Comics Fondle

Holy shit.

First off, I hated Batman: War Games. I didn’t think DC could get any stupider in their attempts to create some anti-character “universe” of storytelling. Oh, how good event-based plotting is, huh? Whatever, I save money on comics in a couple months, no big deal… But Batman: War Crimes, a totally unnecessary sequel to War Games, is a big deal. It effectively changes a constant the Batman character has had for thirty years.

And it’s actually not a bad change. In some ways it’s terrible and since I didn’t read all of War Games, I can’t comment on how feasible it is, but it’s a decent change. It’s a human change, a tragedy.

As for the rest of War Crimes, the technical aspects of the story, there are a lot of problems. Willingham succeeds–to some degree–in matching Gabrych’s excellent Batman interior monologue, but Willingham’s dialogue is stale. I love and admire Willingham’s Fables, but almost everything that makes that comic book so good (the structure, the character relationships, the wit), is absent from his superhero writing. Some people just shouldn’t write superheroes (like Greg Rucka).

There’s also the incredibly silly aspects to War Crimes, like the guy dressing up as Batman to frame him. Knowledgeable comic book readers will remember pre-Frank Miller Batman, when folks often impersonated Batman. I think that even happened immediately following Year One, actually. If it worked then, and I’m not knowledgeable enough to know, it certainly doesn’t work now. Not when there’s such an attempt at reality in these comic books. It’s a totally failed attempt too….

Gabrych does have, in his two issues (Willingham wrote the other two), a few great Batman moments. Gabrych wrote twelve issues of Detective Comics a year ago and it was the finest Batman in this current incarnation. So there was a nice sense of deja vu for a bit. Gabrych has his Detective collaborator, Pete Woods, back and someone picked the wrong inker for Pete. I love Pete Woods, so I can forgive. Willingham’s artist is Giuseppe Camuncoli, who’s better than I remember thinking he was….

But, really… for someone who’s been reading Batman comics–off and on–since 1989, War Crimes makes an interesting development in the character. Whether or not the twits at DC will recognize this development is another story.

C

Technorati Tags: Andersen Gabrych, Batman, Bill Willingham, Comic Book, DC Comics, Giuseppe Camuncoli, Pete Woods, Review

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