Afterbirth: DC's "Rebirth" initaitive, week nine

Red Hood and The Outlaws: Rebirth #1 by Scott Lobdell, Dexter Soy and Veronica Gandini

This book is probably the one that I was most confounded to learn that DC would be relaunching as part of their "Rebirth" initiative. The reason? The market and the audience seem to have pretty resoundingly rejected the idea of a Scott Lobdell-written book about Red Hood at this point.

Red Hood and The Outlaws was launched in September of 2011 as part of the New 52 initiative, written by Lobdell and starring the rebooted Jason Todd, Roy Harper and Starfire. It lasted a respectable 40-ish issues, with its sales seeing regular bumps thanks to its tenuous Batman connections, which were, of course, strong enough to tie into events like, say, "The Death of The Family."

Then DC relaunched it as Red Hood/Arsenal in 2015, with an altered line-up reflected in the title, and a different artist, but Lobdell still attached.

So here's Red Hood and The Outlaws volume two, still written by Lobdell and set to feature a third line-up of characters, who can be glimpsed on the cover, reflected in Red Hood's gun sites–some version of Bizarro* and a new version of the post-Crisis, pre-Flashpoint Amazon character Artemis. In this first issue, however, the only one of the three characters who actually appears is The Red Hood, Jason Todd.

Given the connections to Batman, I suppose it's understandable why DC keeps trying to make a Red Hood book happen, although I'm uncertain why they keep trying to make a Lobdell-written Red Hood book happen, given that he wrote the last two versions and hasn't had much success in either keeping books afloat (see "DCYou" launch Doomed, or have you already forgotten that book even existed?) or staying on books long enough to suggest they were terribly successful (Superman, Teen Titans). The fact that DC has tinkered with every other aspect of this book–the artists, the title, the line-up, the costumes–but not the guy writing it seems strange to me.

I've personally never "bought" the return of Jason Todd or his taking up of the name "Red Hood." I thought his resurrection was a bad move that took more away from Batman than it added to the character and the mega-story (I similarly wasn't pleased with the return of Barry Allen, or, later, the restoration of Barbara Gordon's status as Batgirl). I particularly didn't care for the way the return was handled, as Todd went back and forth from being a Punisher-style killer vigilante to an outright super-villain to an anti-hero in league with Batman, though a couple of the things he did along the way should be deal-breakers for Batman (i.e. killing people with guns, attempting to kill Tim Dake, attempting to kill Dick Grayson and Damian Wayne, etc).

The New 52 reboot did nothing to make a living Jason Todd calling himself "The Red Hood" anymore workable. Even with the excuse of the hard reboot of Flashpoint, DC stuck with the old resurrection story (Superboy punches and a Lazarus Pit, apparently) but the time compression makes the character's story hard to swallow, and Lobdell pretty liberally re-wrote his characterization and his relationship with other characters in his orbit, particularly those that appeared in the book alongside him.

The result is a pretty classic modern DC frustration, wherein the publisher wants to rely on the readership's familiarity with a character to help endear that character and sell that character's comics, while simultaneously telling the reader everything that they though they knew about the character was wrong, and here's a brand-new history and characterization for that character.

Not to get too far into the weeds here (too late, right?), but Jason Todd was Red Hood by "Year Five" of the current DCU timeline. Assuming Batman takes in Dick Grayson and trains him and makes him the first Robin in the first year of his career and Grayson is only Robin for a year, then we're already somewhere in Year Two or Year Three when Batman meets juvenile delinquent Jason Todd, takes him in, trains him, makes him Robin, adventures with him as Robin II, loses him to The Joker in some altered and updated version of "A Death In The Family," and then Todd is brought back to life and some form of the events of "Under The Hood" occurs. That's a lot of ground for two-to-three years...and consider that Batman has to squeeze two more Robins in before Year Five.

Lobdell reviews all of this in this one-shot, so none of that has been soft-rebooted away as part of "Rebirth" (It occurred to me while reading this book and, even more so, while reading Titans #1 that perhaps the "Rebirth" initiative should have waited until after DC does whatever it plans to do to restore their universe/continuity; DC Universe: Rebirth #1 intimated that ten years of time were stolen from the DCU and the New 52-ivers was created to weaken and fuck with the fabric of reality, so it will be presumably restored at some point...which will make necessary another reboot in the near-ish future anyway).

So in this issue, Red Hood narrates another re-telling of his origin story on his way to the presentation of what appears to be the premise for this newest Red Hood series.

There are seven pages about his first meeting with Batman (when he tries to steal the Batmobile's tires), and how be came Robin and how, even at a relatively young age, he was a bit more wild and violent than Batman was comfortable with.

This section benefits greatly from colorist Veronica Gandini's work, which keeps keeps the palette muted enough that it almost looks washed into black and whtie, save for the striking red of Jason's hoodie (Oh! A red hoodie! I get it!) and, later, his Robin costume, with yellows and flashes of flesh coloring or dull yellows breaking the blacks. It's very moody and very effective.

Then cut to the present, where Jason fights Batman, who is attempting to stop him from apparently gunning down a bunch of cops and the mayor of Gotham. Improbably, Jason wins the fight.

He retreats to what appears to be an all-villains bar, where he reminisces over the next phase of his back story–"A Death in The Family" through "Under The Hood"–over a large mug of beer which, hilariously, he doesn't remove his mask to drink. Not sure how that works, as he doesn't even have a little mouth hole to insert a straw into.

He's approached by another guy in a full face mask and jacket, and he has the gall to tell the guy who is dressed so similarly to himself, "Sorry, Pal. S&M's not really my thing..." That guy tries to recruit Jason into Black Mask's False Face Society (I thought Catwoman just did that story...?) Apparently the battle with Batman and the apparent shooting of all the city employees ingratiated Red Hood to the local bad guy scene (No one seems to notice or remark upon the fact that Red Hood wears a bat-symbol on his chest, of course).

Finally, we end in Jason Todd's current Gotham City base of operations, which Batman has of course found, and is standing there waiting for him. We learn that Todd had actually injected the mayor with a cure to some goofy super-villain weapon that had infected him, and that he had sedated the cops rather than shot them with bullets.

During the course of their discussion, Todd tells Batman he wants to follow up with the False Face Society, and go undercover as a bad guy to help fight crime within. That's a fine premise, even if it seems pretty similar to the premise of the current and previous Dick Grayson books and seems like a better one for a Red Hood comic launching on the heels of "Under The Hood" or even Batman, Incorporated rather than his third team book in five years, but whatever.

Artist Dexter Soy's work looks better here than I can remember it looking at any point in the near past and, again, I think a great deal of the credit goes to Gandini's coloring. As an introduction to The Red Hood character, I think this one-shot works perfectly well and, in fact, it probably serves better as an introduction than a re-introduction, since if you've been reading the character since Todd came back to life and took over that name and adopted that costume in 2005 or so, you'll know all of this (and be aware of how fluid and almost random his characterization has been in all that time).

How the book will incorporate "The Outlaws" Bizarro and Artemis will have to remain to be seen in the pages of Red Hood and The Outlaws #1 on August 10, when Lobdell and Soy launch the "Dark Trinity" storyline.

Batgirl #1 by Hope Larson, Rafael Albuquerque and Dave McCaig

(Quick note: This is the exact same review that I posted as part of last week's "Comic Shop Comics" column, included here for the sake of making this column a complete review of the the Rebirth specials and the launches of all their new titles). After how great the previous creative team of Cameron Stewart, Brenden K. Fletcher and Babs Tarr's run on the second half of the previous volume of Batgirl was, how luke-warm I was on the new team of Hope Larson (whose older work I've enjoyed, but whom I've only encountered as a writer/artist doing her own thing, not a writer of super-comics) and Rafael Albuquerque (a great artist, but not one with a style I personally found as exciting, unique and as much of a break with the rest of DC's line as I did Tarr), and how confusingly poor last week's Batgirl And The Birds of Prey: Rebirth #1 was (scroll down for a pair of reviews), my expectations for this issue were set pretty low.

It did manage to surpass them though.

Perhaps wisely, Larson takes Barbara Gordon out of Burnside, and Gotham City altogether. The rationale proffered in the last issues of the previous volume seemed a little weak, but, here in the real world, it does allow Larson and Albuquerque a way to avoid direct comparisons with the previous creative team. If Babs is journeying to Asia to re-find herself, well, it allows the new creative team, and the book itself, to find themselves before plunging back into the more familiar Barbara Gordon milieu of Gotham City (Although it may be worth noting that she is in Gotham in Batgirl and The Birds of Prey, which is set after the first story arc of Batgirl, and she was also there in the first issue of Nightwing, which also shipped this week).

She's gone to Japan, in part to interview 104-year-old former (?) bat-themed crime-fighting vigilante Fruit Bat, given the fact that the average lifespan of a superhero is 40 (Actually, I don't know how many superheroes have actually died in the post-Flashpoint DCU yet...and, of course, stayed dead. Damian died at 10, so if the average is 40, then that means someone really old must have died at some point too, but since there's only been a single generation of superheroes now, at least not that Barbara would know of, since DC Universe: Rebirth intimated the existence of the Justice Society's heroes. Batman and Jason Todd both died young, and came back to life. So maybe they, like Damian, don't count, since they didn't stay dead. Superman's dead, but he was also pretty young, somewhere in his twenties, right? Actually, let's not even think about it, okay?)

Babs gets to see the very old super-lady in action, as she takes on and frightens off a girl in a sailor suit and dumb face-paint (you can see the pair on the cover). She also meets an old friend from Chicago, who is coincidentally staying in the same room at the same hostel she is.

Larson's plotting and script are just fine. Albuquerque's artwork is also just fine. Babs appears a lot less stylish than I'm used to seeing her now, as she's dressed the entire issue as is she were out hiking, and I wasn't crazy with the designs of the new characters (Like, it always strikes me as a little weird when heroes in other cultures or countries dress in traditional or stereotypical costumes; it's not like all American heroes dress like Uncle Sam or cowboys, you know?).

The book does seem to be off to a pretty good start though, and I'm certainly planning on reading #2.

Hal Jordan and The Green Lantern Corps #1 by Robert Venditti, Rafa Sandoval, Jordi Tarragona and Tomeu Morey

In the first official issue of the new volume of Green Lantern, the Rebirth special's artist Evan Van Sciver is replaced by pencil artist Rafa Sandoval and inker Jordi Tarragona, for what appears to be something of a retreat from writer Robert Venditti's somewhat off-the-beaten path take on Hal Jordan and Green Lantern during the course of the book's "DCYou" period.

The Sinestro Corps is ascendant, as we saw in the special, and Sinestro has regained his youth (and a snazzier new yellow Parallax-style costume) by charging his ring directly from the imprisoned Parallax entity itself, apparently sucking the whole entity into his ring.

Meanwhile, Hal Jordan is looking for leads as to where the hell the Corps has disappeared to–and is temporarily affected by fear, which I think turns part of his recently regained corporeal body back into green pure will energy(?), and The Corps reappears from...wherever they were exactly during their last two miniseries.

So Hal, Guy, Kilowog, Arissa and Mogo are all back in the universe. And...that's this issue, really. Venditti seems to be re-setting the board for another Sinestro vs. Hal Jordan, Yellow Lanterns vs. Green Lanterns showdown.

I've seen it before, so am not terribly interested in what happens next, although I wonder if a certain segment of Green Lantern fans will be happy to see the franchise return to something more familiar after the last year or so of the unfamiliar.

Sandoval's art is fine, although the thing I like most about these Green Lantern comics with various armies of variously colored Lanterns is the designs of particular aliens in the ranks of each. As I mentioned previously, I like the fact that one of the new (or newer? I wasn't reading Sinestro) Sinestro Corps members is apparently just a giant gorilla with a power ring, and, looking at the GLC, I see there's a raccoon now, apparently distinct from B'dg or the late Ch'p. Maybe this is the Rocket of the DCU...?

I think this Green Lantern book is probably better written, and the characters seem more consistent with themselves, but of the two currently on the stands, I prefer Green Lanterns, which has an Earth setting (which seems novel after about a decade of Green Lantern comics set almost exclusively in outer space), two newer characters with interesting backgrounds, the intriguing promise of a "Phantom Ring" (presumably not the skull ring The Phantom wears to brand guys with skull-shaped bruises when he pounds it into their faces) and, of course, Dex-Starr, the napalm blood-vomiting Red Lantern house cat.

Nightwing #1 by Tim Seeley, Javier Fernandez and Christ Sotomayor

The first issue of the volume of a Nightwing monthly, still being written by Grayson co-writer Seeley, covers some similar ground as the Nightwing: Rebirth special, in which Dick Grayson decides to move on from his super-spy work and resume his Nightwing identity for another, similar mission: Infiltrate the new, international iteration of the Court of Owls and destroy it from within. Along the way, he checks in with old allies, including Batgirl Barbara Gordon and Batman and current Robin, Damian Wayne (These are both rather nice moments, in which he interrupts a Batman/Robin sparring match by advising Damian how to get past Batman's defense, and when he meets Batgirl in plain clothes thinking it was a date, not a team-up).

Seeley is setting up a war of sorts between Kobra and the black-masked Parliament of Owls, in which the Owls want Grayson to get increasingly offensive, ultimately pairing him with another bird-themed operateive, Raptor. They naturally don't get along so great.

I'm not terribly fond of Raptor's costume, which features a mask that is at once evocative of a luchadore mask and that of Hawk from Hawk and Dove, and a tight-fitting, sleeveless coat with a zipper and hood. The closest thing he has to a power is an elaborate, somewhat steampunk-looking claw that is somehow able to provide him whatever he needs in any particular situation...a little like a magical answer to Batman's utility belt.

I don't love Nightwing's current costume either, which features a too-small blue chest symbol and blue highlights in unusual places (strips on his calves, blue knuckles and palms on his gloves). It's a big improvement over his Agent 37 costume and his previous, red-and-black Nightwing costume, but I don't know, it's not quite there yet.

In the "Rebirth" era, DC seems to be retreating from The New 52 designs into the direction of the pre-Flashpoint designs, but not going so far as to just give characters versions of their classic costumes. So like Tim Drake's new duds, I think the new Nightwing costume is a vast improvement, but not quite there just yet.

Titans #1 by Dan Abnett, Brett Booth, Norm Rapmund and Andrew Dalhouse

Sigh. Okay, so this is the first issue of the new Titans ongoing series, following immediately on the heels of Titans: Rebirth #1, which reflected both the events of DC Universe: Rebirth #1 (in fact, this book seems most directly concerned with the follow-up to that universe-shaking revelations of that one-shot) and Titans Hunt, the Dan Abnett-written miniseries that was a sequel of sorts to Convergence.

So yeah, good luck!

After a brief, four-page recap of DC Comics: Universe #1, we're back in Dick Grayson's apartment, where the (new) original Teen Titans team of Robin-turned-Nightwing, Aqualad-turned-Garth, Speedy-turned-Arsenal, Wonder Girl-turned-Donna Troy and Lilith-turned-Omen are trying to help Kid Flash-turned-Flash Wally West figure out just what the hell is going on with DC continuity. They all remember the old, pre-Flashpoint continuity, or at least a new version of it, where they all had updated, post-Flashpoint versions of their original Silver Age costumes or whatever.

And I honestly can't wrap my head around this whole premise. I mean, I saw the creation of Donna Troy some five-to-seven years into The New 52-iverse timeline; how could she have existed before? When Dr. Manhattan and/or Pandora re-make the universe and reboot characters, what do they use as their raw material? Isn't New 52 Superman, for example, made out of pre-Flashpoint Superman...? (Apparently not, based on Convergence). This all just makes my head hurt.

And Booth's artwork doesn't do anything for my eyes.

It's not just his style, which I'm not a fan of, or his stylized, '90s take on anatomy, but the very lay-outs, which are all irregular, oddly-shaped panels presented at angles.

So in this issue, while Lilith/Omen tries to magic stuff clues to help them out of Wally's mind, Arsenal and Troy decide to go looking for Mammoth (which has something to do with Titans Hunt), and Nightwing and Garth decide to just hang around his trashed apartment.

Meanwhile, a pretty cool, classic Flash villain is reawakened somehow, and, like his foes, seems to know who Wally West is, and we catch up with New 52 Linda Park.

I would love to like this book, as I like almost all of these characters a whole lot, but these days they are really jut familiar names, as when you take away a character's history and relationships, what you're left with is just a name. I'm not quite sure I even follow Abnett/DC's plan here, to have these re-booted characters semi-remember some aspects of their old histories which, visually at least, seem to have been heavily altered so much that they aren't being de-rebooted (er, restored is probably a better word), just changed.

As mentioned previously, I think this book would be a better one had it been launched after whatever the endgame is for DC's Watchmen vs. The DCU storyline they've foreshadowed. That, or maybe set on a different Earth or continuity. That way the characters could at least remain themselves.

On the positive side, I do really like the way Booth drew the absurdly silly mustache on the villain and, while she doesn't appear in the issue at all, look, Bumblebee is on the cover! I like Bumblebee.



*We've had at least two since the last reboot so far, the Frankenstein's monster-like "B-Zero" from the pages of Forever Evil that died, and the one that starred alongside Jimmy Olsen in the Bizarro mini-series that launched during the "DCYou" initiative.

Based on the variant cover for this issue, this Bizarro is wearing a version of the current Superman costume, blue boots and all, with a backwards S-shield. It remains to be seen if it will be a third Bizarro or if the second one just changed clothes.

Review: Batman and Robin: Dark Knight Vs. White Knight

DC launched Batman and Robin in 2009 as part of Grant Morrison's ongoing run on the Batman franchise. It was one of several instances where the writer rather shrewdly tied a new story direction to the launch of a new title, underlining the presumed importance of the new direction (and, perhaps not incidentally, generating higher sales than he would have by continuing on a pre-existing title).

This particular book was launched after the events of Final Crisis and the aftermath of Morrison's "Batman R.I.P." story arc in the Batman title left Bruce Wayne temporarily "dead." Dick Grayson became the new Batman, Damian Wayne became the new Robin and DC was launching a new title devoted to this bold new direction.

It was actually the first of two times Morrison's twisting and turning six-year Batman mega-plot birthed a new Batman title. When Bruce Wayne returned, Morrison left Batman and Robin, which had outlived its usefulness to his story, and DC launched Batman, Inc. for Morrison, a new book devoted to chronicling Wayne's attempts to build a global army of crime-fighting Batmen.

So what to do with Batman and Robin...? Cancel it? A successful title starring Batman? Of course not.

Instead, DC would keep it going, although their plan for doing so looks like it must have been more than a little confused, looking back on what the post-Morrison version of the title looked like: Ten issues by four different creative teams, three three-issue arcs by three different teams (the third of which suffered some pretty bad production problems, based on the number of artists involved with it), plus a one-off, schedule-filling issue by the fourth team.

This collection includes all of the post-Morrison issues of the first volume of Batman and Robin save for the final issue, a done-in-one written by David Hine and 2/3 drawn by Greg Tocchini, with artist Andrei Bressan drawing the final third. (What, exactly, happened during this period of the title's life is likely explained by the then-imminent launch of DC's "New 52"; at one point, Peter Tomasi and Patrick Gleason were announced as the new creative team for the book, but after one arc another creative team came in and, when the second, "New 52" volume of the series was announced, it was with Tomasi and Gleason as its creative team).

All of the apparent chaos behind the scenes obviously wasn't conducive to producing great comics, but there's surprisingly good work in this volume, some of it from creators who haven't produced much of note over the course of the last few years (artist Scott McDaniel and writer Judd Winick, for example) who nevertheless make rather strong showings within these stories.

The first story is very good, the second a little less so and the third even less so. Due to the fill-in nature of all three arcs, and the fact that the de facto Batman showrunner Morrison had already turned his attention away from the Grayson/Wayne Batman and Robin team means there's only so much any writer can do with the characters or characterization. All three writers managed to carry on Morrison's surface-level characterizations, however, and have fun with the inverted light-hearted, quipping Batman and dark, tight-ass Robin relationship, the Dynamic Duo as multi-generational buddy cops with Alfred as referee premise.

All three stories also manage to introduce new villains of varying degrees of stature and creativity, and boast some pretty decent art—at least until the very end of the collection.

Let's look at them one at a time, shall we?

"The Sum of Her Parts" by Paul Cornell, Scott McDaniel, Christopher Jones, Rob Hunter, Art Thibert and Andy Owen

The arc opens in medias res with Batman and Robin busting up a mysterious wedding ceremony of some sort, while Damian bickers with Dick over the fact that they both had an entrance line (That is, traditionally, Robin's job, but ur-Robin Grayson hasn't kicked the habit yet).

From there we flash back a few nights to a grave robbery of one Una Nemo, a brilliant, beautiful billionaire that Bruce Wayne was once semi-courting as part of his weird playboy act; he disappeared on her when Darkseid shot him backwards in time (although she didn't know why he suddenly stopped calling) and then she got shot through the forehead during a yacht robbery gone bad and, thanks to some barely alluded to comic book science about pollution in the water, she survived:

That's McDaniel's drawing of her. Here's Guillem March's, from one of the covers to Batman and Robin #18:

While the comically large hole in her head might beggar belief, this is a Batman comic, and it sort of works; she may look like she was shot with the sort of revolver that Elmer Fudd or Yosemite Sam might menace Bugs Bunny with, but it gives her that striking, gruesome Dick Tracy-villain look that so many of Batman's best enemies has. It also helps her meet the requirements of a good Batman villain: A striking visual that matches her modus operandi and her unbalanced mental state.

Now calling herself Absence, Nemo launches an extremely strange crime spree revolving around what's missing and what's not there. Her plan seems straightforward, and involves whipping up a cult following and a series of death traps for Batman and Robin, her stated plan being to kill enough of Bruce Wayne's new army of Batmen to regain his attention. More is going on.

It's a extremely well-scripted Batman story, working on the two levels the character's devious plotting is working on, while providing all the surface thrills that Morrison's conception of the all-new Batman and Robin team (and comic) had provided in previous issues, while also mining the fertile psychological territory that is inherent in the Batman experience (It's somewhat neat how Cornell manages to explore Bruce Wayne's behavior and state of mind in a story that he barely appears in at all, while also doing the same with Damian, Dick and the new villainess, and making it all relate.

Based on this story arc alone, Cornell might have been an ideal writer to follow Morrison on the title.

Given all the help McDaniel had in crafting the artwork—Jones gets a "with" credit for pencil art, while all those other names above inked these 60 pages—it's hard to tell exactly what's his and what's some one else's contribution, but it all looks like McDaniel's art. The figures have his signature design, they contort into thrusting, frozen poses when leaping or fighting, they are usually drawn leaping or fighting.

There's a lot of black in the art and it is, in general, richer, deeper, fuller than a lot of McDaniel's work in the recent past (Trinity, Arena, etc). There's a lot more detail to it, but it retains the semi-abstracted look of much of McDaniel's work, in which dynamic angles and figures propel the action as well as the story.

"Tree of Blood: Dark Knight Vs. White Knight" by Peter J. Tomasi, Patrick Gleason, Mick Gray, Keith Champagne and Tom Ngueyn

It sure takes a lot of guys to ink DC comics these days, doesn't it? The last three names above were the guys who inked Gleason's pencil art on this story. To everyone's credit, it's not incredibly obvious when a new inker comes in, and even with that many cooks in the kitchen, they produce much better than average 21st century Batman comics art.

I wish I could remember which blogger it was that called out how incredibly fucked-up the first scene in this story actually is (It was Tucker Stone, yes, but maybe someone else too...? Maybe everyone else? Tucker's take is, as usual, pretty funny. So you should probably go listen to it). In the book's first three pages, we see the three Robins—Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and Damien Wayne—hanging out in the kitchen with Alfred, making popcorn and smoothies and chatting. Then they gather in Wayne Manor's home theater with their dad/mentor and Alpha Bat Bruce Wayne to watch a movie.

It's a pretty cool, just-some-guys hanging-out, superheroes-behind-the-scenes sort of sequence, the kind that is more rare in Batman comics than in super-team comics. Sure, it's a little weird that none of the Batgirls were invited, and that Tomasi makes a point of this being the important part of the Batman family by having Wayne literally refer to them as "the whole family." But what's fucked-up is the movie they're watching: The Mark of Zorro, aka the movie young Bruce Wayne just got done watching with his parents before they were gunned down in an alley, an event that so traumatized him that he spent the rest of his life and most of his fortune dressing up as a bat to beat people up...and convince dozens of others to do the same!

After that, it is a pretty straightforward Batman comic, in which the Dick Grayson/Damian Wayne versions of the characters (Bruce and Tim apparently go off to their own comics after the movie), investigate the work of a new serial killer with a bizarre and presumably very expensive, pain-staking method of choosing and killing victims.

He's covered in something that renders him a glowing silhouette, with his eyeballs being the only normal detail one an see, and he has some kind of weird gun that paints things similarly glow-y (this detail reminded me quite a bit of the 2003 miniseries Batman: City of Light). To kill victims, he dresses them up as angels, pumps 'em full of drugs, and talks them into jumping off of skyscrapers.

The victims he chooses are what is perhaps the most interesting thing about the character—aside from the rather striking visual, which gets even more striking in the last scene, which leads me to believe Tomasi intends for him to be a repeat villain. This probably constitutes a spoiler: All of his victims are the relatives of Batman villains who are or have been incarcerated in Arkham Asylum, and his plan is to not only kill all of those killers, but wipe out their families and thus their bloodlines as well.

The downside of this is, of course, that it makes this one more story about all of Batman's old villains, instead of doing or saying much of anything new. There are welcome aspects to that strategy, like getting to see Gleason draw a large swathe of the rogues gallery—there's a pretty great scene where you turn a page and suddenly Man-Bat* appears out of nowhere flying tackling Batman—but it also simply covers the same old ground in a slightly different way. This is probably me as much as it is them, but I've read soooooo many stories about Arkham Asylum and its inmates at this point, I find stories dwelling on them rather tiresome now.

"The Streets Run Red" by Judd Winick, Guillem March, Andrie Bressan, Greg Tocchini and Andy Smith

Finally, there's a Winick-written Jason Todd story, which I think is the first one since Morrison sort of took over the character for an arc and offered his take on the long-dead Robin that Winick had quite clumsily resurrected and made into the new Red Hood.

Winick's version was a guy in a vaguely Spider-Man-shaped red helmet and street clothes, savagely gunning down villains like The Punisher (as to how he survived being blown up by a bomb and buried, it apparently had something to do with Superboy-punching, but let's not dwell on that).

Morrison reinvented Todd's Red Hood, giving him a cool new superhero costume (which I assume was designed by Frank Quitely rather than Batman and Robin #4-#6 artist Philip Tan, but I don't know for sure), a pair of signature crimson pistols and a sidekick of his own, Scarlet. Just as Dick Grasyon graduated to Batman, Todd made his own Red Hood persona more Batman-like. (That arc also revealed some rather weird details, like the fact that Todd was actually a redhead, but Bruce made him dye his hair black to look more like Dick).

So Winick returns to Todd after Morrison, and essentially writes him as he was writing him before, while acknowledging the cosmetic changes.

Aside from a flashback to Todd's days as Robin during the first ten pages of the book, drawn by cover artist March, and a visit from Dick Grayson's Batman to Todd's jail cell, the entire first issue is devoted to Todd in jail. Apparently, after the events of the previous Red Hood arc, he was being housed anonymously at Arkham Asylum, but is now being transferred to a regular prison.

There he regularly kills criminals—he's up to 95 before they think to transfer him back to Arkham.

Couple of things: 1) Yes, the lethal vigilante in jail killing his fellow convicts left and right is a Punisher story that's been written over and over 2) the Bat-guys want Todd in Arkham Asylum due to its greater security for his own safety, but Todd wants to be in a regular prison since he's not crazy—Arkham Asylum has terrible security, with folks escaping and murdering other people in there constantly, and wouldn't Todd rather be incarcerated somewhere he is able to kill folks like The Joker than somewhere he has to simply content himself with killing gangsters and "regular" criminals...?

Anyway, when Todd is being transferred again, he's "rescued" by The Menagerie, a team of mercenaries who are half-animal—the artists draw them as basically human with animal heads on top. They look kinda silly but, hey, new characters! That's something.

They are working at the behest of...Some Lady. Winick doesn't really explain who she is, or why she wants to free Jason Todd. She does know he's Jason Todd, though, so she somehow knows more about him than anyone at Arkham Asylum or the Regular Prison (Blackgate...?).

When Todd, with an assist from Batman and Robin, defeat The Menagerie, she calls him on the phone to tell him that she has Scarlet kidnapped, so The Red Hood (now wearing a compromise costume incorporating bits from his superhero-style costume and his Punisher-Lite costume) must form an uneasy alliance with Batman and Robin to rescue Scarlet by fighting...people. That work for that lady.

And, um, that's pretty much it. The story simply finds Jason Todd, follows him around, and then sets him free to fly off into an indeterminate future (I'm not certain; is this his last appearance before The New52boot, in which he would be reintroduced in the title Red Hood and The Outlaws...?).

The story isn't terribly ambitious, and lacks even a pretense of characterization of the antagonists, who are maguffins without so much as a veneer of non-maguffinosity. Where it really falls down, however, is the art. Which, as I mentioned, is by several artists, none of whose styles mesh in the least.

Any one of them would have probably done a decent enough job, but all together on a single story? It's a mess, and they're not even doled out, like, one per issue.

Here, for example, are three images by the three artists from the same story:

This, apparently, is where things really started to break down behind the scenes, and preparation for the New 52 relauch got underway and began interfering with the pre-New 52 comics-making.

Recently, Grant Morrison has announced that he's winding down all of his DC writing, which currently includes Action Comics and the recently relaunched Batman, Inc.

It will be curious to see what DC decides to do with that created-for-Morrison title when his run wraps up. Will they allow that book to retire with Morrison, or will they keep it going as they kept Batman and Robin going...?

If the latter, perhaps they'll let Cornell take it over. Based on the stories in this volume, he's the best they've got at following Morrison.



*Was Man-Bat an inmate of Arkham at any point in the comics...? This is the first I've heard of it, and I can't really remember an instance of him being shown as an inmate. I thought he wasn't criminally insane so much as sometimes he would turn into a giant bat, which is more of a chemical problem than a mental one..

Batman: Battle for the Cowl in 30 Seconds (Or Less)

(Please visit the Invincible-Super Blog for more 30 Second Recaps.)

Being Free Doesn't Make Them Any Better Pt. 2: Batman: Battle for the Cowl

Batman: Battle for The Cowl was such a pointless endeavor that even discussing it at all seems like a waste of everyone’s time—certainly reading it was.

What precisely happened between the time Batman Bruce Wayne was “killed” by Darkseid in Final Crisis and when an all-new Batman and Robin showed up in Batman and Robin wasn’t all that important to writer Grant Morrison, the creative force currently driving the Batman franchise.

One of Morrison’s great strengths as a comic book writer is that he intentionally leaves blank spaces in his narratives, blank spaces the readers perhaps half-subconsciously fill in with their own imaginations, resulting in adventures that are infinitely more satisfying to the individual reader than anything DC Comics could come up with precisely because the stories are the reader’s own stories.

Occasionally, the publisher will attempt to fill in those spaces however, and that’s what Battle for the Cowl was—the Batman office asking writer/artist Tony S. Daniel to come up with a Point A-and-a-half to stick between Morrison’s Point A and Point B.

Over the past few years, I’ve talked a lot of smack about Daniel’s work, but I do genuinely feel bad for the guy. He’s not a great artist, and is, in fact, still a relatively weak one, having never moved beyond the design-an-image-to-avoid-having-to-draw-human-feet level of artistic development, and yet DC asked him to partner with Grant Morrison, perhaps the comics industry’s most popular creator who is also almost universally critically lauded (generally superhero writers are one or the other) on one of the industry’s premier publisher’s biggest titles. Daniel would have been a fool to turn down the gig, whether he was ready for it or not.

And he wasn’t. His work on Batman with Morrison was cringe inducing. Rather than complementing Morrison’s work and helping to tell the story, Daniel’s art was generally running interference; it was something to be overcome by the reader in order to figure out the script.

With Battle for the Cowl, Daniel had a chance to redeem himself a bit. As great a superhero writer as Morrison may be, he’s not the world’s greatest collaborator—some artists he meshes with perfectly, others seem to be at odds with him. That’s just the nature of making comics piecemeal, I suppose, and it’s unfortunate that Morrison was writing some of the most interesting and exciting Batman stories in a generation, only to have so many of them hampered by the artist.

But here Daniel would be writing as well as drawing, so there shouldn’t be any excuse for any disconnect between the writer and the artist, the script and the printed page. If this artwork wasn’t any good, Daniel had little excuse.

The storytelling is somewhat improved than it was during his work with Morrison on Batman on arcs like “The Resurrection of Ra’s al Ghul” or “Batman R.I.P.” It’s generally clear what’s happening on every page or in every panel, even if it’s not communicated terribly gracefully or doesn’t look all that nice. There wasn’t a single instance where I had no idea what I was looking at, and had to wait a few panels or pages for the dialogue to explain the visuals to me, as happened during Morrison/Daniel collaborations.

That said, Daniel still strikes me as a weak comic book artist. His work still resembles a collage of rough Hollywood storyboards and pin-up sketches more than a fully functional and polished comic book page. He changes scenes with the comic book equivalent of a smash-cut, there’s rarely a sense of space or place or that the characters are interacting with either and some seriously odd, layout choices, like this one of Commissioner Gordon walking across the page:

And even when working from a script he himself wrote, there are weird inconsistencies from panel to panel. In perhaps the most egregious example, the second chapter of the story ends with one of the contenders for the cowl seemingly murdering the other by jamming a sharpened batarang into his rival’s abdomen.

In the panel where the wound is revealed, it’s facing in one direction, but in the very next panel—a splash page which concludes the chapter and would have been the cliffhanger ending of that particular issue, the Batarang was drawn facing the opposite direction (The depth, placement and severity of the wound will change in the next issue too, but jeez, that’s supposed to be a pivotal moment in the issue, but it’s hard to give oneself over to the drama when one’s eye is drawn to the art mistakes in two adjacent panels).

The writing isn’t all that great either, but, again, there was a pointlessness to the series that precluded it being all that good anyway. Battle of the Cowl was simply marking time between Morrison scripts, giving the most obsessive Batman fans something to buy while the new creative teams assumed their positions and geared up new titles and new directions for old ones.

It’s a three-issue series, and in each issue a different one of the three real contenders for the cowl take turns narrating.

Gotham has apparently gone to hell as soon as Batman “died” (one wonders how the whole city managed to keep its shit together while Batman took that year off in 52), with groups of theme gangs running wild in the streets (Daniel does invent some neat gangs with weird, visual hooks all their own, but we never hear anything about them at all, so they become one more screech in the visual white noise of the book).

Also, Black Mask (who is dead) releases all of the Arkham Asylum inmates (like Bane did in Knightfall) and put some kind of chemical thingee in them to make them serve him while he goes to war with Two-Face and the Penguin.

How many heroes does it take to fill the void Batman left? Well, in addition to Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and Jason Todd, all of these folks make cameos: The Knight and Squire, Black Canary, Wildcat, Man-Bat, Lynx*, Batwoman, Batgirl, Oracle, Huntress, Catwoman, Lady Blackhawk, Owlman, Geo-Force, Halo**, Katana, The Creeper, Metamorpho, Black Lightning, Misfit, Manhunter and Ragman.

How useless are all these folks? It takes about 25 of ‘em to equal one Batman.

Okay, maybe that’s a petty, nerd-centric concern, but that’s the target audience here, right? The sort of fan who will suspend disbelief enough to care about what happened between Point A and Point B of Morrison’s story, right?

I tried, but too much of the story seemed off and hard to match up with what I know of the characters and events from other books. There were just too, too many of those little petty, nerd-centric concerns for me to lose myself in the story at all.

Perhaps the most unfortunate part is the ending, where the most obvious candidate to replace Batman finally does so—and it’s not made explicit he does.

Because Battle for the Cowl employs the personalized narration boxes, in which each narration box is color-coded to reflect the narrator’s costume and or symbol, when Nightwing Dick Grayson assumes the role of Batman, his narration box changes colors and adds a Bat-symbol, so it’s no longer clear that it’s Dick talking, only that it’s Batman.

The last two pages are drawn from the new Batman’s point of view (or, a point of view just behind his head) so we only know that it’s a dark-haired man. So it could be Dick Grayson. Or Jason Todd. Or Tim Drake.

It’s Grayson, of course; DC didn’t really do much to keep that any great mystery, but you couldn’t be sure of that from the story. If you were invested in the mystery of who will be the new Batman, it had to have been a frustrating way to end the series.

That was the end of Battle for the Cowl, but it wasn’t the end of the Batman: Battle for the Cowl hardcover collection, which included two one-shots after Daneil’s series—Gotham Gazette: Batman Dead? #1 and Gotham Gazette: Batman Alive? #1.

Despite the goofy titles and numbering, this was essentially a two-part miniseries in which writer Fabian Nicieza checks in five different Gothamites, each character’s story drawn by a different art team.

Each one opens and closes with narration from The Veil, a spirit-of-the-city type of character introduced by Denny O’Neil and Guillem March in one of the many “Batman R.I.P.” epilogues, her sequences drawn by Dustin Nguyen (The Streets of Gotham artist).

The other Gothamites checked in with include Vicki Vale (as drawn by Gotham City Sirens artist March), Stephanie “The Spoiler” Brown (as drawn by ChrisCross), Dr. Leslie Thompkins (by Jamie McKelvie) and Harvey Bullock (by Alex Konat and Mark McKenna).

None of the stories really stand on their own as complete works, but I don’t think they were meant to either—it’s basically a sampler platter of plot points and conflicts that will be picked up on in other Bat-books during the line’s “Batman: Reborn!” branding effort. As such, it functions fairly well, even though I’m not sure which storylines were picked up where exactly (The Vicki Vale figuring out the Bat-family’s secrets plot, for instance, struck me as the most interesting, but I’m not sure where to look for its continuation).

I don’t know if Nicieza could have done much better with the limited story space and collection of beats to hit than Daniel did in Battle, but he seems to have gotten more of the characters’ voices righter in these vignettes, and certainly each of the artists who drew them were far superior in skill to what Daniel was able to demonstrate in his story.

The result was that as I was reading these segments in the back of the collection, I kept wondering what a Nicieza/March or Nicieza/McKelvie Battle for the Cowl might have looked like.



*I guess. The woman in the white cat mask is supposed to be Lynx right? She died though, so I’m not sure if this is a new Lynx or…what, exactly. I guess I don’t read enough Batman comics to be able to keep up with who’s even alive or dead anymore.

**Huh. I thought she died too.



********************

On the other hand, if it weren’t for Battle for the Cowl, we never would have had the sequence from Tiny Titans that began with this page:

Don't Look Now, Judd Winick!

From Deadman: Dead Again #2 by Steve Vance, Jim Aparo and Rich Burchett (DC Comics; 2001)

One of the half-dozen or so things that bugged me about Countdown #48

Like each of the previous three issues, there was a whole lot to dislike about this week's Countdown. This time out, a lot of it came on page nine, a brief five-panel scene between Donna Troy and Jason Todd that is breathtaking in the amount of continuity mistakes it manages to cram into such a small space.

Donna Troy is standing over the fresh grave of former Titan Duela Dent, The Joker's Daughter, and up walks former Titan and former Robin Jason Todd, who is currently a multiple-murderer and fugitive from justice, a walking threat to Donna's pal Nightwing's very existence as a costumed hero (not to mention Robin and Batman's).

Instead of smacking Jason across the cemetery or calmly asking him to surrender himself to the proper authorities, Donna just kind of chats with him.

Even if I wanted to be extremely generous with writers Adam Beechen and Paul Dini and assume that maybe Donna doesn't know about all the guys Jason has beheaded, and that she for some reason trusts him not to ever reveal Nightwing's secret identity to anyone, I still can't understand why she's not a little more pissed at the guy.

After all, as far as I know, the last time the two of them crossed paths was in this comic book



Now, it was a terrible comic book, probably the worst issue of Titans with Geoff Johns' name on it prior to "Titans East," so I can hardly blame Dini and Beechen for not wanting to read it.

In fact, I've tried very hard to block it out of my own memory because this issue, primarily because, in addition to containing Jason Todd (alive, aged, and evil), it also features an incredibly stupid scene in which he rips off his Red Hood costume



to reveal this costume


which he was apparently wearing underneath his Red Hood get-up...cape, gloves, boots and all.

But anyway, in that issue, Jason Todd broke into Titans Tower, gassed Raven in her sleep, shot Cyborg and Beast Boy with some kind of electricity-emitting darks that knock them both out, and then attacked Robin, beating him into unconsciousness and knocking down the Donna Troy memorial statue in the Titan's creepy Hall of Statues of Dead Titans.

Donna, who has arrived at the Tower in search of cannon fodder to take into her space battle against Alexander Luthor's giant space hands, is there when the team finds her nominal teammate Robin,



who tells them all that Jason Todd just did this to him.

So I gather Donna either has very bad short-term memory (this happened just before Infinite Crisis, so it was only about a year ago her time), or she really, really, really doesn't like Tim Drake.

That, or Beechen and Dini didn't read Teen Titans #29. Like I said, I don't blame them for not wanting to read it, and I'd excuse them both, if they weren't using both of those characters in this story.

Beechen is an even worse offender here though, since he took over Teen Titans from Geoff Johns. Apparently I don't understand what is involved with writing universe comics for one of the Big Two, but I always thought that part of preparing to take over as a writer for a pre-existing title included reading the previous issues.

I mean, it's not like Beechen was taking over Action Comics or Detective Comics here, where there are hundreds of issues featuring characters who have weathered thousands of appearances that no one could keep track of every single one of, but Titans was only forty-some issues old when he took over...that's an afternoon's worth of "research."

Delayed Reaction: Batman: Under the Hood

Batman: Under the Hood (DC Comics), by Judd Winick, Doug Mahnke, Tom Nguyen and others

Why’d I Wait?: Writer Judd Winick has been responsible for some great creator-owned work, particular Pedro and Me and The Adventures of Barry Ween, Boy Genius, but his DC work all seems to fall somewhere between mediocre (Blood and Water, Green Lantern), bad (Green Arrow, most of Outsiders) and downright repulsive (“Lightning Strikes Twice,” the John Walsh-guest starring issues of The Outsiders). So despite the stellar art team inside and out, this seemed like a story to avoid—particularly once rumors started circulating that it would be about the resurrection of Jason Todd, perhaps the one character in the entire DC Universe that should never be resurrected for any reason.

Why now?: Since they really went ahead and resurrected Jason Todd (I was so sure they wouldn’t actually go through with it), morbid curiosity made me want to find out exactly how well executed The Worst Idea In DC Comics History actually was. Plus, I’d just put down the first volume of The Winter Soldier, which I guess put me in the mood to read about resurrected boy sidekicks.

Well?: This is a hard book to read, and a harder book to review, because the central idea—Jason Todd, back from the dead!—is so hard to get past. It’s just so wrong on so many levels, from the fact that he suffered the most unequivocal death in comics (beaten to near-death by a crowbar, then dynamited), to the fact that Batman comics don’t have the sort of science fiction or supernatural underpinnings that so many other comic books do, to the fact that Todd’s death was the result of a 1-900 phone poll (making Jason Todd’s death perhaps the only one in comics history that the fans decided on, rather than the writers and editors) to the simple fact that the death of the second Robin has been a pivotal event in Batman’s history, leading to some 20 years worth of character development.

Well, putting all of that aside, Winick does weave a fairly dramatic reveal here. The volume opens with Batman fighting a new Red Hood, who unmasks off-panel, and then we flashback to what lead up to the battle.

There are an awful lot of unanswered questions here, including why Jason Todd is still alive, why he’s a grown man instead of the age he was when he died and why he’s suddenly become evil. He sets himself up as a relatively nice crime boss (You can sell drugs, but not to kids), but he has a savagery that makes him seem as bad as, if not worse than, the villains. When he takes over a racket, for example, he does so by handing the old bosses a duffle bag full of the severed heads of their associates.

Winick writes some fairly exceptional character moments between Batman and Nightwing, particularly during their fight with an Amazo android, and there are some wonderfully sharp exchanges between Batman and members of the so-called “Power Pact” that mindwiped him in Identity Crisis.

Winick’s Black Mask has a nice, rhythmic sense of black humor in his back-and-forths with his underlings, even if his character is simply Winick Stock Villain Boss. And his use of Mr. Freeze is criminal. He writes him as Winick Stock Mercenary Villian, which is a damn shame, considering the character’s potential (The best use of which was in the first season of Batman: The Animated Series).

The main problem with this graphic novel as a whole, however, is that it relies too much on other stories. If you haven’t read at least “Hush,” Identity Crisis and Batman: A Death in the Family, little of this story will make sense. What separates a decent story arc from a great one will always be how readable it is on its own, and Under The Hood just doesn’t stand up by itself.

Regarding the art, the team of Doug Mahnke and Tom Nguyen (responsible for a fine run on JLA and the underappreciated Justice League Elite) have simply done the work of their careers here, and Matt Wagner’s covers are all exceptional.

Confidential to DC: Ever put any thought into a Matt Wagner omnibus? Maybe “Faces,” Trinity, his Demon miniseries, his random Batman short stories and all the covers he’s done over the years? Think about it.

Would I travel back in time to buy the original issues off the shelf?: Oh, hell no.