MYTHCOMICS: BATMAN: THE JOKER WAR (BATMAN 95-100, 2020)

... Joker considers both Batman and himself to be above the common breed of "civilized men," telling him, "Don't talk like you're one of them. You're not, even if you'd like to be. To them, you're just a freak." I guess I'm fortunate Nolan didn't work in any mentions of Ubermenschen, possibly counting on audiences to interpolate the (false) idea that Nietzsche's supermen were simply strong men who ignored society's rules. -- my review of DARK KNIGHT.

 This five-issue arc appeared on the heels of two other arcs in the regular BATMAN comic, both scribed by James Tynion IV. In the first one, CITY OF BANE, Bane kills faithful butler Alfred. In the next, THEIR DARK DESIGNS, several of Batman's familiar rogues -- including the Joker, resurrected from the usual villain-death-- set up the theft of Bruce Wayne's billions, which is the main story-trope of THE JOKER WAR. In addition, during DESIGNS Tynion, in concert with artist Jorge Jimenez, introduced Punchline, the Joker's replacement for his former partner, which debut includes an inevitable "first fight" between Punchline and Harley Quinn. I passed on reading CITY OF BANE, but to put JOKER WAR in perspective I did reread DESIGNS. As on my first reading, I found that it was just a basic Bat-adventure, with the intro of Punchline being that arc's only distinguishing aspect.

WAR is more complex than DESIGNS, for this third Bat-arc partly builds upon, and partly rejects, Christopher Nolan's quasi-Marxist interpretation of Joker. Some might aver that Nolan's above line about Batman and Joker being members of some elect group had already been suggested by assorted comics-writers, not least Frank Miller, but Nolan certainly popularized the concept. On the third page of WAR's first section, Tynion takes Nolan-Joker's sentiments and takes them in a similar direction, as Batman relates to an imaginary Alfred in his head:

I'm the only other person in this world he thinks is alive...

 

At the same time, Nolan-Joker shows utter contempt for money, while Tynion-Joker enjoys having access to the Wayne fortune, even if his main purpose is to use filthy lucre to defeat his destined enemy. That plan revolves around using money to prove Joker's view that Gotham City, the cynosure Batman has devoted his life to protecting, is really more in line with Joker's philosophy than Batman's.

 

One of Joker's opening gambits is to exacerbate the hero's already de-stabilized state of mind by having Punchline expose Batman to a toxin that makes him hallucinate in far more gross ways. Harley Quinn, anxious to keep Joker from turning Gotham into his own crazy town, seeks to aid the crusader, though her ultimate goal is to bring the Clown Prince's reign to a permanent end.

Harley manages to take Batman to a hideout, giving him a counter-agent to the toxin. Under this chemical bombardment, the hero begins to "trip balls" as Harley calls it, which includes another vivid dialogue with Alfred. (Actually, it sounds about the same as the toxin-less hallucination Batman has at the opening of the story.) Imaginary Alfred adds an element that obviously couldn't appear in the Nolanverse, having Alfred claim that Joker "mocks love and family by pulling his acolytes close to him. Making a joke of your family, your relationships. But he'd just as soon put a bullet in their heads if that gave him the upper hand against you." Alfred's subsequent statement about how the number of Joker's victims matters far more to the hero than to Joker, however, sounds largely like a restatement of a similar point in Miller's DARK KNIGHT RETURNS.

While the crusader trips out, Joker and Punchline enjoy the high life, with Joker commenting on his supposed early life (which of course could be a total fantasy on his part). Punchline mentions that some of their men have been slain by a new vigilante, Clownhunter. Though Joker gives the order to have Clownhunter "crucified" as an example, the villain is pleased to see the rise of an avenger who doesn't obey Batman's no-killing principles, because that confirms Joker's view of Gotham as a "kill or be killed" cesspool.

A little later, Punchline invades Harley's hideout and tries to kill both Harley and Batman. In terms of gender politics, Tynion must tread carefully here. Since the original Harley-Joker relationship of the nineties Bat-cartoon was denounced as toxic, Harley can't be seen as merely jealous of Joker's new female partner/girlfriend. For that matter, Punchline makes clear that she's not into Joker for reasons of passion, but because she admires his unswerving devotion to chaos. And Tynion largely succeeds in making the catfight about how each female projects, or has projected, her desires under the empty vessel of the Clown Prince. Tynion even throws in the irony that "there's nothing in the world that [Joker's] ever going to care about more than that stupid bat."

Back in Batman's seething brain, Alfred adds a fairly original wrinkle, stating that "Batman is a child's dream, that you can travel the world and learn every possible way to save everyone"-- but also adding that the dream is important for that very reason. Earlier Punchline has already claimed that Batman, not his kid-associates, is the one who gives his tools their childish names, and a recovering Batman indirectly confirms Punchline's hunch in a funny scene with Harley. 

Not too surprisingly, Joker too echoes the insight about a "child's fantasy," though he calls it "selfish and strange" because Batman has sought to alter Gotham from its true corrupt nature. But Batman has one advantage: a whole Bat-family invested in his dream, and with the help of that family Batman turns the tide against Joker's army and recovers the Wayne fortune. Bat and Clown meet at Ace Chemical, the place where most versions of Joker were clown-ified, and though the result of this never-ending battle is inevitable, Tynion concocts a reasonably original climax. 

Harley shows up while both combatants are on their last legs. She attaches one bomb to the tied-up Joker and another to herself, then runs away, forcing Batman to choose to save her life or Joker's. Batman makes the right choice, though naturally the villain escapes via his own resources, though not without a little humiliation. An epilogue shows Batman perform an "intervention" for the vigilante Clownhunter, trying to persuade him to give up his unholy fixation on killing.

JOKER WAR, though it's a better than average Bat-myth, is certainly no classic. There are too many segues in which Batman encounters zombies of some sort, both imaginary and brought about through some obscure Joker-science, and the Alfred-delusions would have made more sense if all of them had been triggered by the toxins. (There's a loose excuse that even before getting dosed, Batman was injured in the previous arc, but it's not a convincing reason for his fantasies.) There's a nothing subplot about Gotham's other villains trying to profit from the chaos, but it just takes up space. To my eye Jimenez resembles a more rough-hewn version of Jim Lee's work in the celebrated HUSH storyline, giving maximum moxie to even minor villains and to briefly seen members of the Bat-family. 

PHASED AND INTERFUSED PT. 2

 In Part 1 of this essay-series, I cited my definition for "phase shift:"

"phase shift" is my term for the process by which a function in literature-- which parallels my term "icon"-- shifts from one state of being (within the "horizontal" world of its purely fictional existence) to another state of being.

 Simply as a random choice I cited one of the phase shifts I had identified in a recent essay, but as I said at the essay's conclusion, I could have chosen many others.

My first *sustained* investigations into "crossover-ology" began with Part 1 of the series A CONVOCATION OF CROSSOVERS. The examples in the essay concerned how icons with stature, such as Robin Hood and Fu Manchu shifted into icons of charisma when they were "demoted" into subordinate icons, which was the opposite type of shift discussed in PHASED PART 1. In this essay, I'll deal with a different type of phase shift.

GLAD TO MEET YOU FOR THE FIRST TIME AGAIN in June 2023 introduced the overall concept of iconic bonding. For my example of this literary process, I drew distinctions between the status of Batman and Robin during the thirty years that they were a bonded ensemble, and all the years afterward, when Robin ceased to be Batman's partner. According to some critical evaluations, DC ended the partnership for purely pecuniary reasons. Following the cancellation of the BATMAN teleseries in 1968, sales for BATMAN comics fell precipitously, and DC decided that the presence of Robin in the series reinforced the feature's association with the now unpopular concept of camp. For the first time Robin had solo adventures of his own that were not implicated with the Batman-and-Robin series, as well as entering into ensembles with both Batgirl and the 1970s incarnation of the Teen Titans. (The character had also been with the 1960s incarnation of that super-group, but that iconic bond had been qualitatively secondary to the better-known Batman-and-Robin ensemble.) 

All of the 1970s alterations to Robin's status should be viewed as a minor phase shift, akin to any other time a character in an ongoing partnership gets a "spin-off." However, a different flavor of phase shift transpires in TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #44 (1984), which I previously reviewed here as part of the JUDAS CONTRACT continuity. For four years Robin had remained in the ensemble of the successful 1980s TITANS franchise, which had become his dominant source of ongoing stature.

 During that time DC also reversed its course on having a Robin in the BATMAN franchise, and since Dick Grayson already had a successful berth in TITANS, the company chose to bring forth a new Robin, Jason Todd, introduced about a year before in BATMAN #357. For whatever reasons, it took roughly a year for DC staff to decide that Dick Grayson would divest himself of the Robin identity for good, and take on a new superhero name, Nightwing.

This is a phase shift of a different nature than the spin-off status of Solo-Robin. Over time DC raconteurs had to evolve a new literary identity for Dick Grayson As Nightwing, even though textually he was the exact same person as Dick Grayson As Robin. This type of phase shift relates not to stature or charisma, but to what I will call the "narrative texture" of a character; of the set of expectations that the audience brings to a given text, separating one persona assumed by Character A from another persona assumed by Character A. By this same logic, I deem DC's Superboy to be a distinct persona from DC's Superman-- but that's a discussion for another time.

MYTHCOMICS: BETTER THAN BATMAN (2016)

Note: BETTER THAN BATMAN is culled from seven NIGHTWING stories that did not appear in a single run of issues. I'm reviewing the TPB collected edition. This NIGHTWING series followed on the heels of a previous serial, GRAYSON: AGENT OF SPYRAL, in which Dick Grayson briefly gave up his superhero ID to work undercover with the titular spy-outfit. Tim Seeley, writer of BETTER, was one of the collaborators on the GRAYSON series.

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Prior to Stan Lee's application of soap-operatic continuity to the medium of comic books, ongoing serials-- such as DC's "Batman"--observed an implied status quo. On occasion the hero might discover some unknown facet of his personal history, like the 1956 tale "The First Batman," wherein the Caped Crusader learned that his father once wore a costume like his own. The ascendancy of Marvel Comics made it difficult for a writer to toss out such "big revelation" stories that failed to affect the series as a whole.

Soap operas depend on uncovering secrets. It was relatively easy in the sixties and seventies to reveal, say, that Captain America's girlfriend from World War II was still alive. However, by the 21st century, writers had to stretch credulity to disclose brave new enigmas. For the 2002-03 Bat-series HUSH, Jeph Loeb concocted the notion of "Bruce Wayne's best childhood friend," who, rather predictably, turned to be something of Bruce's "evil double." For the 2011 COURT OF OWLS storyline, Scott Snyder posited that for centuries Gotham City had been ruled by a secret society of criminal financiers, whose existence went undetected by Batman for the entirety of his career, up until the "Court" revelations.

BETTER THAN BATMAN has a specific linkage of COURT OF OWLS, wherein it's disclosed that at one point the evil Owls had planned to abduct the orphaned Dick Grayson, in order to make him one of their assassins. Bruce Wayne's adoption of Grayson inadvertently foiled that scheme. Grayson
-- now a twenty-something superhero who gave up the Robin-identity to take the name "Nightwing"-- took this revelation personally. He became an agent of Spyral as part of a long-range plan to infiltrate and undermine the international forces of the Court. However, at the start of BETTER THAN BATMAN, he's forsworn his role as a secret agent and has resumed his Nightwing identity. The Owls are aware of his double identity, as well as that of Batman, but the arrogant aristocrats believe that they've succeeded in blackmailing the former Boy Wonder into their service. In order to monitor Nightwing more closely, they assign him a partner, an international criminal named Raptor.

From their first meeting, Raptor-- who also knows the secret identities of both Nightwing and his former Bat-partner-- shows an unusual personal interest in his new ally, telling him that he Nightwing needs "a better mentor," since "everything Batman taught you is wrong." This assertion comes at a time when the off-and-on association between Batman and Nightwing is under some strain. In this Seeley is also following a "series bible" that generally finds Nightwing to be more human and thus more fallible than the monomaniacal Batman. Yet, rather than simply parroting this observation, Seeley attempts to give this psychological myth some sociological support.

The Court of Owls represent "the new plutocracy." continually seeking to advance their goals at the expense of underprivileged people-- including their tendency to swell the ranks of their assassins from low-income families, such as Dick Grayson's family of circus-performers. However, according to Raptor, Bruce Wayne is no better, having adopted a young orphan purely for the purpose of bringing him into the superhero fold, just as the Owls would have made young Dick into an assassin. Raptor does not belong to the "one-percenter" class of the Owls, and he constantly calls attention to this fact in his quasi-Marxist lectures to his new partner: "The three-headed beast of branding, marketing, and advertising is the most powerful human force in the world." Nightwing cooperates with Raptor for the same motive he had during his earlier service to the Owls: seeking to gather more information on both the Owls and their criminal opponents. However, while the Owls had no power to sway Nightwing's sympathies, the hero is somewhat fascinated with Raptor's devil-may-care attitude and his casual defiance of the law. Both Batman and Batgirl (the Barbara Gordon version this time) fear that Raptor could tempt Nightwing into a life of criminality, if only because Dick Grayson grew up with an abiding love of the Robin Hood mythos (hence the origins of the name and costume of "Robin the Boy Wonder.")

More significantly, though, Raptor turns out to be A Person From Nightwing's Past. His identity is a little less contrived than that of the aforementioned villain Hush. Yet the Hush-story is probably an influence on Seeley's tale. Not only is Raptor an acquaintance of Dick Grayson's parents, he's been watching Nightwing's career from a distance for as many years as the hero has existed. In the end, not only is Raptor oriented on taking down his alleged employers the Owls, he also wants to exterminate wealthy philanthropist Bruce Wayne, on the theory that everyone rich deserves death.

On an intellectual level BETTER THAN BATMAN appears to be a refutation of the Marxist politics of Christopher Nolan's revamp of the Batman-origin. However, Seeley's mythopoeic imagination gives this basic notion more affective appeal, by lending far more resonance to the tropes of child-abduction and/or child-murder. One of the side-plots of BETTER includes Nightwing and Raptor venturing into a labyrinth, not unlike the one Scott Snyder introduced in COURT OF OWLS. But Seeley explicitly relates the Owls' maze-fetish to the Classical Greek myth of the minotaur, which is all about-- the sacrifice of the young and innocent.

In the end, the status quo is naturally preserved: Nightwing rejects Raptor's embrace of criminality and remains faithful to his adopted Bat-family. But in keeping with the story's repeated motif of the hero as an acrobatic circus-performer ("Being up in the air is my first love"), Seeley gives his audience what it wants: the illusion of danger, in keeping with an artful balancing-act.