Somnopolis

The dust-jacket for Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely’s Batman & Robin carries a number of quotes from admiring reviews, including one from Entertainment Weekly that simply says ‘Clever’.

Morrison could never be accused of being anything but. Rebooting the Batman franchise in the aftermath of his Final Crisis title, Bruce Wayne is missing in the time-stream and presumed dead; former ward Dick Grayson has taken over the role of the Bat and Damian Wayne has become a new Robin. The book introduces yet another grotesque villain to Gotham known as Professor Pyg and former side-kick Jason Todd returns, now having assumed the villainous moniker of the Red Hood, as a bloodthirsty vigilante traumatised by his resurrection.

Notice anything? See for a series reboot Batman and Robin is surprisingly unfriendly to new readers. I passed on the trade to my brother-in-law after I finished it. While he was impressed by the excellent Quitely art (with his usual tropes of thin-lipped men and unflattering female body-types present and accounted for) he was frankly confused by Wayne’s ‘death’, the identity of the Red Hood and why it was important, not to mention the revelation that Batman had a son.

Unfortunately this is inevitable given that Batman and Robin is not so much a reboot as a continuation of Morrison’s run on the main book (now written by artist Tony Daniel). Dick Grayson is a rueful Batman, self-conscious about wearing his mentor’s mask. He also has a great deal of difficulty trying to rein in the willful Damian Wayne, who has inherited his father’s single-mindedness and intimidating intelligence. His Robin is not a side-kick, so much as a Batman-in-waiting. After all, Bruce used to fight crime dressed as the more colourful hero before he was inspired to become the Bat. As we discover when Jason reappears, some Robins aren’t worthy of the role.

This reversal of the usual Batman and Robin dynamic – the former doubting his abilities, with a young side-kick who is his intellectual superior – should prove to be a interesting interlude. Morrison is also writing The Return of Bruce Wayne, applying a two-tiered approach. Batman and Robin is a story about living up to the legend, whereas Return… riffs on the numerous literary and historical influences that go into the Batman character.

When asked to elaborate on the plot [...] Morrison said this: “Each of the stories is a twist on a different “pulp hero” genre — so there’s the caveman story, the witchhunter/Puritan adventurer thing, the pirate Batman, the cowboy, the P.I. — as a nod toward those mad old 1950s comics with Caveman Batman and Viking Batman adventures. It’s Bruce Wayne’s ultimate challenge — Batman vs. history itself!”

Which brings us back to that ‘clever’, remark. This book is most certainly a detailed study of what makes Batman work as a concept, but I’m not sure if beyond the discursive intensity of Morrison’s writing there’s a story in all this world-building and revamping of the franchise. It almost invites the inevitable wiping of the slate, which followed the writer’s similarly intelligent deconstruction of the X-Men title for Marvel Comics.

For me the most interesting moment in the first six issues is Alfred Pennyworth encouraging Dick to treat his time as Batman as a performance, in keeping with his past as a circus performer. Not only does this reflect the origins of the character, it injects a note of fun and excitement into the dark core of the Batman role. Morrison continues this approach with (literal) freakshow villains, an antagonist known as Flamingo who is part Zorro/part Purple Rain era Prince and in the tragic Red Hood we see the exorcised nihilism that had come to infect the Bat-books since Frank Miller’s dour Dark Knight Returns.

So while Morrison can still come off as something of a smartass at times, with his Professor Pyg(malion) and eliptical plot progression, he also brings a sense of fun to the Bat that for the most part, outside of the Paul Dini cartoon at least, has been missing for some time. On balance chalk this one up as a win.

Atop Fourth Wall – Where Bad Comics Burn is a comic review site that hosts videos from Linkara, who as the title song describes, ‘wears a purdy hat’. He’s also a funny fecker, who will someday I fear choke on his own rage at the depths the comic book industry insists on plumbing.

Just watch his new segment, ‘Miller Time’, which has left me tired and drained this morning having stayed up until the wee hours watching and trying to hold in the laughs. In the end Linkara knows what he is doing. Fanboy rage is the fuel of the industry now. Observe the negative reaction to Marvel’s One More Day event, which actually helped its success. All publicity in comics, is good publicity. So while the man in the hat rants and raves, he also scores some worthy humour points at his target’s expense. Ridicule is a far more effective way of criticising bad writing and attention seeking ‘events’ (see his review of DC’s Amazons Attack).

In the interest of full disclosure, I first encountered Linkara on Gail Simone’s YABS forum. Often accused of being a hotbed of knee-jerk liberalism, the forum has been responsible for worthy causes that its members have actively participated in, such as the now legendary Rick Olney thread; the formation of Unscrewed; a fundraising auction of comic art to help pay John Ostrander’s medical bills for glaucoma surgery. YABS also continues to host debate on Gail Simone WiR list and promotes her own books such as Secret Six and Wonder Woman. Linkara is a frequent contributor to the forum and posts new episodes when they are released. It is no surprise that he found a home on YABS, which hosts many threads using ridicule to criticise events in comics.

Atop The Fourth Wall though less known, does for comics what Mystery Science Theatre 3000/Rifftrax does for bad films and Zero Punctuation doles out to the computer game industry – serve up beat downs to the egotists and incompetents who plague the industry. It’s also funny! Bonus….

…..still chuckling about Frank Miller’s Batman being renamed Crazy Steve. Heh.

Empire Online Review here.

It’s a troubling thought this. Troubling because I will admit to rampant, bigoted fanboyism when it comes to Alan Moore’s Watchmen. Some consider it the best comic book ever. I would add the caveat that it’s the best superhero comic book ever, which is something quite different.

So mea culpa. Criticism of Watchmen is something I take very seriously. Fanboys are known for their inability to engage in debate, their passion for their chosen topic excluding any possibility of argument. I will try to tread carefully here. For me Watchmen is an extremely well-written work. It takes as its central theme the idea of absolute power and how it relates to morality. If you could save the world at the expense of a few, could you do it? The plot is concerned with the death of a morally questionable superhero. Those other ‘heroes’ that survive him (the sociopathic Rorschach; defeated Night-Owl; reluctant Silk Spectre; calculating Ozymandias; and omnipotent Dr. Manhattan) each react differently to the demise of The Comedian, with only Rorschach immediately assuming that there is potential threat to them all. Who would want to kill a superhero and a patriot?

The story takes in an overarching conspiracy that seems to confirm Rorschach’s fears. Many readers assume that he is actually the main character of the book. However, Rorschach it is made clear is also mentally disturbed and violent, an unredeemed version of the Batman archetypal ‘vigilante’. With heroes like these, who needs enemies? Indeed each of the titular Watchmen (a term which is never applied within the story itself) fail to live up to the heroic ideal established by American superhero comic books. They are psychologically disturbed, alienated and/or disenchanted with their ‘mission’. This is Moore’s vision of the superhero as related to the ‘real world’, more a Weapon of Mass Destruction than a fighter for justice and truth. America’s political history takes a different turn. Richard Nixon holds on to power by successfully winning the Vietnam War thanks to the godlike Dr. Manhattan. The Watergate Scandal never occurs – it is implied that The Comedian had a role in the assassination of Woodward and Bernstein. The Cold War is escalating, with an immanent conflict between Soviet and US forces in Afghanistan.  There are hints that techonological advances have also been made, evidenced by everyday items like bulbs at the end of smoking implements that circulate air, or clean energy station pumps on the sidewalk.

Reading the book one is reminded on its themes at every point. Background details reinforce some of the central ideas and spring out upon repeated readings (look out for references to Alexander’s ’Gordian Knot’). There is an interesting use of repetitious symbolic images, that frequently take on the appearance of an atomic Doomsday Clock counting down to annhilation. The title refers to a translation of the classical aphorism ‘Who watches the watchmen’ and time becomes a measure of power. Dr. Manhattan exists partially outside of time, but cannot influence the course of events beyond their predetermined nature. Ozymandias has a plan for how to avert the end of time, but none as to what he will do next. Rorschach sees history through a narrow prism, as black and white as his shifting mask (Moore attaches a psychological report from the childhood of the character, wherein he describes the bombing of Hiroshima as necessary to end the war). Time is edging the world ever closer to atomic destruction and Einstein’s regret that he would have rather been a watchmaker is quoted to express the guilty conscience of the 20th century.

Phew. Bearing all that in mind – why make a film of this book? Watchmen was released as a limited series comic book that serves as a self-contained story. The book itself contains appendixes in the form of biographical extracts, scientific journal essays, celebrity interviews, psychological reports, a recurring pirate comic book (the play within the play) and even an ornithological article – all serving to deepen our understanding of this alternate world burdened with real-life superheroes.  How can all of that content be summarised by a film? Indeed why should it? The book is enough. Hollywood does not agree and for 23 years has tried to turn Watchmen into a ‘real’ commercial concern. Wired has an interesting potted history of this project’s duration. The worth of the book itself, it’s success as a brilliantly produced comic book, is not enough. That prestige can be capitalised upon by fashioning it into a mainstream movie, which would presumably make more money for Warner Brothers than the minuscule comic book readership could ever do. Is there a need to make a movie about Watchmen because a director has a vision that he or she feels could improve upon the text? No. The only ‘need’, is to sell a lot of tickets and here’s the most important point. Watchmen is not for everyone. It’s a difficult read, very dense and also carries with it a sense of its own importance. Comic fans who have enjoyed it often describe a sense of being unable to read superhero comics in the same way again. The word ‘deconstruction’, gets thrown around a lot. There is also, however, a strong feeling of resentment by certain ‘fans’, towards the book for the same reason. Watchmen ruined superhero comics.

When the term ”grim ‘n’ gritty” is used in relation to the comic industry, Alan Moore and Frank Miller (Dark Knight Returns) are mentioned as the responsible parties. There is another way of looking at the post-Watchmen malaise though, the sudden upsurge of extreme violence, titillating sex and moral depravity evident in the ‘funny pages’. They didn’t get it. Much like Nietzsche being accused of nihilism when he set out to decry it, Moore has been hung by his own petard. The positive Empire review above mentions the shocking violence of the film, the horrifying ending that Snyder has construed to replace the ’silly’, conclusion of the book, the kinky sex enjoyed by Silk Spectre and Night-Owl. I’m beginning to feel a strong sense of deja vu. For if the movie is unable to convey the breath of references and emotion of the book, are we not looking at a repeat of the same superficial homaging that plagued the comic book industry (and some would argue still does - Mark Millar’s scatalogogical Wanted, already adapted into a declawed movie, is yet another culprit). When I think of Rorschach, the first scene from the book I remember is not him scalding a fellow prison inmate with hot fat, but his interviews with the troubled psychologist. Quiet, measured scenes that express the lonely horror of being Rorschach.

If I had to see an adaptation of Watchmen, I would have preferred a television series, perhaps animated. In the Wired article linked above there is an interesting description of Zack Snyder as a ‘nerd-jock’. I think that is a very telling phrase. It signifies how comic culture and nerdy pursuits have been assimilated into the mainstream. That it’s ok to watch a film about men and women punching each other while wearing tights, because this is badass and hardcore! Awesome!

Except when I read it on the page, these characters were all faintly ridiculous. They were meant to be. Watchmen was a comic book that demonstrated stern and knowing tough love to the industry that spawned it. Watchmen the movie hopes to imitate the commercial success of the similarly morose Dark Knight and get lots of bums on seats. Somehow I don’t think that’s enough.

Mark Millar promoted his new Wolverine story ‘Old Man Logan’ as his take on Frank Miller’s Dark Knight Returns. Which is nothing new. Previously he promoted Wanted as his version of Watchmen. Essentially he is pitching this as the last Wolverine story, not to be confused with Paul Jenkins’ Wolverine: The End. Not to mention X-Men: The End.

In case there’s any confusion on this point, Millar is not the only one trying to recapture DKR. The attraction for these comic writers is understandable. Comic titles are franchises. There is no one creative vision for any of the mainstream comic characters – there may have been original creative teams, but they have generally long since moved on, leaving their creations in the hands of whomever is hired for the task. So Stan Lee’s Daredevil is a million miles from Frank Miller’s, or indeed Ed Brubaker’s. Seeing as these are stories with no ending, shedding continuity as often as times change like a snake sheds its skin, it is understandable that some writers evidence a strong desire to conclude the story, even if it is in a What If title, an Elseworlds or an ‘End’ story.

End stories can be identified as generally occurring in a dystopian version of the future. The DCU of DKR had succumbed to an all-powerful fascist American government that had successfully ejected most of the heroes and even recruited Superman to be their enforcer. Millar’s Old Logan wanders a landscape littered with the detritus of superhero wars populated by copycat vigilantes and aging fellow heroes from back in the day. This eagerness for dystopia is tiresome, in that every story seems to follow the same pattern. Marauding gangs of adolescents thugs in retro hero costumes are a recurring feature, as well as the surviving heroes making appearances either grossly overweight or missing limbs. The Invisibles by Grant Morrison features its own End story in the final issues, with King Mob the leader of the anarchist protagonists seeming to sell out by converting their history of activities against the Grand Conspiracy into a video game. Morrison and Alan Moore are exceptions in that their storylines – The Invisibles and Promethea – both end with an apocalypse, but that ‘end of everything’, is not shown as an atomic mushroom cloud. Instead humanity embraces its own end with a celebration, the eschaton revealed as a pan-global shift in perception.

The fascination with the end of all things is not new in fiction or history. There are theories that the Great Fire of London in 1666 was deliberately started by millenialists seeking to fulfill their own belief that Armageddon had arrived. It is an act of egotism, this fascination with the end – because people cannot accept that this world will outlast them. On a much smaller scale comic book writers need to make their definitive mark on narratives that they are only contributing to for a brief time. Mark Millar had already written what some consider to be the best Wolverine story in years Enemy of the State. This was the ‘balls to the wall action’, Canuckle-head story, with Logan becoming brainwashed by an evil organisation named Hydra and going on a killing spree. Wolverine’s violent nature is key to his popularity, which makes attempts to market him as a kid friendly character noisome at times. He is basically a killer struggling to control his bloodlust. In recent years he has become a flagship character for Marvel alongside Spider-Man and the Hulk, so his essential nature is frequently only hinted at, for fear of upsetting parents. See also how silhouetted murder and slicing off limbs is fine, but there is a taboo on depicting him having a smoke. Millar overturned all that by having the fierce mutant go on a rampage within the institution he had called home for so many years, Xavier’s School for Higher Learning, threatening the lives of the children residing there. The storyline was immensely popular and with the exception of one more story from the Scottish writer, a WWII era POW yarn with Wolverine captive in a concentration camp, his run was concluded on something of a highnote.

For Millar to return to the book now and suddenly jump forward in time to do his own ‘End’ story seems excessive. All the usual ideas are repeated – aging heroes, wasteland surroundings, villains in the ascendancy and a hero broken by his past. Perhaps he will pull something interesting out of his hat, but Millar to me has always seemed like someone who thinks ’subtle’, is a species of wood.

Maybe someday there will be a Wolverine: The End story about Logan happily married to a fellow superhuman and their arguments about doing the washing.

You’ve seen the trailers – overblown, sepia toned, bastard children of Mel
Gibson’s Braveheart. Maybe you’ve heard of Frank Miller and his penchant for
inserting his foot so far into his mouth his toes are tickling his oesophagus. In the last couple of days, following the opening of Zack
Snyder’s 300, a slavish adaptation of the comic by Miller, in US territories
as well as Greece, you may have heard of the reception this film is
receiving.

Words like ‘fascist’, ‘racist’, ‘homophobic’, are being bandied about. It’s a
CGI Triumph of the Will, a D. W. Griffith for the Myspace generation. Others
see it as brainless comic book violence. Either way there can be no doubting
the excesses of the picture. King Xerxes isn’t just a Persian warlord – he’s
a giant covered in bling, surrounded by catamites and coded as being sexually
perverse. Whereas the Spartans are fine, upstanding warriors, defending our
Western values thousands of years in the past, espousing our democratic
beliefs in ‘freedom’. No mention of the slaves then. Or that the ‘Golden
Age’, of Greek enlightenment was itself ended by a civil war between Athens
(dismissed as ‘boy lovers’, in the film. Once again – pot meet Mr. Black,
the kettle) and Sparta.

Look the debate rages on even as we speak. Bloggers either hate or love this
movie. People are inferring all sorts of contemporary meaning into it – Bush
is identified either as Xerxes or Leonidas, depending on your leanings. The
film is already a box office smash, so this is guaranteed to continue.

My interest lies elsewhere though – Mr. Snyder. He’s only directed two films
and already he’s had two hits. His previous film was a flimsy remake of
George Romero’s Dawn of the Dead (”In this one…they run!”), that had some
standout moments. The opening montage set to Johnny Cash’s ‘When the Man
Comes Round’, was definitely a highlight. On the back of his extraordinary
success, he’s been handed the reigns of the Watchmen adaptation.

Mr. Snyder, why must you hurt me so? Make popcorn films, christ, you’re good
at it. Mark Millar’s the Ultimates – there’s a comic book movie for you if
you want it. Excess, celebrity cameos (”Hulk Smash Freddy Prinze Jnr!”) and
always topical. Fun, but with a little bite. Watchmen, as anyone who knows me
is already sick of hearing, is far more. It is a comic book designed to be
read purely as a comic book. It might do things film is also capable of -
overlapping dialogue over another scene, which simultaneously acts as a
comment upon it, mid-panel flashbacks – but it is designed not to be
read as much as poured over. A film adaption would not so much be a translation of this, as a ‘Cliffs Notes Guide’, to Alan Moore and his sad story of uncomprehending lives caught in massive conspiracies. Of the apex of the Cold War, when the threat of worldwide Mutually Assured Destruction was still quite real (now instead we are living with the agonizing slow death promised by global warming).

In the world of Watchmen, set in the mid-80’s, a nuclear war between the USSR
and the US is looming over Afghanistan. Superheroes exist, but have mostly
been outlawed, forcibly retired, or in the unique exceptions of the Comedian
and Dr. Manhattan become government agents. They are middle-aged, living with
failed relationships and a growing uncertainty over what they accomplished in
the ‘good old days’. Until the beginning of the story, which opens with the
deaths of one of the heroes, growing rumours of a ‘cape killer’, conspiracy
and the isolation of Dr. Manhattan, a walking weapon of mass destruction. The
story is broken up into chapters, each bookended with text which takes the
form of novel extracts, magazine interviews, academic papers or in
Rorschach’s case, a psychological profile. There is even a ‘play within the
play’, a long-running comic strip attributed to Spectre artist Joe Orlando,
describing the tragic consequences of one man’s escape from a pirate vessel,
which we soon realize is acting as a comment on the plot of Watchmen itself.

Look trust me there’s a lot to this book. I met a guy once who wrote his
dissertation on it. It’s a pretty involved text. And they hired the guy who’s
greatest cinematic contribution so far is to turn the Battle of Thermopylae
into a video game? Here’s a hint of what may be on the horizon. Watchmen
features a character called Ozymandias, a young man who rationally set out to
become the optimum human. He simply decides to accomplish this, eliminates
any personal failings or insecurities he has and choosing Alexander the Great
as his inspiration, sets about doing it. Guess who wants to play him? Tom
Cruise.

Now if that isn’t irony in action. Zack Snyder will take this picture and
deliver a spectacle. That is what the studios want, because ultimately it
will be cosily profitable. Three other directors previously attached to this
were: Terry Gilliam, Darren Arronofsky & Paul Greengrass. ANY ONE OF THEM
could have delivered a coherent, well-made, adaptation. It still
would not have matched the book, Gilliam himself argued that a five hour
mini-series would be better, but they might have succeeded in elabourating
upon the ideas of the book. Snyder is the man who stated his intention was to
remake Dawn… ‘without the satire’. Who wrote Xerxes as a bisexual giant to
‘make the audience uncomfortable’. Here’s a thought – given the need to make
this into a ’superhero’, picture, who would the script choose as the main
hero? The coldly pragmatic Ozymandias/Veidt? The impotent Nite-Owl, or
inhuman Manhattan? Perhaps Rorshach – but he’s a confirmed raving lunatic!

Beyond all this I have to say – if you look up the uncensored trailer for 300
on youtube and pause the video on 1:52 guess who pops up? A neat little
easter egg of a test shot Snyder took of Rorschach standing against a CGI New
York skyline. I have to say my bitter little fanboy heart gave a jump when I
saw that.

I have a moment or two to spare here.

Once again I scuttle profundity with my parasitic dependence on pop culture. Sin City. Ah, a true post-modernist enterprise, a film forced to conform with the limitations of the comic art panel.

At any rate, one character gives a marvellous speech. A corrupt senator, elected through family nepotism and
willfully corrupt, gives Bruce Willis, bedbound and wrapped in bandages, a thorough explanation on the nature of power. Power he says isn’t money, or owning a gun (proferring one in ol’ Brucie’s face as he speaks, making it
abundantly clear that there is nothing that can stop him killing our hero publicly in a hospital bed). No, power is telling a lie so big, so ridiculous that everyone knows it’s a lie – but go along with it anyway. Because if they
admit the truth, than their lies also collapse. So therefore power is the ability to dominate the obfuscation of the truth.

The ‘everyday’, in the sense of a routine/schedualed life works on the principle of effortless repetition and the subjugation of one’s time.

Umberto Eco has William Baskerville discuss his investigative style with the narrator in ‘Name of the Rose’. He does not ponder the solution to the mystery by assuming there to be one truth. Rather he allows the existence of many possible truths, many possible errors: “…’instead of conceiving only one, I imagine many, so I become slave of none.’I had the impression that William was not at all interested in the truth, which is nothing but the
adjustment between the thing and the intellect. On the contrary, he amused himself by imagining how many possibilities were possible.”

This also exists in the quotidien world we are both familiar with – workers become drugged by routine and discuss their worker lives in a language exclusive to those not familiar with its terms. Here once
again we have a new language in play, much like the academic jargon of collegiates.