You seriously think a semantics-based argument is going to make comic geeks say “Hey! That isn’t Batman!”
:dubious: :dubious: :dubious: :dubious: :dubious:
Exactly!!
He’s commented on how much he likes/appreciates the slam-bang nonstop sensawonda & excitement about the Mort Weisinger Superman (one interview in particular had him raving about the greatness of the “Superman’s new power” issue where Supes lost his powers but could make a “mini-me” pop out of his fingers that could do super-stuff)…but the Mort Weisinger stuff had…heart. The “3 part epic novel–complete in one issue!” Death of Superman imaginary story had more emotion in it’s 22-ish pages than Final Crisis had in the entire thing.
I love Morrison’s ideas. One of my all time favorite bits was from one of his early Doom Patrols where a book, soaked in 7-Up blessed by a defrocked priest did…um…something magic…revealed something. I love that.
But without someone to slow him down, there’s no characters or emotion. Barry returned from the dead after 25 years and there was never more of a reaction than “Huh-how bout dat?”. Batman dies and no-one reacts. The universe (seems to be) rebooted and we don’t find out what that means. The ideas are stunning, but the emotion is lacking. (To be fair, he did dead-on nail the sense of apocalyptic doom the heroes should be feeling).
I’ve bitched about the slo-mo story pacing of a Bendis–where it took him 6 issues to retell an 11 page story without adding much extra to it. This is the reverse. I wish this series had been 3 or 4 issues longer and we had some solid characterization. It’s not that Morrison can’t do it–look at his last Animal Man arc after Buddy’s family is killed through the bit with the Psycho Pirate and the “Second Crisis”–it’s just as intense, just as frenetic, just as packed with big, universe-shaking sense-of-awe-and-wonder, but you CARE about Buddy. The new Forever People? Eh. Not so much.
Since comic book readers supposedly aren’t mostly little kids anymore, I’d expect them to be able to handle the idea that 1939 Batman/Golden Age Batman/Silver Age Batman/Camp Batman/TV show Batman/Gritty 80’s Batman/etc./etc./etc. are all equally and validly Batman. Remember, these are fictional stories we are talking about; not objective reality.
Maybe this would require a better writer than this Morrison person seems to be to pull it off. Alan Moore, who can be an insufferable jack-ass much of the time, seems to me to be the type of writer who could handle such a thing.
Freejooky’s lengthy quote from the interview above is, IMO, pretty convincing evidence that the idea that “all Batmen are The Batman” is valid. Take the “channel zapping” mentioned above. If you are flicking through the channels and (through some quirk) BTAS, the 60’s live action show, a couple of the movies, Justice League, Superfriends, and the Scooby-Doo episode with Batman and Robin in it are all airing simultaneously…which one is the “real” Batman? Note, I’m not asking you which one is your favorite. The answer is that all of them are equally Batman.
First, your question about using the 1939 Batman is, essentially, “Why did Morrison use a character for whom using a gun would be a big deal, when he could have used a character for whom using a gun would not have been a big deal?” Sort of answers itself, doesn’t it?
Second, your analogy of flicking through the channels is really not applicable any more to DC comics. If you go look at the monthly titles, the Batman in those titles is always the same guy. The occasional one-off stories or reprinted collections are always clearly distinguished from the current titles (and not too common lately, anyway). And DC is moving away from that kind of thing specifically because it confuses readers and thus lowers their revenues. (they killed a Flash last year because he’d’ve been one too many; the Marvels keep getting reorg’d for similar reasons.)
Third, chosing some obscure variant of a character is completely antithetical to how Morrison writes.
He wants you to pick up All-Star Superman, read “Doomed planet. Desperate scientists. Last hope. Kindly couple.” and think “Ah! I know that story!” – he doesn’t want you thinking “Wait – is this the Superman before Krypton got added to his backstory? Or maybe Red Son Superman? Or the Superman who got adopted by the Waynes instead of the Kents?”
He’s compressing his stories by eliding over the stuff he assumes we all know. He assumes everyone knows what a big deal it is that Bruce picked up a gun and shot Darkseid – so he doesn’t have to spend any time on pointing that out. He expects people to read it, and say “Hey! Bruce used a gun! That’s a big deal!”
POW!
And that’s really the problem with Final Crisis – Morrison does that so much that it is often for things that the general reader has no general awareness of. The Zoo Crew popping up without explanation is probably meaningful… if you knew that they were missing. Or who they were at all. And that’s not even the most obscure thing Morrison references in FC.
The way I see it, reading Morrison is a lot like listening to a story told by someone having an unmedicated manic episode. If you know them, and understand the context of what they’re talking about, it’ll be an exciting, whacky story. If you have no clue what they’re talking about… not so much.
What do you mean by “obscure variant” of a character? Batman has been in continuous publication since 1939. We aren’t talking about something like Golden Age Flash compared to Silver Age Flash. Any idea that 1939 Batman is a different character from the one published today is strictly a writer’s conceit; and a relatively recent on again/off again one at that. Sometimes, in an effort to please fans who for some reason think there must be continuity for a character with 70 years of backstories, the writers come up with ideas like multiple realities. Then the next writer who comes along decides it isn’t that way at all.
See, having 1939 Bruce use the gun while 2009 Bruce has to decide whether to stand aside and let him shoot Darkseid strikes me as more interesting than just “Wow! Bruce didn’t know what else to do so he shot him!” It’s especially more interesting if both Bruces are equally and validly Batman. Then it’s no longer easy to go with a fairly cheezey cop-out of a “shocker” like Batman shoots somebody. More interesting, to me, questions about what it really means to be Batman must be answered.
I fully agree with your last sentence above–that said, I’m kind of between the two of you on this.
Just because some guy in a bat-suit appeared in an issue of Batman doesn’t make it “legitimate”. Some stories do so much damage to the character that they can’t be the same guy we read every month. The abovementioned “Thomas Wayne, Jr” stories for example. There were two stories where Batman had an older insane, psychopathic brother. In the second story, Batman just tells Deadman, “Eh, Junior over there is a murderer. Just take his body for your own.”–that’s totally out of character and damages the concept of what it means to be Batman.
The “Batman with a gun” could be counted as an obscure varient–He only used a gun during a one-year period (Detective #27 - Detective #37) and only used it a few times during that period and at least one or two were against “monster-men” or “vampires”. At his core, a key facet of Batman is “Batman doesn’t kill”. Hell, SUPERMAN has killed more times than Batman*–and the “no killing” thing isn’t as key to Superman as it is to Bats.
*And actually the number goes WAY up since Superman spent about 45 years defining “Kill” as “Makes a heart stop beating”. “Killing” Bizarros or sentient, self-aware artificial life forms was no biggie at all–and this was through the late '70s, early '80s.
No, Final Crisis is “The Day Evil Won”. Darkseid conquered the Earth.
The people of Earth were, near as I can tell, freed from the sway of the Anti-Life Equation by the Ray, who imprinted the ‘Freedom’ symbol on the planet in FC #7.
Ah. I was re-reading stuff last night trying to figure out how the Tattooed Man fit into the whole mess.
Still don’t understand how Wonder Woman got free. Or what happened to the other possessing Apokaliptian gods.
But I noticed that the cave painting of Metron’s emblem which old-man Anthro makes in the epilogue is the same one that was unearthed in a subway way earlier in FC (#1 or 2, IIRC).
It is also now next to where Bruce was painting his bat-symbol. So Morrison did lay the groundwork for Bruce’s return…
I have to go with the majority; in the end Final Crisis proved to be more of bad Morrison who cannot chain a plot together. In good works of fiction no matter what the medium you have something more than just big ideas. I know that there’s a lot of people who are distracted by that kind of storytelling (see the majority of fantasy and SF fans) but it doesn’t make it good. He disappoints me over and over again and the big concepts are usually so nice that I want them to work but he consistently cannot bring them together.
At least I got the Herbie archives this week. Ah, Herbie, there’s nothing that a lollipop won’t find. 