I'm not exactly a Batman buff, but to post two frames from what looks like a 60's version of Batman then claim that books like Year One, The Dark Knight Returns and Killing Joke (the first two from '86 and the last from '88) are just more examples of Batman sucking is wrong. I'm sure someone out there who knows more about Batman could probably give you more examples.
"Killing Joke" *did* suck. The Joker having a pity-party? Trying to drive Gordon insane with a *song and dance number*? Assuming success with no evidence?
Hell, Batman trying to *rehabilitate* the Joker? Repeatedly?
It's a lot better than most things DC has ever put out. Hell, when it came out, it was probably the greatest Batman story ever written. That doesn't make it *good*.
(cue torrain to talk about the CCA and "Frederick Wortham [turns head and spits]")
Killing Joke did not suck. It had nothing to do with the Joker having a pity party and I think paralyzing and raping Gordon's daughter (and taking pictures of it) goes a bit beyond "a song and dance number." Call me crazy. He assumed success because Gordon appeared catatonic. What "proof" did he need in your mind? There's one frame in the book that says more than the whole rest of the book despite the fact there's no words in it. Towards the end of the book after Batman tries to convince the Joker that he can help him get himself back together, the Joker turns around as though he's about to accept the offer. For that one panel, rehabilitation is a very real thing.
And I still don't understand how a panel from the 60's proves that Batman sucked up until the late 90's.
I don't think pity party is quite the right word, but the Joker was trying to establish that to some degree it (he, himself) wasn't his fault, that anyone would snap if pushed hard and far enough. Call it an effort to disclaim responsibility, an attempt to say anyone would go mad under that kind of pressure, it's no failing of his.
It's very much a clash between the Joker and Gordon as proponents of their ideals and worldviews. Batman isn't quite secondary, but his role is essentially practical; he's there to find out the Joker's escaped, he's there to track down the Joker and provide a way for Gordon to not die. Yes, he's trying to fix something, see if he and the Joker can break their cycle and somehow not kill each other, but he makes no progress towards that goal, and while the lack of progress says something, it's hardly a revelation. The re-emphasis of Gordon's devotion to his way in the face of pain which I suspect is the greatest he's ever faced until that point and the portrayal of the Joker as trapped by fear as much as glorying in madness and sadism--those are new, those are what make the story interesting.
YMMV, and all that. :)
That said, out of curiousity, could someone point me towards an Alan Moore GN where the final trigger to a character's transformation into the extraordinary/deranged isn't the brutal abuse and death of a woman we barely see and sometimes don't even meet? V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Killing Joke, even The Ballad of Halo Jones... I don't really mind, I'd just like to see if there's much without it.
I'll take a look. I think I still have discount coupons handy
(I'm wondering if I should have said "brutal abuse or death"--Jeannie isn't brutally abused in The Killing Joke, and both Brinna's murder in Halo Jones and Kitty Genovese's[1] in Watchmen are vicious, but there's no long-standing situation of abuse, which is what I may have implied... Hrm. Brutal abuse-and-death, rather than brutal-abuse followed by death, if that makes it any clearer?)
Now that I think on it, all the characters I'm thinking of who have been changed this way have been changed into something that cuts right through convention--Halo's willingness to "go out, do everything", Rorschach and the Joker's rejection of meaning and morality (respectively), V's anarchy.
I'm not saying so much that there's always a serious character who transcends structure (none of the ABC stuff I've read has one, although I haven't read Promethea), I'm saying that whenever I've seen such a character in his work, a dead woman pushed them over the edge. --- [1] Yes, I know she was a real person.
If we're going to branch off beyond the comic, Batman and Robin was released in 1997, meaning that not everything in the late 90's was unsucky.
What happened in the late '90's that made it unsucky? Was that where they paralyzed Bruce Wayne then saw that Azrael wasn't going to cut it and brought him back?
I didn't say everything from the late 90s *didn't* suck.
I said Batman, the character, sucked ass until the late 1990s, when he was turned from "caped crusader" into "three-dimensional person with real-person issues and reactions that weren't *entirely* dictated by the needs of plot."
It appears I was off on the date by a few years. I still maintain that a few reasonably good comics (fitting a bare-minimum level of acceptability, these days) in a sea of crap, immediately contradicted by all their surrounding fellows, does not a renaissance of a character make.
As I've said before, I'm hardly a Batman buff, but I was under the impression that Year One and other books like it heralded a complete change in the character. Even if I'm wrong, I highly doubt Batman was talking about "boners" and acting with all the camp of the 60's show even as Year One, Killing Joke, and Dark Knight Returns completely changed what the traditional view of Batman was. How, for instance, did the 1989 movie - with no references to boners, anti-Shark Batspray or even the brightly colored Boy Wonder - go over so well if this was not the Batman that was portrayed in the comics? I don't see where the books that keep being brought up are contradicted by anything you're bringing to the table. Except, of course, something that looks like it was from the 60's.
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(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 01:42 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 01:50 am (UTC)Hell, Batman trying to *rehabilitate* the Joker? Repeatedly?
It's a lot better than most things DC has ever put out. Hell, when it came out, it was probably the greatest Batman story ever written. That doesn't make it *good*.
(cue
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 02:16 am (UTC)And I still don't understand how a panel from the 60's proves that Batman sucked up until the late 90's.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 04:26 pm (UTC)It's very much a clash between the Joker and Gordon as proponents of their ideals and worldviews. Batman isn't quite secondary, but his role is essentially practical; he's there to find out the Joker's escaped, he's there to track down the Joker and provide a way for Gordon to not die. Yes, he's trying to fix something, see if he and the Joker can break their cycle and somehow not kill each other, but he makes no progress towards that goal, and while the lack of progress says something, it's hardly a revelation. The re-emphasis of Gordon's devotion to his way in the face of pain which I suspect is the greatest he's ever faced until that point and the portrayal of the Joker as trapped by fear as much as glorying in madness and sadism--those are new, those are what make the story interesting.
YMMV, and all that. :)
That said, out of curiousity, could someone point me towards an Alan Moore GN where the final trigger to a character's transformation into the extraordinary/deranged isn't the brutal abuse and death of a woman we barely see and sometimes don't even meet? V for Vendetta, Watchmen, Killing Joke, even The Ballad of Halo Jones... I don't really mind, I'd just like to see if there's much without it.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 09:46 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 09:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 10:08 pm (UTC)(I'm wondering if I should have said "brutal abuse or death"--Jeannie isn't brutally abused in The Killing Joke, and both Brinna's murder in Halo Jones and Kitty Genovese's[1] in Watchmen are vicious, but there's no long-standing situation of abuse, which is what I may have implied... Hrm. Brutal abuse-and-death, rather than brutal-abuse followed by death, if that makes it any clearer?)
Now that I think on it, all the characters I'm thinking of who have been changed this way have been changed into something that cuts right through convention--Halo's willingness to "go out, do everything", Rorschach and the Joker's rejection of meaning and morality (respectively), V's anarchy.
I'm not saying so much that there's always a serious character who transcends structure (none of the ABC stuff I've read has one, although I haven't read Promethea), I'm saying that whenever I've seen such a character in his work, a dead woman pushed them over the edge.
---
[1] Yes, I know she was a real person.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 11:07 pm (UTC)Who's Jeannie?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 11:30 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-26 12:26 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 04:03 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 09:50 pm (UTC)See also: The Dark Knight Returns (mid-80s).
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 11:06 pm (UTC)What happened in the late '90's that made it unsucky? Was that where they paralyzed Bruce Wayne then saw that Azrael wasn't going to cut it and brought him back?
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-25 11:21 pm (UTC)I said Batman, the character, sucked ass until the late 1990s, when he was turned from "caped crusader" into "three-dimensional person with real-person issues and reactions that weren't *entirely* dictated by the needs of plot."
It appears I was off on the date by a few years. I still maintain that a few reasonably good comics (fitting a bare-minimum level of acceptability, these days) in a sea of crap, immediately contradicted by all their surrounding fellows, does not a renaissance of a character make.
(no subject)
Date: 2005-02-26 12:25 am (UTC)