One of DC’s greatest strengths is also its greatest weakness
in a twenty-first century media-saturated America. The biggest of the big DC
heroes—Superman, Batman, and Wonder Woman—are routinely compared with and
likened to mythological gods and heroes. It’s been the subject of no telling
how many master’s theses, stacks of pop culture non-fiction publishing, and
long boxes full of comics, all written by the flavor of the month, eager to
dazzle us all with “their take” on fill-in-the-blank character that’s been
around for fifty or more years.
DC even floated a separate line for these “imaginary
stories,” called “Elseworlds,” which has been and continues to be extremely
popular. After all, myths are made to be interpreted and re-interpreted, right?
So, the idea of setting Batman in, say, 19th Century London fighting
Jack the Ripper (Gotham by Gaslight) sounds
frankly awesome, doesn’t it? And in The
Nail, the Justice League are outlaws in a topsy-turvy world, made very
different when the rocket ship discovered by Jonathan and Martha Kent ends up
in a another family's back yard (with artwork by Alan Davis and Paul Neary,
easily two of the best working comic book artists to this day). Sounds cool,
right? Oh, and let’s not forget the most famous Elseworlds of all—the one that
arguably spawned the need for an Elseworlds bullet in the first place—Batman: The Dark Knight, by Frank
Miller.
How can you not love that?
Way back in 1985, when Batman was still running around
every month, ping-ponging from his own comic to Detective Comics in a two times a month, inter-connected plotline,
and breaking in a new Robin named Jason Todd, the idea of a story set ten years
in the future, where Batman is retired and Gotham got worse, and Superman sold
out, and all of that other Post-Modern, Cold War-colored dystopia that’s
crammed into the series, it was a really cool breath of fresh air. A fantastic
one-off. A nice vacation from the same-old, same old.
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| A cinematic, evocative page from Batman: The Dark Knight #1 |
Ten years later, Miller’s nihilistic romp had somehow become
the bible for what Batman (and the rest of the DC universe) should be. Dark.
Violent. Relentless. Unyielding. Bleak. Bloody. Lots of people point to Watchmen as the culprit, but it’s number three on the list. Watchman is too big,
too political, with too many moving parts. Watchmen also had to explain itself,
and who everyone was, and why it should even matter.
But Miller’s Dark
Knight? Four issues, a quick read, and so very accessible. And it’s Batman,
too, which even back in the Dark Ages of the Time Before Comic Book Movies was
an easy on-ramp. And being about Batman, a character in whose previous pop culture
incarnation had become synonymous with high camp, this generated a lot of ink
in the national media, with 99% of the news stories trumpeting a headline that was
some variation of “Pow! Zap! Comics Aren’t For Kids Anymore!” It was a great
time to be a fan. It was a lousy time to be a fan.
But we were talking about the nihilistic nineties. The
Grim-Dark Years. Every new character had the word “blood” or “claw” or “death”
in their name. The Comics Code Authority was all but defunct. DC’s own mature
readers line, Vertigo, was climbing to its legitimate apex, while the DCU was
seemingly business as usual. Except they weren’t.
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| This story was initially just glossed over. It's since become a touchstone for how brutal the 1990s really were. You would never guess its contents from the cover. |
Kyle Raynor’s (the new new NEW Green Lantern) girlfriend
ended up murdered and stuffed into a refrigerator. Sue Dibny, the Elongated Man’s
wife (and mystery-solving partner), was murdered by the ex-wife of the Atom. This
was after it was revealed that she “took one for the team,” literally being
raped by Doctor Light in exchange for him not assaulting the other family
members of the Justice League. If that sounds a little fucked up, you are
correct. The worst thing you could do in the 1990’s, aside from owning Pearl
Jam cds, was to date any super hero from the DCU. It would have been safer if
you were shooting heroin into your eyeballs.
This tonal shift wasn’t confined to just DC comics; nearly
every large company had mature readers titles, stuff that was aimed at a much
older audience, or just a lot of blood and guts. And with the direct market
rendering the CCA worthless, why not? Go nuts! Put heads on spikes and let the
retailers figure out where to rack it! However, the tonal shift was more acutely
seen and felt as it re-colored characters with as much as fifty or more years
of historical context, all for the sake of killing a supporting cast member for
art’s sake.
In Miller’s Dark
Knight, there’s a scene with an old, one-armed Oliver Queen, talking to
Bruce Wayne about his upcoming showdown with Superman. It’s an evocative scene,
where Oliver makes it implicitly understood that Superman is responsible for
the loss of his arm. Cool. In this Elseworlds story, why not? No telling what
happened, and that made for a great bit of business. The thing was, we were never
supposed to know. It’s better if we let our imaginations take care of it. But
by the mid-90s, DC was so desperate to remain, what? Relevant? I don’t know. But
they published a story that showed exactly what happened to Oliver Queen’s arm
by having Superman rip it off in the monthly comic book.
The story was a hackneyed contrivance, made all the more
insulting by removing Superman’s agency. See, if Superman doesn’t rip off Ollie’s
arm, then he can’t be mad at him ten years later. It was nonsense, but they
were dogmatic in their fetishization of Miller’s Dark Knight, and by this time, also Alan Moore’s one-shot, The Killing Joke.
Moore made a career out of tipping over sacred cows, and it
was in this particular book that the Joker shoots Barbara Gordon, crippling her
with a spinal injury, before taking nude photos of her, bleeding out, to show
to a bound and naked Commissioner Gordon. If that sounds grim and dark, yeah,
you’re right, it was. And here’s the damnedest thing: had these been left as
the one-off stories they were supposed to be, they would have been just as
popular, just as meaningful. But when those two books became the style sheet
for the DC Universe, well…
We are twenty years removed from the 1990s, and things aren’t
much better—though to be fair, the companies have been trying, no one harder
than DC, to make some kind of amends. They have re-launched their whole
universe, what? Five times, in the last fifteen years? It’s a ridiculous
number, especially when you look at the changes they chose to make. And all
because Christopher Nolan’s Batman Begins
trilogy was a blockbuster success.
I have some hope for the new Bendis reign, but it’s gonna
take a lot of solid successes to make me think it’s a real turnaround and not a
fluke. I don’t know what Bendis’ take on the DCU is, but here’s mine: these iconic,
and in many cases, mythic, figures require their own habitats in order to work.
That’s not to say that heroes can’t come to visit, but when they do, they are
guest-starring in someone else’s domain; they don’t bring their domain with
them. Unless, you know, it’s a really cool story.
Batman works best in Gotham City. He’s built for it.
Superman—the Man of Tomorrow—is perfectly suited for Metropolis, the City of
the Future. Flash’s Rogues Gallery only makes sense in Central City. Green
Lantern is best viewed from space. And so on and so on. And the thing is this: the
tone should always match the domain, and by extension, the character within
that domain. I don’t want grim-dark Flash stories and more than I want happy,
goofy Batman stories. Although—Batman ’66
was genius. But it’s not to be confused ever with the monthly issues of Detective Comics.
The character(s) set the tone of the book. You don’t impose atonal
shifts onto characters that are seventy-five years old unless you are
subverting an expectation in some way or heightening for effect. In other
words, Superman is not grim-dark. He’s not and never should be, unless you’re writing
the Elseworlds story that plays Superman against type.
To merge this with yesterday’s post, I want Titans to be Super Sidekicks 90210. Or,
you know, something like that. Doom Patrol
should be weird and quirky and self-referential, which it manages to do,
but I don’t need the scenes of Cliff cheating on his wife. I just don’t. Not as
filmed. Watching the first episode of the Doom
Patrol looked like some people sat down in a room and said, “If we don’t
have F-bombs going off and HBO-style near-porn, the kids are going to tune out.”
It seems like a very insecure show, so desperate to be liked and yet, so
unlikeable. Doom Patrol is the guy
back in high school who always ended up in car with you and your friends, and
no one can remember inviting him to come along.
What sucks about all of this is that I want to like these shows,
these movies. They got Wonder Woman
right and I really enjoyed Aquaman,
mostly because I had zero expectations and nothing to lose. Will Shazam! work as well? We’ll find out. It’ll
be quite telling if all of the not-Batman and not-Superman stuff ended up being
amazing and they can’t seem to pitch a better Batman or Superman story than the
ones we’ve already gotten.
Then again, there’s a Joker movie coming to theaters later this year. The trailer makes it look an awful lot like the screenplay was culled from The Killing Joke. So, what do I know?
