The Batman Who Laughs

Cafe Society
1

This sounds brutal: The Batman Who Laughs #1: DC Comics’ worst, most poorly-thought through concept in its history is about to be published - World Comic Book Review

I think I get the basic idea - there have been so many Robins and kid sidekicks over the years, and unlike Batman, many of them have been expendible. I did read the “child soldier” comment in one issue of Batman - someone comments to I think Dick Grayson why Batman keeps employing teenagers as cannon fodder, and Grayson laughs it off. I think even recently in The Button Green Lantern makes a similar observation. So, in this story, the alt-reality Batman has many Robins and they are all evil.

But man, this sounds bad. Robins as chained, cannibalistic sex slaves?

2

The Metal series has a number of Nightmare Batmen (from a demonic dream dimension, if I understand it rightly), each representing one of Batman’s innermost fears. Which means that, at some level, Bruce Wayne IS afraid of what he’s doing to his kid sidekicks.

3

I don’t mean to threadshit, but the person who wrote that article takes comic books way too seriously.

4

And a prude.

5

And doesn’t understand that DC is trolling people like him.

6

I read the TPBs so I am behind on the story but my understanding is they are exploring a group of worlds where Batman is evil and this is one of them. Eventually the good guys will win in the end.They always do.

7

I guess DC figured Fredric Wertham’s been dead for over 35 years and the coast was finally clear.

8

The twit who wrote that article
A) is a twit
B) didn’t actually y’know…read the comics
C) Is part of a larger twit-filled site wherein
…1) There’s an article complaining that when they updated Rory (Ragman) Regan (a Vietnam vet) from his 1970s incarnation they militarized him into a “combat veteran”(?). And Ragman=Raghead, which is a slur!!!111!! OUTRAEG!
…2) There’s an article complaining that Batman is a Stalin-esqe neo-military guy.
…3) And, my favorite and yours, an article complaining that the frigging GREEN LANTERN CORPS doesn’t have enough diversity (a space-pumpkin, an eyeball with tentacles, a super-intelligent smallpox virus and a living planet don’t count?)

The guy’s a twit and the site is nuts.

They also complain that the Punisher is violent.

9

Best thing about the article is that what seems to get the writer’s goat isn’t that the Robins are deranged demented cannibal sex-slaves, it’s that they’re coerced deranged demented cannibal sex-slaves. I guess if they were deranged demented cannibal sex-slaves out of their own consent, then well, that’d be A-OK.

10

There’s an element of that. The concept is supposed to be controversial. DC would be fishing for this sort of commentary.

It would have been much plainer if the comic was called “Batman: Seduction of the Innocent.”

11

Well… no, it doesn’t.

I’m not cosigning the specific article you’re talking about, because I haven’t read it, but when people complain about media lacking diversity, they’re complaining that it doesn’t represent enough different groups of people who actually exist. If someone is saying, “Why don’t you have more black people in your books?” replying, “Well, we’ve got this space pumpkin…” isn’t really addressing their concerns.

Again, I didn’t read the article your referring to, so I’m not saying it’s right, and I don’t know that the Green Lantern books actually have a diversity problem or not, because I don’t read those comics, either. But what you’re putting out as an obviously absurd complaint isn’t actually that absurd.

12

That being said, the article linked to in the OP is exceptionally stupid.

13

It kind of is in this case. He’s complaining that there’s not enough diverse aliens (he references Doc Smith) so he can darkly hint that the human GLs aren’t diverse. But…they are.

There are six human Green Lanterns currently.

  1. Hal Jordan. Classic “white guy” super hero. Air Force pilot/Test pilot
  2. Guy Gardener. Fightin’ Irish stereotype. Ex-Marine, Cop (and depending on the current reboot status, a Gym Teacher)
  3. John Stewart. Black ex-Marine and architect. Natural leader. MUCH better than Hal at being in charge. (You have to ignore his idiotic characterization in his first appearance, but literally no story after that acknowledged that vaguely racist “Angry, semi-articulate black guy” characterization")
  4. Kyle Rayner. Hispanic (retroactively–he became Hispanic a couple of years after he first appeared) and commercial artist.
  5. Simon Baz. Middle-Eastern. I don’t remember his job, but he got sent to Gitmo for “terrorism” kinda unjustly. Also has the balls to stand up to Batman.
  6. Jessica Cruz. Hispanic. Currently has no job because she’s dealing with serious social anxiety and agorophobia (it sounds silly to have a Green Lantern with crippling phobias but they’ve made it work.)

The Earth GLs are more diverse than any other group of characters I can think of in comics. Two white guys, Two Hispanic people, one Middle-Eastern guy and one Black guy. It lacks in the gender diversity area, but in terms of jobs (The black guy and hispanic guy are the only ones with white-collar jobs). The personality types are wildly diverse and they’re racially diverse.

14

The real lack of diversity among the Green Lanterns is reflected in the token left-handedness.

Seriously, look at the covers of the three-part miniseries Tales of the Green Lantern Corps:

#1
#2
#3

Seriously… only one member is left-handed? It’s sinister, I tells ya!

15

You’re right!!! It’s a conspiracy!

16

*Honi soit le Batman qui rit. *

17

Groupies! A long time ago - what, 2000-2003? - I was a Doper and even attended a Dopefest. No idea what my user name was - it could have been one of a dozen of user names I used on various message boards. Great Debates was my poison of choice, and I used to drive my wife mad sitting around at odd hours arguing geopolitics with text books splayed around me. When 9/11 happened I spent the entire day at the SDMB. I gotta say, it’s nice to be back to a place I had kind of forgotten about.

I happen to be the editor of the World Comic Book Review and decided to find out why a hundred or so visitors were coming to my site from the SDMBs. So, thanks to Thaifood Signal8 for the SEO boost.

The purpose of this post is to quixotically defend my honor and rebut abuse from anonymous people on a message board. (God, I really am back in 2003.)

Now, some of the posters on this thread I remember. Fenris, for example, always seemed like a reasonable fellow, but here he is howling at the moon instead of eating it. Fenris says, first, I am a twit. Ad hominem attack, sir: please play the ball and not the man.

Second, he notes I did not read the comic. Quite correct. That is noted in the review.

Third, he plucks three critiques out of close to a thousand which he says characterises the twittiness of my review. Even if he is correct, is his sample of three representative? Of these, he notes:

a. the Ragman review complains that the central character is a combat veteran. That is part of a broader observation of the major US publishers’ appeal to US military personnel, past and present. It makes a point about the fetishism of the military in the US. Given The Economist has written a similar article this week, I kind of think we are ahead of the curve on that one. As for the slur of “raghead”, the author thinks it was poorly thought through to call a comic “Ragman” when it involves a serviceman shooting Arabs. I’m minded to agree.

b. Fenris then turns his attention to the commentary on the recent Batman:Metal prelude. The front cover depicting a Stalineque statue of Batman raising a fist to the sky and with bleeding bodies strapped t the statue’s abdomen is perhaps more like something Tamburlaine or Attila would have done. Still, the dismissal of the credibility of the critique seems ill-informed.

c. Next, he says it is wrong to observe that Green Lantern Corps does not have enough diversity. It doesn’t. The creators are limited in their imaginations to chondrates. Chondrates are, more or less, animals which have a torso, limbs in parallel, and a head. They’re a subset of many different types of animals on Earth. The most obvious example of a large non-chondrate is a jellyfish. So why are all of these alien GLs chondrates?

With respect, not entirely twitty.

Sage Rat, who I don’t know, describes me as a prude for objecting to sexual enslavement of small boys. No idea how to respond to that.

DCnDC notes that I take comics way too seriously. Correct! I concede that.

Half Man Half Wit says something challenging and a little straw man-ish. Would consenting young boys submitted to sexual slavery be any better than non-consenting young boys submitted to sexual slavery? Well, no. Where did I write that?

Bryan Ekers, who I also remember, wins the prize for wittiest post. I wish I had thought of that and I might steal it.

Finally, Alessan notes that DC is trolling people like me. I think that’s entirely correct. It doesn’t mean I should instead limiting my response to, “wow, those Robins are scary.” I instead noted that those Robins crossed the line. I probably would not have been so bothered if one of them hadn’t been depicted as clutching at Batman’s inner thigh.

Thus I conclude my riposte, such as it is. Wandering about the site, it seems there are some new forums and it generally seems vibrant in this age of monolithic social media sites. Very good. Carry on.

Happy to engage in debate. I should note that one of our regular writers also disagreed with my pre-review and wants to write a rebuttal when the actual issue is published. Further, I have no ego when it comes to retractions. If it evolves that I am off beam, I’ll edit and retract my observations.

So. Come forth.

18

Three of the four examples he gives are clearly not in phylum Chordata, the only one that’s not clear is the eyeball with tentacles (presumably he’s referring to Brokk?) Plants and viruses are not even animals, nor is Mogo. Brokk is closest in appearance to an octopus, so phylum Mollusca is a better match than phylum Chordata. Larvox matches the eyeball with tentacles description less well but it’s plausible that’s who he meant- and Larvox may well be a chordate.

At best one of the four examples that were cited were actually Chordates (animals in phylum Chordata, which is what I presume you meant by ‘Chrondrates’?)

19

Thanks for the correction. The issue that was under review, Green Lantern Corps: Edge of Oblivion #1, featured two humans, Kilowog (humanoid), Arisia (humanoid), Sallac (spelling?) (humanoid with a funny head and extra set of arms), fish GL, lava GL in the shape of a human, sloth GL, medusa-head female GL (with mammalian boobs), little blue headed humanoid GL. On the front cover, all pointing their rings on their humanoid fists and yelling with their humanoid mouths.

Re-reading the comments above, there seems to have been some confusion that my complaint about the absence of imagination in creating overwhelmingly humanoid GLs (yes, the examples cited by Fenris are valid, but are the exception not the rule) was a veiled swipe (“darkly”) about an absence of ethnic diversity amongst the human GLs. That’s an incorrect assumption. I have no complaints about that, other than to note that all of the human GLs seem to come from or reside in a strip of land across the center of the continent of North America. But hey, that’s the major market. We’ll never get a Ukrainian GL.

The substance of the complaint in reality is that the creators haven’t evolved beyond 1960s notions of what alien life might look like, save for Alan Moore’s dabbling in Green Lantern Corps in the late 80s on the aforementioned Mogo, and that GL which was a sentient musical note, from memory. Ch’p is not a creative high point otherwise. Where are the creatures we don’t have the senses to perceive, the aliens who communicate in gamma rays and have magnetic fields for dexterity? That’s the point, not that there are too many white dudes.

(Apologies for typos: I am doing this on my phone.)

20

That sounds to me like a critique of science-fiction writers in general, not the Green Lanterns specifically. The Corps has far more diversity than most science fiction.

Whaddaya mean, there are eight of them just on those covers that Bryan Eckers linked to. Don’t tell me you don’t see them there… wait, you don’t.