The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

Share on Facebook

Barbatos for those of you who haven’t wikied or summoned him already is a demonic badass, commanding legions of lesser fiends, a la the assassins in this issue. I like the bit about commanding animals - probably infernal animals like bats, eh? - and then there’s the stuff about his prophecying the past and future. That’s really interesting, given this latest arc’s, in fact Morrison’s run in general’s, focus on dynasty and destiny. Suddenly we have a new candidate for the devil in the detail, one that tempts me to revise my current opinion that Bruce is Hurt, without negating the theory I’ve held all along that the Ten Eyed Brotherhood’s magic drew down wrathful energies in order to heal and purify Bruce, magical operations rippling as they do across space and time.

But to be honest I think that idea was fairly bulletproof anyway.

I think my current theory has to be that Barbatos is either possessing the original Thomas Wayne or has struck a deal with him resulting in an extended lifespan, Thomas being ‘the piece [the missing painting] that doesn’t fit - there since the beginning’, and although this doesn’t qualify Barbatos as the genuine Devil, it does fit with what we’ve gleaned about demons from films and comics, that even the puniest of them will claim they’re the Ultimate Evil given half the chance.

SPOILERS. If the above is the case then it would also explain why Hurt/Thomas hates Bruce so much. We know that Mordecai-Bruce’s adventure turns sour and that in all likelihood it results in whatever bad shit happens to Thomas. So now we’ve got motivation, Thomas hunting Bruce through time to punish him for trapping him in that room with a bloody demon. At the moment I’m going with the possession theory actually - that’s why all the repetative name writing, the struggling for identity, eventually overcome by a massive BARBATOS.

So, does this mean Oberon is Bruce, his new identity, his costume, his very own protective bathearse, complete with red windscreen, carrying him safely through events until it’s time to dig himself up again? If this is the case I’m guessing El Penitente (Hurt), somewhat naively, doesn’t realise that Bruce-Oberon knows who the fuck he is (which he obviously does).

Aaaah, the speculation.

Share on Facebook

Michael
Don’t you have something better to do than follow me around all night?

Sam
Actually, I do.

INT. The comic book store

Sam
Got a problem guys?

Edgar Frog
Just scoping your civilian wardrobe.

Sam
Pretty cool, huh?

Alan Frog
For a fashion victim.

Edgar
Listen budy, if you’re looking for the diet frozen-yogurt bar, it went out of business last summer.

Sam
Actually I ‘m looking for Batman, no.14.

Edgar
That’s a very serious book, man.

Alan
Only five in existence.

Sam
Four, actually. I’m always lookin’ out for the other three.

You can’t put the Superman, no. 77 with the 200s. They haven’t even discovered red kryptonite yet. And you can’t put the no. 98 with the 300s. Lori Lemaris hasn’t even been introduced.

Edgar
Where the hell are you from? Krypton?

Sam
Phoenix, actually. But lucky me, we moved here.

Share on Facebook

Terminus archives
My Blog

Share on Facebook

A certain timelessness is all part of the point, of course. The strange temporal affect it evokes is probably the weirdest aspect of his weird world, drawing on a strange nostalgic longing for a here-and-now that isn’t but should be available to us. In-story, the thoroughly explored but continually surprising terrain of time travel, of men and women out of time, blessed and cursed at once by the ‘gift’ of immortality, or who’ve hibernated through a century that changed your world out of all recognition, is very much the ground that this comic walks on. Jack Staff’s winking evocation of the world my mind lives in is frighteningly close to reality sometimes. The last time I dropped this book, which I’ve done a few times, only to happily pick it up again later (comic book version of a hot potato that cools down, only to heat up once more. The Lothian question?) was when the vampire-hunting Bramble family were introduced. I am acutely frightened of anything that reminds me of Steptoe and Son, always struck by a bone-deep evocation of temporal claustrophobia - the feeling of being stuck in an era you desperately want to escape from, Harold.

Timelessness shouldn’t mean deja vu. Why is it that every time I pick up a Jack Staff comic, it feels like I’ve read this comic - this very same issue - a good few times before?

Here’s the opening splash of this issue. It’s a perfect establishing shot (it’s important to stress Grist is an absolute master of the funnybook form, apparently effortlessly capable of innovative layouts and storytelling fireworks work as anyone within miles of the supergenre), but perhaps gives away a bit too much of itself.

It shows us Castletown, the crucible of Grist’s ongoing experiments to turn some superhero gold out of empty, leaden British skies. It’s spacious and unbounded. Its roads are not laid out in concrete, but full of the conceptual openness offered by endless alleys of unclaimed, unbordered panel guttering. It’s a great place for a fresh start. But it’s also completely ungrounded. You can’t walk it and be sure that your feet are going to touch something solid, or anything but the thinnest air. You can drop right out of it, landing somewhere else entirely before you’ve even noticed that Castletown’s disappeared. Castletown isn’t just fictional, it’s unreal. And I say this - look at this picture of Burrow Mump, just a few miles from Grist’s home, by way of illustration -

as someone who knows full well that elements of Castletown, the space it is trying to clear, are entirely real, solid and important. In potential.

Grist then, is a genius, but he sometimes gets things wrong, as this umpteenth relaunch of his pet project demonstrates. What’s the matter with Jack Staff? Is it too much fealty to the source material, a superstitious fear of the ghosts of comic artists of years past, or their actual spectral influence,  ice-and-iron fingers seizing the new narrative’s throat at inopportune moments, choking it dead  - the umpteenth iteration of the Steel Claw in the darkened museum or vault, discovery, pursuit, unconsciousness, change scene.

Or is it the central figure, the persistent modern incarnation of that eternal  oxymoron the ‘British Superhero’ who this issue sidelines in its title, while focusing on indoors? I can’t remember how many issues of Jack Staff I’ve read the past decade - it’s a lot, going  back to the first black-and-whites, and I can’t once remember Jack Staff doing anything out- there and superheroic, surprising me, surprising the baddie, kicking serious arse and saving the day. That needing my supercharacters to do this makes me a moron I can shoulder, that’s all in the game. And I can get with any amount of ironic undercutting, British diffidence, apologetic all-a-bit-silly’s, because it is and you’ve got to laugh, haven’t you? But I need to be hooked in first, I need to root for this ineffective fucker in the too-scary balaclava before I can feel comfortable laughing at him. Because it’s obviously silly. Silly goes nowhere, because no we don’t wear our pants on the outside, silly isn’t an adventure, a challenge, something to bravely face. Silly is just the normal state of normal things - I don’t want a superhero comic to be about that.

That’s a bit more like it Jack Staff. That’s what you’re good for. There’s plenty of time left on the clock and all to play for. I’ll see you again next month, or in another decade, but I will be seeing you again.

I give this comic a lot of brains, and one encouraging sign of thickening brawn.

Share on Facebook

1. The Island has been destroyed and everyone (with the exception of Ben, Ethan, Dogen, etc…) was annihilated in nuclear fire. Sounds like the sort of thing Evil Locke is working towards

2. Evil Locke claims that he always does what he says he will do. Recently Evil Locke has been making lots of promises to the Losties. Interestingly the alternative universe seems to be a place in which people get what they want (even Sayid to some extent).

3. It would be a good fun dramatic reversal to have a world (the alt world) which seems slightly more soft and cuddly turn out to be the nightmare scenario

4. I like the idea that Evil Locke’s plan has in some way already reached fruition, and that everything we’ve seen has been it’s wheels spinning in motion

The thing which really appeals to me though, the backbone of these noodlings, is the gulf between Jacob’s modus-operandii and Evil Locke’s. With Jacob it’s all mystery and faith and choice, with Evil Locke it’s all answers and visibility and certainty (”I always do what I say…”) and not having to make choices: Do this or die, do this and get exactly what you want, follow me and don’t think.

Anyway, just another bunch of Lost thoughts.

Share on Facebook

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

Share on Facebook

Terminus archives
My Blog

Share on Facebook

Cartoon County is a Sussex based organization run by David Lloyd and Corinne Pearlman where comic book types can show their work and share information. The monthly meetings at The Cricketers pub in Brighton are a great source of inspiration and alcohol for all involved.  Last January’s meeting was graced by the presence of Karen Rubins.  Karen is nice and special as she recently completed a residency at the prestigious Victoria and Albert Museum.
She was kind enough to talk about the experience and answer questions from CC’s more gobby members like myself, David Lloyd, Dez Skinn, Corinne Pearlman and Tim Pilcher. Why not listen as she talks secret tunnels, samurai swords, hidden comic collections, tarot cards and filling in forms!!!!!

Click to download Karen Rubins interview

Share on Facebook

The first of hopefully several.  This prototype Amusing Brothers animation lacks a proper opening sequence and credits but I thought I’d share this with you anyway you cheeky sausages.  This was animated by Ed Nottingham and voiced by Gary Lactus (Steven) and Amy Poodle (Andrew).

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

Share on Facebook

Here and in the comments, we got the shit ain’t no-one else got. Read on!

PAGE 1

PANEL 2

Amy: It serves plot, but Beryl’s aside, positioned between the macho matter-of-factness of Dick and Cyrils’ dialogue, is also a nice character moment showcasing her humanity and her romantic side. Kate’s last cry for help, her neutrino-comm (talk about radio ghosts!) repeating its message forever in the darkness, is a moving, poetic thought. Beryl Morrison.

Zom: Before we go any further I just want to add my voice to the chorus of people who have praised Cameron Stewart’s character acting. People often fail to notice that Morrison is one of the great character writers when he puts his mind to it, and Batman & Robin is a very character focussed book, but all that focus and all that ability wouldn’t amount to much if it weren’t for his collaborators in the art department, as was demonstrated under the flesh warping pen of Phillip Tan.

PAGE 2

PANEL 3

Amy: Another nice character moment from Beryl, this time with the side effect of bigging up the Batwoman title. By putting the admiring words ‘I heard she was well hard…’ in Beryl’s mouth, though, it feels as if Morrison’s commenting on Kate’s potential as a role model for girls, and particularly for her. Running into a fully formed superheroine prepared to brave death in order to beat the baddies would make quite an impact on a female sidekick operating in a man’s world. This is a good touch.

PAGE 3

PANEL 1

Amy: AND ANOTHER ONE! This time from Cyril. I love the idea of the young Squire being terrified by his American counterpart, savagely chewing his nails on the plane ride over to the Club of Heroes meeting, a sick feeling in his stomach. Between Cyril’s dialogue here, the craziness attendant on Dick Grayson’s arrival on the bat-scene, that ‘blitz of a boy’ quote and the Batman of Zur-en-arrh, Morrison’s captured something about the first Robin that I’m not sure because I don’t read their comics but I suspect other writers have missed, his singular uniqueness, the thing that marks him as the ur-sidekick - his unbridled teenage wildness. That’s was his weapon. That’s what made him special.

And potentially as scary as Batman.

It’s as though when things got really freaky and out there Batman, always prepared, answered with a weapon of his own, unleashing Robin on his foes.

I’ve got a schematic going: Dick was the child, Jason the teenager and Tim, who made tracked Batman down and made the conscious decision ahead of time to be Robin, is the grown up.

PANEL 2

Amy: And it seems Dick Grayson resented Cyril. These two panels unearth the original Club of Heroes’ story subplot that was never told! The tensions between the original members above mirrored by the tensions between sidekicks below!

PANEL 3

Amy: I know I should heroic-hype the shit out of Beryl’s nod to the Wordenshire rectory bells, but I won’t.

Not here.

I’m doing it somewhere else.

Man, there needs to be some post-morrison comics. It’s a damning indictment that DC’s stable never know what to do with his ideas.

PANEL 4

Amy: Batman’s detective skills are a nifty plot moving device, and Morrison seems to be really enjoying utilising them in service of same. This run’s full of it. Also, that Dick has in no time at all figured out not only that the clone isn’t Batman but also what his next move will be, and given that he’s been processing all this information whilst engaging in a life or death struggle with it, with all the emotional baggage and internal conflict that would entail, and being buried alive under a ton of rocks that’ve killed his comrade, marks his out as one of the coolest, quickest minds on the planet. A true superhero. Morrison multitasking again…..

PAGE 5

Amy: Damian’s as quick as Dick.

And, URRGH, it smells of bleach. When the clones were sterilised they used bloody Domestos… And that image in my mind - we’ll get on to some of this in a big way later - of rotting meat scrubbed clean with bleach is vile.

PAGES 6, 7 & 8

Amy: A brilliant sequence. I somehow imagined Damian and Alfred being far more frightened and passive than this. It’s good that other than a quick nod to victimhood at the end of the last issue they come out the gate fighting in this one.

Damian’s pulled off his father’s disappearing trick on more than one occasion. Could Dick do it at that age?

PANEL 1

Amy: For some reason this panel reminds me of the scene in the second part of What the Butler Saw where Bruce and AlfredLUMP discuss the false memories he’s been implanting, and although there’s no real connection there, there are certainly resonances. In fact the clone’s confused condition resonates nicely with Bruce’s disarrayed mind in #682 and #683 generally.

As an aside, I might have mentioned way back in the annocommentations for the What the Butler Saw that the story arc is an exploding of the inner workings of one of those Bruce-Wayne-conquers-all-with-the-force-of-his-indomitable-will stories, both showing and telling rather than simply leaving it up to the reader to fill in the gaps or just nod their head along with the idea that Batman is a psychic badass. So in that alone it’s cool. But I’ve just realised it’s also a mathematic proof that Bruce Wayne would’ve become a superhero anyway, regardless of whether or not his parents had died. I know there isn’t a panel where Universe B Bruce actually dons spandex, but I think he’s heading that way. His horror at the Joker’s crimes and the feeling that he’s destined for greater things, his self hatred (his sense of disappointment), the discovery of a dead superhero’s lair beneath Wayne Manor, the training session scene (that could be happening in either reality, and may be the bridge between them given that Universe B Bruce doesn’t return post partnering up) - all of these things are an indicator that Batman can’t be hemmed in, even when you teleport him to a world where he never existed.

Wow, What the Butler Saw is another one of those updated fifties’ stories again, isn’t it? (Not literally)

In true prismatic style, the clone is a useful device to unpick Bruce Wayne. I’m very taken with the idea implicit here that the violence in Bruce’s life has been a constant reworking of Joe Chill’s primal act of violence, and has therefore made the event impossible to process, impossible to let go.

PANELS 2,3,4 & 5

Amy: This is just brilliant. Fucking fucking brilliant. The stuff about ‘Gunshots cracking in my skull. Day and night. Ka-pow! Pow! Blam!’ and the implication that the sixties’ show, under psychoanalysis, was revealing via parapraxis a darker truth, little Bruce Wayne constantly reliving his parents murder with every kick and punch. And of course this simpler, confused Zombie Batman would experience the memory in a hallucinogenic, primary, cartoonish and childlike way. It works on both levels. Talk about recontextualising and refusing disparate bat-elements! Genius. And then further to that the ‘Krakt!’, Morrison again, as he did with Batbane, admitting Knightfall to the unhallowed halls of bat-trauma, in second place sure, but nonetheless right up there.

The shattered psychic prism that is the bigtop triptych is superdense and allows Morrison to literalise lots of stuff sloshing around in Bruce’s mind. There’s the riddle of Catwoman - what is she to Bruce exactly? Friend? Foe? Lover? The inseparability of Robin and the Joker, both of them circus freaks, representing the crazy fast energies that have always been a feature of the batman adventure, and inverted lovers, one murdering the other, the Joker in some way replacing Jason, or at least infecting him, when he eventually returns. (as a side note has anyone noticed the way that bullet wound in the Joker’s head looks like a black cordite bindi - a third eye staring straight into Hell? The Swami of Sin….) After that we have Wurzel Baneage, and the terror of being helpless all over again, broken like a piece of straw on the knee of bloodmusclesweat, the raw physicality of your parents riddled with bullet holes, and again the zany lightning current reemerges in Zur-en-arrh, Batman’s attempt to  incorporate these wayward energies, to have them work for him, to *become* Robin. Is that figure there an aggregate of Jim Gordon, Alfred and Thomas Wayne? I suppose even though Bruce’s relationship with Alfred and Jim isn’t strictly paternalistic, seen from above the dynamic between them certainly resembles that of a wild, rebellious teenager and a solid dad figure. Shit, Jim means a lot to Bruce, doesn’t he? I never thought of it like that before. I saw them more as pals.

Cool.

And then Kathy Kane(/+Huntress), the Batman Clone emerging from the smashed glass, (still)born into a world of insanity and horror that will eventually destroy her.

The whole shattered womb/wombglass in shattered eyes/shattered bonesbodymind equation is extremely sickening generally: ‘Born Ded in splintrs of j-j-jagged glass!’ It’s just so disturbingly violent. It conjures in my mind an image of a baby bleeding out on a cracked mirror, or something akin to that (We’ve already mentioned the correlation between the child’s and zombie’s eye view of the sound effects (oh man, let’s back up a sec - you wanted the 60s TV show crossed with Lynch? You got it!), but of course another thing positioning Zombie-Bats as a child is his babyspeak). I’m not bringing this up solely to upset people, I’m just wondering if anyone else felt this bloody, raw energy haunting the edges of the page. It’s a brilliant example of horror operating within the narrow crawlspace of a mainstream comic, but via imagistic dialogue.

I’ve had weird nightmares where instead of dandruff people has large anadin pills in their hair, and the pearls/eyes mashup here reminds me of that. Yuck. Ever since the day I spat out a calcium deposit that’d been slowly pushing its way through the skin under my tongue for two years before that, I’ve found the idea of discovering a foreign object - and I do mean an object, something made of plastic, metal or glass, something manmade - growing somewhere on or in one’s body incredibly disturbing, and the pearls/eyes mashup is certainly pushing that button again, yesiree peeyyUUke a dee. Zombie-Bruce is so infected with the idea of Martha Wayne’s death, so entranced by the moment when time stopped and her freezeframed jewellry scattered across the air, that his eyes have become pearls! That’s just horrible, isn’t it?

PAGE 10

PANELS 4 & 5

Amy: Being that this clone is a Batman broken by his history, it makes sense that he should always adopt the negative position and resultingly his dialogue should reproduce the principle characters’ fears. If Damian’s afraid of anything it’s that he’s somehow tainted, that he’s the real faulty clone, and that not only will he be unable to live up to his father’s heritage, he’s actually a cancer feeding off it and ultimately destined to destroy it. Why else does he have so much to prove? Nice way, along with the obvious stuff that Zom points out, to propel him into the next arc, Batman vs Robin.

It’s a good thing, though, that his insecurities are completely wrongheaded, that he’s actually a mini-bruce, and that like his father he’s an existentialist. An existentialist holding a piece of sparking cable.

PAGE 11

PANEL 3

Amy: The four doors representing the four elements leading to the Lazarus Pit is another cute Morrisonian flourish. Spirit often crops up as the fifth element in occultism, and life is the function of all of them combined. Instant depth.

PANEL 4

Amy: I like that Kate’s so self-possessed she can decide not to lose it upon resurrection. Maybe she views that stuff as being for unprofessional, undisciplined civilians, perhaps for undisciplined, unruly men. Batwoman as badass example no. 2.

PAGE 12

PANEL 1

Zom: It makes me chuckle that Morrison killed Batwoman off so fast. It’s as if he couldn’t wait to clout her with a ten ton avalanche made of pure superhero. Yeah, yeah you can have your TDKesque rationalisations (her treatment by the army, the army connections, the military hardware, the wig, etc…) but you also get your Crime Bible and your were-people, and, in the hands of Grant, your superheroic death. Let’s face it, you’re nowhere on the Justice League scale of Heroic Endeavour if you haven’t come back from the dead at least once.

PAGE 13

PANEL 1

Amy: I have no idea what ‘Ice Cube’ is. Some sort of research lab obviously, but is it real or just in comics?

PANEL 4

Amy: The Knight and the Squire have whole narrative arcs, and in fact a grand narrative, built into them don’t they? The poverty…. Zom pointed out that being poor they’re superheroes for our recession blighted times. America - read american superheroes - can glamour it out, but Britain’s ugly bits are always on display. It would be nice if DC had a strongish UK line like Marvel had in the eighties and the Knight and Squire was one of its titles. The Knight and Squire’s return to glory arc could dovetail neatly with a global financial about turn, or at least our own, making it the popularist british comic EVAAAAH.

Doubt it would though. We’re probably all well and truly screwed.

PANEL 6

Amy: Batwoman seems incredibly spry for someone only just raised from the dead. It’s her Barbelith moment though, her self dissolved and then reintegrated by that boiling red sphere stuck in the ground. How did King Mob describe it, ‘Ego annihilation is followed by euphoric reintegration and an extended sense of understanding. There’s a surge of creative energy, all time is understood to be happening simultaneously…’? It’s not just that Kate’s tough as nails, but also that she was only just now at one with the time worm. No wonder she’s grinning from ear to ear and thousand yard staring at her hands. Where she’s been you have a billion billion hands and you can see across universes.

One little bat zombie’s no sweat after that.

Do you know what’s great about this shit? I’m not reading it into the scene. Morrison’s clearly winking at the long term fans. The most bonkers reading is REAL.

PAGE 14

Amy: I wonder if Grant will remember he blew up the Batmobile.

Oh, I see, it’s the one before the newest one. Sheesh, that one didn’t last long.

I think there was some confusion regarding better batmobiles.

Zom: The new blown-up Batmobile is also in evidence. Somehow I don’t think that’s Grant’s fault

PAGE 15

PANEL 1

Amy: Holy iterated bat-man, Alfred!

Zom: There’s something so enjoyable about seeing Alfred pick up a cricket bat to defend Damian against the onslaught of Zombie-Bats. This is where dependable manservant crosses over into hero territory. Batman doesn’t merely employ a butler, he employs a super butler, one who remains reliable when the going gets really fucking crazy. On another more important level it’s moving, the idea of an old man selflessly facing down hell to defend a little boy who hasn’t always been the easiest of charges (but then which little boys are?). Going back to what I said above about Alfred’s capacity for reliability, I suppose you could read Alfred’s actions as an endorsement of the idea that there is something virtuous about a manservant’s willingness to lay down his life for his master, but I’m happy to ignore that bothersome political dimension and focus on the people. For me this is about love, bravery and decency.

THE REST OF IT

It seems Zombie Batman’s inverted bat-mission rather than to in some way resurrect his parents by saving innocents’ lives is to destroy the orphaned child himself. Suicide, in other words- to turn the sun, or put another way, the world, off. Batman’s a light in the black bug city, one that should never go out.

Damian’s midair tut is priceless.

PAGES 16 & 17

Zom: Perhaps Batman vs Robin is at least in part motivated by Dick’s actions in this arc. Yes it seems as if Damian and Talia have something planned, but I can’t imagine that Dick’s role in the creation of Zombie Batman has helped bring Dick and Damian closer - quite the opposite. I don’t think I’d be too keen on being assualted by a superhuman, rotting corpse version of my father. I suspect I might think that the person responsible for that was not someone who I wanted as my friend. I might even think that that person should be punished, and I don’t have Damian’s temper, nor did I spend my formative years learning morality from the League of Assassins, nor am I ten years old. The there’s the thought that maybe batman shouldn’t be the sort of guy who sets off zombie rampages (thanks to his failure to plan properly – Dick operates “without a net” remember), a thought compounded by the fact that this dangerous bat-fraud isn’t satisfied with his last fuck up, now he wants to go on some mad and no doubt doomed to failure quest to find Damian’s real dad (who last anyone knew was vapourised by Darkseid) with no regard to how Damian might feel about it.

Yeah, I can see how Damian might have a bone to pick with Dick.

Amy: yeah, that smug grin and all the quipping’s inappropriate to say the least. Is this the first time the comic’s positioned us on Damian’s as opposed to Dick’s side? I mean Dick really is coming off as thoughtless, lovestruck cock.

PAGE 18

PANEL 1

Amy: ‘Puh-puh-patch patch me up…’ Jesus, he really is a foul mockery of his source material…. More grotesque Bruce Wayne impersonations….

PANEL 4

Amy: And now with the infantile snivelling. It seems Kate’s been reduced to the same aggregate of which Helena and Kathy are already a part.

PAGE 19

PANEL 2

Amy: Damian’s as always prepared as anyone else in the cape and cowl. The grappling line’s a nice twist.

FIGHT!

This is a brilliant fight scene. Such a fantastic rhythm to it and the punches really connect.

Zom: I really can’t praise Cameron’s art enough here. Like Quitely, Stewart demonstrates the forgotten art of the choreographed fight. More please, comic industry.

PAGE 20

PANEL 1

Zom: Hah, the double-punch is back. Motifs like this help to foster a sense of familiarity and intimacy, because in order to spot them you have to be a committed reader. In some small way the device also works for me as a love letter to genre as a whole, with the double-punch standing in as a kind of visual catch phrase, not unlike “It’s clobbering time”, “Hulk smash”, “flame on!”, or “is it a bird?…”. In common with those verbal motifs it is closely allied to action scenes and the heroic moment and as such functions as a way of drawing attention to the centrality of those moments within the genre

I also like the way it insists on the unity of the two character’s doing the punching. Common cause and a deep bond is suggested that resonates nicely in a book called Batman & Robin, but it goes further than that, by bringing them together with this sort of pure iconography we move beyond mere characterisation or the extigencies of plot. I don’t think I’m being too woolly when I say that it evokes the magic word “team up” and all the superhero logic that that implies. Check out all the double-punches in Batman Brave and Bold, I suspect Morrison has.

PANEL 3

‘I’m wot u will b.’

Amy: So, this is where Dick fears his new role will lead, his own destruction. The cape and cowl are a heavy burden, wiith them comes the madness…and the Joker! The clone may be right. Nobody else but Bruce has the power to wear the mantle, etc: BRUCE WAYNE, RETURNETH!

PANEL 4

Amy: The clone smashing when he lands is nastier than any of the other options. He’s a bat-object not a batman.

PANEL 5

Amy: ‘Who are all these terrible people and what on earth’s going on?’

Damian’s playing the game here. I’m not sure he would’ve done in the past. He’s slowly growing into his pixie boots.

PAGE 21

Amy: The little nod to Starfire’s nice. What’s going on with her and Dick? I loved that couple when I was a kid, the hot superpowered alien and the daredevil mortal boy. I keep on hoping she’ll show up. This is a bat-superhero book after all.

And damn I like to see Batman flirting with the girls, digging this day.

PAGE 22

Amy: Obviously the neutrino comm enabled Knight and Squire to track King Coal. It’s the kind of thing that in a movie you’d simply put down to the superheroes being magic, like Batman’s rooftop vanishing acts, but in this instance we’re in on the trick and it feels good.

Zom: I should have seen that coming. Coal’s wife isn’t some sort of sinister monster lurking behind the scenes or rather she is but the key words here are “behind the scenes”. She’s Arthur Daley’s unseen but always felt “’er indoors”, reimagined through a slightly more horrifying lens. So we have Coal as the hen pecked husband, the Carry On-esque penance he pays for his cheeky comedy infidelities, and his dodgy (read: failed) business dealings. The usual low level sexist connotations of this British comedy convention are ameliorated just a little bit by the feeling that Coal’s version of Daley’s private demon is probably just that, genuinely demonic, and that the chap has good reason to be terrified of her. Yet another nice example of Morrison mining the British culture for this arc, and twisting things just enough to make them shriek.

PAGES 23 & 24

Amy: Aaaah, Damian’s telling Dick off now. How the roles have reversed! Nice dramatic pacing that, having Damian exhibit his strongest claim to maturity yet just before he throws himself into the next arc’s profoundly teenage act of anti-authoritarian aggression.

Zom: Is it just me or is “Pennyworth” starting to sound like a term of endearment? There’s a long history of writers portraying Bruce Wayne as brusque with Alfred so obviously it has echoes of that, but I think there’s good reason to feel that the ice may be thawing. Alfred helps Damian (another team up! Sorta) fight off Zombie Batman, bravely risking life and limb in the process - Alfred, lest we forget, isn’t a ninja – and by having Damian say “Pennyworth and I are lucky to be alive” Morrison ensures that we know that Damian noticed.

Amy: Dick’s little speech at the end while entirely self-justifying isn’t unconvincing. Bruce Wayne definitely isn’t just a ‘loved one’, he’s a world class superhero, and, yeah, sooner or later someone would have had to have tried to revive the clone. In a world where everyone’s died and been reborn at least once (as Zom points out, Batwoman makes the grade this ish) there really isn’t an option. World savers are Earth whatever’s most valuable resource. And Grant’s one to great pains in this book to stress that Batman is a role Dick’s playing: Dick can be a batman, but he can never be the Batman.

But there’s two things that get us really jazzed for Bruce’s return. To begin with there’s Dick’s faith in Bruce, his certainty that if a body was not forthcoming Bruce must be alive, which bestows upon him impossibly mythic status - sure he was facing down one of  if  not the most powerful being in the universe at the time he disappeared, but, y’know, WHATEVER; this is the goddaman Batman we’re talking about and that’s that.

Secondly, there’s the iconography of the empty suit.

That’s the real kicker. That’s the thing that had you all hot under the collar when you closed the book, even if you didn’t know it. That rotting corpse was always a warning sign, but more than that it was a symbol of the period in which Batman was dead, the period of mourning. Remove the corpse (indeed, this being a superhero book fight and destroy the corpse) and the Batsuit returns to a state of purity, cloaked in the shadows of mystery and legend….waiting.

‘All we have to do is find him.’

I wonder how long it’s going to take Dick to figure out he’s stranded in time. Pretty bloody fast I imagine.

Share on Facebook

The Mindless Ones meeting Neil on their way for an astral-swally at Lokkh’s Taverna

The promised advice, from marriage.com, which also informs that a 10th Anniversary is a time to celebrate “ideas and symbols”:

The tenth year of marriage celebration is the first of the major milestone anniversaries. As you celebrate this special 10th wedding anniversary, think about the durability of your commitment to one another for a full decade.

Share on Facebook

Terminus archives
My Blog

Share on Facebook

The characters demonstrate the expected dialogue ticks, the speech balloons are bloated fit to burst, and the most powerful people on the planet don’t kick anyone in the face or blow up any universes, but instead sit around having Important Conversations About Themselves. If you asked someone who didn’t like Bendis’s work to describe one of his comics this is exactly the sort of thing they would come up with. A move away from what the genre supposedly does best – ideas, iconography, adventure, action, scale – towards character psychology, character motivation, and character relationships.

But the superhero genre is a flexible beast, flexible enough for some to question whether it should be considered a genre at all, and in recent years Bendis’s best work has played a not insignificant role in highlighting this fact. If all superhero comics were like this I would have a problem but they’re not so I don’t. The fact is that Bendis does what he does well, on the whole he writes plausible people who behave plausibly and gives them plausible and fun problems to chew over. In the mighty Marvel manner he understands that one very effective way to build drama is from the characters up rather than from the plot down, an approach which is particularly useful here because it gives him a way to tackle the problem of water treading, a by product of this issue’s logistical relationship to the Siege miniseries.

This issue finds us splunked into Siege without a motor, cast drift on a plot-lite sea with only a lot of character-centric chat for company, but, given that the Siege is Bendis’s baby and that characters inevitably form the bulk of his plots’ atomic structures, it is inherently interesting. By way of an example, the tension between Norman Osborn the public servant, Norman Osborn the power hungry megalomaniac, and Norman Osborn the Green Goblin in waiting is a live and important issue. Victoria Hand’s suggestion that Osborn is working himself so hard precisely because he wants to force himself to snap and become the Goblin adds colour to what has gone before and considerable drama to the current proceedings, especially when you consider that later in the issue he finds himself trying to talk the Sentry down from destroying the world, and that next week he plans on invading Asgard.

I would argue that this sort of tie-in filler isn’t just a practical solution to the kinds of plot and scheduling problems faced by Siege, it’s key to getting the most out of the series. As I’ve noted above Siege is a Bendis scribed event, and as ever with Bendis most of the big moments, however epically framed, will be about the characters. That being the case quality time spent with the main players is worthwhile because it stands to bolster the big payoffs down the line.

A solid three and a half brains from me (z)

Punisher Max #4, by Aaron, Dillon and Hollingsworth

Rapidly losing brains, this one. The Mennonite and Franky Frank  face off (literally - it’s all faces this episode, where fists should be), and nothing quite works. Dillon’s art is overlit and poorly staged, never quite fixing where the combatants are in relation to one another, and none of the punches, shots and stabs ever feel like they connect. And since when does Frank Castle use a taser? Did he use a taser on Barracuda’s balls? No, he used jump leads and a car battery, like hard men have done since the dawn of hard time (the seventies).

Dramatically, the introduction of The Mennonite (still the best word to type in all the Marvel U, so points for that, if we have to) and his killer peacenik horses has got to count at this stage as a clear mistake. The narrative focus, the threat embodied by the Kingpin, what his ‘go for the family’ ethos means against Frank’s MO, has been thrown out of the window in an enervating slush of baby’n'bathwater soup. How can the Kingpin not have been a big enough baddie to fill out six issues of escalating tension and fat, full-bodied catharsis? I don’t get it, what am I missing? It shows nothing but a disappointing lack of self-confidence from the writer, and a total lack of being awake at work on the part of the editor who greenlit it, who didn’t anticipate the sudden loss of life from his shotgun-shot balloon of a comic.

There’s one bit of unintentional comic genius in this comic, which, if I allow myself to sober up, stops me from weeping at the waste of three (or is it nearly four?) fucking quid that I spent on this comic. Check out big Willy Fisk’s phone on page 6. The phone is emphasised on panel two, which is tehnically OK because there’s nothing else for that panel to do except to go ‘then the Kingpoin’s phone rings’. So it makes sense to emphasise the phone, to perhaps exaggerate its size, to place it on a piece of very small furniture whose convenient existence you just can’t quite believe in. Now, yes, it’s graphic storytelling, yes, I see. I see. I see a fucking big phone is what I see. A big phone for big fingers. A big phone for someone who is going to get laughed at by children. You ain’t taking over the local high school with a stupid big phone like that fatty. Time to upgrade, in all sorts of ways.

This comic gets  two brains: One for the funny big phone, one for the adult way in which someone gets called a cunt (To the MAXXX!). And one for ‘The Mennonite’, which is such a joy to type. But still only two brains in total. (b)

Share on Facebook

Plus, good if completely arbitrary excuse to drop this picture, I mean just look at it - The Leopard from Lime Street , without doubt the spiffingest British Superhero of all time, as reimagined by the also-legendary Duncan Fegredo. Meow indeed!

Compo 1
British supervillains with ridiculous regional accents

How to Enter
Invent a British supervillan for Batman and/or Knight & Squire to get in a proper bundle with. Points for originality, fun-factor, fear-factor, obscure Brit cultural references, bad dialogue, resemblance to characters who may or may not appear in  Batman & Robin #10. Entries close on the Saturday night, GMT, after Batman & Robin #10 comes out.

Prize
The official prize is ’some old Grant Morrison tat’. In reality, this means some old back issues of 2000AD, all featuring Big Dave strips. In the world of hipster comic wank, Big Dave is the true motherlode of Morrison rarities, a controversial, hilarious and lurid strip that is almost guaranteed never to be collected in any form. Keep your Flex Mentallos, this is the Earth-Z version, the one you really want. It’s co-written by MarkyMark Millar, back when he was good, effortlessly evocative and funny art by Steve Parkhouse, he’s always good, Anthony Williams drawing shellsuits, all sorts of Thrilly goodness. And because its 2000AD c.1993/94, lots of other remarkable stuff too: John Smith, who knows we exist, on a couple of episodes of the awesome Slaughter Bowl; the same gent on Revere with the gothy paints of Simon Harrison, some Shaky Kane, some Rian Hughes, and even some Maniac Fucking Five. Good times. (If you’re American anyway. If you’re local it’s just charity shop leftovers, but don’t let that stop you from entering! Love you!)

Running on this one is very high - plenty of great entries so far, the final decision will be a very tricky one to make. Don’t worry about though, we solemnly swear to pick the winner of this and all our competitions in a thoroughly half-assed and slapdash way, probably while drunk.

Compo 2
Paul Collicutt - Robot City Adventures

How to Enter
Click the link above. Listen to the podcast. Keep an ear out for the bit where Mindless Ones back room boy don’t-call- him-Snapper-Carr the one and only Brown Lantern’s mobile goes off, and tell us what Gary Lactus thinks it sounds like. Email your answer to mindlessones@hotmail.co.uk. We’ll pick your name out of the bin, and bosh! You’re a winnah! Entries in by 1st March

Prize
This is the best prize, by some margin. Two, free, too-cool-for-school comics by the wonderful Mr Paul Collicutt, PLUS a limited edition print. Look:

Word to the wise: don’t tell anyone, but we’ve only had a handful of entries to this one so far. If you do enter this you’ve got a pretty good chance of winning, and, really, it’s a fucking good prize:

Compo 3
Iron Man: Virus

How to Enter
You know Pepper Potts, one of those background Iron Man characters who basically does nothing except bring Tony valium when he’s got the DTs,  clean sick off his Armani suits, make sure the fridge is never short of Martini, olives and Colt 45? Well, now she’s got her own Iron Man suit, which is like a normal Iron Man suit without any of the good bits. Her superhero name is The Enabler - sorry that’s not right, it’s ‘Rescue’, very probably the worst superhero name in the genre’s seventy-whatever year history. Come up with a better one. Stick your entry in the comments on the post, or email it us, by the 10th of March, and our favourite three will win.

Prize
Iron Man: Virus. It’s not all that easy to explain really. It’s got superheroes in it, Iron Man for one, and you read it, but it’s not a comic. Imagine it is a comic, only all the pictures have been taken out, and all the speech bubbles have had the words sucked out of them in neat lines on lots of pieces  of blank paper. If you read the words in the right way, they tell a story which you can follow and enjoy. People call them books, and this type of book is called a novel. About Iron Man, which as you probably imagine means that this novel is going to be pretty bloody good.

Running on this one very high. It looked as if two early entries had it sewn up quite quickly, but there have been many more good ones since then, and the field is wide open with everything to play for. Go to it.

Good Luck to everyone with the smarts and the stones to enter any or all of our competitions, and a very Merry Christmas to all our readers.

Share on Facebook

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

Share on Facebook

Terminus archives
My Blog

Share on Facebook

Because of course the comic’s primal ancestor isn’t cave art – stop being so pompous – it’s the bored schoolboy’s notebook, the dirty little doodle hiding between the sums and spelling notes.

It’s a medieval idea, of course, and it shows, but The Magician, so it goes, is always ‘male’ – active, singular of intent, direct, penetrative. In his first, short, and probably last adventure, Astro Dick, a little magic wanderer, takes us on a whistle-stop tour of the magician’s eternal journey. Y’know, with fannies and that.

On a moon of naked (but for capes, straps and oil) Prometheae, Astro Dick defeats the Brainosaurus and earns their physical favour. As a perfect fool and seeker of the truth of the self, or something, and eschewing the pleasures of the mind’s flesh (sex is always as much a psychic, phantasmic phenomenon as a bodily one, remember, so perfectly fitting for the lunar sphere), he heads via the creative, resplendent and… err, mercurial planet of Mercury (yes, there is a Metal Men cameo. He doesn’t hate comics as much as he likes to say) on to the heart of the sun. Wielding yet another magic wand, he bashes out the sun’s alchemical head, revealing the true sun hiding behind the sun’s son, the sublime and inconceivable techno-glorious awe-staggering gold icon of it, and understandably ballshrunk, heads back to the moon where the ladies of pulchritude still await his attention, which, magicianly ambitions floppily defeated, he is only too pleased to grant them. Brainosaurus comes back and Astro Dick is needed in the fray, and this is the big bad joke, and it goes through the boundary of bad jokes at lightspeed and comes out the other side and ends up being kind of funny, I think, so spoiler warning I suppose:

Having been where he’s been his space helmet (helmet!) is so slathered with ladyjuice that he can’t see what he’s doing, and Brainosaurus wins. End.

Given away as the free space-spinning sweetener with the second issue of his current project, the OZ-redux alt.lifestyle mag Dodgem Logic, Astounding Weird Penises is, apparently,  the first published comic to be both written and drawn by Alan Moore.  He can do what he likes, you can almost hear him thinking, and if that happens to be a sixties throwback undieground porno joke comic, where he satirises his own best comics work and personal religion with lots of pics of ladyparts, manparts and fallen lunar Greeks, then that’s just what he’s going to do. It’s kind of fingers-in-poo, kind of compelling, kind of awful, kind of funny.

Share on Facebook

PAGE 1

PANEL 1

Amy: ‘What is it with these Crime Coven people and their obsession with stories for kids?’ What is it indeed? Perhaps it has something to do with the rogue logic of fairytales and nursery rhymes, their criminal physics? Alice in Wonderland as topology, a map of a world overturned, where reason and meaning begin their steady descent into the abyss, Cole’s ‘hole in everything’.

Fairytales also speak to our primal condition, a preverbal world of gods and nightmares. Maybe the Crime Covens see their work as an attempt to return mankind to a purer state, unrestrained by ego and superego, culture, law and society.

Shit, they sound pretty cool, don’t they?

Oh, whose side are we all on?

Zom: Fairytales more often than not are instructive lessons in morality and manners and as such speak to the centrality of such structures. But they also bring to mind - through their content and subject matter and the understanding that they are designed to speak to a pre-moral entity (a child) - a world which isn’t beholden to such things. Helps that they are also the sites of raw, unadulterated terror and danger, so yeah that’s a nice reading, Poodle.

PAGE 2

PANEL 1

Amy: It seems King Coal is taking the name of his city, Newcastle, literally. Given that Newcastle was, during the middle ages, England’s northern fortress, it perhaps has a better claim to capital city status - the site of a new castle - than anywhere else in the north. I think we mentioned the north/south divide in our last annocommentations and Coal’s goal, although aligning neatly with his religion’s, also maps neatly across this conflict.

It’s also worth noting that ’pit’ is another word for mine, and obviously takes on a sinister symbolic dimension here. Afterall, it may also refer to Hell.

Zom: Coal and pearls. Black and white like the tokens of any number of games.

Love Coal’s Northern boss/bastard look. Red hair, lamb-chop sideburns, jowls and a beer belly, basted in a suit, shirt and tie combo forgotten to good taste. The coat and crown feel like the fancy dress costume of upstart new money rather than the regalia of genuine royalty. In fact looking closer the coat reveals itself to be a leather sheepskin jacket straight out of the seventies. This chap is the stereotypical northern industrialist and as such drags with him all those associated connotations: rough, tough, no nonsense, straight talking, with absolutely no time for soft Southern shites and political correctness. Add to that his chimney sweep henchmen and a scheme that involves a collapsing mineshaft and you have a guy whose evil aura is augmented by all those nightmare tales of 19th Century health and safety culture. Going further, the faceless sweeps, the very fact that they are expendable henchmen, paint a picture of a man who actively does not care about the humanity of his workforce.

Coal is the walking embodiment of the reasons for the trade union movement. Sean Bean in Red Riding anyone?

Amy: Another thing: Coal is a Geordie, and, sorry Geordie people, most of us in the UK would agree that Geordie speech is the closest the world’s going to get to a comedy accent. All his “wor lass’s” and his “why ayes” make Coal a figure of fun as much as anything else, and it’s an explicitly anglocentric joke, but one Morrison subverts. Zom and I were talking about this, the closeness between comedy and horror in Grant’s comics - the way they often share a panel or a character - and the exciting tension between the two, the way one frames and accentuates the other. Cole’s mode of speech is essentially silly, and therefore harmless, but the content of what he’s saying by the time we get to that stuff about gaping existential holes in everything certainly isn’t. It’s reality as described by a manic depressive or a psychopath, and actually quite chilling. There are other examples across this story arc too - most notably the Bob the Builderesque Metalek who transforms with a flick of the imagination into the soulless, insectoidal Other. 

I’m beginning to think Cameron Stewart is the perfect artist to articulate this kind of thing because his cutesy cartoonish style sets of the horror so effectively, something I think artists with a more ‘realistic’ style generally fail at.

On a side note, it’s also telling to note that most of the industry’s better writers, Millar, Bendis, Moore and Morrison, are all perfectly comfortable with comedy as a feature of their work. It’s a sign of maturity I think, and ability. I like my comics to be multi-faceted, I like a writer who’s unafraid of sending their subject matter up. Irreverence and a lack of pofacedness are a good thing.

Johns.

Zom: Down, Poodle! Leave the poor man alone.

Hmmm… Coal, for all his supervillainy, could easily be reimagined as one of the League of Gentlemen’s grotesques. LoG being a hugely successful TV show that was built from the bottom up around the longstanding British fixation with the uncomfortable connection between comedy and horror. It could well be that Royston Vasey (the home of the League) was in Morrison’s mind when he conceived of Coal, but regardless of whether it was intended it’s a nice resonance.

PANEL 3

Amy: I’m enjoying the way this bastard freezing british winter’s reflected in Grant’s comic. Inspite of all the silly caricatures and the bat-holiday vibe, it makes me feel this story’s for us.

I’m also liking the contrast between the glowing, wombish subterranea and the icy exterior scenes. You want to dry your mitts over that Lazarus Pit, so you do. I truly believe these scenes possess more gravity, that they are doubly involving and atmospheric because I crave warmth.

PANEL 4

Amy: I have no idea how a neutrino-com would work, but a quick wiki throws up the fact that neutrinos can pass through physical matter undisturbed, so all that rock above Kate wouldn’t be much of a problem.

The DC US military come packing some hardcore kit, don’t they?

PAGE 3

Amy: I’m wondering if that this story’s set in the UK actually serves to leaven the blow of the bat-supernaturalism somewhat. Batman’s on holiday and the laws of physics, or grittics, are on holiday too: ‘Yeah, we’ll let that crazy Morrison get away with it here because this is London ENgerLAAANd, home of history and Loch Ness monsters. This shit probably goes on all the time over there…

Zom: He’s undoubtedly playing upon certain sorts of expectations: comics set in Britain have long been the home of magic and such-like, and then there are all those popular myths - like Arthur, like the Loch Ness Monster - that can’t help but serve as touchstones for those living outside the UK. For better or worse that’s just how it is.

Amy: When I first heard Grant was on the book  I assumed it would be sci-fi closet a go go right from the getgo. I have to say I think I prefer the tack he’s taken, the SUPER-supernatural elements having been kept to a minimum. A great deal of it is equally open to a somewhat arcane but nevertheless literal interpretation: Batman in outer space becomes Batman in an an isolation chamber; hyper-imps the last vestige of the bat-ego keeping him sane; Superbatman a fearless back up personality to be used as a weapon of last resort upon destruction of his mind; alien abductions: bad trips induced by fear-guns…. but as with Morrison’s Kathmandu experience, there’s always the sense that something else could be going on…. A proper ghost story vibe. This inclusivity really works. It’s far more elegant than what I originally had in mind, and, importantly, it incorporates every bat-tonality.

PAGE 5

PANEL 3

Amy: Last issue, while slipping on a pair of electro-dusters, Dick explained that ressurectees often exhibit temporary insanity. This issue he administers an electric current to the clone’s temples after establishing that this is the case.

Whether or not Morrison intended this to be read this way is obviously open to debate, but personally I think he did. It feels like his black sense of humour. I can hear him joking about it in an interview in my head, how Batman’s always prepared: instant-ect.

PAGE 6

Amy: I know Cameron’s a great admirer of Quitely’s facial expressions, and so am I, but I’m also an admirer of Cameron’s. The range of emotions on display, and their subtlety, is just fantastic, from the newly born anti-batman’s confusion and fear on page 4 to the confidently evil grin he fixes Dick with here. I must go through some other comics and check out how dead, or at least how one-dimensional, the characters look.

THE DARKSEID STUFF.

‘I can USE that.’

So is that what’s happening here? Is this the hand of Darkseid from beyond the grave? That’s great. If it’s evil it’s Darkseid doing. All is one in Darkseid.

PAGES 8, 9, 10 & 11

We need to see Beryl kick ass some day.

Anyway: FIGHT!

I haven’t seen many fight scenes by Stewart. My only, tiny, gripe would be that in some of the panels the batmen look a teensy bit lumpen, but other than that the eye bounces through the action effortlessly and the whole thing’s a million times more coherent and exciting than these things usually are (a thought I find somewhat depressing- why can’t more people draw fight scenes, eh?). One thing I particularly enjoy is the way the panels start to jiggle about, tussle and fracture when the action starts, and the way the shape, the trajectory of the panel, mirrors the fighting going on inside it. It really impacts the reading and makes the sequence so much more readable as well as making the page come alive. Lovely.

BUT, UH-OH, LETTERING MISTAKE!

No point pointing it out. Sort yourselves out DC editorial.

PAGE 12

Amy: Are those Coal smudges on Coal’s fur? Nice touch.

Zom and others have pointed out that the Knight and the Squire haven’t really done much so far other than add colour, and obviously the thinking goes that maybe they’d have more to do if Grant hadn’t bothered with Batwoman. But I don’t give a monkeys. I just want piles and piles of cool new superheroes and villains. Something we get in spades. Perhaps DC editorial insisted on having Batwoman appear in one of their most popular books to boost sales of her relaunch, but even if that is the case Grant’s really thrown himself into, it hasn’t he? He’s really enjoying playing with her unique batmospherics and yet again demonstrating how good  he is at balancing potentially tonally uneven elements in his books. Nothing jars. Somehow Batwoman, a gritty character if ever there was one, works perfectly here amidst the whirly-knights and pearly villains. Not only that, but she adds instant depth to Coal and the plot generally, bringing her entire mythology to bear on the piece. Good old Batwoman.

Now bugger off Jock.

Zom: Plenty of juggling goes on over in Detective too, and Williams and Rucka do a good job of it. There’s a lot of Nolan’s Dark Knight in there, but last time I checked Nolan forgot the werewolves and the Crime Bible.

PAGE 15

Amy: Does Alfred know the body’s a clone? Were they guarding it? Or does he just intuitively understand that whatever Dick’s doing with Batman’s corpse must be fucked up?

Sexy fucked up.

PAGE 16

PANEL 1

Amy: This has to be one of the best panels ever. The way that…thing won’t stop bellowing. Again, it’s simultaneously funny - Angryman (as we shall now refer to the clone henceforth) riding whirly-knight - and scary - Angryman riding whirly-knight. Good, simple expressive use of colour too: this guy’s satanic. Nuff said.

The superfast temporal ellipsis between panel 1 and panel 5, and the way that in both panels he’s facing in the same direction (is it a coincidence that in Dick’s panels he’s facing the opposite way?), really serves to underline Angryman’s single minded, devilish purposefulness. The inexorability of his arrival in Gotham.

Be afraid.

He is coming.

The line about the ravens is a nice touch. You wouldn’t get that shit anywhere else.

Zom: Boring annotation hat: an indirect reference to the superstitious belief that were the Ravens ever to leave the Tower the United Kingdom would fall.

PAGE 17

Amy: Oh man, it’s so good to see Damian again. With all the cool stuff going on I hadn’t noticed how much I was missing him, but all it took was a ‘Pennyworth.’ to remind me. When people describe Batman & Robin as a ‘team book’, part of me can’t help wondering why the pre-existing Batman title was never described in those terms, and I think I know. No, it wasn’t simply that editorial wanted the writers to showcase the titular character, it was because Tim Drake lacked personality. He was the literal equivalent of a bat-sidecar - an addendum, an adjunct, without half the integrity of Damian. Damian is a compelling story unto himself, quite apart from his father or Dick, and Tim isn’t.

Or at least that’s my theory.

That some people hate Damian so much is further evidence of this. Damian has a personality and that means you may or may not get on with him.

‘My new spine is superior in every way to the original.’

What does that even mean? Teh ROXOR.

Zom: This book is called Batman and Robin, Poodle, you yapping ponce. It was designed to showcase both characters and their relationship in a way that Batman wasn’t. What is interesting is that the team nature of Batman and Robin has been de-emphasised for so long (not only did we get primarily Batman in Batman, Robin was given his own book). My suspicion is that this was born out of a) a desire to make more money (hey, why have one book when you can have two?), and b) a feeling that Robin didn’t fit the tone of a grittier, post Dark Knight Returns Batman. I’m not sure the latter point is such an issue these days, in my opinion this is in part to do with a new found emphasis on tradition and nostalgia, in part because comics are less beholden to realism, and in part (I hope) because fans are more open to experimentation than they used to be.

PAGE 18

Amy: This isn’t much of a cliffhanger, is it? Morrison really isn’t very concerned about death in the DC universe. It’s already been explained that in a complex world of jet-apes and time travel death is the least of your worries, so let’s not go there. No, what’s interesting about this page is Kate’s plan. I imagine it has something to do with nixing the coven’s prophecy by being resurrected. After all, this can’t be the event that brings about the age of the crime beast if she survives, can it? Maybe next issue will see Damian, after getting the shit kicked out of him, somehow trounce Angryman at exactly the same time as Batwoman emerges from the Lazarus pit. That’s the way magic works in Morrison’s books - non-causal interconnectivity.

Zom: Tru dat. A point that more people need to get to grips with as it goes right to the heart of Morrison’s take on the supernatural.

PAGE 19

Amy: Fucking hell, Mrs Coal just has to be a monster.

Zom: Yes, we still haven’t seen her, have we? She’s been deliberately kept off camera. I’m thinking she ain’t nice.

PAGEs 20, 21 & 22

Amy: On the phone the other day Zom was keen to point out that this moment is another really effective way to drum up sympathy for Damian. No matter how much you dislike him, you’d have to be pretty fucked up to enjoy the idea of a disabled boy being murdered by his psychotic father.

Zom: The words child in terrible peril spring to mind.

So are we looking at scene setting for the Batman vs Robin arc here or will that fight prove to be between Damian and Dick? It’s hard to be sure, although Damian’s comments to his mother about their plan or whatever (don’t have the last issue to hand) would seem to suggest the latter possibility.

NEXT TIME IN BATMAN AND ROBIN

Amy: Something’s occured to me. All those people who complain that Morrison’s interviews are better than his comics should just bloody well stop reading the former. I’ve stopped, and it means some things are actually a surprise.

Zom: Morrison is very, very good at surprises, really uncommonly good as long as you remember to avoid his press. Haven’t read a pre-release interview with the fella for over a year and I’m a much happier fan for it.

Share on Facebook

The book Dream Date by Tim Leopard and Fraser Geesin is available from Running Water Press or from Amazon.

Share on Facebook