, with one color added. So they'd print the black layer. And then line it up (if you look in the lower left corner of the first page, you'll see the boxes used to line things up, and if you look closely at the images you'll see the individual circular pixels). Change the ink and the set-up. And print the red layer. And then do it another two times. So you could draw in primary colors easily. Secondary colors (green, orange, brown, purple) were doable. But that's about it. So the good guys are all in reds and blues and the bad guys are all green and purple and everyone has blue eyes (because eyes are too small to fit two colors of pixels well). By the time advances were made and adopted, the look and style was established.

5 - Moral ambiguity is relatively new, actually. It was a result of the deconstruction that took place in the 80s. If you go back to the Silver Age (50s-70s, roughly), you won't see that at all. Instead, you see Good Guys and Bad Guys and barely a nod to motivation for that.

TBC...

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

As for Batman... they've done a lot with him. And different writers have different takes. There were a few years where every summer he would become paranoid and untrusting and push everyone away and become a big jerk. Learn his lesson at the end of the storyline... and then do it again next summer. It was really stupid. (And that's not the worst of what they did in the annual Gotham Crossover Event Of The Year.) They've learned, though, and they're doing better. And, again... the darkness is a result of the 80s (the "grim & gritty" period, which gave birth to The Punisher and Wolverine and such). If you dig back before that, you'll see a happier, saner Batman. Problem is that he's also more of a cartoon, a cardboard cutout. It's nice to see him with some depth and personality. And, like I said... they're learning. Making his personality better and more balanced. Just a question of who's writing...

And, I'll rec Astro City one more time. It's lovingly written, and stories have ends and people have depth and character and dead generally means dead and time moves normally (so, unless it's a flashback, an issue published in 2001 takes place in 2001 and everyone has aged 6 years since 1995). One of the original goals of the series was to spearhead the "reconstruction" of superheroes. Watchmen and Dark Knight Returns had started a "deconstruction," where everyone pointed out the silly and nonsensical nature of the Silver Age and all the things that didn't work. Took apart the heroes and put in all this darkness and nuance and shades of gray. With Astro City, Kurt (who isn't a fan of the deconstruction) said that it was time to put things back together. To build from what had been learned and to do things better. So, you might want to give that a shot.

As for Batman Beyond... it was a good show (even if it had a shade too much anime influence), but yeah, the movie got very disturbing. Don't judge the whole thing based on that.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

My predicament right now is that I'm in the relatively new Nolanverse Batman fandom. Which more or less ignores every movie, cartoon or comic that went before. I don't suppose that a lot of the older fans are very happy with that. We must be as annoying as those Harry Potter fanfic writers who love the movies but have never read a single book.

Still, fandom is just a giant sandbox, and the great thing about comics is that canon is such a flexible thing. Batman gets revamped all the time.

I've mentioned I want to write a Batman story for NaNowriMo. I think what I shall do is, create my own verse within Nolanverse and write all my Batman stories within that continuity. That way, I won't have to keep referring to all the headache inducing comic storylines.

Does that sound vaguely heretical to you?

Will give Astro City a try, btw, but it will have to wait. My computer is experiencing some hard drive problems and needs to be formatted.

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

Not heretical at all. Not to me, anyway. Find what you like and go with it. That's kind of the point of entertainment no?

There are so many different versions just of Batman. I was introduced to him via Adam West, but that's not really Batman, IMO. I met the real Batman through Michael Keaton. Which a lot of fans were unhappy with. But that's their perogative. (And, looking back... machine guns? On the Batmobile? And the Batwing equipped with more guns? And rockets?)

So... no. Not annoying. I mean, there are ways to be annoying about it. To nitpick, to try to impose your tastes on others... I'm sure you've encountered plenty of stuff out there in the wider sea of fandom. But you're not doing any of that. You're finding the version that you like and going with it. Which, IMHO, is exactly what you should do. (Though it is nice to give the others at least a fair chance. But I think you're doing that, too, for the most part.)

Sorry to hear about your HDD. That sounds painful. Good luck getting it fixed.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

Thanks for the explanation, Paul. I admit, I don't quite understand the concept of "rebooting". How do you just erase an entire timeline?

What I really grieve for is the loss of Golden Age Batman, who got married to Selena Kyle and had a daughter. =( Why'd they have to do that?

See, I don't agree that even though the medium started out that way, that they have to stay that way. Look at the X-Men. They got rid of all the silly spandex in favour of a clean-cut black suit just before the movie. What really tipped it for me in Batman Begins was that the Batsuit dispensed of the spandex and bright yellow logo for a functional Kevlar suit. WHY can't the rest of the JLA follow suit? *sigh* I mean, I love Superman, but part of the reason I shelved my fanfic Woman in the Mirror, was because I felt the plot was too serious to feature a guy who flew around in primary-colored underpants. =/ It feels so campy.

Generally, I like moral ambiguity. It's just that it feels a bit overdone.

I like Superheroes. I just don't like campy superheroes.

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

How do you just erase an entire timeline?

Have you read Crisis? Basically, you create some great cosmic-level threat which wipes out one or more universes, or otherwise alters the timeline, effectively wiping the slate clean.

As for spandex... I like it. The Begins suit makes sense for Batman, but Spidey doesn't look right in anything but his traditional costume. And Armored Daredevil just didn't work. And, really, I'd rather have the X-men in spandex. Even if Wolverine's blue-and-yellow makes little sense, it's... what a comic book should feel like, IMO. What would you have Superman wearing?

As for camp... if you don't like it, then avoid the Silver Age. Part of the whole deconstruction was getting rid of camp. There was quite a bit of it for a while there.

You can't please everyone all the time. And there's a lot that's done right and a lot that's done wrong and no one's going to agree on exactly which is which. But I think it's a learning process. I think Silver Age stories are better told than Golden Age ones. And while I'm not a fan of grim & gritty, I think the deconstruction pointed out some valid issues, so that Modern Age stories are better told than Silver Age ones. And... we're moving forward.

Anyway... there's a lot out there. You just need to find what you like.

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

Actually, what you do is create an in-continuity plot device which has the power to alter continuity.

In the original Crisis, there was basically a monster which ate universes, and when the dust settled, several heroes were dead and the remaining universes had been crammed together into a single new timeline. So there was a new Flash and Superman wasn't as powerful as he'd been and there'd never been a Superboy and Supergirl was gone and none of the old silliness was in continuity anymore... just the general history, plus whatever the writers felt like keeping, or at least referring to.

But there was a small bubble put to the side where a Superman, his Lois, a good version of Luthor from a universe where the JLA was evil, and a Superboy were preserved. They could the new DCU, and were still alive, but weren't actually a part of that reality. A year or two ago, strange things started to happen. For example, Jason Todd, the second Robin, came back to life... as a villain. Eventually, the reason for this and a bunch of other things was revealed... Superboy Prime, the Superboy from another universe whose life had been preserved in the happy little bubble had been... get this... punching the walls of the bubble, which were, in a sense, the walls of reality. And the punches were so powerful that... *sigh* ... they created waves/ripples of discontinuity which quietly altered the timeline, bringing it closer to "what should have been." In a happy, proper comic book universe, Robin wouldn't be killed. It wasn't supposed to have happened. So... Jason Todd came back to life. (Except that waking up in his coffin, digging himself out of his own grave, and then discovering that Batman hadn't killed the Joker - the man responsible for killing Jason and his mother - kind of drove him nuts.)

And then Superboy, with the help of Alexander Luthor, created a giant reality-altering machine so that he could warp reality and make a new, perfect universe. He merged universes and fiddled with timelines and would have destroyed the entire multiverse with his insane attempts to "put things right", but was finally stopped. And a new multiverse was left, with only 52 Earths. In the wake of all that, the major good guys all decided to take a year off to get their heads together. All the comics jumped ahead to One Year Later, and the story of the missing year was filled in one week at a time with its own weekly comic, 52. Which then led into a new weekly comic which counted down another 52 weeks to... the beginning of Final Crisis. Which is going on now. (And yet, somehow, I'm doubting that it will be the last one.) This one has something to do with Darkseid destroying life on a vast scale and the bad guys winning and stuff. I'm not reading it. But in a few months, it'll be settled and the universe will be rebooted again and the entire DCU will have yet another shiny new status quo. We'll see how long it lasts.

With any luck, though... it'll be for the best, in that it will give the writers a good springboard to start things off right. Again. Hey, the Batman I saw at the beginning of One Year Later looked pretty good to me...

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

O_O

I think I'd sit it out till they finished rebooting the entire thing too.

Aargh. I hate the Jason Todd storyline so much! But I don't know squat about the character himself, so I don't know whether I want him. On on hand, having a Robin die in the line of duty is a great plot device, on the other hand, I like my superheroes shiny and happy.

Jason kind of feels redundant to me. I LOVE Dick Grayson, and the dynamic between him and Tim is so great *BatmanBeyonddidn'thappenBatmanBeyonddidn'thappen* that Jason just feels like he's there to upset the applecart. =/

Thanks for all the feedback and explanations, Paul. It's great to have this stuff explained without having to wade through countless forums and back issues and what-not. =)

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

I'm just getting sick of the big summer events. Target audience these days for comics is college kids. People who have more time for entertainment in the summer. So every summer there's some big sensationalist overarching thing. And it almost invariably sucks. I've decided to just stop reading them and then catch up with any permanent changes after the dust settles.

Jason Todd...

Dick Grayson grew up. Which I think is cool, and I'm glad they let him do it. But then Batman needed a Robin. And it was the 80s, so he had to be... edgy. They met when Batman caught him trying to steal the tires off the Batmobile. He was angry and tough. Distinct from Dick, which is good, but a little too dark, especially for Robin (whose job it is to be counterpoint to Batman).

Jason turned out not to be very popular. So DC did something interesting. They made a phone poll. Jason got blown up. And it was announced that the readers would decide whether he lived or died. Polls were open for a matter of days. Readers set up ballot-stuffing autodialers that clogged the lines. People scrambled to get their votes in. And, with all those calls, Jason lost his life by a margin of just a handful of votes. (The story, including the tale of the voting, is in the TPB Batman: A Death In The Family.)

Batman went without a Robin for a while after that. But then Tim Drake literally knocked on his door. It seems that little Timmy had been a circus fan as a kid. He'd seen young Dick Greyson pull off an acrobatic stunt which only two other people (both adults) in the world had ever managed. And when he saw footage of Robin doing the same thing, he put two and two together. He'd quietly followed Batman and Robin's exploits without telling a soul, but when he saw Batman becoming darker and more unstable, he stepped up. He asked Dick to come back because Batman needed a Robin - someone bright, young, and optimistic - to give him balance. Instead, Dick convinced Tim to step into the role himself.

And that's how we ended up with a new Robin who was very much like the original, and even had his official stamp of approval.

So... yeah. Jason was brought in to upset the applecart. And people didn't like it. And he was killed off. And thus became more significant than he'd ever been while alive. His memorial display in the Batcave (an empty costume suspended in a glass case) has been an important emotional touchstone in many stories (and has been broken in more than a few fights).

Anyway, happy to explain. Happy to help. Glad to have someone interested in listening. And something to talk about. And so on. :)

(Oops. Forgot I wasn't logged in when I hit post. Sorry. You can ignore the "anonymous" copy...)

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

Thanks, Paul. I actually found out about all that stuff from Wikipedia, but I didn't know about the memorial.

What was Jason's relationship with Dick like? I keep hearing conflicting accounts. And why did Batman pull Jean-Paul out from left field to take up the mantle after he became disabled? I understand why he didn't want Dick to do it, but how come he trusted Azrael so much?

You've created a monster. XD

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

To be honest... (don't tell anyone I said this...)

I don't know.

I didn't start reading Batman comics until the late 90s, maybe even 2000. What I know of the times before is through research and TPBs. I'd heard of Jean-Paul and AzBat. I even got an issue (I think as a gift?) which confused the heck out of me because it was in the middle of the AzBat storyline.

Funny thing is that after Jean-Paul was kicked out, Bruce still wasn't doing so well. So he left again, and... Dick was called in to fill in. (Batman: Prodigal)

Dick should have been the one he called in. But... I think they wanted a story with a darker, more violent Bat. No idea where Bruce came up with Jean-Paul or why he brought him in.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

I really wish I could get hold of the comics. But I can't even download anything right now. *broods* I'd love to read Batman: Prodigal.

Thanks again, Paul. Your "secret" is safe with me. =D

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

Prodigal was a good read. Not the greatest, but good. Sorry I can't give you the copy I read, but it belongs to my local library...

Hope you get the comp issues fixed soon. Good luck with that. (Any idea what's wrong?)

And thanks. ;)

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

What would you have Superman wearing?

I'm fine with the blue suit and red cape. It's just the yellow belt and red underpants I have a problem with. *g* But I agree, Spidey wouldn't look right without the Spidey-suit. On the other hand, some of the suits the female superheroes wear to fight crime are just ridiculous. (High heels? Really?)

I usually don't like Golden Age stories at all, but being a fan of Selena/ Bruce, I couldn't help mourning that one.

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

Ah. Zoomway actually has a page about how the costume came to be. (See? Even I don't think she's entirely evil... ;) )

But yeah... there's a lot that's silly and/or impractical. Things that simply don't work in live action.

As for superheroine costumes... that's a whole other subject.

But high heels in specific remind me of a character from The Tick animated series. American Maid fought crime in a star-spangled red, white, and blue maid's uniform. Her primary weapons? Deadly, razor-sharp stiletto heels, which she could throw with incredible accuracy.

[ladymirth.livejournal.com]

American Maid fought crime in a star-spangled red, white, and blue maid's uniform. Her primary weapons? Deadly, razor-sharp stiletto heels, which she could throw with incredible accuracy.

I'm...not...going to touch that one. o_O

I love Zoomway's stuff, actually. They were a wealth of information when I first got into the LnC fandom. Thanks for the link!

(Having read the article) So nobody thought that the "Alpha Male" version of the 1930s would need to be slightly revamped for current audiences to get the idea? *facepalm*

I'm okay with everything except the sodding briefs. What the hell?

[pgwfolc.livejournal.com]

I should point out that The Tick is a parody series. His other major ally was Die Flatermaus (German for "The Bat"), a guy in a bat costume who was in the hero biz for the glamor and the girls, and actually ran away at the first sign of danger.

As for the costume... it's been tweaked over the years, but after this long... he wouldn't look like Superman otherwise. I mean, they tried updating the costume. They did the Superman Red and Superman Blue nonsense. They tried updating Spidey's costume, too... And everyone hated it all and wanted things back the way they were supposed to be.