Actually Damian first appeared in 1987 in "Son of the Demon". The kid on the cover is named Tommy Wilson. His dad was a convict who told his son he was Batman to explain why he was gone for long periods of time. Tommy got kidnapped, his dad got shot while wearing the batman costume and Batman came in to save the day. Batman #88 1954
I'm actually exceptionally fond of Grant Morrison's work, and believe that at least four of his recent DC/Vertigo projects (All-Star Superman, Vimanarama, Seaguy and Seven Soldiers) comprise some of the best superhero comics of the last decade.
You don't take umbrage with what he's been doing to Batman over the past few years, let alone Final Crisis? Batman R.I.P. is the single worst Batman story of the modern era. Worse than Hush and Contagion combined.
Nope, I thought Club of Heroes was a fine melding of silver age structural coponents with modern age sensibilities, and as far as goes Final Crisis, it possessed a strong foundation, if muddled by an imperfect delivery. His Batman & Robin concentrates on the characters rather than the myth of Batman for the first time in a dozen writers, and his current Joe the Barbarian shows no end of promise, if just judging by the structural flourish he's delivered up to this point.
I try not to "take umbrage" with how imaginary characters are handled, and I'd also suggest that criticism is meant to take more forms than "it's great!" or "it sucks!" I'd love to hear why you think his work is the worst ever, and is fecal matter, etc, rather than a reiteration that it simply is...
Fair enough. I didn't want to seem like a loon by going on for 10pages out of nowhere. I'm definitely open to a more detailed discussion, though.
My issues with Morrison are twofold. First, he always comes across as a guy who thinks he's more artistic than he actually is. Like he's one of those guys who's convinced of his own genius, when he's really just another guy getting paid to write about men in tights.
The second issue is the actual content of his work. I get a very strong vibe that the guy uses drugs to expand his mind. Maybe those kinds of ideas would work in a more surreal mythos, but Batman is supposed to be THE realistic superhero. It's difficult enough to accept that his rogues gallery can ever pose a threat to him at all, especially when Batman has beaten big blue so many times I've lost count. But to bring Bat-Mite and zur en arrh into it? Let alone that whole Black Glove thing? Positively absurd.
I've been reading Batman comics since the 1989 movie came out. God, it's crazy to realize it's been over 20 years now. When people feel strongly about something, they tend to get a vision in their head of its "ideal" form. Morrison's work is an exact 180 of what I'd consider to be Batman in his prime.
Maybe it's silly to get so worked up about something as trivial as comic books. So be it. I've been a nerd all my life, and really wouldn't want to change that. At the same time, I can recognize that each person will like comics for a different reason. Some people just enjoy the escapist fantasy of it all. Some want to read a good story, some enjoy the artwork more. Some people can just read a story about guys in costumes and take it at face value. That's fair enough. That's not the way I like to approach Batman, though. I think the character deserves a lot more respect than his creative teams have been giving him over the past 10 years or so, but such is the nature of any serialized product. Things are going to change, and at some point, the thing you loved is going to turn right around and go in the opposite direction.
At any rate, it's just a matter of different strokes for different folks. Maybe there are people out there who can enjoy Damian Wayne becoming canon, and Jason Todd coming back from the JFC grave. It's just not my cup of tea.
Sounds fair, Jason, it's not unusual to have an aversion to alterations of the idealized era of the character in your head - there's a saying that the golden age of anything is when you're nine years old, because that's when you first develop your most coherent notions of what a character or genre is supposed to be. I know I feel that way about Superman, and I've only rarely been more impressed with a contemporary serial author on the book than I've ever been with Cary Bates or Martin Pasko, the authors of my childhood fandom.
The thing about Morrison is that he's not inventing his Batman stories out of whole cloth - there was a time when there was a Bat-Mite, a Zur-Enn-Arh, a Club of Heroes, as well as rainbow monsters and pink Batman costumes and a dog who fought crime. As a writer, you can approach those stories in one of two ways, either ignoring them and cherry-picking the elements which fit your vision, or you find a way to embrace the entirety of the character in all its extremes into a single vision. I like the second approach; it feels like cheating to me to brush away a couple of decades worth of stories because they offend the eye, and it seems braver to me to do what Morrison does and say "Okay, we have here the ultimate dark avenger. Now how does we rationalize an ultimate dark avenger fighting time-travelling dragons?"
There's a thing a lot of Batman fans say, that the character was "always" dark and grim and gritty, and that his silly adventures were a blip occurring around the era of the TV show. Unfortunately, that's not really true - Batman was going into space and fighting dumb monsters within five years of his first appearance, and the weirdness continued at assorted levels well into the Eighties, until Miller officially put an end to it. I like that Morrison chooses to acknowledge the weird stuff - although, to be fair, that's not the crux of my enjoyment ofn his writing. I like that he made Bruce Wayne an actual character, rather than just the facade Batman maintains when he's not punching out costumed hoboes, and I like his Batman and Robin now, because they feel like real characters rather than imperishable myths.
Also, I hate to say it, but if you object to your comic creators getting their ideas from drugs ... well, man...
In any case, thanks for expanding on your criticisms, I appreciate it and I learned a great deal. I can certainly understand your perspective on the Morrison stories, he does attempt to affect big changes, and doesn't do much to honor the writers who immediately preceded him ...
10 comments:
"He's also why I'm missin' this tooth! He has issues!"
Jeez, kid, it looks like your dad SWALLOWED one of those barrels.
Actually Damian first appeared in 1987 in "Son of the Demon". The kid on the cover is named Tommy Wilson. His dad was a convict who told his son he was Batman to explain why he was gone for long periods of time. Tommy got kidnapped, his dad got shot while wearing the batman costume and Batman came in to save the day.
Batman #88 1954
OH WAIT LAUREN ARE YOU SAYING I INACCURATELY CAPTIONED THE HURG HURG BLURG Christ, some people's kids ...
Still better than any of the fecal matter Grant Morrison is smearing over the pages of DC these days.
I'm actually exceptionally fond of Grant Morrison's work, and believe that at least four of his recent DC/Vertigo projects (All-Star Superman, Vimanarama, Seaguy and Seven Soldiers) comprise some of the best superhero comics of the last decade.
You don't take umbrage with what he's been doing to Batman over the past few years, let alone Final Crisis? Batman R.I.P. is the single worst Batman story of the modern era. Worse than Hush and Contagion combined.
Nope, I thought Club of Heroes was a fine melding of silver age structural coponents with modern age sensibilities, and as far as goes Final Crisis, it possessed a strong foundation, if muddled by an imperfect delivery. His Batman & Robin concentrates on the characters rather than the myth of Batman for the first time in a dozen writers, and his current Joe the Barbarian shows no end of promise, if just judging by the structural flourish he's delivered up to this point.
I try not to "take umbrage" with how imaginary characters are handled, and I'd also suggest that criticism is meant to take more forms than "it's great!" or "it sucks!" I'd love to hear why you think his work is the worst ever, and is fecal matter, etc, rather than a reiteration that it simply is...
Fair enough. I didn't want to seem like a loon by going on for 10pages out of nowhere. I'm definitely open to a more detailed discussion, though.
My issues with Morrison are twofold. First, he always comes across as a guy who thinks he's more artistic than he actually is. Like he's one of those guys who's convinced of his own genius, when he's really just another guy getting paid to write about men in tights.
The second issue is the actual content of his work. I get a very strong vibe that the guy uses drugs to expand his mind. Maybe those kinds of ideas would work in a more surreal mythos, but Batman is supposed to be THE realistic superhero. It's difficult enough to accept that his rogues gallery can ever pose a threat to him at all, especially when Batman has beaten big blue so many times I've lost count. But to bring Bat-Mite and zur en arrh into it? Let alone that whole Black Glove thing? Positively absurd.
I've been reading Batman comics since the 1989 movie came out. God, it's crazy to realize it's been over 20 years now. When people feel strongly about something, they tend to get a vision in their head of its "ideal" form. Morrison's work is an exact 180 of what I'd consider to be Batman in his prime.
Maybe it's silly to get so worked up about something as trivial as comic books. So be it. I've been a nerd all my life, and really wouldn't want to change that. At the same time, I can recognize that each person will like comics for a different reason. Some people just enjoy the escapist fantasy of it all. Some want to read a good story, some enjoy the artwork more. Some people can just read a story about guys in costumes and take it at face value. That's fair enough. That's not the way I like to approach Batman, though. I think the character deserves a lot more respect than his creative teams have been giving him over the past 10 years or so, but such is the nature of any serialized product. Things are going to change, and at some point, the thing you loved is going to turn right around and go in the opposite direction.
At any rate, it's just a matter of different strokes for different folks. Maybe there are people out there who can enjoy Damian Wayne becoming canon, and Jason Todd coming back from the JFC grave. It's just not my cup of tea.
Sounds fair, Jason, it's not unusual to have an aversion to alterations of the idealized era of the character in your head - there's a saying that the golden age of anything is when you're nine years old, because that's when you first develop your most coherent notions of what a character or genre is supposed to be. I know I feel that way about Superman, and I've only rarely been more impressed with a contemporary serial author on the book than I've ever been with Cary Bates or Martin Pasko, the authors of my childhood fandom.
The thing about Morrison is that he's not inventing his Batman stories out of whole cloth - there was a time when there was a Bat-Mite, a Zur-Enn-Arh, a Club of Heroes, as well as rainbow monsters and pink Batman costumes and a dog who fought crime. As a writer, you can approach those stories in one of two ways, either ignoring them and cherry-picking the elements which fit your vision, or you find a way to embrace the entirety of the character in all its extremes into a single vision. I like the second approach; it feels like cheating to me to brush away a couple of decades worth of stories because they offend the eye, and it seems braver to me to do what Morrison does and say "Okay, we have here the ultimate dark avenger. Now how does we rationalize an ultimate dark avenger fighting time-travelling dragons?"
There's a thing a lot of Batman fans say, that the character was "always" dark and grim and gritty, and that his silly adventures were a blip occurring around the era of the TV show. Unfortunately, that's not really true - Batman was going into space and fighting dumb monsters within five years of his first appearance, and the weirdness continued at assorted levels well into the Eighties, until Miller officially put an end to it. I like that Morrison chooses to acknowledge the weird stuff - although, to be fair, that's not the crux of my enjoyment ofn his writing. I like that he made Bruce Wayne an actual character, rather than just the facade Batman maintains when he's not punching out costumed hoboes, and I like his Batman and Robin now, because they feel like real characters rather than imperishable myths.
Also, I hate to say it, but if you object to your comic creators getting their ideas from drugs ... well, man...
In any case, thanks for expanding on your criticisms, I appreciate it and I learned a great deal. I can certainly understand your perspective on the Morrison stories, he does attempt to affect big changes, and doesn't do much to honor the writers who immediately preceded him ...
Post a Comment