Disclaimer: Damon and I have actually hashed this whole thing out over in the comments section of his blog, so don’t think there’s actually any beef between us. That title was devised when I first saw his posting and was filled with righteous nerd anger. I’m only sharing this new because A) The discourse is good and healthy & B) This has been sitting in the Nexus queue since I wrote it last week and I’d rather this be my posting for the week instead stirring the shitpot that’s been boiling over all around the net since they killed Ryan Choi...or, y’know, coming up with something else to rant about.
I have to say, the last thing I thought I’d see when I went to check the comments on my Return of Bruce Wayne #1 review was a link to a manifesto. That’s the last thing I ever expect to see when I click a link. Porn? Wouldn’t mind it. A funny video? Why not. A list that’s in the form of slideshow instead of just plain text like they used to do it? I hope not, but I wouldn’t be surprised. A manifesto? Never.
I could tell from the start that my opinion would differ from that of Mr. Beres as soon as I read “This is a difficult comic to write about.” That’s just the thing; it isn’t at all.
Bruce exits the cave after finishing the carvings he began at the end of Final Crisis. He meets the cavemen and they are attacked by Vandal Savage’s tribe. Vandal chooses to wait until morning to kill Bruce who is having a fever dream about the giant bat carcass in front of him. He is saved by Boy. He dresses himself in the Bat-skin. He lays the smack-down on Vandal Savage and then leaps off into the future. Superman, Booster Gold and Green Lantern appear and Superman gives a vague little speech about how Batman returning to the 21st century without their help will doom everyone.
That’s what happened in the issue and that’s what I judged it on. Batman fought cavemen and Superman told us something terrible is going to happen. As far as I’m concerned nothing happened and it bored me. Now if you were expecting me to go into some deep analysis about the parallels between this and Final Crisis (although I think it would be more apt to look at this story as sequel to Batman R.I.P. rather than one to Final Crisis,) or acknowledge the link between Bruce’s night terror about the bat and unraveling mystery of Barbatos which is being revealed in Batman & Robin, well I’m just not going to do that. Why? Well it certainly has nothing to do with me lacking “cognition.”
Thank you, by the way, for tossing in that snide little insult. I’m glad to see that higher level of discourse you want for comics includes petty flaming.
When it boils down, I didn’t write about any of the parallels and symbolism and groundwork because I didn’t give a damn about any of them. And I didn’t give a damn about any of them because the writer didn’t make me give a damn. This issue of The Return of Bruce Wayne might as well have been the latest episode of LOST. Yeah this stuff is important to the story as a whole, but good job presenting it in the most uninteresting way possible. Grant Morrison told us this story was supposed to show us why Batman was cool. I don’t think this part of the story did that and no amount of hypertextuality is going to change the way I feel.
Don’t get me wrong though – just because I don’t think RoBW #1 is a good comic doesn’t mean I think Grant Morrison is telling a bad story, it’s just off to a slow, uninteresting start.
What this really comes down to is the fact that you took a review that I barely took seriously (and only did as a companion to my I Hate You, Bruce Wayne column,) very seriously – enough so to write up a manifesto about the weakness of comics journalism and the stupidity of your fellow comic book fans.
Do you really think comics don’t get a prominent place in our media because of the lack of respectable commentators? Maybe comics would benefit from having a Roger Ebert but that would not change the way they are perceived by the populace at large. Regardless of all the comics out there that can be regarded as pieces of art it’s impossible to deny the negative connotations that the average person thinks of when they hear the words “comic book.” Until a massive shift in consciousness occurs, comics will always be regarded as “Superhero kiddy stuff.”
Even to speak in defense of the genre and tout examples of superhero work which push the boundaries of content and form the bias against it will remain. In the eyes of millions of people, the ideas of someone like Grant Morrison or Warren Ellis will always be worth less because they did not choose a more widely accepted medium such as film, television or even prose. There’s a part of me that thinks one would be more socially well-received if they were the writer of a cartoon rather than of a comic.
What’s really hurting comics in regards to mainstream acceptance is the fact that they still haven’t been fully accepted within academia. I once had a professor who made sure to include a graphic novel on the syllabus of every course she taught. If only every English (or Philosophy, or Art or Psychology or Communications) professor could take the time to explore the passageways of America’s forgotten medium; we’d have a massive shift in the way people view comic books.
Some comics have managed to break into the mainstream but they’re almost always the ones which fall outside superhero genre. Even worse is that often it seems these comics gain mainstream popularity simply because they aren’t about superheroes, as if their existence somehow legitimizes and de-stigmatizes the medium. It’s not a coincidence that once the film version of Persepolis was released Barnes & Nobles started shelving the graphic novel in the memoir section rather than with all the other comics. The slowly spreading mainstream acceptance of comics isn’t happening medium-wide the way I think most of us would hope and instead we’re seeing a polarization based around genre much in the same way it exists in other mainstream entertainment mediums.
Superhero comics are the action movies of the comic book medium. Grant Morrison, god bless him, might as well be writing Rambo V: Rambo In Time, so forgive me if I don’t take that all too seriously. The flaw in your manifesto was that you thought there needed to be a change in the way we write about comics when really it’s that we need to change the way we write about superhero comics.
Personally, I think if we take them too seriously no one else will. They’re just stories and it’s not a big deal if I didn’t like one (or that I didn’t express my dislike pretentiously enough.) I don’t get mad at people who tell me they don’t like The Catcher In The Rye because Holden is too whiny; you should be able to handle me writing a review where I don’t talk about how Grant Morrison did his Grant Morrison thing.
I take a look at a blog like Rikdad’s and I definitely appreciate what that guy is doing and just the fact that he’s willing to sift through so many back-issues to find connections to the current story is commendable.
But I don’t think it’s enough.
It’s not enough for us as fans to only breakdown and discuss the significance of themes/ideas from a comic within just the context of that particular comic and comics that connect to it. Comics are a part of our culture and they carry with them the weight of our history and a shared set of values we’ve built up around the concept of hero.
The Return of Bruce Wayne isn’t just a story about Batman testing himself through time, it’s about Batman being reborn and rebuilt through time. This is a man who we have seen do the impossible yet there are still fans who cry “Batman shouldn’t be time-traveling or fighting aliens! I like him more grounded!” So Grant Morrison is taking him and putting him through an impossible paradigm to give birth to a new Batman – one whose origins lie in Bat-demons, the spite of an evil fallen god and history itself.
What does it mean for superhero comics as a whole, when the only way we can accept a man handling the impossible is by seeing him birthed through it? What does that mean for us as human beings and things we think mankind can handle?
Morrison is trying to change the way we think about Batman so that we can take in all those crazy stories from the 50s that no one ever talks about. This epic sweeping story he’s writing is all about making us willing to accept any and all stories about the Dark Knight.
He’s asking us to take superheroes less seriously.
I’m Jay Galette, and here’s hoping that all you high-strung comic fans out there find some chill pills for what’s ailing you.
