Comics Fondle

The 1970s Englehart/Rogers Batman stories are famous. They’re the stories the 1989 Batman movie was based on, before Jack Nicholson came along. DC finally reprinted them in a collection in the late 1990s, after there was significant clamoring for them. Significant clamoring was difficult before the internet really took off (now that the flight is flown, of course, the internet only clamors for what media companies tell them to clamor for, just like everything else).

This year is DC’s year for Batman specials, tying into Batman Begins–which I find incredibly amusing, since Begins is kind a flop. It made money, sure, but to match the 1989 Batman, it needed to be a cultural revolution, which it wasn’t. Regardless, Dark Detective does not star the Batman from either of the movies, or even the Batman from the comic books–the current ones or Englehart and Rogers’ original run. This Batman is the one Englehart has been stewing for almost twenty years.

It’s impossible, in the modern context, to reinvent Batman. All Batman comic books today are based, somewhat, on Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, which, being set in the character’s future, makes no sense. Maybe someone like Darwyn Cooke does something different and so did Ed Brubaker in his excellent Made of Wood story. Of course, DC doesn’t let Darwyn Cooke do Batman full-time and Brubaker’s a Marvel exclusive (and DC never appreciated him anyway)….

Still, for a company of dodos, DC still turns out some good work, but it goes under the radar. Englehart develops Bruce Wayne a lot in Dark Detective, revealing him to be nothing but an overdeveloped adolescent. Robin Williams in Jack, only with kung fu. Englehart posits that the Batman is a child’s creature and that Wayne never grew out of it. That’s a fairly revolutionary idea, since most comic book fans consider Batman perfect. I just read an interview with one writer who refused to recognize Batman as a psychopath, which the character (as portrayed in current DC comics) most obviously is. He’s well intentioned, but he’s a loon.

Englehart’s Batman is not a loon, he’s a child (much like Bruce Jones recent take on the character). The rest of the story, featuring the Scarecrow, the Joker, and Two-Face as villains, and reintroducing Silver St. Cloud (Bruce Wayne’s best love interest), runs hot and cold. A lot of time is spent talking about love, but the story takes place over just a few days, so we get to see very little of it expressed. Englehart’s characterizations are better than his dialogue, so it’s not like we get a superhero version of Frankie and Johnny. (Does anyone else really miss Michelle Pfeiffer? I just got Wolf the other day and I realized I really miss her in good stuff).

As for the Marshall Rogers art… I love Marshall Rogers. He’s one of the few artists I used to buy, but something’s happened in the last fifteen years. His style has changed, sure, but so has the way his art looks on the paper. The new paper’s too slick. It doesn’t have the necessary roughness of newsprint. Rogers used to make reading the comic an adventure, you had to follow the characters through the page. There was some good art in Dark Detective, but it wasn’t the mind-blowing experience I expected.

There are rumblings of a Dark Detective II, which I hope happens. Englehart brings some of the innocence back to the character and to his villains (again, just like Bruce Jones recently did) and it proves to be exactly what the character needs. Compared to the high profile, Frank Miller-written All-Star Batman, Dark Detective is incredibly superior. Miller’s called his series a sequel to his Batman: Year One, but in actuality, it’s still a prequel to his Dark Knight Returns, which Year One was not. The problems with Dark Detective in no way lessen my enjoyment reading it and Englehart turns Bruce Wayne into a human being again, something DC strives hard not to do….

B-

Technorati Tags: Batman, Comic Book, DC Comics, Marshall Rogers, Review, Steve Englehart

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