One of the more difficult debates I keep having with myself as I continue this review thread is how much attention to give to other members of the Bat-family. For example, I still can't believe I neglected to include Dick Grayson's transformation out of the Robin costume and into the first (horrific) Nightwing costume in the pages of the New Teen Titans a few years back. It's for that reason that I'm including the following review, worthless as it proved to be:

Suicide Squad #23

"Weird War Tales"

writers: John Ostrander and Kim Yale
pencils: Luke McDonnell
inks: Karl Kessel
letters: Todd Klein
colors: Carl Gafford
editor: Robert Greenberger

Grade: D

I've never read Suicide Squad before, and this issue did little to entice me to read more. The writing was solid, and Amanda Waller was clearly still intriguing at this point, not yet the over-played bad guy you're tired of loving to hate, but the characters seem ridiculous to me, in appearance, abilities, and overall characterization. Maybe I just caught the wrong issue, as this one is largely flashing back to Invasion as opposed to giving sincere attention to the team and is full of continuity references that I do not understand, but I was so bored that I actually chose not to finish this issue.

I picked this issue up because it's the first cameo appearance of Oracle (who will later prove to be Barbara Gordon, though I wonder if that had been decided yet). The emphasis, though, is on the word cameo, as it turns out that I pushed through this issue just to arrive at one single panel in which one of the team members is using a computer that suddenly states:

Hel-lo.
I am
O-RA-CLE.
Is any-one
pres-ent?

Apparently, I paid $11 for that one panel.

Not sure I'm really keen on following up with this series to see Oracle in action, but I'll check back for #38, where her identity is finally revealed, and #48, which I believe is also a key issue for her.

No plot synopsis. Just not worth it.

Batman #427 (continued)

"A Death in the Family, Part 4"
writer: Jim Starlin
pencils: Jim Aparo
inks: Mike DeCarlo
letters: John Costanza
colors: Adrienne Roy
asst. editor: Dan Raspler
editor: Denny O'Neil

grade: A-

Reading A Death in the Family has been a deflating experience for me. This was one of my favorite stories of all time as a kid; I read it again and again, knew every panel. So, coming back to it as an adult and seeing how flawed it truly is has been pretty upsetting for me. Imagine then my surprise when arriving at the moment of Jason's death in this chapter moved me more than it ever did before.

Yeah, Cei-U's gonna roast me for this one.

I'd read this story so many times that I'd become desensitized to it, but going through it again, expecting less from it than ever before, Jason really surprised me in the end. I'd gotten so used to Starlin painting him in such an unflattering light that seeing his death as the sum total of repeated decisions to trust in and protect a mother who didn't deserve him just floored me. All Jason really wanted was a mom, and he sacrificed everything with blind love for that cause. That really touched me.

The verdict is still out on Dr. Haywood. I can't decide whether her actions are entirely unrealistic or too disturbingly real after all. All mothers certainly aren't saints, and a woman who'd willingly turned her back on an infant she never planned to have, who was raised by the man that left her and the woman he left her for, and who fought hard to pull herself out of the depths, resorting to moral slips and white collar crimes to sustain her, just might be willing to throw away the son that was never hers in order to get the Joker off her back and protect the career she'd fought so hard to attain. I suppose I can buy that.

It's nice to see the Joker act a little more like himself in this issue, finally appearing with the traditional white face, green hair, and red lips in time to bash Robin in, but it's incredibly disturbing to see just how random Jason's death is. Again, this is not the Joker from The Killing Joke who sadistically wounds one person in order to emotionally break another. This guy didn't even consider the repercussions when beating Jason with a crow bar. When Dr. Haywood asks what Batman will do when he discovers the that the Joker has beaten Jason with a crow bar, the Joker says, "Hadn't thought of that...He's a vengeful one, that Batman. This could get a bit sticky."

Again, Starlin's Joker is all about the pragmatics. He kills Jason to eliminate the evidence that he beat him with a crow bar, not to get back at Batman or to finally deal the fatal blow he's been wanting for years. This is just business; nothing more.


The minor details:

Aparo loses me at times in this chapter. That's blasphemy, even to me, but there are truly panels in this chapter that bug me. The excessive pouty faces on page 23, the weird reversing of angles and ensuing disorientation between the 4th and 5th panels on page 24, the entirely unnecessary shot of the alarm clock on page 26, the Joker's weird face leering at nothing in particular on page 27, and it seems to me that the beating on page 26 could have been more powerful (even being depicted off panel) with a looser, more inventive panel arrangement. Otherwise though, he did a damn fine job as usual. Too bad DeCarlo couldn't do more to compliment his pencils, but (after all), it's DeCarlo.

Why does a camp full of starving refugees pay absolutely no attention to two well-dressed white Americans moving amongst them? You'd think someone would beg or at least stare and wonder what they're up to.

What in the world is Bruce referring to when he preaches, "Once again, the world didn't listen in time. The same mistakes were repeated"? I thought it was just a famine that struck Ethiopia around this time. You don't really prepare for those.

When Jason meets his mother for the first time, and she looks completely thrown, the following occurs to me for the first damn time in this story:

Why didn't Jason just call?

He could have weeded through the candidates in seconds. Granted, Rosen and Woosen wouldn't have been able to be reached by phone, but he probably could have gotten hold of Dr. Haywood and solved the mystery in a single night, as well as prepared her for the news before his arrival. Maybe she wouldn't have been so quick to toss him to the Joker if she'd had time to adjust and emotionally prepare herself to suddenly be someone's mother.

Starlin's desire to explore international politics has always felt heavy-handed, but the entirely irrelevant starving Ethiopians in secondary focus on so many panels just feels excessive. I suppose Starlin was trying to get his readers to want to help, but then make a story with that being the focus. Don't just randomly insert starving Ethiopians into a story that has nothing to do with them. After all, their story is a little more important than this one, so it seems trivial to keep pursuing Jason's plight when there are hundreds of people outside the tent who are experiencing deaths in the family on a regular basis.

Again, the conveniences in this story are absurd. Joker's meeting with Dr. Haywood just happens to be set at the same time as her reunion with Jason. That wouldn't be so bad if the coincidences of them both being in Ethiopia at the same time and to meet the same person weren't already insulting.

So Bruce was just keeping a mostly assembled Bat copter in the back of his land rover all this time? Couldn't someone see the clearly marked, brightly colored bat symbol through the window?

Okay, I kind of sort of get Dr. Haywood's motivations now, but you think, upon seeing that Jason is Robin, she'd be more like, "Listen, I can take care of this on my own. Trust me, and don't go for help. I'll explain later," rather than serving him up to the Joker, who wouldn't have had any idea he was there otherwise. To be fair though, the worse the actions of Dr. Haywood, the more sympathetic Jason becomes in our eyes for placing his trust in her.

I've got to ask again -- how in the world was Jason going to survive that blast? Based on what we've seen of the alternate panels for the next chapter, Dr. Haywood was going to die from the blast no matter what. Yet, somehow, Jason, who was six feet away from her at the time and already beaten nearly to death, was going to survive?


The plot synopsis in one ridiculously long sentence: Bruce and Jason arrive at a refugee camp in Ethiopia, looking for Dr. Haywood (who, by process of elimination and sloppy detective work, must be Jason's real mother), Jason meets her and hears the sad story of why she never gave a damn that he was alive, Bruce leaves them alone, Dr. Haywood excuses herself for an important meeting, Jason sticks around to see who she's meeting and is amazed to see it's the Joker, they discuss the six truck loads of medical supplies she's going to help him steal, we discover that he plans to replace them with crates full of Joker gas (How can he afford to make those? I thought the whole point of this was that he was broke), Jason runs back to tell Bruce everything, Bruce uses a portable Bat Copter to warn the relief workers about the Joker's plan and makes Jason promise not to take down the Joker on his own (Batman shows an awareness of past history by begging Jason to listen to him just this once, though he missed the foreshadow at the end of chapter 1 that choosing The Joker over Jason will end badly), Jason approaches his mother and offers to help, revealing that he is Robin and changing into costume, she lures him into Joker's clutches, Joker beats him with a crow bar, realizes Batman will want retribution for his doing this, and decides to blow up Robin and his mother in the warehouse to destroy the evidence, Batman intercepts the relief workers but loses the Bat copter in the process, Jason recovers in the warehouse with two minutes left on the detonator, but chooses to untie his mother rather than disarm the bomb, Bruce is driving a slower flatbed truck and finally decides to check on Jason rather than pursue the Joker, Jason's mom has nearly gotten them both out of the warehouse when she discovers the door is locked, the warehouse blows, and Bruce arrives just in time to witness the devastation and exclaim, "JASON!! Oh, my God...Oh, my God...No..."

Really, I was touched, and I didn't expect to be. And, Starlin's disappointing portrayal of the Joker aside, this chapter didn't suffer from the same problems as the previous ones. It made more logical sense, didn't waste time, and was incredibly fair to Jason instead of seeming like it was just in a rush to eliminate an annoying sidekick.

The only problem I see from here is that, in my mind, the story is done. Granted, it would be appropriate to have some falling action (Bruce and Alfred mourning, maybe watching Bruce assemble the monument in the Batcave), but the conflicts of the story (Jason finding his mother, Bruce reigning Jason in) are over. The English teacher in me knows there's no way we should be getting two more full length issues out of this story.

Let's see if the remainder of the storyline is as arbitrary and out of nowhere as I remember it seeming at the time...

Batman #428

"A Death in the Family, Chapter 5"
writer: Jim Starlin
pencils: Jim Aparo
inks: Mike DeCarlo
letters: John Costanza
colors: Adrienne Roy
asst. editor: Dan Raspler
editor: Denny O'Neil
created by Bob Kane

Grade: B+


In addition to the numerous other degrees of importance I'm about to attribute to this issue (probably more than many of you are expecting), this issue is also important because it's the first comic I ever read and understood. My mother had purchased two comics for me when I was much younger and unable to understand them, but this is the first one I ever really read. It didn't turn me into a comic fan overnight (it would take the 1989 Batman film to do that in about a year's time), but reading this was certainly a memorable experience.

I'd imagine this was many people's introduction (or reintroduction) to Batman for much the same reason as mine -- we'd heard about Robin's death in the news and wanted to see what was going on. This issue seems to be written primarily with that in mind, since most of the issue is recaps of all that's happened with Jason post-Crisis.

We'll, not exactly.

This is Starlin's carefully revised post-Crisis origin of Jason, tying together events and omitting/revising a lot else to make it look like Jason had been building toward this moment all along. Perhaps the most drastic change is the incredibly different different ending we get to Jason's confrontation with Two-Face (he was grinning along with Batman when he originally made the decision not to seek revenge). Interestingly enough, the whole "Did Jason push Felipe?" bit from Batman #424 is entirely omitted in this retelling.

Starlin still seems entirely unsure what to make of Jason Todd, even at this late point. He attempts to depict his death as being caused by "dark moods" and rebelliousness, but also attributes it to Jason being "too young for this kind of work" (again, Starlin hated the idea of a kid sidekick in general). Yet, it was neither clearly his age nor his rebellious streak that got him into trouble this time.

Fortunately, Starlin shows that he's capable of being merciful to Jason. His epithet, given by his mother, pushes aside the dark, careless, rebellious characterization, and summarizes Jason in this touching way:

...he turned out. To be... such a... good kid. ...All his problems... and he...still...turned out good...

Dr. Haywood would have no way of knowing about any of Jason's problems. I really see this as Starlin talking to us directly. Sort of a, "I hate the idea of Robin and want to kill him, but it was nothing personal against Jason Todd." Of course, I suppose the Joker could have said the same thing.

At the same time, it's disturbing how easily Jason is discarded after this point. He gets a lame funeral, and then there's no time spent on watching Bruce and Alfred grieve, there's no building of the monument, there's no consideration of Jason in any way; we just move on to the Joker's story (which will go on to get all of the next issue. Is this really still the "A Death in the Family" story?). Even if I could get behind Starlin's desire to kill Jason, letting the character go in this way is just insulting. He's been a part of this franchise for the better part of this decade and, before the Crisis, had a lot going for him (and presumably a lot of fan support). He deserved a better farewell than this.


Why I find this issue important:

1. It's the divergence point from the alternate future of Dark Knight Returns. As I posted earlier on in this thread, there was a lot of evidence to suggest that Denny O'Neil initially envisioned the post-crisis Batman as being in the same continuity as DKR, allowing Miller to bookend Batman's career with DKR and Year One. However, in DKR, Batman retired shortly after Jason Todd died, presumably because Jason died. That clearly does not occur here.

2. And yet, this is the beginning of Miller's sociopathic Batman characterization entering the comic. Moench, Collins, Barr, Grant, and even Starlin portrayed Batman as a compassionate character capable of happiness even after Miller's origin and future ending made him incredibly dark and obsessive to the point of possible mental instability. In this issue, Starlin allows Jason's death to be the event that triggers this characterization, particularly in his oft-remembered punching of Superman at the end of this issue. With all the press attracting people to read this issue who probably hadn't stopped in since DKR and Year One, this must have solidified their expectations for Batman as well. Suddenly, he's gone from a relatively traditional characterization to being an obsessive bad ass. At least Starlin makes the transition warranted (in response to Jason's death, to his being the indirect cause of, rather than the solution to, the death of an innocent, and, perhaps, to realizing that crime fighting isn't some game to be enjoyed with a young, brightly colored partner).

It's also worth noting that Bruce chooses not to allow Alfred to tell Dick that Jason's dead. "No help from now on. That's the way I want it." Starlin is pushing to make Batman solitary and moody, his very reason for killing Robin off in the first place. It's worth noting that he still works these lines into the alternate version of this issue where Jason lives.

3. I'm sure I'll get disagreement on this one because what follows is admittedly a weak argument, but this is the beginning, in my mind, of the Robin assembly line. Dick had to grow up and get replaced after thirty years, but once Jason was killed off, it was a Robin free-for-all. Eventually, some writer or editor was going to seek to give Batman a Robin again, and that role was now disposable. Dick lasted as side-kick for three decades, Jason almost made it through one, Tim was in and out of that role in the 90s (even getting replaced by Stephanie for a short while), and the 2000s gave us Damian Wayne. With Jason's passing, the role ceased to carry a legacy that actually meant something. All of a sudden, anyone could be "The Next Robin" without concern for whether the character was compelling and well-rounded enough to last as Robin in the long run.


The minor details:

Darn gutsy to have put Ayatollah Khomeini into this issue, directly hiring the Joker as Iranian ambassador to the U.S.

Ah, the diplomatic immunity angle again. Starlin just did this five issues back with Felipe and his father, only they were from Columbia. What had been happening in the news that had both Jim Starlin and the writers of Lethal Weapon 2 (hitting theaters a few months later) so obsessed with this topic?

Columbians, Iranians, Lebanese terrorists, the KGB...wow. Starlin really really didn't like foreigners, did he? It's funny that he started turning the spotlight on America's potential enemies in the pages of Batman around the same time that Grant turned the spotlight on America's (and, later, all of Western culture's) atrocities against others in the pages of Detective. Grant distrusts America, and Starlin distrusts everyone else.

Batman reflects upon the Joker and thinks, "I've excused the evils you've done in the past because of your insanity." Yet, as has been discussed at length here, Starlin's Joker is pretty much the least insane Joker we've ever seen. It seems evident that Starlin doesn't like the idea of the Joker anymore than he liked the idea of Robin (neither would seem to belong in a grounded/realistic Batman story, though Heath Ledger would disprove that idea twenty years later). It seems here, though, that Starlin's even more bothered by the seemingly absurd fact that Batman has never done more to permanently stop the Joker. I don't know if I asked this in this thread already or not (I've certainly been thinking it), but I wonder if Starlin wasn't hoping to take out the Joker too with the end of this story. Of course that was never going to stick...especially after the 1989 movie hit theaters.

This cover and the one for next issue are among my favorite comic book covers ever made. If only Mignola had been hired to pencil and ink some actual issues of Batman. At this point, I might take him over the Aparo/DeCarlo team.


The plot in one ridiculously long sentence:

Batman runs through the devastation in search of Jason, recapping Jason's progression from Batman #408 onward with Starlin's own special narrative filter applied, painting Jason as the emotional ticking time bomb that he never actually was until the beginning of this story, he finds Dr. Haywood nearly dead, he recaps the first four chapters of this story in flashback, Dr. Haywood finishes the recap, explaining how Jason saved her and proved what a "good boy" he was, Batman finds Jason dead, hugs him, and carries him off, Joker sells the stolen medical supplies and gets recruited by Ayatollah Khomeini, Bruce starts taking his quest to find Joker more personally, Joker leaves a clue for where Batman can next find him, a small funeral is held for Jason and his mother (only Alfred, Gordon, and Barbara are present), Bruce decides to go it solo from now on, he figures out that the Joker wants to meet him at the United Nations, he goes there and meets Superman, warning him that the new Iranian ambassador has full diplomatic immunity (we already know who it is), Batman loses control of himself and decks Superman (breaking his own knuckles while not hurting Supes at all), and the Iranian ambassador is (not at all surprisingly) revealed to be The Joker.


I loved the final moment with Dr. Haywood recalling Jason's final moments and summing up his goodness, and I respected Starlin's attempt to weave Jason's post-Crisis appearances into a consistent character progression (apparently the lie stuck. People still believe it), but I feel Jason's story lacks true resolution and completely derails with the Joker's becoming an ambassador. That belonged in a different story.

A strong, but strongly flawed issue.

Batman #429

"A Death in the Family, Chapter 6"
writer: Jim Starlin
pencils: Jim Aparo
inks: Mike DeCarlo
letters: John Costanza
colors: Adrienne Roy
asst. editor: Dan Raspler
editor: Denny O'Neil

Grade: C


The final chapter in the A Death in the Family storyline feels no more a part of it than the previous chapter did. While this supposedly final confrontation with the Joker stems from what he did to Jason, it's an entirely different story with its own plot structure. Yet the "Death in the Family" title probably helped it sell a ton more copies, and DC seemed to be so confident of this fact that they jacked the cover price up to $1.00 for this issue only, even while it contains no additional pages.

For what it's worth, the only chapters in Death in the Family that were actually integral to Jason's death were Chapters 1, 4, and the first half of Chapter 5. Chapters 2-3 are unnecessary filler, and the second half of 5 and now all of 6 are an entirely different story.

It's interesting that, in the very storyline in which the post-crisis Batman continuity finally clearly diverges from that of DKR (Batman doesn't retire when Jason dies), Starlin seems to be making a supreme effort to finally align Batman's characterization with that of the protagonist we saw in DKR. This Batman is full of rage and a thirst for revenge as a result of Jason's death, and his ideological confrontation with Superman in this issue (as Superman is hired by the president to make him follow the law, which, as Batman points out, is not the same as justice) seems to be taken directly from DKR, especially as Batman begins referring to Supes as "The Boyscout."

There's also an attempt to align this story with The Killing Joke as Batman is finally brought to that point he sought to avoid in TKJ in which one of them must kill the other. The alignment is also clearly there as Batman instructs Joker to "give it up," and he replies by pleading, "I can't! I can't! I CAN'T!" which is completely reminiscent of the scene in TKJ when Batman offers Joker a chance to change and Joker sadly replies that it's far too late for him. I must admit this last bit felt very heavy handed here, as Batman must have said "Give it up!" to the Joker a billion times by now, though it's also true that Starlin made it clear both seemed to sense the climactic nature of this struggle before it even began. They both understood this one is to the death with an eerie level of connectivity (the Joker even seeming to look at Bruce Wayne and know who he really is and what he's about to do).

Starlin tries to do some justice to Jason again in this issue, but this time it's over the top and smacks of insincerity on Starlin's part as the following conversation ensues:

Superman: He seemed like a really nice kid.

Batman: He was. Jason was the best.

Since when? I really liked the kid, and even I can't buy that. Of course, Starlin never showed us the good times between Jason and Bruce. Collins gave us the origin, Starlin fast forwarded, left Jason out for most of the run, and then did everything possible to make him troubled and doomed to die. I'd like to believe that the Mike W. Barr stories in Detective, featuring a generally happy and good kid (later revealed to have tremendous pain and anger carefully buried deep inside), fits between the origin and Starlin's run -- the "good" years that would allow Bruce to see Jason as "the best" prior to all of this happening. But there's no sense that anyone was trying to merge those depictions of Jason together. Once Starlin came onboard, Barr's depiction of Jason seemed to get erased from existence.

Aparo's Joker gets a lot more ridiculous in this issue. I swear his chin grew several inches since the previous issue, and that face that constantly leers at nothing in particular is more odd than it is disturbing.

Okay, so the Joker flagrantly brags to Batman that he killed Jason when his entire motivation for doing so in Batman #427 was to keep Batman from knowing he had beaten him with the crow bar so that he could avoid Batman's retribution. I suppose it's possible that The Joker suspected that Batman was there because he already knew, but it's far more reasonable to assume Batman had come because Joker was going to be delivering that "speech" to the United Nations.

Starlin still isn't writing a funny/clever Joker. His speech to the U.N., right before he tries to kill them all, isn't his style at all as he preaches quite seriously about feeling disrespected, abused and belittled by society. Really the only thing close to a gag he delivers in this issue goes as follows:

Batman: You always know the exact wrong thing to say, don't you?

Joker: That's what makes me so special.

and soon after:

Joker: Okay, Let's Mambo!! Gone! I hate it when he does that. But he does make life worth living. I'm all A-tingle. Won't be able to sleep a wink. Can't wait...

This second bit really sounds like a hack trying to write the Joker without having the least bit grasp on his outlook and sense of humor. "Let's mambo!!" is the best you can give him while he's trying to gun down Batman?

Starlin's commentary against the U.S. is so one-sided that it's absurd here. CIA director Ralph Bundy's advice to Batman is particularly pathetic; I can't imagine a patriotic agent actually speaking these lines:

Guys like us should just do our jobs and let the big shots do theirs. They know what's doing and they say hands off Iran's new U.N. ambassador! Understand?

The idea of the U.N. (which Starlin seems to carelessly blur with the U.S. govt. here) allowing the Joker in as a diplomat AND not subjecting him to any security check whatsoever (he had two giant metal canisters strapped to his chest!) while also somehow having security lax enough to allow the Joker's henchmen to plant bombs throughout the chamber, just seems utterly absurd to me. As much as Starlin came across as a raging liberal in "The Cult" (and don't get me wrong; I'm kind of a raging liberal, myself), his paranoid view of foreign governments and belief that the U.S. coddles and empowers them to this extent feels like the perspective of some extreme right wing dude wearing camouflage and living in a shed in the woods.

And speaking of "The Cult," though Starlin never once mentioned the events of that story in the Batman title (unless his reference to having been in the sewer on a recent mission way back in #421 was supposed to be acknowledging the story), he now has Bruce mention that he's still recovering from what Deacon Blackfire did to him. AGGHHH. That single line, spoken in a single panel, completely messes up the post-crisis Batman continuity I'd constructed up to this point. Starlin's internal continuity doesn't work all because of this reference to the events of "The Cult" having happened recently. Check out the continuity again:

__________________________________________________ ______________
The Post-Crisis Batman Timetable

Year 1 -- The Year 1 storyline. Additionally, the replacement commissioner at the end of "Year One" is fired or forced to retire
Year 1 -- Batman switches to the yellow chest symbol

Year 2 -- The Year Two storyline

Year 3 -- Dick is taken in by Bruce at age 12, becomes Robin at age 13

Year 3-9 -- Most of Batman's rogues gallery is active for some time prior to Dick's retirement, but presumably not until after the events of Year Two (since it's implied that Reaper is Batman's first supervillain), including Two Face, Penguin, and Joker.

Year 9 -- The first Robin is retired and presumed dead by the general public, at age 19 after 6 years with Batman and an implied long history of repeated confrontations with members of the rogues gallery

Year 10 -- Bruce takes in Jason. Dick attends one year of college, drops out, becomes Nightwing, and "started a new life as leader of" the New Teen Titans (this seems to imply that he formed the team after becoming Nightwing and never led it as Robin).

Year 10.5 -- Jason becomes Robin six months after Bruce takes him in (Dick confronts Batman about Jason being the new Robin 18 months after his retirement; the preface for Death in the Family states that Jason became Robin 18 months after Dick retired).

Year 11.5 -- the present day of Batman #416, which takes place one year after the confrontation between Dick and Bruce over Jason becoming Robin.

This makes the current events of Batman take place in Year 11.5 or Year 12, but "The Cult, Book 4" explicitly states that Batman has now been active for ten years. The only way this works is if "The Cult" takes place at the beginning of Jason's career.
__________________________________________________ _______________

...of course, Starlin just killed that explanation with a single entirely unnecessary line from Batman.


The final climactic battle in this issue between Batman and Joker, the one that Starlin has spent the last issue and a half building toward, that he seemed to feel was so important to depict that it usurped the need to give any closure to Jason's final fate, ends far too quickly and randomly. Batman literally touched Joker ONCE, abandoned him when it looked like he might kinda' sorta' be done for, and then acknowledged immediately after that he didn't really expect him to be dead. What the heck was the point of all that? I've previously mentioned that I suspect Starlin was looking to off the Joker along with Robin (both being fantastic aspects of the Batman mythos that didn't fit his grounded vision of Batman), but this is the lamest, half-ass "I'm killing him, but I'm really not killing him if anyone wants to bring him back" ending possible. I wonder if he and O'Neil had a discussion about this and O'Neil forced him to pull his punch with the Joker, or if this was a decision he reached on his own. Clearly, the Joker was too profitable a character to get rid of, especially with the Burton movie about to hit screens.

For what it's worth, Denny O'Neil posts the exact same statement from the letter column of Detective #595 into this issue's letter column, again giving an initial reaction to the vote to kill Jason off.

All in all, this is a nice issue if you were a fan of DKR and Killing Joke and were waiting to see those works have an impact upon regular continuity. To me, though, this felt like something that was shamelessly and obligatorily thrown out there to keep the fan boys who loved those works buzzing, not a work that possesses any true integrity of its own. Mignola's cover and that one haunting Aparo image of a bullet-riddled Joker attempting to laugh aside, this "final" Joker story did absolutely nothing for me.

Batman #430

"Fatal Wish"
writer: Jim Starlin
pencils: Jim Aparo
inks: Mike DeCarlo
letters: John Costanza
colors: Adrienne Roy
asst. editor: Dan Raspler
editor: Denny O'Neil
created by: Bob Kane

grade: B+

It's Starlin's final issue, after almost two years on the book, and he still struggling to find a distinct take on Batman in this issue. Whereas the first half of his run took an interest in exploring where the line is in vigilantism, he got a bit too distracted with trying to find reasons to make Jason unlikable/killable, and now he's here at the end, finally finding his Batman.

What he tries to end with is more of that alignment with DKR that we first saw in "The Cult" and began to notice again in the final chapters of "A Death in the Family." Gordon describes Batman as having, "an almost maniacal drive to save innocent lives and punish criminals" in this issue. That's Miller's characterization alright, and when we get to the flashback of Bruce's parents' murder, the panels are taken directly from DKR chapter 1, page 23. They were even watching The Mask of Zorro before the mugging, which was also a DKR contribution.

Later, as Batman takes down the gunman in this story, we get that Miller-style narration in which Batman assesses and predicts the moves that he and his nemesis will make, almost like a computer. An example:

"The smokes pellets will provide all the cover he needs. And their psychological effect on his prey is extremely predictable. First comes anger. Then fear. And finally carelessness."

However, just as in "The Cult," which I called Starlin's "liberal answer to DKR," this Batman is still an altruistic hero despite the rage and cold calculation. He still tries to save the gunman's life in the end. Really, the difference between Starlin and Miller is in Batman's motivations. Miller makes Batman pissed/obsessive. Starlin makes Batman's rage ultimately directed at himself for wishing his parents dead before it happened, and makes his mission to fight crime more a duty of penance, a means of repeatedly telling them he's sorry.

I LOVE that interpretation of the Caped Crusader; it makes the morbid, Gothic mood of the character so much more understandable/appropriate. Miller's character should have become the Punisher, not a dark cloaked soul standing alone amidst dark towers and gargoyles at night. This character has substance (grief is far more interesting than rage) and, most importantly, this character can still be considered a hero, whereas I'm not entirely sure the same could be said for Miller's enraged sociopath.

Still, the modifications Starlin makes to Bruce's origin story really bothered me. I can't imagine Bruce dedicating his life to saying "I'm sorry" to an alcoholic father who hit him. The entire premise of Batman really only works if you can view Thomas and Martha Wayne as the kind of saints that any parents would appear to be in the eyes of a pre-adolescent who lost them too soon. The Bruce I imagine would have blocked out such sordid details about his father and not worked to recollect them later on.

The "I'm sorry, daddy! I didn't mean it!" at the end was too much...it felt more silly than tragic when contrasted against the mature darkness of The Batman. Still, I found most of the rest of the visual contrast in this issue (adult Batman versus childhood Bruce) powerful. Normally, the origin story gets told either on its own or while Bruce is "Bruce". To contrast who Bruce was versus the dark figure that Bruce has truly become felt fresh and powerful to me.


The minor details:

- This real-world villain feels lifted directly out of a Grant story. Grant would have made him more interesting, warped, and reflective of our times though.

- Aparo's surprised faces are beginning to bug me. Page 3, panel 6, in particular, has a face so exaggerated that it looks like the Joker.

- What was the point of the woman trapped in the middle of the road? I didn't understand why the police couldn't just close down the road to get her out, she was never actually shown, and she added nothing to the story, yet she was the major focus when Batman first arrived on the scene.

- Gordon asking, "By the way, is Robin with you tonight?" felt silly to me. Clearly he's not there, and even Starlin has established that Robin doesn't come out on every mission. It makes a nice connection to the previous storyline, but it's an unnatural line of dialogue. Maybe Gordon should have said something like, "Funny, I thought Robin would be with you tonight" or something.

- In my mind, the last issue was all about showing how Jason's death led Batman to become a darker, more Miller-like Batman, but Starlin appears to be backing off from that here, showing a Batman who has always been Miller-like, and yet who can still be a good guy through and through. Too bad the majority of people who stopped in to read DKR and "A Death in the Family" probably didn't bother to read this issue or notice the subtle changes it was going for. With "A Death in the Family" Starlin cemented into public consciousness a Batman that he doesn't actually seem to want.

- On page 7, can a sniper rifle really shoot through a steel door??

- Page 9, the offices of "O'Neil and Raspler: Creative Consultants"

- Batman is beaten far too easily in this issue, constantly missing his mark in a fight with an inexperienced gunman and getting far too blinded by the flash of a gun, wandering around almost drunk and entirely unable to move for nine panels after.


In the letters column, O'Neil is now using the same "From the Den" writeup in Batman and Detective, so there's nothing new there, but he does explain Starlin's (at the time, temporary) departure from the book to begin a "Gilgamesh II" epic saga. Someone posted in this thread a few pages back that Starlin had been fired from DC for killing Robin, which didn't sit right with me at the time and still doesn't (can't find the post right now). Can anyone back-up or clarify this statement?

The Owsley and Byrne issues have all been planned at this point, as well, though I'm surprised that O'Neil refers to John Byrne as "famous horror novelist John L. Byrne." Unless this is a different John Byrne, I had no idea he'd written novels (and what an odd way to introduce him, rather than mentioning Man of Steel or the X-Men).


The plot synopsis in one ridiculously long sentence:

A laid-off banker with a sniper rifle goes to a rooftop to kill innocents before killing himself, Batman intervenes, the Sniper says "I wish you were all dead," which causes Batman to recall his origin (now revised) in which he tells a drunk and abusive Thomas Wayne that he wished he was dead, later prompting Thomas to apologize and reconcile by taking Bruce out to see The Mask of Zorro, after which the fatal mugging occurs, Batman tries to take down the gunman but is unable to stop him from moving into the sightline of the police snipers on the ground, and they kill him.

Batman #431

"The Wall"
writer: James Owsley (later Christopher Priest)
pencils: Jim Aparo
inks: Mike DeCarlo
letters: John Costanza
colors: Adrienne Roy
asst. editor: Dan Raspler
editor: Denny O'Neil
created by: Bob Kane

Grade: A-

Both the fact that this was an issue written by a filler writer and that the cover was a totally non-committal image that promised nothing about the story within convinced me that this issue was going to be a waste of time.

Boy was I wrong.

This was a fantastic issue and, more importantly, it was a very significant one for two major reasons:

1. The fact that Owsley is trying so hard to make Bruce behave in an anti-hero fashion after Jason's death, regretting that a criminal confessed so that he couldn't pound him, suggests that Starlin's extreme efforts to align Batman with his DKR characterization may have been an editorially mandated decision. It's clear by this point that O'Neil was doing anything he could to sell more books (in the letter column for this issue we'll find him describing his move into a swank new apartment in a better neighborhood -- gee, what paid for that?), and anti-heroes were selling like hotcakes at this point (as did DKR).

2. This is the first time that we really learn anything about Bruce's training post-crisis. Owsley is the first to show Bruce traveling to foreign lands to seek out great masters of the combative arts. Not only has this idea become a prominent part of Batman's established canon since the publication of this issue, but it's also clear that this issue served as inspiration for at least two other popular Batman stories in other mediums:

- The Batman: The Animated Series episode, "Day of the Samurai" shows Bruce learning the "touch of death" during his training and later having to take down a rival who studied under the same master. In the case of this story, it's the "vibrating palm," but the concept is the same.

- Batman Begins shows Bruce being trained by the same master that trained the League of Assassins. Of course, in the film it was Ras Al Ghul, but both stories still link the League of Assassins to Bruce's training. I suppose that this one leaves us guessing where Ras fits into Bruce's origin as a result of this connection.

Funny that Ras goes unmentioned in this story, though. Perhaps O'Neil wasn't planning to bring him back post crisis? "Son of the Demon," his only appearance after Crisis on Infinite Earths up to this point, appeared to be a non-continuity story.

I really like how this story came together in the end. Without obviously dangling any clues in front of you, Priest strung together the series of events in this story into a clever and tight mystery for Bruce to unravel. I really appreciated the seeming effortlessness with which Priest assembled the facts and then spelled out the solution for us without belaboring the point.

My only regret with this issue is the rushed ending, in which Batman questions his former master on why he trained mercenaries in the deadly arts without first questioning their motives.

Master: After all, I did not question your motives when you came to me.

Batman: No, you didn't. But perhaps you should have.

If Priest had given us another five pages first, this ending might have worked, but it was entirely undeserved here. We saw Batman being a jerk and wanting to abuse his powers earlier in this story, and he made a creepy comment about how he would have done the murder when examining the murder victim's body, but we never saw him actually cross any lines and, more importantly, we never saw him second-guess his actions until this moment (which comes so many pages after one minor comment about wanting to beat up a villain that could easily be forgotten by this point).

Still, a fantastic issue overall, especially in the level of clever detective work it gives Batman to do.


The minor details:

-What's up with the title of this story?

-Cei-U wanted to know when Bruce starts using his mastery of disguises in the post-Crisis era. Here's the first story to showcase it as he disguises himself as a janitor and a mortician, so committed to his roles that he actually goes on to repair a woman's sink after he's learned all he came to learn.

-Did anyone else think Batman had just killed that assassin with the vibrating hand before we turned the page and found out he'd only stunned him?? Whew. Priest really played to the idea that Bruce was teetering on the edge of the dark side here.

-So how many of Bruce's former masters know he's Batman? He clearly first came to this master as Bruce Wayne, and yet the master immediately speaks to Batman as if he is the same person, and Batman does not appear surprised by this.

- Bruce first sought out this master ten years ago (before he became Batman), yet the post-crisis continuity we've established for Batman based upon Starlin's work indicates that Bruce has been Batman for at least 11.5 years, and even the contradictory reference in "The Cult" has Bruce in his tenth year of being Batman. Priest's "ten years ago" date simply doesn't work.

- So why did Stuart create that alibi for himself and then confess to crimes so that he could be locked up in jail? I'm afraid I still don't understand this aspect of the story.


The plot synopsis in one ridiculously long sentence: The story begins with a flashback to a young Bruce Wayne seeking out Kirigi, the master teacher of an ancient form of combat, ten years earlier, we then cut to modern day with Batman angry that a criminal he'd been wiretapping and planning to violently intimidate had confessed, he gives the tapes to Alfred to transcribe and lies awake, unable to forget Jason, only for Alfred to discover something surprising on the tapes, Batman visits the criminal (Stuart) in jail to discuss a faked performance on the tape of Stuart witnessing a random murder, Batman decides this is an act since the murder was never reported and the body never found, Batman checks out the apartment where the murder took place while disguised as a janitor, he then tracks down the body in Los Angeles and examines it while disguised as a mortician, he then randomly and violently abducts a woman and then confronts Mugs (the crime boss who Batman deduced had hired The League of Assassins to kill that woman--which ended up being the wrong woman, thus explaining why Batman abducted the other woman--confusing, huh?), Mugs calls his man to call off the next hit, Batman traces the call and goes to the house, only to find the man dead and the League of Assassins there, a battle ensues, Batman uses a modified version of Kirigi's vibrating palm move against one of the assassins (who immediately recognizes it), and then Batman confronts Kirigi about not questioning the motives of those who he trains...including Batman.