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Monday, July 18, 2005
All Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder
I can’t think of a comic I’ve recently read that speaks to the weakness of the “assembly line” and hype-driven world of superhero comics today than this one. It’s not that it is a bad comic, it is that all the good things about this comic are squandered because of such a disconnect between the writing and artwork, the two elements that make up a comic book in the first place.
Frank Miller is a very sly writer. He can occupy that space between serious and non-serious very well. You can never quite tell when he’s joking or if he’s being earnest, probably because he’s so good at both. Dark Knight Returns and some of the Sin City books live for that weird area where the drama gets so amped up it starts resembling comedy, but never quite admits to being either. I like that feeling I get reading those books because I’m never quite sure if Miller is joking or not. To be honest, I don’t want to be sure as it would ruin the reading experience.
I also like when Miller goes “bigfoot” and the question of whether Miller is being serious is not so daunting. The latter Sin City books do that (what other way could they go?). I thought Dark Knight Strikes Again was an uproarious book because it was so pleased with being chaotic and crazy. That all comes from the fact that Miller started the DKSA art style with Roy Crane’s Captain Easy and put it through Harvey Kurtzman MAD books, the incessant noise of 21st Century technology and perhaps a little bit of Gary Panter. Every page was big but not big and glamorous like a lot of DKR. No, it was a lot of big and goofy. It was perfect for Batman, Superman and the rest of DC’s best known characters.
Jim Lee’s artwork can be many things but big and goofy is not one of them. That is a shame because from the script presented here Miller still seems fine with having a bit of fun with his usual “noir” writing. It’s as if Miller read Evan Dorkin’s script to the DKR parody in World’s Funnest (which Miller supplied the artwork for) and thought that it was a perfectly valid way to write a mini-series with a lot of eyes looking towards it. Miller is someone who is so comfortable with the comics medium he can pull it off. He knows so well how to make the Spillane-shtick work he can subvert it with seemingly no effort. Unfortunately, Lee doesn’t seem to be in on the joke.
That’s a shame because it seems to be a joke worth being in on. I smiled more than a few times reading he book. “She’s trouble. The kind of trouble you want,” is how Vicky Vale is introduced to us and it’s a damn fun way to present the femme fatale of the story. Unfortunately Lee presents no exaggeration of the femme fatale trope that Miller calls for. We get many sexy shots of Vale that are meant to be sexy but nothing else, least of all fun and over the top. Lee puts too much energy in crafting typical “bad girl” sexiness there’s nothing else. There’s nothing to distinguish this sequences from the introduction of Voodoo working as a stripper in WildC.A.T.S. #1 or any of the other comic pages Lee has worked on where plastic and boring eye candy is presented.
The problem doesn’t change. Miller gives us quotable lines like “Gotham’s finest. It wouldn’t be ladylike to say finest at what.” There’s well done writing done in a more sober tone for parts such as the murder of Dick Grayson’s parents (Miller could probably do this in his sleep at this point but it’s still good). There’s even the final page where Batman’s utterance to Grayson is a wonderful bit of superhero aggrandizement. For all this what kind of art do we get? Competent but cold early-90’s superhero art.
There’s nothing of Lee’s art that has any personality to it. There’s no part of his style that can properly express the tone Miller seems so set upon. He can draw up a comic book page with people engaging in any type of superheroic action better than most mainstream hacks but all the technical prowess in the world doesn’t make up for the fact that the feeling of raw human emotion is devoid of his work. Looking at character’s faces and their poses I can tell it’s put together very carefully. As a result there’s no part of the book where I felt Lee was bypassing craft and just going straight to putting what was in his gut onto the paper. It’s too damn sterile.
Sterile is the last thing Miller needs in an artist depicting this story. Short of Miller himself perhaps the only person to do this story justice would be Lloyd Llewellyn-era Dan Clowes. Fat chance of seeing that happen.
It’s easy to see why DC wanted to put Miller and Lee together. This is a book that will sell very well, at least in the direct market (where DC would still own half of the market no matter what, big victory there!). The teaming up of these two doesn’t yield anything more worthwhile than that. We have a comic where the two main talents behind it are going in different directions. No matter how much I liked a lot of Miller’s choices in the script the end result is a comic that doesn’t work.
Take the end of Preston Sturges’ Sullivan’s Travels. Joel McCrea is so damn earnest in his speech about the importance of making folks laugh, all while clips of the downtrodden in hysterics are superimposed over McCrea and Veronica Lake, that film scholars aren’t sure whether Struges decided to go back on the ironic tone of his film to please people at the studio or if he was taking the irony to a whole new level. Now imagine that scene at the end of some remake of Travels where instead of McCrea we have Vin Diesel and instead of direction by Sturges we have Michael Bay at the helm. That is what reading All Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder is like. Lee saw the ridiculously long and energetic title and still didn’t take it as a cue to get a little jocular. We as readers are poorer for it.
***
On the subject of San Diego I can say that I had a very good time, especially when it came to meeting people I had only known on-line. I was mostly working, though, so I can’t say that the days provided me with a lot of worthwhile anecdotes. I can tell you that taking Sunday off and spending the whole day in bed is a great way to shake off all the hustle-and-bustle of the previous three days.
I do apologize for those audio posts. Listening back to them I could do a much, much better job. If they were no fun for me to listen to I can’t imagine what it was like for you poor souls. I promise it won’t happen again.
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