Tom King's Batman: It's probably just me...
Yes, it’s probably just me.
Everyone else I read or listen to or talk to is ga-ga about Tom King’s Batman.
Me? Sorta. Kinda. Ehhh.
It’s probably just me. I’m just tired of the assumption that Batman is only interesting if he’s on the couch, literally or figuratively.
Of course, it’s not just King. This has been going on now for a very very long time, for several meta-arcs, Grant Morrison’s and Scott Snyder’s and now King’s, this “He So Crazy feat. Batman.” It reminds me more than a bit of the dismal dark decade of Daredevil, until Mark Waid threw back the curtains and let the sunshine in.*
Any chance of Waid coming on next? Not likely.
It’s not that King is a bad writer; no, he’s an excellent writer. He’s an extraordinary writer. The way he plays back-and-forth with flashbacks is wonderful. His dialogue is sharp and clever, without dissembling into Aaron-Sorkin-too-smart-to-be-real kitsch. The Clark-Bruce-Lois-Selina interplay in #37 was one of the most fun books I’ve ever read. It was outstanding.
Now, not that all of King’s storytelling is airtight and par excellence. The jury room rant in #53 was, gee, just a little over the top, ya think? If I was on a jury and one of my fellows did that, I wouldn’t change my vote; I’d notify the judge that one of the panelists was clearly unable to discharge his duties and should perhaps get some help, and would he please send in the alternate juror?
And the whole gosh-I-can’t-marry-you deal from Selina in #50 was so...predictable. I mean, is that it? “Batman needs his darkness!” Nobody’s noticed that before, nope. Just turning the emotional dials up to 11 doesn’t make it any more original.
Is it too much to expect, that King would transcend the cliches? Maybe. But that’s the challenge of being as good as King is; he sets a high bar for himself.
But my main gripe is, this Batman that King is writing...this Bruce Wayne? I’ve been reading Batman comics for 50 years (and I know this is the default Old Man Argument) but...
I don’t know this guy.
Blasphemous as it sounds to say, it’s a bit like how I felt watching Batman v Superman, watching those roid-rage guys beat each other near to death.
I couldn’t have cared less.
Because I didn’t know those guys.
I recognized the costumes, but that was about it.
And it’s not like King hasn’t done this before on, oh, I don’t know, every book he’s worked on. Take an established character, and totally reimagine his motivations, his ambitions, his mental stability, and take him two steps beyond recognition. Genius, they cry! Brilliant, they sigh! A whole new level of depth, they genuflect!
But it’s too easy.
He’s hardly playing by the rules of an 80-plus-year-old shared universe, unlike the other writers over which he has been so meteorically elevated. They (or at least, most of them) understood that Bruce Wayne was the sum total of 80 years of writing, or at least the couple-three writers who came before them.
But it seems there are few rules for King; same costume, same supporting characters, that’s about it. Cut loose, bro!
It’s like the new writer who comes on and immediately wants to kill some main characters. Instant dramatic effect!** No, no, can’t do that, says editorial. Work with what you’ve got. So instead, King just retcons different people into the costume and proceeds to deconstruct them. Hmm, shame that O’Neil or Moench or Brubaker never thought to ask for permission to do that, eh? ***
But, you say, what about the literal homage he pays to Bruce’s backstory...the intimate, detailed, and emotional revisiting of the alley and the gun, the Zorro movie and the pearls? The Robin flashbacks in #54?
Brilliantly posed, yes. But those are all the more troubling for me, because now those familiar details are supposed to mean something different; something different to me and, more importantly, something different to Bruce. And therefore, X number of years later, we have a different Bruce.
And I don’t know this guy.
There’s a sequence in #51 where Dick takes Bruce’s place, Bat-costume and all, and responds to the Bat-Signal, and Gordon greets him with:
“You're not him.”
Yup, that’s how it feels to me, too.
There’s a wonderful exchange in the middle of Brian DePalma’s Phantom of the Paradise (admittedly one of my all-time favorite movies, just...well, because), where a hot glam singer is brought in to sing some stolen music, and he practices in front of the record exec’s right-hand man/enforcer. The singer is having a little trouble adapting the music to his style, so the enforcer is cynically helpful:
ENFORCER: Drop an octave here, change a line there, make it completely yours. Let's go.
SINGER: Far out! But doesn't that change the whole thing?
ENFORCER: You heard him. Make it yours. As long as it sounds good, nobody’s gonna care what it's about.
SINGER: Is that so?
ENFORCER: Nobody cares what anything’s about...
SINGER: Is that right?
ENFORCER: Who the hell listens to lyrics anyway?
That’s where I’m at with King’s Batman. It’s a fun ride, and I’m enjoying (and buying) it...but do I care? Well, for me it’s really just another Elseworlds tale.
Because I don’t know this guy.
But…
It’s probably just me.
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* In fact, didn’t we just have a “let’s emotionally destroy the Batman” in Snyder’s Death of the Family? Ancient history, I guess.
** Oh wait, damn, that’s what he’s doing in Heroes in Crisis. Oops.
*** Yes, I know, Alan Moore. But that’s a whole ‘nuther post. That’s a whole freakin’ dissertation.
