A Response to Scott Snyder, Part 3 (Damian Wayne)

In conclusion...

Robin (Damien Wayne)

Grant Morrison’s Batman mega-arc has always been right on the cusp of long-standing continuity. There are always questions raised about what from the past is part of continuity, whether these events are then part of regular DC continuity or something specific to Morrison’s vision, blending the Golden, Silver, Bronze and Modern ages into hyper-time, no matter what crisis may be threatening the time stream.

Damian’s history technically dates back to the Mike Barr Elseworlds one-shot, Son of the Demon. In it Talia Al Ghul, daughter of Ras Al Ghul, reveals herself to be pregnant to Batman, who of course believes it to be his own child. Ras and Batman bond over the situation, relishing the merging of their two empires under compromised goals and motives, until Talia has an apparent miscarriage, at which point Batman bids the Ghul’s goodbye, but not before the twist revealing their hypothetical child was not lost to a miscarriage, and instead was born and adopted out.

Using the Superboy-Prime time-punch as his modus operandi, Morrison wove Son of the Demon back into continuity, opting to introduce Damian Wayne, the son of Talia and Batman, who has been raised in secret by the League of Assassins. Damian was introduced in Morrison’s first arc of his Batman opus, looking at a television screen and saying “There, that’s my father” to the sight of the super hero. The storyline would see a fun series of sequences of Batman and company trying to raise a spoiled, self-entitled, super-assassin who would just as soon cut your head off over not getting a laptop as he would listen to a speech about sacrifice.

Damian popped in and out of the Batman title for the next year, leading up to Batman R.I.P. and Final Crisis, the events of which left Batman in a time limbo, forcing Dick Grayson to don the cape and cowl and, unwittingly, taking on Damian as the new Robin. The change to the status quo was quite shocking; Damian had only appeared a little over half a dozen issues at this point, and here was this former cold blooded murderer in one of the oldest super hero costumes in the world. The dynamic between the jovial, optimistic Grayson and the cold, matter-of-fact future heir to the Batman throne shot to the top of the sales charts, where it remained for almost 2 years.

Damian has been featured in numerous cross-overs and team ups. He was on the Teen Titans for 3 issues, featured in a World’s Finest mini-series, and has had numerous adventures with Supergirl of all people, in both Supergirl’s solo series and Superman/Batman. The crown jewel of Damian’s DC adventures would be Paul Dini’s Street’s of Gotham, which featured a very long storyline, first Dick and Damian uncovering a child abduction ring, that led to an amazing solo-outing pitting Damian vs. the scarred serial killer, Zsasz.

Damian has secret bunkers throughout the city, weapons and vehicles, as well as becoming partners with a frail orphan with the ability to turn into a hulking monster named Abuse. Damian schemes and goes under cover, ending in a duel with Zsasz that has Damnian nearly slicing the flesh monster in two. The series was sharp and fresh, giving us a hard, down to Earth look at a character who, at the time, was still fairly new and had hardly been seen on his own. Dustin Nguyen provided stylinsh, thick line work with dirty colors, giving Damian’s adventure a very unique, non-DC look that really added to the overall martial arts feel of the character.

As Streets of Gotham wound down with the rest of the universe in preparation for the big reboot, I held out hope that Paul Dini and Dustin Nguyen would be given a Damian Wayne Robin book. There has always been a Robin book, with Jason Todd being the lone exception. Both Dick and Tim each had Robin series that went into the hundreds of issues, the Robin character has always been featured prominently in the Teen Titans, not to mention the general relationship they tend to develop across the universe. Damian has not had this opportunity.

With DC actively trying to court a younger audience I find it annoying that the most popular new character in over a decade, a 12 year old brash assassin son of Batman, cannot find his way into the mainstream DCU. Right now Young Justice, DC’s flagship cartoon at the moment, features a teenage Dick Grayson leading a pre-Teen Titans cast of sidekicks. Now, I’m not a marketing specialist, but from talking to people the average person doesn’t know who the hell Dick Grayson is. Everyone knows Robin and a few are aware of the circus origin of the first Robin, but no one really cares who Robin is in the general media. DC could have used Damian in Dick’s place and exposed the character to a wider audience while also joining their continuity a little bit, making the transition from cartoon to print easier.

With the relaunch Damian has been scrubbed pretty hard out of sight. Damian used to have appearances every month across the universe, including backup roles in most Bat books, now in the first month of the New 52 he is relegated to the first issue of Batman and Robin and a few cameo panels in Batman #1. Dick Grayson in the newly launched Nightwing doesn’t mention him, he isn’t name dropped in any other Bat book, he has no prominent role or storyline to carry out, and now that Morrison’s Bat Opus is on hold for a few months, Damian is all but invisible.

One of the most common complaints about the industry, from both creators and fans, is there aren’t enough new characters, that we keep reading the same stories over and over with different details about Superman’s birth and origin or The Hulk merging and separating from Bruce Banner over and over. Damian is relatively brand new. Despite being introduced in 2006 he has been left inside the Bat Books and outside of one Batman: Brave and Bold “what if” story that represented a wildly out of character Damian, he has never been mentioned on any television show or movie DC has released.

If DC wanted my money they would launch a Robin solo-title. He has a motive, he has an identity, he has gadgets and safe houses, partner’s (Abuse) and acquaintences to grow into relationships (Alfred, Stephanie Brown, Barbara Gordon), and most uniquely, he is one of the DC characters with a future already laid out. Batman #666 and #700, both written by Grant Morrison, features stories of a grown-up Damian who has inherited the mantle of the Bat. Damian is haunted by a guilt over the death of the Batman, inflicting severe punishment, even death, upon the new breed of futuristic Gotham scum, with his own rogue’s gallery including Professor Pyg and Flamingo, two characters who would show up in out present, along with Max Roboto and Jack-A-Napes, villians yet to be seen outside these futuristic adventures. The future Batman wears a trench coat, designed to take the place of a cape. His arm protector’s are now sharpened blades used to sever limbs and torsos, leaving bloody stumps in place of mayhem. He has a disturbed relationship with Barabara Gordon, the wheel-chair bound chief of police who can’t help but blame the Dark Knight for the death of “a friend.”

In these two comic books Morrison has created quite the future for our beloved brat. His cockiness and lack of remorse today gives way to the haunting weight on Damian’s shoulders in the future. It is intriguing and mesmerizing, some of the most imaginative comics in recent years, oozing the brutality and absolute justice today’s crowd wants out of it’s Batman. Just as I plead for a Robin solo-series, the Holy Grail of “crap I’ll never get” is a futuristic-Damian-Wayne-as-Batman series. Immediately we have to come to the conclusion Morrison won’t be writing it if it ever happens, but I have faith that DC would stack the property rightly, giving an already fully-formed character a prominent role that he deserves.

Scott Snyder began this little series by asking use who we, the fans who actually buy comic books, feel deserves a solo-series. Damian Wayne. Make it happen Scott.

A Response to Scott Snyder, Part 2

As you were...

Kamandi

As part of The New 52, DC has relaunched O.M.A.C., One Man Army Corps, a Jack Kirby created character who’s seen varying degrees of popularity depending on which incarnation it is--the original “regular Joe turned militaristic super monster,” or the more recent futuristic symbiotic cyborg agents used by Checkmate. The new series, helmed by Dan Didio and Keith Giffen, is choosing to follow the route of the former. Marketed almost exclusively as a Jack Kirby love letter, the new O.M.A.C.’s first issue featured dozens of shocked, screaming faces and its fair share of wide action panels of the O.M.A.C. monster displaying hilarious strength. Despite being very fun and kinetic, O.M.A.C. does fall a bit short in the plot department, especially in the context of the thicker feeling of a lot of the new line from DC.

I was introduced to Kamandi first in Final Crisis (not much of an introduction) and then Wednesday Comics. I had heard the comparisons to Prince Valiant, I fell in love with its old-timey futuristic sensibility at first sight. Silver age comics are lost on the younger crowd; we didn’t grow up with these comics, and they aren’t celebrated as much anymore compared to more seminal works from The Dark Knight Returns and The Watchmen up through Arkham Asylum and The Authority. The Kirby stuff is always referenced at the cons but fun, light hearted, straight forward stories of humanity through more optimistic, wish-dreaming eyes are either held up as the best the medium has to offer or childish play things we’ve grown out of, the types of toys not to be seen playing with once your old enough to drive.

I have noticed what I believe to be a concerted effort at DC to put more content and more plot in the monthly books. Though there are exceptions, the amount of splash pages and needless retelling of the plot have decreased. The grand story telling expressed in Kamandi would be a good companion to this new content model. Kamandi has the ability to reach out to outsider fans, offering more classical, romantic stories filled with medieval imagery and breathtaking action scenes and lost love. A writer on caliber with Paul Cornell could work wonders with this story telling platform.

It’s obvious Dan Didio and company want to bring back some Jack Kirby concepts, and for the moment they’ve chosen the massive O.M.A.C. along with the New Gods appearing to be involved with the new Justice League. As the replacement series start to roll out (and let’s be honest, O.M.A.C. can’t be long for this world) I would hope DC could see in their library another breath of fresh air, on par with I, Vampire, All Star Western, and Resurrection Man. One of the successes, for me, of The New 52 has been the chance for off-beat titles to find a new audience, with the new media spotlight Kamandi could be just the ticket for those longing for their comics to be fun again.

Brave and the Bold

Scott Snyder’s question asked us what underrated characters we’d love to see in their own series. I think we can all agree that most characters that deserve a series have a series. Batman will always appear in a quarter of the books, the Super family will always get preferential treatment, and Wonder Woman will always have a book, no matter how abysmal sales are. It’s when you talk about characters like Green Arrow and Animal Man that you have to start asking whether these characters really deserve their own series.

Animal Man right now is easily in my top three titles of the New 52, it’s bizarre and fresh without going off the deep end into mindlessness, but that will end eventually. Animal Man has had various spotlights including a long running series, started by a long run that put Grant Morrison on the map along with Bussy Baker, in the 90‘s and a spot on the Justice League Europe, but his last solo mini, The Death of Animal Man, went under everyones radar and his appearances have been sparce since. Green Arrow, despite having a regular series for years and being a popular character in larger event comics such as Identity Crisis and Final Crisis, has hardly ever seen his solo numbers crack the top 100 in the past 5+ years.

DC has a lot of characters in their library, the Pope is also Catholic. Do all of these characters deserve their own series? By and large, no. DC published Brave and the Bold in some way for more than 60 years, sometimes as a Batman team up book, sometimes as a general team up book, most recently it was resurrected for a decent run by J. Michael Straczynski, focusing on joining older unknown characters such as Dial H for Hero with more well known characters such as Batman (JMS would leave the series in limbo after just 8 issues). Brave and the Bold is a fantastic arena where The Guardian can team up with Barbara Gordon to take down The Riddler, Supergirl and Deadman race dragsters, and Superman teaches Damien Wayne a valuable lesson. It is the perfect model for building this new universe early on, solidifying relationships, and introducing their vast wealth of properties to a brand new audience. I could have a blast listing all of the teamups I'd pay $2.99 for.

Superman goes back in time and meets Jonah Hex, The Question is enlisted by the Metal Men to track down a missing Dr. Magnus, John Stewart leads a few key Teen Titans on a training mission that goes bad, you get the point.

Come back for Part 3...

A Response to Scott Snyder, Part 1

Scott Snyder has emerged as one of the new star writers for both DC's superhero (Batman, Swamp Thing) and Vertigo line (American Vampire). On Twitter he has been very open with the fans about how to break into the industry, writing tips, and engaging in critical commentary, I would say he's the 'cool guy' at DC on Twitter right now. In support of his public query this week I have compiled 8 characters and concepts that would beef up their current offerings.

Rorshach as the Question and a Pitch for the Inevitable Watchmen Revival

DC’s attempts to restart the Watchmen franchise over the past 20 years, not to mention their general dry-humping ceremonies to resurrect what was never intended to be a larger franchise, has been well documented. By keeping Watchmen in print, they kept the rights to the series and its characters (who we will get into momentarily) out of Moore and artist Dave Gibbons control. DC (from reports mainly Dan Didio) went as far as to offer Alan Moore the rights to these concepts in he would simply endorse a Watchmen revival. Dave Gibbons has be less apprehensive about the ordeal, artists are probably much more used to losing control of their work. Alan Moore used DC’s offer as a jumping point to further embarrass the publishing house as a desperate, idea-thirsty mausoleum of what used to be.

It is well known that Alan Moore’s original outlines for Watchmen used the recently acquired Charleton Comics characters which included The Question, Captain Atom and The Blue Beetle. Right around this time, DC was preparing for Crisis on Infinite Earths, which was going to fold these characters into DCU proper continuity and Moore was forced to alter the characters in Rorschach, Dr. Manhattan and Nite Owl, which in the end helped establish Watchmen as it’s own monster.

This year, as part of the DC New 52 relaunch Captain Atom was given a reboot along with his own monthly comic, the first in years outside of a backup feature in Action Comics. He has been taken back to his roots as a far more powerful and uneasy quasi-God, not unsimiliar to Dr. Manhattan. It is not too outside of the box to think that the new Dan Didio led DCnU is trying to take advantage of these mild character similarities to reclaim the Watchmen as their own in a round about way. The fact that Grant Morrison is going to be launching his long-awaited Multiversity which will feature a Watchmen-esque 48 page one shot with the Charleton character only backs up this idea.

The Question has a long history in the DCU, including his own solo series launched after Crisis on Infinite Earth. He has been featured on several DC cartoon shows, including:  Justice League Unlimited and Batman: Brave and the Bold.  Most recently, Vic Sage, the original Question, was featured as a prime player in DC’s big weekly event 52, training Renee Montoya to be the next Question. In the new Batwoman #1 they spend an adequate amount of time focusing on Renee Montoya’s picture in what appears to be a fallen officer memorial. It is not explained if she is actually dead in this new universe or if she has fallen off the face of the Earth to be the Question full time, but this makes me wonder if DC is done with the character.

Renee as the Question has been all over the DCU since 52. She was a vital part of Final Crisis, had a backup feature in the Batwoman-led Detective Comics, had her own Blackest Night tie-in, and has made appearances in most very Batman title or anthology special. DC has the opportunity to use this strong, Hispanic LBGT character as a stand in for the hard as nails, never compromising, feared and hated Rorschach. Renee definitely has a skip in her step that Rorschach is missing, but in this new universe character changes aren’t anything new (*ahem* Starfire).

If DC can combine the Charleton legacy characters (Captain Atom, Blue Beetle) and other largely unused Charleton throwbacks (Nightshade, Thunderbolt, Peacemaker) and new DCnU minor-celebrities Hawk and Dove, with a combined Watchmen/DCnU continuity I think there is a real possibility of capturing a new line of comics for the market.

Superman/Batman or World’s Finest

Superman and Batman are the kings of the DC Universe. People throw Wonder Woman and Green Lantern as the swappable #3, but we all know the truth:  we all want that Batman PEZ dispenser. With roots in the Golden Age “World’s Finest Comics" Superman/Batman originally launched in 2003 it featured the creating team of Jeph Loeb and Ed McGuinness. It was in loose continuity with the rest of the DCU (it would feature the origin of the new Supergirl), depicted large scale threats, and was generally helmed by well known industry talent.

Around the time of Final Crisis, the quality of the series took a sharp downward trend. Instead of following through with Bruce Wayne’s apparent death and featuring adventures of Dick Grayson as a new Batman with longtime friend Superman DC opted to go “back in time” to retell unknown events from larger crises storylines such as 2001's Our Worlds At War. Spoiler Alert: this lasted for one unrelated storyline from Joe Casey.

At it’s best Superman/Batman was epic, action packed, character driven tales of two best friends helping and protecting each other. Towards the end it became two characters trapped in a box punching throwaway enemies. This is no slam to the writers of those later issues, editorial was very strict those days and led to the late Dwayne McDuffy resigning from writing duties on the Justice League because he couldn’t use any of the big Justice League characters due to other story line constraints.

With the DCnU Reboot we have the opportunity to launch a new Superman/Batman with a new Superman and Batman. So far, Superman and Batman have not created the bond they had in the old DCU, these are stories people my age never had the chance to read. I’ve always known them as best pals outside of little flashbacks in All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder, and as ridiculous as that portrayal was even then you could see the little inklings of respect between them at that early stage in their careers.

I would read a well made Superman/Batman title. Let down the editorial walls; let time move fluidly; bring on well-known, all star writing and art teams--make this a good book. Don’t treat it as a cash cow that you don’t have to milk.

Come back tomorrow for two new entries...

Batman #1 Review

Batman #1

Scott Snyder’s run on Detective Comics hit all the right marks. He was using a still relatively new Dick Grayson as Batman and, more than any other writer except for Grant Morrison, really went out of his way to show that this was Dick’s book. The city and characters began to change fittingly and I was sure that this would be the Dick Grayson we’d all be talking about, the Scott Snyder Batman a la the John Byrne Superman.

Although Dick is back in his Nightwing costume I think we can still see all the hallmarks of Snyder’s previous Batman run. Within the first 8 pages we are immediately introduced (in a very clever way) to all three Robins and Alfred (Red Robin was very integral in Snyder’s Detective run) and throughout we see all the familiar faces including Gordon, Vickie Vale and Harvey Bullock. This is all in stark contrast to Tony Daniel’s new Detective Comics run which seems to only be featuring Batman, Gordon and Alfred.

The story moves, quickly. We start with a riot in Arkham, which is far more fun than any other Arkham riot I can think of, quickly shooting to a Bruce Wayne news conference with lots of future hints dropped on the floor about what Batman is planning along with an introduction to a future villain/ally/red herring that works very well to put this new guy in the thick of the plot in 1 page flat. In the final few pages we’re treated to a very well written back and forth between Batman and Harvey Bullock before a bomb explodes (figuratively) in the form of a cliffhanger you’ve got to come back for.

Snyder has a real knack for telling these stories; lots of characters, each with their own side plots and motivations, coming together in the middle to get to the end. Bruce Wayne’s appearance is noteworthy only because there have been a lot of Batman comics in the past few years that obviously tried to stay ambiguous as to who was under the cowl. This led to a cardboard Batman never leaving his cave and having exhausting never ending fights to fill space. Snyder has a firm grasp on the strengths and weaknesses of the Bruce Wayne character and why Batman needs to adopt this mask (heh) from time to time. He is juggling a lot of balls with just issue 1, but to say I’m not excited would be a boldface lie.

The art is beautiful. I remember seeing the first teaser of the cover and having some apprehension to the possibility of an Image guy drawing Batman. The splashes are kept to a minimum (but they look so damn good) and there is a lot of really inspired movement. Early on a character is undercover and they are placed in the background delivering a devastating 360 mule kick while Batman strikes a super-scary “punch several guys at once” pose. Movement, expression, and subtle hints in the background make this well worth reading over, especially as the momentum begins to build in the coming weeks. There was one moment where a new character is introduced and given the context, and tell me if I’m crazy, its hard not to think this character is Clark Kent (in his reporter fashion), and I think something could have been done to denote that this is a brand new character.

If I were to complain it would be petty; Damian is shuttled away as soon as he arrives, Gordon’s biggest moment is getting a phone call to move the plot, etc. but in 20 pages Snyder writes what would take any normal writer double the space to tell. This is not a man that throws away pages in exchange for pretty splash shots of costumes on rooftops (it should be noted, NO ROOFTOPS!) and when I’m paying $2.99 plus tax for 20 pages it is much appreciated.

Final Score: 5/5