Superman Through the Ages! Forum

Adminstrator's Note: This topic is split from this one (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1749).

Englehart wrote Batman: Dark Detective recently, and the final issue where Silver's fiance was so badly injured that Bruce tried to talk her into staying with him until he mended, and she took it as a rejection--yeah, an open ending) ended with DC saying "let us know if you want a sequel!" Given the angry response to the book from those who think that Frank Miller is the true creator of Batman and that every single thing before him was worthless camp (sound familiar?), I don't think that'll be happening. DC got nailed with complaints that Englehart wasn't writing the "true" Batman and that his '70s approach was unwelcome and out of character for Bats. Of course, Batman hasn't been acting in character since Frank Miller got his hands on him (and people have come forth with horror stories about how Miller fans have condemned the animated series' Batman for being the pre-Miller Batman and thus a waste of space), so how would they know what Batman's supposed to act like?

(My own feelings about Dark Detective are that the characterizations were dead-on, but the plot itself never really gelled. You could tell Englehart was rusty when it came to Batman. But the intent was good, so I have to give him credit for that. I still think Kia Asamiya's Child of Dreams nailed the flavor of the Kane-Finger/'70s-era Batman the best of any modern-day Bat-yarn.)

(End of a very, very long sigh)

I suppose it was inevitable, but I prayed the day would never come: Englehart's DETECTIVE COMICS are marginalized by the Batfanboys. Words fail me.

How do the Batfanboys feel about BATMAN BEGINS, which obviously had more of Englehart's influence?

BATMAN BEGINS shows an underplayed, heroic Batman that is clearly modeled on Englehart's definitive version of the character, where Batman is a heroic defender of the weak motivated by a strong sense of justice, right and wrong, and not by Rambo-style flashbacks and semi-psychotic compulsions like the clueless Frank Miller would have you believe. In Englehart's DETECTIVE COMICS, Batman's parents' murder turned him to fight crime because of his desire to never see such a piece of suffering again. He and Dick Grayson had a cameraderie and playful rivalry. In Frank Miller, Batman's parents' murder was a psychotic break that urged him to seek violent, purposeless retribution dressed as Dracula, and as for his relationship with Robin, Miller put it best: "He was a good soldier. He honored me." It is the first characterization - Englehart's - that is employed in BATMAN BEGINS.

And to make the Englehart comparison totally complete, his girlfriend, far from the mysoginistic personality-free arm candy (is there a single Frank Miller female that isn't either a whore, or a former whore?) that Frank Miller populated his worlds with, is a raspy, assertive female district attorney, who is turned off by Bruce Wayne's playboy pose. They have Silver St. Cloud in BATMAN BEGINS in all but name and hair color.

They've already lobbied for Frank Miller to get co-creator credit on Batman and have dismissed Bill Finger as a "boring" hack. If they're willing to disown the guy who really did co-create Batman (and whose characterization Englehart used), why should one of the guys who followed his example be let off so easily?

According to the Batman fanbase, every single thing ever done with Batman from 1939 to 1986 was "camp, homoeroticism, and giant props." Yet they'll make tons of excuses when it's pointed out that Miller portrayed the Joker as being in love with Batman and admitted to piling on as much sexual innuendo into their encounters as possible just to retroactively prove the Joker was always this way. It's OK for Miller to do this because he "saved" Batman, but the father-son relationship between Bruce and Dick is inherently wrong. I think they've completely collapsed onto the Wertham ideology, and in a lot of ways I think Miller did, too.



According to them, Batman Begins is influenced by Miller (they see nothing of Englehart in it), thus they adore it. Putting it bluntly, they were madly in love with the movie before a single frame of film was shot, simply because they adored the casting of Bale. There was never an instance of them questioning any of the movie's ideas. It was nothing but pure fawning from beginning to end, and much of it was devoted to how much Noaln and Goyer were giving us the Miller Batman, at least in the fanboys' eyes.



I had the exact opposite reaction when I read the shooting script last year (it had been leaked to the 'Net, and only a couple minor changes ensued between the script and the film). I thought its Batman was very unfocused and in a lot of ways out of character, commiting crimes under the pretense of studying criminal behavior and getting himself tossed in jail at least twice. While it wasn't the evil, hopelessly corrupt Batman of Miller, Nolan and Goyer's Batman came off as a nonentity to me, sort of a watered-down version of the Burton-Schumacher treatment (which was said to be based on Englehart as well, even going to so far to have him perform uncredited rewrites on the first film). In order to explain who and what Batman was, the filmmakers went to some pretty stupid extremes and forgot to give him a personality.

I also had issues with the lack of a Scarecrow costume, a very badly handled Ra's Al Ghul (don't get me started on the Ducard angle and lack of a Lazarus Pit), far too many scenes of swarming bats, a lot of repeating some of the worst plot points/mistakes of the first four movies, the ugly Batsuit and Batmobile designs, and a plot that was a convoluted mess, so I chose not to see it in the theatre. If I do see it at all, it'll be on cable. For my money, The Mask of Zorro was far truer to the heart, soul, and spirit of Batman than any of WB's movie offerings. Give me a Batman movie made with the same love, care, and loyalty that was lavished on Zorro, and then I'll be a satisfied customer.



Vicki Vale spends the first several pages of All-Star Batman & Robin half-naked and talking smack about Superman while gushing about Bruce Wayne. Great Jim Lee art in that sequence, but Miller's writing is still garbage. Psycho Batman shows up at the end to force a newly orphaned Dick into becoming his boy hostage.



To be totally honest, the character came off as superfluous like the Vicki, Chase, and Julie of the previous films, just more sanctimonious and annoying. You could have cut her from the story and nothing would have been lost. But the Millerites didn't complain much because they were too busy slobbering over Katie Holmes. They love her to death.

I apologize if my previous post came off as angrier and rather mean-spirited. But Englehart doesn't deserve this sort of thing.

I didn't say Katie Holmes's character was good or bad (she did get on my nerves quite a bit). I am saying, however, that there's more Englehart in her than Miller.

This is what I love about Batman!

 

1. So the minute you develop a mind-altering drug, you should go out and sew a costume together?  The mask was pushing my suspension of disbelief already.  Not everyone is as psychotic/obsessive compulsive as Bruce Wayne.
2. As it was my first intro to Ra's, it worked great for me!  Except that it was that guy from Star Wars and a million other movies (some of which I once liked)!
3. The bats were scary and an important theme.
4. There were a lot of stupid plot points and scenes, and the costume/batmobile were horrible.  Actually, the one Batman costume that worked for me was the one that Scarecrow hallucinated at the end of the film.  That would strike fear into the hearts of men, criminals being a superstitious and cowardly lot!

I just had the distinct displeasure of reading All Star Batman no. 1 and 2.

Bar none one of the single most wretched things I've ever seen in my life.

Frank Miller understands not one single darn thing about Batman or superheroes in general.  He can go rot for all I care.

It reads better as a steroidal homoerotic farce, like Jeph Loeb's Commando.

I had something along the lines of the exact same reaction when I read ALL-STAR BATMAN #1.

I must confess, I am not an expert on women. But the idea that a woman would spend hours walking around in her underwear having a loud monologue to no one in particular about which male superheroes turn her on...

Now, if Frank Miller was a better writer, he would have Vicki Vale chowing down on some chunky monky ice cream while in curlers, a green facemask, and bunny slippers, while gabbing on the telephone to her girlfriends about her thoughts on Superman and Batman.

The difference? Real women do the second; they don't do the first (except in Frank Miller's mysoginistic Junior High Schooler imagination).

You'd think with a mysoginistic start like that, it couldn't possibly get worse. Unfortunately, it's all downhill from there.

Oh, and it has the introduction of Robin, too. A story told approximately 50 billion times, made all the more banal by the fact that the imagination impoverished Frank Miller has absolutely nothing new to add to it.

Uh...what exactly happened in this one issue? What plot points were presented? What story was advanced? What was the conflict, again? This is the worst excess of decompressed storytelling: one whole issue being used to tell a story that could have been told in four pages. I checked the "writer" credit box to see if my old buddy Brian Michael Bendis was somehow involved (he wasn't, but it sure did feel that way).

Frank Miller once said to Alan Moore (truly a juxtaposition of the sacred and the profane, right there) that his DARK KNIGHT RETURNS was meant to be a funeral for Batman. Yeah...a funeral from an early grave you put him in, jerk!

I have yet to hear one positive comment about All-Star Batman.  I have also heard very little good about "Dark Knight Strikes Again" (easily the worst piece of filth I have ever been stupid enough to buy the first two issues of...before giving up and giving them away) and no one I know of has anything good to say about Miller's "Batman-Spawn" crossover.

Every time Miller touches Batman he proves how clueless he is, and diminishes the legacy of DKR a little bit more.  Based on page count alone, he has already produced far more Bat-dross than Bat-gold and if he keeps it up he will soon have tarnished his single achievement to the point where even it can't be enjoyed.

Miller should have quit while he was ahead and left DKR as his last word on Batman.  And for the record, while Jim Lee is an adequate artist, he's nowhere near as good as people seem to think he is...not even as good as he was years ago on X-Men...and no matter how good he is it can't make up for Miller's writing.

I flipped through ASB at the LCBS and I thought it transcended homoeroticism into pedophilia.

A friend of mine who's militantly gay said, "ASB was so gay - and not in a good way".

ASS hopefully will be better but the art looks steroidal anime.

Dark Night Returns was brilliant.

Dark Detective was fantastic.

All Star Batman was disgusting and not worth the paper it was printed on.

ASB was supposed to be the flag-ship title for the All-Star line.  So now I'm worried about the line in general.  Instead of being an updated return to a "classic" Batman, ASB was something else entirely - I'm still not sure just what, but whatever it was, it was diametrically opposed to Batman.

Regarding All-Star Superman, Grant Morrison has been talking up a storm about the "classic" Superman; but it seems pretty clear that DC doesn't give a flying-fig about such things.   They've also delayed the title, presumably for editorial reasons.   The four page All-Star Superman preview (http://superman.nu/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?t=1788) didn't show much Superman either - it was all about Lex being sick and twisted.  So I'm still hopeful, but starting to get a little worried.

:s:

I wondered what the above "curse word" was and then I realized it's the abbreviation for All-Star Superman! The morons in marketing have done it again!  :lol:



Was it ever touted as a return to classic Batman?  I thought the big draw of the All-Star line was that creators would be freed by the constraints of modern DCU continuity and able to tell their own stories in their own way. Being old-timers, we read into this exactly what we wanted to: Yay! A return to pre-Crisis fun!  Or perhaps we just assumed that stepping outside the DCU would have to equal an improvement.

Of course now we see that there are innumerable ways to screw up a character and DC is devoted to exploring every one of them.  Just because AS Batman isn't the raving nut-job haunting the in-continuity books doesn't mean he's any less despicable, insane or ugly.

This is where it all falls apart.  Tell me I can do a book free from official continuity and I think, "Wow, I'll turn back the clock to the Silver/Bronze Age!"  Tell a comics professional the same thing and he'll think, "Wow, now I can do all the stuff that the legal department said was too sick and twisted for the regular books!"  :roll:

To be honest I never really liked DARK KNIGHT RETURNS much, either.

People who prefer Batman to Superman tell me the reason they prefer Batman is because "he solves problems with his mind instead of by overwhelming applications of power like Superman."

Right.

Like whip out a giant TANK and machine gun children?

Here's a fun game to play next time you read DARK KNIGHT RETURNS: read all of Batman's dialogue in a thick Austrian accent, a-la Ahhh-nold Schwartzenegger, and I *guarantee* it won't sound weird or out of place in any occasion. Remember that sequence where Batman shoots a few kidnappers and says "I believe you?" That's a classic Arnoldism right there!

"Hey Joker...remember when I said I'd kill you last?"

"I lied."

I challenge anyone to find a place of purely mental action or detective work on Batman's part in that entire miniseries.

Whether you agree with my assessment of DKR or not, the seeds of the aspects that would fully blossom in his later work are present in this miniseries:

1) Women being "sell-outs" or similarly sexually objectified;

2) Perverse, psychosexual fixations;

3) Undisguised, naked Ayn Rand politics;

4) Batman as a violent, brutal figure that borders on the psychotic, fueled by flashbacks;

5) Batman as a figure who delivers violence first and plans second.

Nahh...  Clint Eastwood and his constipated voice still wins the day here.  Of course, I was awed by DKR when it first came out, and I never want to think about Ah-nuld in association with Batman for fear of recallingl Mr. Freeze, so I wear my biases on my sleeve.  I gotta confess-- I'd love to see Jeph Loeb write a Commando comic book.