GRAPHIC NOVEL and TRADE PAPERBACK (TPB) REVIEWS

Batman: Son of the Demon 1987 (HC & SC GN) 80 pages

Written by Mike W. Barr. Illustrated and coloured by Jerry Bingham.
Letters: John Costanzo. Editor: Dick Giordano.

Rating: * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 2

Suggested for mature readers

In a story that initially was meant to be viewed as semi-apocryphal, Batman and his arch foe, Ra's Al Ghul, ally themselves against a mutual enemy, a terrorist and one-time Ra's protégé named Qayin -- going so far as Batman essentially joining Ra's organization (Ra's' long cherished dream) and marrying Talia, Ra's daughter -- and even impregnating her! (Years later, the story was largely removed from the "apocryphal" category, and accepted as canon, even being reprinted in a staple spined comic book edition).

Son of the Demon is one of those stories which, frankly, just doesn't fully click with me. First off, to be up front, I'm not a big Mike Barr fan as a rule -- though I've liked some of his stuff, certainly. And the story's one of those problematic things in comics where part of my ambivalence is how familiar it all seems -- I mean Ra's (and Talia), though initially kind of cool and urbane the first time you encounter them, get real old, real fast and aren't exactly the most complex characters in Batman lore, or given to surprise nuances, and Batman has allied himself with Ra's against a mutual threat before. Still, maybe that's unfair, as plenty of readers will have read fewer past stories than I (though, conversely, the story kind of assumes the reader has a familiarity with the characters' history). I've never been sold on the Bats-Talia romance, so to have a story where Bats just blithely decides to marry her and have a family...just rang false.

Significantly, the scenes focusing on Qayin were somewhat more interesting -- not because Qayin was a particularly complex or well-rounded figure, but simply because he's a new foe, as opposed to the overused Ra's.

At its heart, Son of the Demon kind of wants to be a character-based story, as Bats allies himself with Ra's, marries Talia, and where themes of family and childhood traumas abound. In a couple of scenes Batman's objectivity is threatened by memories of his own orphaned childhood, and even the title takes on multiple meanings as Batman essentially becomes Ra's son, but Qayin was also a surrogate son. Yup, it's all very character-based...yet it rarely succeeds as a character-driven story. Barr is too busy writing an action-adventure romp to slow down and make the human emotion work. The story kind of runs into a lot of scenes where a character does something...but you aren't convinced he would.

I mean, Batman hadn't even heard of Qayin a day or two previous...yet then decides Qayin's such a serious threat he joins ups with arch-villain Ra's? And then he hops into bed with Talia, without even blinking an eye? Then he and Ra's spend a lot of time saying how much they hope their alliance will last when, um, it's pretty obvious that, once Qayin is defeated, their agendas have nothing in common. Later, Batman considers shirking his crime fighting forever now that he's a family man... It's an intriguing idea, one that completely turns the character on his head (after all, crime fighting is his life) while not being completely illogical (after all, it was being bereft of a family that drove him to become Batman) -- but it really needed a lot more delving into and exploring of Batman's emotions and thinking.

For that matter, though Qayin is, like Batman, also a figure emotionally scarred by having been orphaned, Barr doesn't really expect us to have any empathy for him, robbing the story of any extra subtlety.

So, for my money, though it had some interesting potential in the character department, a lot of it was either unconvincing, or undeveloped. In a sense there's a feeling the characters are being pushed around by the needs of the story, the themes, or the "deep" ideas...rather than by their personalities. Part of that is just the story telling: Qayin never becomes more than a bargain basement James Bond foe, and certainly when Batman first becomes aware of him he hardly seems anything more than a villain-of-the-month. Barr needed to better convince us he was some all pervasive force of world shaping villainy in order to better convince us Bats would side with Ra's. And, as I say, the stuff with Bats in general is not unjustified...if it were better developed and explored, either with thought balloons giving us insight into his internal emotions, or with scenes that better portrayed his character growths. As it is, Batman is too much of the BAT-Man, a grim, fairly opaque personality. Maybe some visual choices would've been in order -- he spends most of the story in costume. But particularly during the brief period where he considers quitting for the sake of family, he should drop the costume, better demonstrating the man vs. super hero conflict (and then re-dons the costume for the climax). I dunno. Just a thought.

Admittedly, I reiterate -- I've just never been convinced by the Bat-Talia romance (Talia having all the personality of a curvaceous brick). Which meant the story maybe had to work harder to convice me.

As an action saga -- there's a lot of shoot outs, and only a vaguest logic holding the sequences together. Even then, it's not comprised of a complex, Byzantine plot, but a fairly straightforward one, designed to support basically four key action scenes. Bats-Ra's stories often tend to resemble James Bond movies more than traditional, Gothic Batman tales, with lots of scenes of armies of agents rappelling down cliffs and getting into big shoot outs. Barr, never one who seemed that sincere about the super hero's "thou shalt not kill" edicts, has Batman make a few token comments about not killing...but he spends most of the time with his allies gunning down the opposition, and where Batman himself is happy to indirectly cause deaths, or make snide comments when a foe dies. In fact, Barr's Batman is a rather unlikeable, cold hearted guy...which, admittedly, makes him in keeping with the character as he's often portrayed these days, but not someone you exactly find yourself rooting for.

As used to be the case with some graphic novels, there's a certain "mature readers" flavour, usually involving grittiness and violence. Qayin kills a couple of people in grisly ways, but not in a way that seems anything more than gratuitous, while at the beginning Barr throws in a psycho who threatens to rape a pregnant woman!!! Sure, Bats and Talia tumble into bed together, which at the time might've been seen as a bit risque, but it's not graphic, and it's more the violence that seems excessive. Which has always struck me as a curious comment on comics: that in a story like this they up the grit, the violence, the seediness...but balk at, say, showing Talia in the altogether as if somehow that would've been offensive, but violence is okay!

Jerry Bingham's art is pretty good -- I liked his work when I first saw it years before on a Black Panther story-arc in Marvel Premiere. And here, his eye for detailed and evocative backgrounds is particularly striking. And there's even a slight Neal Adams flavour, appropriate for a Bat-Ra's story. But his eye for composition isn't great which, combined with Barr's script, kind of mutes the human/emotion factor. The story is too brightly lit for a Batman story, lacking mood (as mentioned, James Bond is more an inspiration here than anything). Still, it's nice work.

When I first posted my review, I mentioned that a second reading might mute my criticisms. And, in a way, it did. With lowered expectations, I breezed through it easily enough, it clipping along at a decent pace. But ultimately, that's simply because I read it as nothing more than a mindless page turner, with all my initial criticisms about motivation and characterization and story remaining pretty much intact. So, give the Devil his due...it improved with a second reading. But I can't say whether I liked it more...or simply dissliked it less. But, ultimately, as a 78 page epic, printed at tabloid size, Son of the Demon seems pretty run-of-the-mill, with an action plot that, beyond the initial concepts and themes (which could be intriguing) feels kind of thrown together and undeveloped.

Original soft cover price: $13.95 CDN./ $9.95 USA.

Batman: Strange Apparitions 1999 (SC TPB) 176 pgs.

Written by Steve Englehart (and Len Wein). Illustrated by Marshall Rogers (and Walter Simonson). Inks Terry Austin, Dick Giordano, Al Milgrom.
Colours/letters: various. Editor: Julius Schwartz.

Reprinting: Detective Comics #469-479 (1977)

Rating: * * * 1/2 (out of 5)

Number of readings: 3

Everyone tells you comics have gotten better, become smarter, more sophisticated -- which is true. But what they don't tell you is, they've also become a lot dumber, a lot simpler, a lot more geared toward mindless action. Sometimes the same comic can be smarter and stupider all at once. I say this as a preamble to this review. Because, y'know, I'd long been ambivalent about this run of stories...but, re-reading some of it recently, and contrasting it to some modern comics I've read...well, man, it starts to read a lot better. At least there are plots, and sub-plots, and character bits, and the fight scenes are often used more sparringly. It's still not a "great" saga but, well, it's better than a lot of what's published today. And, in that vein, I really recommend Englehart and Rogers recent, decades later sequel, Batman: The Dark Detective, which marries some of the best of the old and new approaches to comics. End of preamble.

If you read Batman comics in the late '70s and early '80s, you'd have been aware of frequent fan letters hearkening back to Steve Englehart's run on Detective Comics, chronicling Batman's struggles with a corrupt city government headed by "Boss" Rupert Thorne, and the twist of villain Hugo Strange crossing swords with Thorne, being murdered, but returning as a ghost for revenge. Englehart's version of Batman stuck in a lot of people's minds; Silver St. Cloud, the love interest introduced here, was seen by many fans as the woman for Bruce Wayne, etc. DC Comics which, it seems, has an almost pathological aversion to reprinting material from the '70s, has obviously made an exception in this case.

I mention all this so you can you can put in context the fact that I wasn't a big fan of Englehart's "Boss" Thorne Saga.

Firstly, I came to the saga wrong way around, having read Gerry Conway's early '80s sequel published in dozens of Batman and Detective comics. Conway's sprawling epic sticks in my mind as one of the greats (and is reviewed on my They Ain't Trade Paperbacks section). When I finally read Englehart's original (re-published in a deluxe 1985 mini-series) it paled.

Some of the weaknesses are unavoidable, like the fact that it's only 8 issues, hardly allowing room for the twists and turns Conway's sequel could indulge in.

There are some strong bits -- particularly a one issue tussle with the Penguin. It's a frivolous adventure, but it's fun on that level, and boasts some striking visuals: a fog-draped opening; a scene of the Penguin in a deserted theatre, etc. The two-part Hugo Strange story has its moments, as does a two-part battle with the Joker. But everything is rather superficial and slight. Still, Batman: Strange Apparitions does what I wish more TPBs would do. Instead of collecting a multi-issue story, it collects a series of stories woven together by sub-plots. Many comics are often more interesting for their on-going sub-plots than the villain-of-the-month adventure, but it's precisely those sub-plots that are hard to follow to their conclusion, since it's difficult to know when they begin and end. A TPB like this makes it all very convenient.

I've liked Englehart's work in other titles, but I was less impressed here. The plotting is too abrupt and wishy-washy. "Boss" Thorne plots to run Batman out of town by having the city council declare him unwanted, but his plan never extends beyond that -- in fact, there's a scene where Thorne's cronies argue why such a plan is a bad idea, and Thorne simply pounds his fist and says they're doing it anyway...as if even Englehart was at a loss to justify the character's actions. And the conclusion is unsatisfying. In fact, Batman and Thorne almost exist in separate stories, neither really impacting on each other. Thorne's vendetta against Batman has little effect (as the characters note) and Thorne is defeated by things that Batman has no part in. Indeed, the story arc ends not answering what surely is the big question...is the ghost real or not? (Conway's later epic did offer an answer).

If Englehart had wanted to explore the idea of real life political corruption invading the hero vs. super-villain simplicity of Batman's world, he never really delivers. Batman, the champion of justice, seems to have known about Thorne's corruption for years...without ever having tried to stop it. Doesn't that make Batman, at least indirectly, culpable for Thorne's villainy? A few years before, Englehart had written a Captain America storyline wherein Cap uncovers political corruption and, shaken by the revelation, questions whether he can still be a symbol for a system he's lost faith in. Englehart's Batman series seemed like an attempt to revisit that idea...but without any of the passion or conviction of his original.

The romance with Silver St. Cloud is also unconvincing. Now, admittedly, a 17 page comic published bi-monthly can be excused for being a bit rushed in its storytelling, but Bruce barely exchanges two sentences with Silver in one issue, before Alfred is musing in the next issue that Silver might be "the one" for Bruce. Later, in the saga's most crucial plot development, Silver suspects Bruce's secret identity -- with little logical justification! She hadn't seen Batman at that point, Bruce hadn't ducked out in a moment of crisis only to have Batman appear moments later, or anything. Granted, I suppose, she does discover odd things about Bruce: his hair is wet in one scene when it should be dry (as Batman he'd been swimming) and later is told he checked into a clinic for radiation poisoning -- all suspicious, I grant you, but still not enough to immediately conclude he's Batman (not in a city of 8 million people), particularly when Silver doesn't even speculate about it.

The cynic in me wonders: did fans identify Silver as "the one" because Englehart showed a mature, developing relationship, or was it simply because Englehart brow-beat the reader by telling them it was a great relationship? Likewise, the credits -- at least as presented in the 1985 reprint series -- contain lines like "A Bat-tale like none before" and "the Batman you've been waiting for". Tongue-in-cheek hyperbole has been a part of comics since the Marvel Age, but it does smack a little of the editor telling the reader it's a classic, rather than letting the reader decide.

Both the Thorne plot and the Silver St. Cloud plot seem too much like Englehart knew what he wanted to do...but couldn't figure out how.

I just didn't take to Englehart's Batman. Likewise, Silver just never got under my skin the way a love interest should. In fact, Bruce and Silver seemed too much like those trendy "hip" characters that populated a lot of '70s movies and were really annoying. You kind of expect them to be smoking marijuana and attending wife-swapping parties (actually, there's an awful lot of tobacco smoking going on, for that matter). And, just to put my political biases up front, Englehart's Batman seemed just a little too elitest, a little too neo-conservative for my tastes.

The first story is drawn by Walter Simonson and inked by Al Milgrom and it looks like they spent maybe half a day cranking out each issue. Both men have been better. A lot better. Then the Marshall Rogers/Terry Austin team takes over and the art improves dramatically...but I still have mixed emotions. The exquisitely rendered backgrounds, the striking way Batman's cape flares out, the edgy panel composition are all great, but there's a flatness to the figures sometimes, a coldness, and a stiffness and a cartooniness that isn't always as effective.

And then we get to the final two-part tale, written by Len Wein, and with Dick Giordano inking Rogers' pencils. Dark, moody, and melancholy, this story introduces the tragic villain Clayface III. Wein is one of my all-time favourite Bat-scribes, and he delivers a more sombre Batman than Englehart, at the same time presenting a more emotionally complex tale -- Clayface is a murderous villain, but painfully sympathetic, evoking a genuine ambivalence in the reader. Giordano's inks soften Rogers' lines, making everything moodier and more organic. This is probably worth the purchase of this TPB just for itself. There's an ideological twinge, though, when Wein has characters act as if Clayface's crimes are escalating when his murder victims go from being derelicts to a night watchman, as if somehow murder is worse depending on the economic standing of the victim.

Batman: Strange Apparitions isn't great. In fact, it's highly overrated. But it is interesting in spots, and given the way comics are re-packaged as "much requested" and "classics", often with little basis, I can at least attest that, my misgivings notwithstanding, this saga really was much talked about in the years immediately following its original publication. And, as my preamble notes: compared to a lot of modern comics...it's practically War and Peace. And this series was so fondly remembered, Englehart, Rogers and Austin re-teamed almost thirty years later for the mini-series Batman: The Dark Detective (collected in a TPB), continuing the relationship between Batman and Silver...and it was, in my opinion, one of the best mainstream comics of 2005...and I say that not even having been a huge fan of this original story arc.

This is a review of the issues published in Detective Comics and/or reprinted in the 1985 mini-series, Shadow of the Batman.

Cover price: $20.00 CDN./$12.95 USA.

Strange Deaths of the Batman 2009 (SC TPB) 200 pgs.

Writers/artists: various.

Reprinting: Detective Comics #347, World's Finest #184, 269, The Brave and the Bold #115, Batman #291-294, Batman Chronicles #8, Nightwing #52 (some of these comics featured more than one tale -- in those cases it's the lead story that has been reprinted) -- 1966 - 2001

Rating: * * * * (out of 5)

Number of readings: 1

Reviewed: Nov. 2017

There can be different inspirations for TPB collections. And sometimes the most intriguing can be when disparate tales are collected around a theme. In this case: the death of the Batman.

Or at least: presumed and possible deaths. I think the collection was triggered by a then-occurring storyline in the Batman comics involving Bat's supposed death, encouraging this traipse down memory lane. (And not to be confused with the similarly-themed Whatever Happened to the Caped Crusader?)

There are a couple of 1960s tales, including "The Strange Death of Batman" (by the classic Silver Age combo of Gardner Fox and Carmine Infantino) in which a perfectly conventional Batman adventure takes a weird turn, breaking the fourth wall, as writer Fox (written into the story) then simply imagines an alternate resolution in which Batman is killed and how Robin alone gets the bad guy. Presumably DC was testing audience reaction to such "imaginary stories." This is then followed by a true "imaginary story" (no calling upon the author's avatar to justify it) -- "Robin's Revenge" (W'sF #184) by veteran Superman chroniclers, writer Cary Bates and art by the great Curt Swan. And I'll confess, I read it years ago as a kid and so my critical judgement may be suspect...but I think of it as a stand out tale, possibly even influencing later such stories. Batman is seeming killed by a villain, and then the story jumps ahead a few years to an Art Deco future as an adult Robin and a greying Superman pick up the trail of the man who killed Batman. As I say: it's just a memorable tale.

Perhaps the oddest story in this collection is Bob Haney's "The Corpse That Wouldn't Die" (from B&B #115) in which a brain dead Batman is reanimated thanks to The Atom literally jumping up and down on his brain stem, to try and solve Batman's final case, the kidnapping of an heiress. It's, y'know, pretty nuts -- but it's also quite entertaining, and moodily illustrated by veteran Bat-artist, Jim Aparo, during arguably his stylistic peak!

The centre-piece of this collection is the four issue epic "Where Were You the Night Batman Was Killed?" in which the Gotham underworld believes Batman to be dead and stage a series of mock trials (with Two-Face acting as attorney and Ra's al Ghul the judge) where different villains (namely Catwoman, Riddler, Joker, and Superman foe Lex Luthor) all relate different stories claiming credit. Written by frequent Bat-scribe David V. Reed and illustrated by John Calnan, it's goofy and corny but, y'know, it's also kind of fun in its old school unpretentiousness, the stories the villains tell unfolding in sufficiently intriguing ways. Calnan's art isn't as dynamic as Infantino's, Swan's or Aparo's, but it tells the tale.

After all those wild n' crazy stories, "Buried Alive!" (W'sF #269, by Gerry Conway and Rich Buckler) is almost mundane. Almost -- but not quite. In this case there's no "death" of the Batman exactly (to be honest, many of the stories don't involve Batman actually dying, so much as people thinking he'd dead, or having a near-death experience). Here Batman is kidnapped and buried alive, his kidnapper holding him for ransom -- and leaving it to Superman and Robin to try to save him. It's certainly an effective little page-turner, if a bit anti-climactic compared to the other tales.

I mean, that's kind of the fun in this collection: the sheer, mind-boggling imagination at play in tales of an adult Robin, the Atom "steering" a dead body, and super-villain trials. Are they at times silly and childish? Ab-so-tively! And as a teenager, I'm sure I'd have thought that. But as an adult I can appreciate the charm of them, the story-telling chutzpah, the sheer page-turning zeal. Heck, I even like the way many of these old stories draw upon little educational scientific factoids to jazz up scenes and plot twists.

And to be honest, "mind boggling imagination" isn't exactly a phrase one would apply to the more recent stories in this collection.

"Prisoner," a lead story from the anthology comic Batman Chronicles written by John Stanisci, is a brooding character piece told from the POV of Talia al Ghul who is assigned by her malevolent father, Ra's, to once and for all kill Batman -- the man she kind of loves. Drawn by Marvel Comics stalwart Sal Buscema, it's certainly an admirable character piece. But it's ultimately a fairly simple tale that, like a lot of such "serious" pieces, feels like it could been told as well in half the pages.

While the final story feels a bit like it was thrown in just because the editor was told he needed to include some more current tales. It's a Nightwing/Catwoman tale in which Batman's only involvement is in a brief dream sequence at the beginning. That's it as far as Bats, or the theme of this collection. Like the Talia story one can give it marks for a character thread (Catwoman is acting atypically flirtatious toward Nightwing -- though no mention is made of the fact that she's known him since he was a child!), but it's a kind of flimsy thread. While the main action-plot is just the two getting into a running battle with some hoods trying to rob a diamond. Written by Chuck Dixon and drawn by Greg Land it's a breezy romp but not one liable to settle in your memory.

It's sort of weird because I'm pretty sure there have been other stories that would better suit the collection's theme.

Of course there's something a little odd about a Batman collection where, by nature of the theme, Batman himself is often a secondary character -- as the stories either involve him being killed off, or are told from the perspective of other characters. But maybe Batman suits a collection like this better than most since often Batman tales play up the myth and the legend of the character. So a collection like this is as much about how other characters perceive him as it is about Batman himself.

Cover price: $__.

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