In Defense of Batman & Robin

Okay. I haven't abandoned my Wondy project - I have the next entry more or less ready to go; I've just been too lazy to edit it and collect the necessary images.

But, of course, the big news of the hour is Batman. Christopher Nolan's Dark Knight made over $150 million last weekend, breaking a bunch of records that nobody really cares about because they'll be broken next year by a big-budget Sleepwalker adaptation.

Mark my words: Future summer blockbuster.

It's an amazing movie, as you probably know by now. But I don't really feel like talking about it at the moment; that'll come a couple weeks from now after I've had more time to digest it and maybe see it again and think of something funny to say about it after I get all of the tasteless jokes revolving around Heath Ledger being dead out of my system.

No, I want to take a look at a movie that something like 75% of Batman Begins and Dark Knight reviews go out of their way to trash - 1997's Batman & Robin.

You could add a babydoll dress, Doc Martens, and Lisa freaking Loeb to this poster and it still wouldn't look any more 90's than it already does.

The movie is infamous among fanboys as one of the worst comic-to-film adaptations of all time. Its name is practically synonymous with "bad movie," and there was much rejoicing when Christopher Nolan took the character in a grittier, more down-to-earth direction.

But that's a bunch of bullshit. As is often the case, fanboys are guilty here of taking themselves and the characters they read about way too seriously. Because while it may not be the dark, pseudo-realistic take that Dark Knight is, Batman & Robin is, it its own way, a really awesome movie that's too readily dismissed by just about everybody.

I'm going to say it right now: B&R has some of the finest dialog of any live-action Batman film or TV show ever. Don't believe me?

Poison Ivy: Mammals! A day of reckoning is coming! That's right, the same plants and flowers that saw you crawl from the primordial soup will reclaim the planet. And there will be no-one to protect you!
Gossip Gerty: You must be new in town! In Gotham City, Batman and Robin protect us... even from plants and flowers!

Poison Ivy: There's just something about an anatomically correct rubber suit that puts fire in a girl's lips.
Batman: Why is it that all the beautiful ones are homicidal maniacs? Is it me?

Mr. Freeze: I will blanket the city in endless winter. First Gotham, and then the world!
Poison Ivy: Just what I had in mind. Everything dead on earth, except us. A chance for Mother Nature to start again. Behold - the dawn of a new age! My mutant plants have the strength of the deadliest animals. Once you have frozen mankind, these babies will overrun the globe, and we shall rule them, for we will be the only two people left in the world.
Mr. Freeze: Adam... and Evil!

Mr. Freeze: Allow me to break the ice. My name is Freeze. Learn it well. For it's the chilling sound of your doom!

Mr. Freeze: Ice to see you!

There is nothing not to love about this image.

The last one is noteworthy as a representative of the ten million puns Arnold Schwarzenegger's Mr. Freeze makes about cold stuff throughout the movie.

Visually, the movie is garish. Every single actor hams it up as much as they possibly can, to hilarious results (Uma Thurman's Poison Ivy at one point, when foiled, actually yells out, "Curses!"). The plot of the movie doesn't really make sense (for starter's, Poison Ivy's plan to repopulate the planet might not work so well after Mr. Freeze kills everything on it), nor does it pretend to. And it's all totally awesome.

Actual line: "Men, the most absurd of God's creatures. We give you life... and we can take it away just as easily."

Here's the thing. Fanboys have in the past and still do have to deal with the fact that the objects of their hobby of choice - comics - are looked at by most people as either simple kiddie fare or as a substitute for pornography. How far from the truth that is (and often times, the answer is "not very") isn't really important; lots of fans feel as though they have something to prove in regard to their hobby, which means that they want representations of their favorite characters in other media to be as serious and "adult" as possible. Just look around at how many people said in regards to Batman Begins something along the lines of, "Finally, somebody taking Batman seriously!"

And that's not to say that there's anything wrong with serious, gritty takes on various characters. Dark Knight is awesome, and Heath Ledger's Joker is genius, and blah, blah, blah.

The problem is that there tends to be a huge backlash among certain groups against non-serious adaptations in general, and campy ones in particular.

The completely brilliant 1960's Batman show often falls prey to this, with lots of fans thinking that they're clever and sophisticated for pointing out how absurd the whole thing is.

Likewise, there's a ton of bagging on Batman & Robin for how goofy it was.

Well, no kidding. You know what? Batman is a goofy character. He's campy, flamboyant, and theatrical. Bruce Wayne is a tortured soul, sure, but he's also a guy who comes up with cute names for all of his accessories and ensures that, as much as possible, they resemble tiny bats. His regular foes include a clown, a dominatrix, a chubby dandy with a bird motif, and someone who based a criminal career on the number 2.

Quiz: Are you looking at A) a photo of Robin from Batman & Robin or B) promo art from a new series on Bravo?

It's really not surprising that these ingredients should occasionally turn out something bright, colorful, and silly. In fact, one of Batman's big strengths is how ridiculous and colorful his world is. That's one of the reasons he can change so much and still be recognizable as Batman - if the 1960's Batman show is Batman with the color setting on the TV turned all the way up, then Dark Knight is Batman in black and white. But they're both great.

Batman & Robin isn't as good as the 60's TV series; don't get me wrong. It's not even close to the best modern Batman movie. The 1966 Batman is still the second-best Batman movie ever (right behind Batman: Mask of the Phantasm). But B&R isn't the travesty a lot of people think it is, and certainly doesn't belong in the category of truly awful comic book films like Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four or the 1990 Captain America. The whole thing is goofy, loud, hilarious, and, if you don't go into it with some sort of chip on your shoulder regarding silly takes on a guy who runs around in a cape and beats up the mentally ill, a ton of fun.

Michael Turner

So I'm taking a break in my series of Wondy articles to talk about something considerably more important than comics that ship late and stories that don't go anywhere.

On June 27th, 2008, superstar cartoonist Michael Turner died from complications related to bone cancer, which he had been battling for years. He was thirty-seven years old.

Teen Titans #1

With the possible exception of Jim Lee, Michael Turner was the single most popular cover artist working in comics today. More than Alex Ross. More than J.G. Jones. More than Steve McNiven. Whatever one might think of his style, it was distinct, consistent, and wildly popular.

Turner basically put Top Cow Comics on the map in the mid-90's with Witchblade. In high school, I had a huge poster of his character "Fathom" on my wall. In college, I had pin-ups he did of various characters on my wall and a poster of the cover to Identity Crisis #4 - featuring Wonder Woman - on my door. Which, I suppose, goes to show that one didn't have to be a horny straight teenager to appreciate the way he rendered women.

Witchblade #1

Wondy vs. Dinosaurs.

Identity Crisis #4

There are lots of things that you can say about his art, and I'm not going to pretend that I was always in love with it. But there was always an energy surrounding the things he drew. His drawings looked cool. Take a look at his drawing for the cover of the upcoming Uncanny X-Men #500. He was one of the few artists who could make me feel like I was ten years old again, just in awe of how cool everything looked.

Uncanny X-Men #500

Incidentally, there seems to be some curse surrounding talented cartoonists named "Michael." In 1996, the insanely talented Mike Parobeck died at the age of thirty-one. Just last year, one of my favorite cartoonists in the business - Mike Weiringo - died at forty-four of sudden heart failure. I'll probably cook up entries for both of them in the future, because they really were great talents and the industry is poorer for their absence.


But this is about Turner, so take a look at the sample of his work here. As far as I know, the last interior work he did was at DC on the Superman/Batman storyline that introduced the new Supergirl. Rubbish story, but gorgeous art. Check it out sometime if only to gaze at the amazing pictures.

Supergirl

Who the Hell is Wonder Woman? pt. 3

Wonder-foe Giganta destroying Times Square. Typical redhead. Astute readers might notice her bold use of Donna Troy as a necklace. Hi, Donna!

So. Having read my last entry, you might be thinking, “Hey, this story sounds pretty cool; I wonder what happened next.”

Probably not, but you might be.

At any rate, that’s where I and many other fans were in July of ’06

But I’ll get to that in a second. To really get the full impact of what the Wonder Woman relaunch was like, you’re going to need to know a little about the history of how comic books are made and published.

Okay.

So back in the 1930’s and 40’s…

Hey. Hey.

Don’t you dare click away. I promise this will be interesting. And brief. Sort of.

So originally, when comics consisted of a mixture of new material, reprinted newspaper strips, and short, text-only stories, they were larger in dimension and page-count than they are now. Various books were released on monthly, bi-monthly, and quarterly schedules, and featured a number of stories and features per issue.

The 1940's Wonder Woman, seen here in a rare appearance where she doesn't look as much like she wandered off the set of a weird bondage porn as usual.

Lest you be tempted to raise your fist and shout, “Damn you, Greatest Generation!” for one-upping us technologically-superior slackers once again, let me assure you that almost every single comic published in the “golden age” was total garbage and completely unreadable unless you’re a six-year-old in 1941 shouting “Wuxtry!” on a street corner or something. There were exceptions – Will Eisner’s Spirit, Jack Cole’s Plastic Man, and some Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, and Captain Marvel material – but in general stories were simple, formulaic, and boring, and artwork was extremely crude.
Many is the fan who has gone through DC’s Archives in search of what they think will be some cool, pulp noir adventure stories, and come up with a pile of crudely-drawn nonsense that’s more notable for being full of really embarrassing ethnic caricatures than anything.

Fast forward to the 1960’s. Comics are now smaller in both dimension and page-count.

The 1960's Mod Wonder Woman. Sock it to me? Daddy-O? I have no idea.

At this point, it’s rare that you’re getting multiple features per comic. Early in the “silver age,” you’re still getting multiple stories per comic, but that increasingly changes to stories that take up a whole issue. When Marvel arrives on the scene and comics like Fantastic Four and Amazing Spider-Man become wildly popular, we begin to see *gasp* stories that span multiple issues in order to accommodate larger artwork by superstar artists like Jack Kirby and Steve Ditko, as well as Stan Lee’s ongoing, soap-opera style subplots.

This, incidentally, is when superhero comics really become readable en masse. 60’s comics like Superman, Amazing Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, Thor, Captain America, Iron Man, Daredevil, Flash, and others are still a blast to read now assuming you can get past really dated pop culture references, the fact that everybody in the world is white unless they're the monarch of some African or Asian nation, and everyone treating women with as much respect as they would have given their dog had it learned to talk and started nagging them.

Once we get to the 80’s and 90’s, multiple-issue stories are the norm, and comics have shrunk once again.

Wondy trying out a rarely-used superpower: the ability to look really fucking 80's.

And that brings us to where we are now.

At this point, following a comic series requires you being okay with the fact that, in general, you’re going to have to pick up five or six issues in a row in order to get one complete story. The reason for this is that longer stories are easier to collect into sizeable trade paperbacks that can then be sold at Barnes & Noble.

If the issues are released monthly, that means that it can take half a year to complete one story.

And that’s a fairly big “if.” See, another reason that it takes so many issues to tell a single story now is that the way comics are drawn has changed a lot. Less happens on a given page of a modern comic book than happened on a page drawn in the 1960's.

Top: Superman page from the 60's. Superman changes out of his disguise, flies to the fucking moon, and pulls it out of the sky to plug up a volcano.

Bottom: Astonishing X-Men page from 2008. Wolverine is in a tree for four panels.

Publishing schedules also aren't what they used to be. It was once the case that twelve issues of Amazing Spider-Man (or whatever) were published every year no matter what happened. If the regular writer or artist of the book had trouble getting material in under deadline, there were back-up scripts and fill-in artists ready to go.

That's not so much the case anymore. Both Marvel and DC have become extremely lax when it comes to giving popular creators the time they need to work on a book, even if that means that months go by without an issue seeing print.

One of the most egregious examples here would be All-Star Batman and Robin, the Boy Wonder written by Frank Miller and drawn by Jim Lee. The latter is insanely talented, probably the single most popular comic book artist of the past twenty years, and also incredibly busy working on a number of projects at any given time while running his own publishing imprint, Wildstorm. The former wrote things like Sin City, Daredevil, and Dark Knight Returns.

Actual, unaltered panel from All-Star Batman & Robin, the Boy Wonder.

All-Star Batman and Robin #1 was released in July of '05 and was advertised as a bi-monthly comic. Issue #2 was released in September of '05. So far, so good. Issue #3 was released in December of '05. Slipping a little, but whatever. Then you get to issue #4. Released in May 2006. And that was the only issue released that year. Issue #5 came out in May 2007, and the series has become somewhat more regular since then. However, to date there have only been nine issues of All-Star Batman released since July of '05. And keep in mind that this is one big story that we're buying in instalments that take about ten minutes to read.

While it's cool that comics have way higher standards for their art and higher production values than they had in the past, I tend to think that all of the time spent on getting these really elaborate comics to print negates one of the big advantages of the medium - that it's a visual medium that can be produced fairly rapidly. Having twelve issues of X-Men a year is, I think, a nice alternative to waiting a few years for a movie to be produced.

All this is just to show that following a monthly comic can really suck if you actually care about a storyline enought that you'd like to see it finish while you can still remember how it started.

Unfortunately, Wondy suffered from this problem.

As mentioned in a previous entry, Wondy #1 was released in June of '06 and sold a whopping 132,600 copies. Issue #2 was a few weeks late, arriving in August, and only moved 84,500 copies. Not as great as #1, but still excellent for a Wondy book. It was at this point that they announced that the book would be bi-monthly, so of course it immediately got even slower than that, and issue #3 didn't arrive 'til November of '06 and sold 77,000 copies. Wondy continued on its quarterly schedule with #4 in February of ' 07 at 69,847 copies. At this point the book has lost about half its readers.

We're then told that #5 is being pushed back. Then it's being rescheduled. Then it's being rescheduled indefinitely; when issue #5 is actually released in March of '07, a different creative team is behind the book, and the story that began in issue #1 is still totally unresolved. To finally read the ending of "Who is Wonder Woman?", we had to wait until Wonder Woman Annual #1 in September of '07.

In short, it was over a year before the 5-part storyline was completed. A story comprised of just over a hundred pages took over a year to be released.

The wonky release schedule caused sales to plummet, and fans were up in arms over the whole thing, accusing Heinberg of neglecting his Wondy-duties because of his recently-appointed position of executive producer of Grey's Anatomy.

The whole thing basically turned into a huge debacle, and that's even before we get into the quality of the story itself.

Next time I'll look at how the story actually progressed, and we'll see whether or not it was worth waiting a year to see Diana twirl her way back into our hearts.

Diana fights off her one weakness: bigness.