BOUGHT:
Now that my self-imposed deadline for this post about all the new-ish comics I read in June has arrived, I still can't think of anything.
So, suffice it to say that Nancy For All Seasons, Fantagraphics's second recent collection of Bushmiller's Nancy (following last year's Nancy Wears Hats) is filled with 300 strips from 1953 to 1954.
If you're already a fan of Bushmiller's and/or Nancy's, you should have it for your shelf. If you're not yet a fan, you should definitely pick it up and check it out; there's an awfully good chance you will end up being a fan by the time you get a few pages into it.
The title story is one of those adventure stories, a 22-pager in which Scrooge's lucky dime is lost at sea...and in danger of falling prey to an unlikely salvage operation by four-armed Martians, a story bookended by Donald's attempts to make it as a newspaper reporter, even if he has to make up outlandish stories on slow news days. (Despite being the length of a standard modern comic book story, this one feels much longer, thanks to how many panels there are per page, and how much Barks packs into each one.)
That's followed by "The Status Seeker," in which Scrooge finds himself in a race to recover a particular jewel that resembles peppermint candy, his opponent being one of those mustachioed anthropomorphic pig villains discussed in a prose piece in the recent "A Little Something Special" and Other Tales of Fiendish Foes (The pig man villain design resurfaces in a second adventure in this very volume, wherein he is named "Foulcrook", is teamed with a dog man named "Slyviper" and tries to steal the discovery of a lost city out from under Scrooge and his nephews in an attempt to make it into an archaeological society).
As for Magica, she uses catastrophic weather events and magical disguises to try to break into the money bin in one story, later hires the Beagle Boys in an attempt to beat Scrooge from acquiring a flock of geese that lay golden eggs and later still comes up with a bizarre—but quite visually interesting—potion that transforms one's face into that of whoever he has last looked at.
In addition to all of the Scrooge stories, this volume contains a couple of shorts starring Gyro Gearloose and his mechanical helper, Helper, none of which did much for me personally; I guess I'm so used to seeing the inventor used as a sort of plot device in Scrooge stories that it's hard to find him too terribly compelling a star in his own right, even if each of his stories here are rather short ones.
Interestingly, among the usual generous amount of backmatter discussing each story and its history, and the original comics covers, there's a double fold-out poster of a Gyro image Barks drew.
Similarly, writer Matt Fraction's plotting is strong, and, with one glaring exception I'll get to in a bit, he has a solid grasp on all of the characters, who all seem to be and sound like themselves, and his presentation of Bruce Wayne on a maybe date with a scientist whose work might be behind some strange goings-on involving Arkham inmates is an inspired blast of flirty dialogue and action sequences.
Despite the considerable, even obvious talents of the creators though, this first volume of the new Batman series still left me kind of cold. I could appreciate most of its component parts, but I couldn't really personally connect with the book, let alone get lost in it.
That likely has to do with the sense that we've seen all of this before, even as the comic takes the pose of giving us something new (Check out that dramatic new Batman costume, for the most obvious example, with Batman back in blue for the first time in over 30 years!).
So, there's a supervillain in a position of governmental authority and using his resources to target our heroes, something I complained about as feeling tired when Jason Aaron introduced villainous New York City District Attorney Hieronymous Hale in his 2025 Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Vol. 1: Return to New York (reviewed in this column).
Batman is on the outs with the Gotham Police Department, as he has been off-and-on from Batman: Year One to James Tynion's IV's 2020-2022 run and, I think, beyond.
Militarized law enforcement specialists are brought in to deal with vigilantes and supervillains, again as in Tynion's run.
Killer Croc is apparently devolving and becoming more bestial, with a newer, scarier design featuring a long, Venom-like tongue, as in the 2002-2003 "Hush" storyline.
One of Tim Drake's loved ones notices that when Tim spends time with Bruce Wayne, he tends to get injured, and je blames Bruce, as was the case in Chuck Dixon's 1990s Robin run.
I realize that this might not be a Batman problem so much as a Caleb problem. Maybe human beings just weren't meant to read that many Batman comics over the course of a single lifetime, and that even if so much of this seems recycled to me, well, perhaps many of the other readers of this Fraction/Jinenez run are seeing these things for the very first time (Although, given how recent Tynion's run was, and the fact that so many Batman arcs like "Hush" remain in print forever now, I kinda doubt that).
Even the villains are, for the most part, ones we've seen more or less constantly for decades: Killer Croc, The Riddler, The Penguin, Hugo Strange. An upcoming appearance by The Joker is foreshadowed. There are two exceptions, the mysterious masked Minotaur, presumably a new character, and, disappointingly, an anime-coded woman with glowing swords who can transform into a flock of birds; she seems like a brand-new character but, once defeated, Robin Damian Wayne dismisses her as "Lady Death Man", so apparently this otherwise strikingly different character is connected to extant IP (Oddly, Damian doesn't mention Flatline, one-time sidekick of Lord Death Man and his ally/friend/love interest here at all).
In Daylight, Fraction and Jimenez have Batman, sporting a new blue and gray costume (it's not simply a return to that of the one he wore before "Knightfall"; you'll note the bat-symbol on his chest is quite different), Batmanning around, despite the fact that the Gotham City Police Department, now bizarrely run by Police Commissioner Vandal Savage, not only doesn't sanction his freelance policeman status, but are now actively targeting him with arrest or worse.
Batman encounters a series of old foes—first Croc, then The Riddler—who both escape from the current incarnation of Arkham (the sky-scraping Arkham Towers, rather than the old asylum) and act strangely out of character, presumably because their minds have been messed with by "The Crown of Storms", a new invention of Wayne-funded scientist Dr. Annika Zeller who, conveniently, appears to be both rather young and pretty hot, so she can also function as a love interest of sorts for Bruce Wayne...maybe.
Meanwhile, the masked Minotaur has organized crime in Gotham City, including Commissioner Savage, The Penguin and others, into a fine-tuned, money-making machine that's so behind-the-scenes no one seems to know their organization even exists, including the Batman.
Damian Wayne and Tim Drake are both active as Robin, although after an issue or two spotlighting how awesome he is, Tim seems to go into semi-retirement, spurred on by catching a stray gunshot from a Gotham police officer (Given how many bullets Tim's dodged over the decades, it's perhaps a little convenient that he gets shot here at all in such a fashion) and his boyfriend Bernard's worry that hanging out with Bruce somehow endangers Tim.
James Gordon, Harvey Bullock and Alfred are all around. Jim's a beat cop now, and Alfred is either a ghost or a hallucination of Bruce's. Indeed, Alfred pops up in here about as much as he always has and, at first, I thought he might be some kind of programmed holographic AI Batman had built, but instead he seems to be a figment of Batman's imagination, as he talks to him about his current cases and conflicts, often receiving admonishment or advice in return.
I actually haven't read a regular Batman monthly since Tynion's climactic "Fear State" arc, so I'm not up on what's going on in the DCU's Gotham City at the moment, but Batman seems to be spending most of his time at "Pennyworth Manor," which looks to be a sizable mansion within the city limits. Bruce Wayne still seems to be very rich and to be running his company, so I assume he's recovered his fortune but lost Wayne Manor somehow...?
Fraction's take on the character is very gadget-heavy, with Batman and his Robins employing all sorts of high-tech gear throughout, including toyetic flying and stealth suits, and, charmingly, every time they use one, even something as simple as a grappling line, there's a little box introducing and explaining the gadget in question.
Now I don't want to rain on anyone's parade here. Fraction and Jimenez's Daylight represents good, solid, entertaining Batman comics. I am interested to see where this is all going, if The Minotaur is someone we know (or who I suspect it is) and if Fraction later justifies choices like the use of Savage in this story or why Anarky Lonnie Manchin suddenly seems like an idiot (Again, more on that in a bit).
It's just not great, and, at this point, I want really great comics, not just really good ones.
You probably think I've gone on long enough at this point, but here are a few bullet points regarding particular gripes of mine from these otherwise quite solid comics...
Making it even more odd, in these first few issues of Fraction's Batman at least, he doesn't do anything that required the character to be an immortal caveman supervillain. He is anti-Batman and, presumably, opposed to all of the other Gotham vigilantes. He frames Batman for a murder. He threatens to kill a subordinate...and then perhaps kills or has him killed off-panel later on. All stuff that, like, any bad actor could do, whether it was an original character, or another supervillain taking at random.
Like, why Savage, and not The Ventriloquist or Captain Cold or Amazo or Starro? I just don't get it. (Also, in the scene of The Minotaur having a sort of staff meeting with various crime heads, Savage seems to very much be that character's lieutenant, which doesn't seem very Vandal Savage-y, does it? )
Anarky started as a one-off vigilante in the mold of What-if-Batman-was-more-hardcore-and-worked-to-change-the-world-rather-than-just-fought-to-uphold-the-status-quo?, tackling pollution and corporate greed in addition to the prevalence of illicit street drugs, which Grant's Batman seemed to spend most of his time dealing with. As Anarky became a recurring character, he quickly developed into a sort of anti-Robin and, by the time he earned a miniseries and a short-lived ongoing, (in 1997 and 1999), he was a full-fledged superhero, with a secret base of his own in Washington, D.C., and coming into conflicts with characters as various as Etrigan, Darkseid and Green Lantern Kyle Rayner.
He was also brilliant, constantly quoting philosophers and lecturing his dog and/or readers about political and economic theory. Breyfogle originally costumed him in a wide-brimmed hat, cloak and face mask patterned after the lead character in Alan Moore and David Lloy's V for Vendetta.
He is completely unrecognizable here.
Jimenez's radical redesign has him wearing what are essentially street clothes, a big, puffy red jacket with a tilted A-for-Anarchy symbol (spraypainted) on the front of it and wearing a gold mask that looks nothing like his usual one, with bright red eyes and a jagged, zigzag along the lower half as if to suggest pointed teeth.
When we first meet him, he and two henchmen, both wearing gold masks, are trying to hijack or rob a semitruck for some reason. Why does Anarky have henchmen? The scene provides a reason why he shouldn't; one of them shoots the driver dead, and Anarky berates him: "You moron-- --This wasn't the job!"
I was just sort of assuming this was a new, second (or third, I guess) Anarky, until Batman later tracks him to his hideout, throwing two more random guys through the window—apparently more of Anarky's men—and addresses him as Lonnie. Batman catches him easily (the best fight Anarky can put up is spraying Batman in the face with something, which slows him down for a panel).
Tell me, does this sound like Anarky Lonnie Manchin?
Just before Batman arrives, he's talking to himself:
Dammit, dammit, dammit.
Okay. Be cool. Come on.
Be cool, grab your gear and get--AAAHH!
And then, after Batman has caught him and tied him upside down, we get this dialogue:
I don't know man, I swear.
Guy paid me a grand to boost the truck and dump i into the river. That's it. That's all.
But everything went bad....
I-- I wanna turn-- Whatchallit-- --State's evidence.
Take me to the cops. The D.A. The Feds, I don't care. Just take me in.
"Whatchallit"...? Does that sound anything at all like Lonnie Manchin...?
Now, both Croc and The Riddler were notably having trouble thinking, and were acting much, much dumber than usual, so I suppose it might later be revealed that Anarky has also had his mind messed with by The Crown of Storms, but, given that he has never been an inmate of Arkham, that seems extremely unlikely...and his relative lack of brains here isn't presented as an anomaly the way that Croc and Riddler's were (Other than Batman commenting on Lonnie's "friends" seeming "pretty stupid" and then later asking "What was the plan here, Lonnie? Because this one seems pretty weak", Batman doesn't acknowledge how out of character his old enemy is).
Remember, Lonnie wasn't just an ordinary genius like Batman, Tim Drake or Barbara Gordon, but he later used a "biofeedback learning enhancer" to make himself ten times smarter than he already was, as well as fuse the two hemispheres of his brain, giving him a uniquely brilliant mind. Lonnie Manchin should seem at least as smart as Batman or Lex Luthor or Mr. Terrific. He should use big words. He shouldn't say "Whatacallit". He knows the term "state's evidence".
•In general, I'm not a fan of killing off characters, as it just seems intuitively counter-productive for a storytelling "universe" like DC Comics to voluntarily reduce their cast and options for their creators...and, of course, as we know now, no one stays dead anymore. Not Bucky, not Jason Todd, not Bary Allen. Hell, even Uncle Ben has come back to life temporarily, hasn't he? So, killing off super-comics characters at this point in time just sets up some dumb resurrection story in the future...I mean, someone is going to have write a story where Alfred has been put in a Lazarus pit and then went into secret butler training for years before he shows up alive at Wayne Manor again in a year or three or ten.
The scenes aren't poorly done or anything, but they do serve as a constant reminder that maybe King and DC shouldn't have killed him in the first place...?
These nine issues are technically two different story arcs—"On the Run" and "Unreality"—but as both feature the team in conflict with the same team of evil opposites, and the bad guys' plot carries from one arc to another, it's essentially one big, novel-length adventure...although it seems to climax somewhere closer to the middle, at the end of "On the Run".
I confess that I didn't quite understand everything that happens here, like the precise mechanics of Barda's "big" idea.
The Oracle data. It makes us too big a target. For the Shadow Army, for a corrupt GCPD, for Maia, still out there looking for revenge. And so many more enemies.
I think the world needs the Birds, but I have to think about how else we can protect ourselves...If every other mission is the Birds of Prey protecting ourselves, our data, then we're not really heroes.At least not ones that are making much of a difference. I mean, how many times has our headquarters blown up? We have to find another angle.
If so, it's up to the next writer—or maybe Thompson herself, on a later BOP revival—to think of that way.
As always, the best part of the book is Thompson's strong grasp on the characters, the nuances she's found within them and expanded into her own particular takes on them, and the relationships between those characters, particularly those that don't seem to belong in the same panels, like Barda and Batgirl (Indeed, as the team shares a drink, and Barda attempts to name this era of the team, everyone rejects her first suggestion of "The Barda Era," but they are more accepting of her second attempt, "Big Barda and Small Bat Era".)
That said, there is one page that I found completely baffling, and I'm going to share it here with you guys, not to shame the creators, but because I honestly need help understanding what I'm seeing.
So, um, what happened in panel four there...?
You know, it wasn't until just now, a week or so after reading this book for the first time and trying to puzzle that panel out, and after having spent a while writing all these paragraphs, that I have another guess.
Flipping ahead about a dozen pages to when previously mentioned sorta cliffhanger, in which the Birds expose themselves to a drug The Shadow Army was after to see what it does (after Oracle and Batman thoroughly tested it to make sure it wasn't toxic, of course), the affected Barda's dialogue appears to have the same font and balloon shape.
So perhaps Copperhead had some sort of handheld gas-dispensing device and then purposely dosed himself with the drug in order to fight Batgirl while under its effects?
I wanted to share what spread from the book, as an illustration of just how good the storytelling is. At one point, Brume and her friends are set upon by a pack of huge black wolves. Just look at this scene! (I tried to scan it a few different times at different settings but it kept coming out looking poorly.)
The growling, roaring wolves fall at them like an avalanche, a roughly triangular mass, with their snouts pointed at their intended prey like arrows. The other panels in the layout are also sharp, pointed triangles, resembling the shape of dangerous blades, as the reader is shown important details—the shocked and panicked wide eyes of the children, the empty eyes of a wolf, and its fanged, drooling mouth.
Wow, what a spread...!
Of course, perhaps the ostriches have all been turned into zombies at this point. Akira is adamant that they have not, though, given their great speed, their ability to perceive potential predators and their all-around awesomeness.
Another thing to keep in mind? Porcupines absolutely cannot shoot their quills, but creators Haro Aso and Kotaro Takata come up with such an awesome scene involving a porcupine doing so here that it is well worth the perpetuation of that fallacy. (This book is not available digitally on Hoopla, or else I would totally take a screenshot of the spread on pages 70 and 71 and share it here, even if it did spoil one of the best parts of this volume, as it is so awesome that one cannot help but want to show it to others. Here's a hint, though: It alludes to a scene from Terminator 2, and Takataeven draws an image of Arnold Schwarzenegger in the background to make sure readers make that connection.)
They also meet a zombified honey badger, which they are all apparently unfamiliar with (Perhaps they are all too young to have seen that honey badger video on YouTube from years ago...?), and would have totally ended them all...were it not for the timely intervention of a new, totally badass character who makes her entrance riding a tiger.
Despite her warnings, they proceed to the safari park part of the zoo, where all the really big, really dangerous animals are, in search of ostriches. Not to spoil things, but it turns out Akira was right: Not only have the ostriches managed to avoid getting bitten by any zombies up until this point, they are also pretty awesome, and end up saving the day...not unlike the pod of dolphins that saved Akira and Shizuka earlier in the saga.
I obviously love this series, as I am still reading 19 volumes in, but I thought this volume was particularly strong, thanks in large part to the concept of a zoo full of zombie animals, something I've thought about off and on since the Hitman two-parter "Zombie Night at the Gotham Aquarium".
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