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Thursday, September 15, 2005
All Star Night of Conviviality
Can the atmosphere you read a comic in decide whether you enjoyed it or not? After last night I think so.
I felt that All Star Batman and Robin the Boy Wonder had a painful disconnect in the burlesque and over-the-top scripting of Frank Miller and the straight-laced way Jim Lee was depicting everything. I still think an artist that can draw with as big a smirk as Miller has when he’s writing the book would be much more appropriate. I think Howard Chaykin would have been a perfect fit. He and Miller are two guys who like their superhero comics big, loud and crazy which is just how a superhero book should be.
Like my pal Tom I chose not to pick up the next issue of the book. My friends did, though, even though they admitted they enjoyed Lee’s contribution far more than Miller’s. I decided I could live without seeing what happened next to ol’ Dick Grayson.
This being the Isotope, new comics day wouldn’t be new comics day without some nice drinks and lots of fun. I learned that the way to get a job at AiT is through steel cage matches with current employees and what it feels like to get smacked right in the face with a comic book (don’t worry, I walked away laughing). I even got my copy of Full Moon Fever signed by letterer Josh Motherfucking Richardson who just might be the greatest man in comics right now. The joy traveled as a bunch of us went down to Sauce on Gough St. to end the night on a chill note.
There, after having a few beers, I asked my friend Ash if I could see his copy of All Star Adam West and Burt Ward the Boy Wonder. He was talking about how there are clues in this book that could lead one to think the Joker was really Batman in this book and that piqued my interest. I didn’t worry about who was disguised as who, I was too intoxicated with the book’s ridiculous glee (and maybe a few other things).
Friends, I can tell you in no uncertain terms that this book is a fine example of American fiction at the dawn of the 21st Century. The full impact of it really gets to you when you’ve got your Irish in you and you’re shouting lines like “What, are you dense? Are you retarded or something? Who the hell do you think I am? I’m the goddamn Batman,” at the top of your lungs.
The book is great comedy. I feel Miller’s writing here reflects the music of my beloved Stooges and Ramones. Like those bands, we have a smart person willfully choosing to go “stoopid” for all the freedom you can get when you whole-heartedly and without an ounce of self-conciseness resign yourself to your silliest and most primal impulses. I felt that energy reading this book. I could have sworn some of it rubbed off on Lee during those bits where the Batmobile has to kill all those cops and then fly into the air. Let others wonder if Miller’s joking or not, I’ll be the one having a good time while reading a funnybook.
(Come to think of it, when The Stooges and later The Ramones came out they were dismissed by many “respected” institutions as total jokes whose music was moronic and could only appeal to morons. Rolling Stone began their article on The Stooges with a disclaimer that they do not endorse their “current phonographic products.” So if something dismissed as “childish” and “tasteless” when it is released can prove to still hold up better than the other works of the time…hmmmmm.)
Batman is a character ripe with comedic potential. I feel this book revels in that potential and got a big kick out of it. Would I feel the same if I was not drinking and having a good time already? I don’t know and I don’t want to know. I will say this, though: this is the first superhero book that did inspire that “power fantasy” in me that so many of the genre’s detractors like to bring up. Not that I saw that fantasy in any of the characters. No, I saw it in the balls-out way Miller wrote this wonderful book. If I wrote a Batman comic, or for that matter any superhero comic really, it would read like this.
I’d just want mine to be drawn by Howard Chaykin.
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