Batman: Lovers and Madmen

I have just started reading Batman: Lovers and Madmen by Michael Green and Denys Cowan. In the forward to the book Brad Meltzer states that this is a great book and a great Joker story and that Green understands the Joker character extremely well. I may not be a best selling author like Meltzer, but I beg to differ, as I could not even finish this piece of crap.

This story, which aims to be the definitive version of the Joker’s comic book origin, is just terrible. It does not even bother to build on previous Joker origin stories like The Man Behind The Red Hood or Alan Moore’s The Killing Joke, and instead seems to have much more in common with the Jack Nicholson Joker from the 1989 movie than anything else. In fact, in Green’s story there is no mention of the Red Hood and worse still, this Joker has a real name. I’m not one of those people who expect continuity to be fixed and strictly followed, yet here Green just shits in the face of the writers who created the previous Joker origin tales by not even acknowledging them at all.

This is where I have a big problem with DC’s policy of trying to entice people from outside the comics’ industry to come in and write comic stories. They encourage people like Brad Meltzer, Michael Green and Jodi Picoult to write horrible stories and wonder why long time fans stop buying the books or criticize them on the internet. I don’t care if someone has written a New York Times best seller, or is the head writer for the hottest show on TV, I just want someone who has a least read some comic books to be the ones writing them. Is that too much to ask?

The Joker – The Greatest Stories Ever Told

Here’s another post that I did on my old blog that I decided I would finally bring here. Originally posted on July 11, 2008.

The Joker – The Greatest Stories Ever Told

This book was released a couple of weeks ago but I wonder why DC Comics bothered to release it at all. Sure the Dark Knight is about to be released on the big screen with the late Heath Ledger playing the Clown Prince of Crime, but as many of the stories featured in this book were also reprinted in the similarly titled The Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told back in 1999, when the original Batman film featuring Jack Nicolson was released, this book is surely redundant. That book was still in print until quite recently and is easy to find on Ebay or even in some comic shops, which means that it is very easy to find most of these stories, which maks me still wonder why DC bothered at all.

DC missed quite an opportunity to publish a book full of very hard to find stories that fans would love to see reprinted, such as The Joker’s Millions and The Joker Walks The Last Mile. Instead they offer another book featuring Steve Englehart’s ‘Case of the Laughing Fish’, David V Reed and Dick Sprang’s ‘Joker’s Utility Belt’ and Len Wein’s ‘Dreadful Birthday Dear Joker’. Sure, these are really great stories, but they have been reprinted thousands of times and are very easy to find. The only Joker story that has been printed more times than these ones is Dennis O’Neil and Neal Adams’ ‘The Joker’s Five Way Revenge’, which is perhapsin my opinion, the greatest Joker story ever written. Fortunately it does not feature here as it was reprinted just a year or so ago in another Batman greatest stories book. (I wonder why that stopped DC as they seem to love to reprit the same stories ad-infinitum?)

There are some stories that feature in the book that are relatively difficult to find. These include ‘The Joker’s Comedy of Errors’, ‘Crime of the Month Club’ and ‘Joker’s Last Laugh’. None of these really qualify as being ‘Greatest’ Joker stories, with ‘Comedy of Errors’ being most notable for The Joker constantly talking of ‘boners’, something that was lampooned by Superdickery years ago. These are quite mediocre stories indeed.

Something else that I did not like was the amount of ‘modern’ stories featured in the book. Paul Dini’s ‘Slay Ride’ is just 18 months old, while there are another three stories that are a decade or less old and very easy to find. Why? Why? Why publish stories that are so easy to find? Why publish stories that only just hit the comic shops a year and a half ago? It does not make any sense at all. I always thought the aim of a collection such as this is to introduce fans to stories that they may not know of, not to repackage something that they have only just finished reading.

Avoid this book unless you are a Joker completest or have a thing for ‘boners’. Most likely you already have the majority of these stories in your comic book collection. I know I have!

There’s another review of the book at this site here.

By the way, is anyone else sick of Alex Ross’ covers for these things. I’m not a great fan of Ross but someone at DC loves him as he seems to be the only one who is allowed to do the art for their collected editions. I would rather see someone else given a go at the covers of these things, perhaps an artist who has actually been associated with the character who is featured in the collection. I think it would be great to have a Joker collection with a cover by Neal Adams, Jerry Robinson or Dick Sprang. Surely DC has some of their artwork which they could use, instead of just sing Ross’ work.

For a review of the much superior ‘Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told’, click here. This is a book that I really recommend. Better still, buy the hardcover ‘Stacked Deck: Greatest Joker Stories Ever Told’.

Art Spiegelman’s MAUS

Art Spiegelman’s Maus is one of those books that I found quite difficult to critique. It is a terrific and absorbing read that once you start reading you just cannot put down, but I find it almost impossible to summarize in a few short paragraphs because it is so complex and multi-layered. I could just say that this is a survivor’s tale of the events of the Holocaust, but that would be selling this story short. It is so much more than just that.

I feel that the major, underlying theme of this book is of the relationships of the people in it. We see how Vladek, who has survived the horrors of Auschwitz, has had difficulty adjusting to life in America and how he just cannot get along with the people he loves the most. The relationship that is most focused on in the book is that between Vladek and Art, father and son. On the surface these two cannot get along. Art will never live up to his father’s expectations, while Art cannot forgive his dad for the strange way that he behaves which he just cannot explain or understand. Art tries to find an explanation for the weird ways in which Vladek behaves, but just like the horrific ways in which many German people behaved during the Holocaust there is no adequate explanation. Maybe Vladek behaves the way he does because of the terrible things he had to endure at the hands of the Nazis, or perhaps he is just a miserly, bitter, self centred old man and that is the way he always has been.

On the surface Vladek views Art as a failure, as Art can never be Vladek’s first son Richieu, who was another whose life was ended by the Nazi atrocities in the ovens of Auschwitz. Privately Vladek does admire Art, even though Art is just a struggling cartoonist. Vladek even seems at one stage very proud of Art’s work and achievements and he does allow Art to chronicle the terrible events that he had to endure in the 1930s and 40s.

There is also the relationship between Vladek and his second wife Mala. It seems that Vladek cannot forgive Mala for not being his first wife Anja, who committed suicide years earlier. We know that Vladek loves Anja and still has great affection for her, but I am unsure why he ended up marrying Mala after Anja’s death. Perhaps the reason for this is really as Mala speculates; because Vladek is a tight man and that she is the same size as Anja, which means that Vladek doesn’t have to buy her any new clothing because she can wear Anja’s things. In other words the only reason that Vladek married Mala is because she reminds him of Anja, but unfortunately she is not Anja, something that Vladek can never forgive her for.

We also see the events of the Holocaust as recounted by Vladek. We see how the Jewish people were persecuted by the Nazis, and the horrible conditions that they had to face, in the ghettos of Poland and the concentration camps of Auschwitz. We see how resourceful the Jewish people had to be to avoid death, although death could be random and that it did not necessarily matter how resourceful you were, that sometimes you just needed luck to stay alive.

Maus is a brilliant, important book that I feel should be read by anyone who wants to know about the atrocities performed by the Nazis during the Holocaust. The book is probably more accessible than a straight out history text book, because it is written in comic strip form. Because of this we can see visually just what lengths the Jews had to go to for survival, as well as the brutality of the Nazis and Poles. Spiegelman’s rightly won a Pulitzer Prize for this work. Even though this is a comic book it is not really suitable for children but it should be used in high schools to show what happened during the Holocaust. I wish that I could articulate my feelings about this a bit better.

Comic Book Review: Man Bat 1-5

Man Bat

Issues 1, 2, 3, 4 + 5

Writer – Bruce Jones

Pencils – Mike Huddleston

One of the things that I’d like to do with this blog is write some comic reviews, then the people who actually read this thing will get an idea of the comics that I like. Perhaps they will actually like my reviews and buy things on my recommendations or avoid things that I don’t like. The just finished Man Bat 5 part mini-series by Bruce Jones is one set of comic books that should be avoided at all costs.

The first question that needs to be asked after reading this is, “What type of drugs is Bruce Jones smoking?” Seriously, Mr Jones either has an extremely vivid imagination, or he writes his comic books whilst taking acid. This book is not as trippy as his recent run on Nightwing, where he turned Dick Grayson into a male model and had Jason Todd briefly turned into a toad (a toad with tenticles), but it is still really craptastic.

In the first issue of the series there is a major development, one which you would think have a major impact on the future of the Man Bat character. At the end of this issue Man Bats’ family is brutally murdered, supposedly by Man Bat himself. The only problem is that DC has already disregarded this, perhaps showing the faith that they have in Mr Jones’ work. You see, in Grant Morrisson’s recent Batman story (issue 655), Man Bats’ wife Francine turns up alive and well, with no explanation being given over just how she could be alive.

Another prblem that this book had was that even though it was called Man Bat, the main character of this story seemed to be D-grade villain Hush. For those who came in late, Hush was a villain that was created by Jeph Loeb and Jim Lee who was the main villain in Batman way back in the 2003 Hush storyline. He then returned to the Gotham Nights book before that was cancelled. Many people, myself included, think that the reason why Gotham Nights was cancelled was because Hush became the main character of the book. He became so tiresome and boring and had stupid plotlines that involved two of my least favourite plot devices/characters, Clayface (there are way too many Clayfaces) and one of Poison Ivy’s plant people. Towards the end of the book many fans were actually hoping that Hush would die!

Anyway, back to Man Bat. I stuck through with this book right to the end, probably because I like the Man Bat character. The plot of this book seemed to just involve Hush trying to frame Man Bat for various murders and also trying to get back at Black Mask for some reason. The whole point of the book seemed to be to make Man Bat into a villainous beast with no control over its actions. The biggest problem with this is that other than in an Elseworld’s story from a decade ago, Man Bat has never been a true villain. He even did quite a few heroic things and I don’t think that he was ever a killer. The whole thing that made Man Bat such a popular character was that he was always struggling with his inner-beast, but ultimately he just wanted to be left alone. If he ever hurt someone it was only because he was trying to protect his family or because he was trying to avoid the real beast, those men who were trying to hunt him down.

Jones tried to change the way that Man Bat has been characterised. He tried to turn him permanently into a beats, with no hint of humanity or self control at all. Naturally enough Grant Morrisson has completely ignored this and made this Man Bat story obsolete even before it finished.

My only hope is that Bruce Jones is never again allowed to write another Batman related comic book. This book should be totally ignored. While it is not as awful as his run on Nightwing, this is still a totally horrible book. If DC ever release this as a Trade Paperback or you see cheap back issues, avoid this at all costs. If anyone wants good a Man Bat story they should track down any reprints of the orginal Frank Robbins/Neal Adams tales. (A good place to start is the excellent Batman: Illustrated by Neal Adams)