Some Thoughts on Action Comics #775

I got around to reading the much esteemed Superman story What’s so Funny About Truth, Justice and the American Way? a little while ago, and of course I greatly enjoyed it. It seemed like a simple, intelligent, very humane story about the value of an idealistic, mythic hero like Superman that has become a rare breed in the modern scene of “realistic” anti-heroes and a culture that often seems too traumatized to take big blue’s simplistic morality seriously. I also recently saw the animated version of the book, which I thought was really quite awful, but that’s another story.

Then I did some looking around online and found out that although the comic is widely regarded as a modern classic, it’s got quite a few detractors who were making some very interesting and articulate arguments against the book’s message. These people didn’t just think it was a flawed work, however; they freaking hated this story. So I decided I would paraphrase a few of these arguments I’d seen and spend some time giving my responses to them, hopefully with as little misrepresentation and misunderstanding as possible.

I won’t bother giving a synopsis of the story because the content of this post really kinda demands that you read the comic first. Anyways, off we go.

“The message of the book is confused because Superman defeats the Elite by using their methods against them, which really only serves to prove that their way is superior in the first place. If Superman’s way really is superior, than that’s how he should beat them.”

There are a few problems with this argument, and it’s where most people, lovers and haters of this book alike, make what I think is the big error in their interpretation. For one thing, Superman never does take up The Elite’s methods. He does what he always does- intelligently uses his powers to safely incapacitate his enemies without doing any long term damage- the only difference is that he pretends he’s killing them to make a point. He’s not “proving that he can be a badass when he wants to”, he’s proving what a sad, silly façade Black’s been playing this whole time by aping him and showing him just how ugly his way is.

Superman is a cultural icon. He’s an integral part of the American consciousness, as basic to us as apple pie and carpet bombing. He certainly doesn’t have the popularity he did in the first thirty or so years of his career, but you’d still be hard pressed to find anybody in the developed world who doesn’t recognize that S. And that’s true in the comic world just as it is in ours. We expect Superman to act a certain way, a way we look up to. To a large degree, I think he’s so often mocked because he reminds us of a childish innocence we often feel embarrassed to admit we still cling to a little bit. To suddenly see Superman drawn looking mean and angry, seemingly murdering people, is disturbing to us and it’s disturbing to the characters in the story. When Superman makes Black think he’s lobotomized him with his heat vision, Black, who’s been playing the cold, snarky badass up until this point, starts bawling.

Black isn’t crying just because he got his ass kicked, or even because he thinks his team is dead, or because Kelly is saying “HA HA WHAT A PUSSY LOL SUPERMAN WINS”, as many seem to think he is. He’s crying because deep down, even though he’ll deny it and rationalize away his own actions, he admires Superman just like the rest of us, and like he said, Superman doesn’t do this. He doesn’t kill people and violate their brains, because that’s evil. The idealistic vision of a gentle, loving hero who shows us all the right way to act that he’s had in his head since he was a child is being destroyed in front of his eyes and the worst part is that what’s there instead looks a lot more like him. And frankly, it looks a lot more like us. Many characters could do exactly what Superman does here in earnest and we would still be rooting for them. Yet suddenly, this man who’s casually murdered any number of people and indirectly caused the deaths of thousands is calling Superman a degenerate for doing things that, compared to his crimes, are small change. The truth is that even Manchester Black knows that the kind of methods he’s embraced are wrong, he just needs to be forced to admit it.

Oddly, people have tried to claim that Superman is somehow proving that The Elite’s methods are right by using them to defeat them, even when he’s got the leader of The Elite sobbing about how wrong they are and Superman hasn’t actually killed or even seriously injured anybody.

To be clear, Superman didn’t have to pretend he killed anybody to win. He could have been completely up front and defeated them exactly the same way. But what would that have proven? That Superman is more powerful? Big fucking deal. He had to pretend to emulate The Elite to show us how indisputably wrong their behavior is. And that has all the makings of a great Superman story. It’s not only subtle, intelligent, and sends a positive message, but most importantly, it resourcefully employs the unique moral authority Superman has to show us what’s right, cleverly making us empathize with the villain to do so. And if you ask me, that’s beautiful storytelling.

This also deals with the argument that Superman is only re-enforcing their attitude of might-makes-right. His moral superiority doesn’t come from his physical victory, it comes from how he shows them they’re wrong just by behaving more like them than like himself. It’s true that he needs to win the fight for dramatic effect, but compared to some really lame ideas I’ve seen for what people think would have been better endings, I think Kelly handled it in the best possible way, doing something unexpected, gripping and meaningful without betraying the character. When your best criticism of a Superman book is that Superman wins in the end, you need to go back to the drawing board.

“It’s wrong-headed because it’s rooted in the belief that Superman’s morality needs to be defended.”

I guess the main problem with this argument is the idea that the book is really a defense of Superman. I don’t think of it that way. I think of it more as simply providing a much less cynical, more optimistic alternative to the kinds of superheroes that were popular at the time of the book’s release. It’s true that The Elite is clearly analogous to The Authority, Warren Ellis’s more “grown up” and more morally ambivalent version of the Justice League. People have tried to argue that it’s unfair because The Elite are much more unsympathetic than The Authority, which I think is absolute idiocy.

Warren Ellis (maybe the only guy alive who can wear a fedora and still be taken seriously) doesn’t like superheroes. In many ways, The Authority is about deliberately awful people, I suspect because as far as Ellis is concerned, that’s what superheroes would be like in real life. They are trying to make the world a better place, and they are in many respects actually likeable characters, but they are only really the good guys because there are other folks out there who are even worse. The Elite kills a few supervillains; The Authority has actually deliberately murdered whole countries, both excusing their actions as being for the greater good. But that’s really what Kelly’s problem with The Authority as a Justice League allegory seems to be- yes, maybe a more “realistic” Superman would be a murderous bastard who forces us to be better people instead of simply leading by example, and maybe in the real world that approach would do the most good- but Superman isn’t that way, and there are good reasons for that. Kelly’s point isn’t that The Authority is a bad or amoral book. His point is just that as a myth, it’s a perversion of Superman, using a pastiche of him to illustrate the abuse of great power rather than the responsible use of it. To be fair, though, I plan on re-reading The Authority soon, and my feelings on this may change after having a refreshed look at it, but even in Ellis’s own words, The Authority are not at all meant to be seen as real heroes.

Now, it’s entirely possible that Kelly made the same mistake in misinterpreting Ellis’s intent and thought The Authority were actually supposed to be heroes. And criticizing the story for that over-simplification of Ellis’s position isn’t unreasonable, I just think it works much better when you look beyond that possibility and consider that maybe Kelly is only pointing out that superheroes really aren’t all that bad.

I was about the age of the kids Superman watches in the playground when the comic came out, half a year before 9/11. Honestly, that scene rang extremely true to me because when I was a kid that was exactly what all my friends thought of Superman. A lot of that came from me being the kid reading Silver Age comics while (at the risk of sounding like a certain cranky old racist on Fox News) my friends were listening to gangsta rap about selling drugs, killing people and raping women. In elementary school.

As you can imagine, a guy in a red cape and underpants saving lives didn’t really grab them (unless it was Captain Underpants, but, y’know, different thing).

Somewhere down the line, it has become unfashionable for characters to be kind, decent people who really just want to make the world a better place, and this is one of the first comics I can think of that seemed to actively be fighting to resist this trend. Action Comics #775 wasn’t the first or last comic to do this, but it was one of the most effective. A nation’s myths reflect its values, and if America’s heroes are a bunch of sociopathic bastards, what does that make us? Perhaps there are some people who would rather not admit it, but that era of comics, that era in our culture in general, intentionally or not, did make us rather desensitized to the cruelty and brutality of many of its so-called heroes, and we did need to be reminded that killing is wrong and that hope isn’t silly. Looking at many of the comics I see on the shelves these days, we still do.

“The public’s almost immediate shift of support from Superman to The Elite is unrealistic.”

There’s no long-winded refutation for this, all you have to do is look at the real world mere months after this book was released and 9/11 happened. Suddenly the country was clamoring for vengeance and by May of 2003, 80% of the country thought bombing and invading Iraq was justified, whether or not the evidence of WMDs was conclusive, Gallup polls confirming that the majority of Americans thought that Iraq had something to do with 9/11. This wasn't a case of Superman having to save us from a great tragedy- all we had to do to save lives ourselves was not fucking kill anybody, and we couldn't manage that. A public that feels threatened will quickly turn to violence and hate if they lack a powerful example to set them straight. Unfortunately, instead of Superman, we had only a handful of liberal radio and television programs that weren't able to turn back the tide of propaganda and fear, and we all know of the result.

“Superman’s speech at the end is too smug and preachy.”

I’ll admit, good Superman stories give me a really warm and fuzzy feeling. When I saw Superman rescuing the airplane in Superman Returns and then calmly quipping to the passengers in the cabin after laying it in a baseball field, I was grinning from ear to ear like a fucking idiot. Those little moments of confidence, modesty and nobility make me feel like a kid again, so you can imagine that Superman’s speech at the end was like Christmas for me when I first read it.

There’s nothing very challenging here. Anger, vengeance and spite are wrong, and Superman will never give up on humanity’s capacity to be better. All old territory, powerful in context, but it all relies, in my opinion, on the one line which kinda sums up the whole comic: “Dreams save us. Dreams lift us up and transform us.”

I had to read the story a few times before I got the meaning of that, but in my own interpretation, yes, Superman has his own dream, but more importantly, Superman is our dream. That’s why we need him: he’s not realistic. He’s the Man of Tomorrow, a guy who wields his unparalleled power with decency and grace humanity as a whole hasn’t achieved yet. We can’t have a Superman in real life at the moment, and we probably never will, but we can try our best to live up to his example. We did create him; all of his ideals are ones we gave him because we instinctively know they’re good and right. We all know we should be kind, we all know we should help the helpless and try to empathize with each other and use our power thoughtfully and without ill will, we just have a hard time doing that in the real world sometimes.

Superheroes are not and could not be real, and frankly I’m not especially concerned about the likelihood that maybe if they were, they’d be fucking pricks. I don’t pine for superheroes to start saving the world here in reality; I pine for us to start acting more like them. For all the potential Ellis’s heroes have as characters and vehicles for great stories and exploring the idea they set forth, The Authority can never be something anybody tries to live up to- and that’s not how they were intended, but for that reason it seems wrong to consider them a suitable replacement for “20^th century” superheroes, as they may have been at the time.

Justice League United #0

We really don’t need another Justice League. I’m just saying, come up with some new names already. We’ve got the Justice League which is basically analogous to what used to be the Justice League of America, we’ve got the Justice League of America, we’ve got Justice League Dark, and now, apparently, we have Justice League United. Remember when we just had the JLA and the JSA and the world made sense? It seems like creating new Justice Leagues is as big a New 52 trope as making characters more sexually appealing, getting rid of superhero trunks, and destroying Gotham. Also, man, it sucks that what used to be the JLA is just “JL” now. It just sounds so incomplete.

            But apart from the name, I have to say, I liked this book. The characters work well together, but I have to say it’s depressing reading the Martian Manhunter interacting with a bunch of b-list characters. That’s not to knock those characters, but it makes me miss the pitch perfect dynamic Grant Morrison’s JLA had for so many years, which is missing now, largely, because of J’onn’s absence (and Geoff Johns’ often terrible dialogue, but that’s another story). Nonetheless, he fits well here with Stargirl, Green Arrow, Animal Man, and Adam Strange. Eventually they’re going to stick in Supergirl and a new character Lemire created for the book, a Moose Cree teenager named Miiyahbin who we currently know very little about. It’s pretty awesome actually- Lemire inserted at the end of the book drawings of superheroes by kids he met from the same First Nations community the character is from- it’s the kind of intimacy between creator and audience that, in some ways, DC has been lacking lately. The idea of a North American Indian character, female no less, that isn’t a well-intentioned but confused, racist stereotype is pretty appealing. Good sign that we’re making some progress since, say, Hard Traveling Heroes. I hope I enjoy where Lemire goes with her.

            One thing I notice about this line up is a lack of brooding douchebags. Nobody in this book really grabbed me yet, but I still generally liked everybody. In a way that’s a bit problematic, though. I mean, if the best conflict we have in the story so far is Green Arrow poking fun at Animal Man’s name (which was entertaining, by the way), we’re gonna get bored sooner or later. It’s hard to judge these things from the first issue, and wherever it goes, I can almost guarantee it will be better than the “real” Justice League title has been.

            This being the first issue, the plot is a bit scattershot at the moment, but intriguing. All we basically know is that there’s some aliens doing some stuff, like taking species from various worlds hostage, including Adam Strange’s girlfriend and Hawkman. And Lobo seems to be working for them. Also, they’ve got an underground base in the middle of the woods in Ontario. Go figure.

            The art is a somewhat mixed bag. It’s all technically very competent, but much of it feels like a really talented art team scared to flex their muscles. There are a few expressionistic color choices by Marcelo Maiolo that worked beautifully with Mike McKone’s linework, but everything stays quietly contained in its panels, all framed a safe distance away, and things sometimes feel rather static. It’s a problem I’ve had with a lot of DC’s artwork lately that just hasn’t had the force and scope of a Bryan Hitch, or Darick Robertson, or Steve Dillon. I know few people can ever reasonably expect to reach the heights of artists like that, but it’s a certain feeling of texture and subtle additions that make the world the book inhabits that much more engrossing, until you feel as if you can smell it and touch it, and find yourself reacting to new sights the way the characters do. An art team that can’t achieve that limits the script where others will let it go any place the creative team can possibly imagine taking it, and unfortunately this book at least presently suffers from that problem.

Catwoman #30 Review

             Wowza, that was painful.

            If you’ve read any of Ann Nocenti’s Catwoman, you know this book could not possibly be good. You aren’t reading this to see if this book is good or not. You’re reading this because you hate this book and want to stew in rage about it with me.

            There are a lot of really terrible comics out there. God knows. But in maybe 15 years of reading comic books, I don’t think I’ve read anything that quite approaches Ann Nocenti’s Catwoman. It’s hard to put into words, without over-extending my vocabulary, exactly how terrible this book is, and how sad it is that DC cares so little about this wonderful character that they’ve put her in the hands of a writer I wouldn’t trust to pen a grocery list.

            I just . . . I don’t know where to start. So, Nocenti’s been running with the New 52 doctrine that Selina Kyle isn’t a confident, intelligent, complex woman who’s just trying to get by, and is dealing with certain very real emotional traumas. Nope, now she’s actually an incredibly insecure crazy cat lady who has been variously portrayed as a nymphomaniac, a kleptomaniac, and now she apparently suffers from a split personality disorder. Looking at the kind of dialogue and inner monologue Nocenti gives her, she may also suffer from early onset dementia. Compared to her, John Ostrander’s Catwoman had the dry wit of a Lauren Bacall part. Oh, and they also made her boobs bigger. A lot bigger. That’s literally all they changed about her appearance.

            Look, I don’t hold mental illness against anybody. I’ve seen how it can effect people all throughout my life, people I love and people I admire. I’ve always considered Selina an emotionally damaged character, and I’ve enjoyed seeing her deal with those things over the years a great deal, on the occasions it was handled well (I don’t think it’s ever been handled quite this badly). But she also used to be fucking cool. Now she not only has way more problems, with no real explanation as to why she has them, they either go completely unaddressed or Selina deals with them with all the subtlety and conviction of a thirteen year old who just got dumped.

I have nothing to say about the plot of this comic, so I’ll just give you a synopsis. Spoiler alert, I guess.

So in the beginning of this issue, Selina burns her Catwoman costume, declaring she’ll never give in to Catwoman’s “wild ways” again, insisting that she and Catwoman are actually two separate people. Some guy propositions her, thinking she’s a prostitute. Why? Absolutely no discernible reason; in fact, it’s one of the rare times in the series where she’s dressed rather modestly. Then she goes to a gym and punches a bag for a while, and then sees the most poorly named and under-developed love interest in comics, Trip Winters. They don’t say anything of importance to each other or anything, Nocenti just wanted an opportunity to remind us that this guy exists and for Selina to tell us that she liked him (again, just cause), but doesn’t seem to see why she should use it as a chance to, I dunno, give him a personality or anything. Selina buys a bunch of cats, then goes home and finds out Trip slipped a puzzlebox into her bag and . . . Jesus fucking Christ. Look, you don’t want to read this any more than I want to write it, so we’ll just sum it up: Selina became a suicide hotline operator (which is odd because we’ve already established that she has a lot of problems of her own that she hasn’t really worked on at all yet) but she’s really bad at it, Roulette challenges Selina to a thief competition to prove she’s a better thief than Roulette and also to save the lives of a bunch of kids, but then finds out nobody actually kidnapped any kids. She decides to do the competition anyway and becomes Catwoman again because she’s really desperate to prove she’s the best thief there is, apparently. She goes to the thing and they all fight. Also, Trip Winters is apparently Roulette’s boyfriend. Mirror Master’s there, but all his dialogue is awful like everybody else’s. Selina gets pushed into the mirror world, and then there’s a bunch of god awful exposition and the issue mercifully ends.

            Oh, and Pat Oliffe’s art is fine. Just fine. I’m not enthusiastic about it, but maybe I would like it better if it wasn’t backed by such a god awful script, but even then it’s at best okay, bringing nothing new or interesting to the table. But I can’t really blame Pat Oliffe for that: if I was penciling this book, I wouldn’t put any extra effort into it either. Hell, I don’t even like the cover by Terry and Rachel Dodson because I know what a book with Catwoman on the cover means now.

            This is one of those books you read because it’s awful and it makes you angry and you like being angry. It’s an insult to the character it depicts, it’s an insult to the world it inhabits, and in a lot of ways it’s the artform at its worst. It's probably for the best if you just don't give in to the temptation. 

Secret Origins #1 Review

Ah, what to say about a book like this? A book retelling three stories we’ve already seen told and re-told, one of which is a re-telling of a re-telling and one of which nobody really liked in the first place. The book initially seems superfluous to say the least, but at least to some extent I’d say it actually manages to make itself worthwhile.

Superman by Greg Pak, Lee Weeks, Sandra Hope, Dave McCaig and John J. Hill

Greg Pak is currently one of my favorite writers at DC, easy, and it was a damn good decision to give him this book instead of one of the other Superman writers. I can see this being an idiotic, probably depressing mess in Scott Lobdell’s hands and just rather ho-hum in Charles Soule’s. But Pak gives it the same human feeling you get from his work on Action Comics. For the first time I can remember, Jor-El and Lara actually seem like real people, for instance. His affection for the mythos and unapologetically bright and optimistic portrayal of the character are all here, but that alone would have done little to separate it from, for instance, Mark Waid’s version of the origin from Superman: Birthright. Instead Pak does something incredibly obvious that should have been done ages ago; he simply tells the story from the perspective of Kal/Clark’s respective mothers as opposed to his fathers. The result is a version of the origin that feels much more intimate and loving than those we’ve seen in the past, and which makes a clear effort to distance itself from the self-absorbed bully in a red cape we saw in the first few years of the New 52 to the genuinely admirable, likable Superman Pak’s been writing. It’s a hard trick, to tell a story that is 100% re-hashed and yet still make it feel meaningful, but Pak actually manages to justify this story’s existence by successfully covering new territory. The art is less remarkable, mostly because there really isn’t anything new to draw here, but from an artistic perspective, blowing up a planet isn’t easy, and Weeks certainly sells that. The art team is particularly solid on the last few pages which feature a return to Jeans-and-a-T-Shirt Superboy, and for whatever reason the colors and expressions on that page are very endearing to me. It kind of feels reminiscent of the lightly sepia-toned Metropolis of Superman Returns, a film I loved largely for its visual elegance.

The Long Year by Kyle Higgins, Doug Mahnke, Keith Champagne & Christian Alamy, John Kalisz, and Carlos M. Mangual

Kyle Higgins, of course, has already written one version of this story in Nightwing #0, but given the new developments with Dick’s character (apparently he’s now going to become a gun wielding secret agent), I suppose it feels appropriate to get stories about Dick as we’ve known and loved him for the better part of a century while we still can. Instead of going on the rage-fueled rant about that choice I want to go on, though, we’ll just talk about this story.

Basically the changes Higgins has made from his first version of this story are

1) Dick doesn’t figure out who Batman is through some inexplicable ability to analyze body language, Batman just shows him.

2) Bruce isn’t a total prick

Higgins made the wise decision here of giving Bruce and Dick a decidedly friendly relationship. Frankly, I’m sick of seeing versions of this story where Bruce begrudgingly allows Dick to become Robin and is a jerk to him the whole way throughout. It’s one of the many crude ways in which writers have tried to “mature” this story and get over how absurd it is that Bruce would put a kid in mortal danger to help him fight crime, or, truthfully, just to try and make it seem less gay. On the other hand, Frank Miller decided to explain it by just making Batman a complete lunatic in general, which, in my opinion, had very mixed results. Nonetheless, I think it’s much more poetic when Bruce realizes that Dick needs to fight crime just like he does, and simply tries to help him channel his sadness and motivation in a positive way. This time around, Higgins has Bruce actually acting as the father figure he never had when he was figuring out how to do the whole crime fighting thing, and it’s really refreshing. I found most of his work on Nightwing to really be neither here nor there, but this story actually felt as if Higgins was trying to say something about the character, as opposed to the episodic “villain of the week” feel we got from Nightwing.

Doug Mahnke’s art is perfectly serviceable, but honestly it feels a bit phoned in for an artist of his caliber. The story feels like it would be no better or worse if somebody else drew it, though I did find myself spending a rather long time staring at a particular splash page.

I wish we could have an outlet for seeing more stories with Dick as Robin. Seeing them together in a comic always gives me a good feeling; it seems like a waste to always brush over those years, and it makes interactions between Bruce and Dick in the New 52 always feel a little empty because we haven’t seen the real bonding years of their friendship on a regular basis since the early ‘80s. Given that it’s kinda one of the most historic and interesting relationships in comic book history, it would be nice if they tried milking it a little bit.

Daughter of the House of El by Tony Bedard, Paulo Siqueria, Hi-Fi, and Travis Lanham

Boy, it must kind of suck to be told you’re slated to write Supergirl. When Kara Zor-El was introduced in Superman/Batman by Jeph Loeb and the late Michael Turner, I was a kid. I’m leery of any book that introduces a female character by having her wandering around a city naked, but I actually had a blast with it. Loeb (a writer I am definitely not always a fan of) managed to make Kara seem like a cool character. There were a few simple things that did it. One, instead of making her a needlessly emotionally conflicted character who’s just pissed off al the time and doesn’t actually like humanity very much, he made Kara excited to see the world humans lived in, and reading her put you in a good mood. Two, he didn’t bother with her origin and just started with her showing up on earth, because frankly, this is just a terrible origin. As a bonus, he made her mentor more Wonder Woman than Superman, which makes a lot of sense and was an easy way to get her out of Superman’s shadow a bit without having to mess with her characterization.

No matter how you do it, Supergirl is a supporting character. That’s just how it is. Such characters have a very hard time developing a sense of importance on their own. Dick Grayson pulled it off because his origin was simple and moving. Krypto pulled it off by being a super-powered dog in a cape, and that’s fucking awesome. Supergirl pulled it off by simply being what she is: a female version of Superman. Now I know that sounds shallow, and maybe in abstract it is, but let’s face it: if you read comics, the S stands for something, and all these attempts to deny it (making Superboy a homicidal maniac, washing out the colors of Superman’s costume so much it looks gray and purple, giving Scott Lobdell the Superman title) are doomed to fail because that S is fucking incorruptible and any attempt to try to make it look dark and brooding is going to look far sillier than, say, George Reeves protecting the Mole Men from xenophobic farmers.

That’s a roundabout way of saying that this story was really doomed to fail. Krypton is boring and Kara’s family life is thoroughly unmoving. Where Superman’s origin is simple, direct and powerfully symbolic, Kara’s requires a lot of explanation and, for absolutely no reason, a violent marital spat, I guess just to make it more edgy. Kara’s existential issues feel totally forced into the story to give it the illusion of depth. But nonetheless, I actually enjoy a lot of things about this, and as flawed as the concept is, Bedard does a decent job of making it work in the latter half. I can see why she feels as she does. Earth is a complicated place, unlike Krypton, where a superhero saving lives can start up an international incident. I can see why that would be frustrating, but where Superman is able to transcend those boundaries, Kara just kinda sputters. She’s going through culture shock, basically, and that’s a perfectly valid concept to use, but it seems to be about all they’ve got for this character to deal with.

Even though the writing and art are for the most part perfectly competent, as an introduction to the New 52 Supergirl, I still don’t care about her any more than I did when I picked up the book.

The only other thing I think is worth mentioning about this book is Lee Bermejo's cover. Lee Bermejo did it. That get the point across?

Batman #30 Review

When Frank Miller’s nonsensical, racist, ugly, generally god awful Holy Terror was released, I remember a few things. First, I remember deciding that the book made an excellent cutting board, and it’s been useful in that capacity for a while now. I also remember, in Miller’s interviews about the book, how he initially wanted it to be a Batman book. Then he “decided” (or “was told by DC”) that it couldn’t be a Batman book because (in so many words) “Batman fights Two-Face. Batman fights the Riddler. Batman doesn’t fight terrorism.”

Well, Scott Snyder has proven that the Riddler makes an excellent terrorist, thank you very much. Hell, Zero Year is, in many ways, the book Miller would have written if he had a grasp of plot, could still draw, and wasn’t an islamophobic maniac who hadn’t had a new idea in at least fifteen years.

I bring all this up because, until this issue, I didn’t really buy the idea Snyder was talking about of changing Batman’s targets from crime bosses and urban decay to our modern anxieties, like climate change, failing economies, chronically corrupt governments living on bribes and conducting mass surveillance, and the big boogeyman of my generation, terrorism. It’s hard to buy into that, given that terrorism has become the official government codeword for “let us do whatever we want to your rights” even though terrorism is nowhere near the biggest threat we, as a people, face. Not even in the top 10. But then I realized that this idea had already been sold to me.

The Dark Knight trilogy handled it very well. One of the few ideas I liked about Batman Begins (it was by far my least favorite of the three) was that of having Bruce Wayne trained by terrorists and then devoting his career, really, to fighting terrorism. Oh, he certainly fights organized crime in those films, but it’s almost an afterthought, the old guard that doesn’t really present much of a threat in the 21^st century. Ra’s Al Ghul, Joker, and Bane are terrorists, in every sense. They aren’t only interested in wanton destruction, although they certainly employ it. What they’re really after is to destroy Gotham’s soul; it’s the true essence of terrorism. Batman even responds to the Joker by initiating domestic sonar surveillance on the entire city without its knowledge.

Since those movies, though, nobody seems to have really ran with the concept. People are so used to the kind of Batman we were given in Batman: Year One (which is undeniably a classic, even though I just spent two paragraphs trashing Frank Miller) that it’s a bit difficult to see how that works. And what about those other real world anxieties? I can see Batman fighting corrupt politicians, that’s some fertile ground. But how does he fight climate change? Team up with Captain Planet?

It’s the kind of brand new, challenging, scary idea only a writer like Snyder could think up, let alone find a way to pull off. Snyder’s a very soft spoken, almost painfully modest guy (that silly twitter feud with Rob Liefeld notwithstanding), but as a writer, even if you don’t like his work, you have to admit he’s got balls of steel. Saying “I’m going to change Batman’s whole world, give him a whole new set of problems nobody in the real world knows how to deal with” and then actually doing it, is impressive. And somehow, he manages to make the idea of Batman fighting domestic surveillance, terrorism and climate change at the same time work. Using the fucking Riddler.

Eat that, Frank.

I will say it seems a bit hard to believe that Bruce has been in bed for like six months yet needs no physical therapy to get back on his feet whatsoever. I know in a plot as unabashedly absurd as this, that shouldn’t bother me, but the particular implausibility of that somehow stuck with me. Other than that, I can’t think of anything to hold against this book. So there’s my feeble attempt at criticism, for what it’s worth.

Oh, but the withering praise is not over yet! The art is as fantastic as usual, though the visual team couldn’t conceivably be expected to reach the heights they did in Batman #29 again in what is largely a catch-up issue. They are given some pretty big sets to sculpt in this issue, though, and Capullo’s pencils introduce the destroyed, flooded and overgrown Gotham splendidly. They also manage to totally sell the gloriously idiotic idea of knocking over a building to create a domino effect that’ll knock down a bunch of other buildings. On my first read through, it didn’t even occur to me that I should think there was anything odd about that. Probably my favorite aspect of the art, which in this particular issue somewhat surpasses Capullo and Miki’s lines, though, is the colors. The colors in Zero Year are beyond anything else in the New 52, unquestionably. Completely bucking the trend of monochromatic, washed out, overly filtered colors that have become the unfortunate standard in many books, FCO Plascencia uses a fearlessly rich, bright palette. It looks more like something out of the ‘80s, particularly reminding me of Watchmen or a Heavy Metal story with its liberal use of purple and yellow. Hopefully other creators take a hint and start using more bright colors like this. I remember seeing an interview with Joe Kubert before his death where he complained about how the industry standard in computer coloring has made everything look the same. Comparing the rest of DC to Zero Year in general shows just how true this is, and it goes a large way towards explaining why the current standards in comic art are so boring and unimpressive to me. Yes, DC, color is a nice thing to put in your books. Use more of it.

As a whole, Batman #30 is probably not the best installment of Zero Year, lacking the poetry and sense of grandeur #29 had, but it does a great job of explaining Riddler’s motives (or at least his excuses), catching us up to the beginning of Snyder’s third act, and maintaining the standard of gorgeous art this team is known for.