DARK NIGHT: A TRUE BATMAN STORY - Comic Review

Paul Dini is an Emmy-winning writer, perhaps best known for his work on the amazing 'Batman: The Animated Series'. In 1993, he was attacked and beaten while walking home one night. He recently revisited this traumatic event in an original graphic novel that combines his real life with the comic world.

Spoiler Warning - also some NSFW language; uglier stuff than I typically use.

I don't think it's hyperbole to call Paul Dini "legendary". His work in animation goes back decades, and he is responsible for what could arguably be some of the greatest Batman stories ever told. Aside from his work on the animated series, Dini is also responsible creating Harley Quinn, as well as the stories behind the universally acclaimed 'Batman: Arkham' video games. Needless to say, I've got a ton of respect for the guy.

So when I heard about this graphic novel a few months ago, I made a point to pick it up as soon as it was released. Obviously, I never knew about the beating Dini suffered at the hands of two complete strangers - few people did - but the premise was that Dini would revisit this trauma and filter his experiences through the world of Batman.

That said, to call this a Batman story is far too simple. It's not. This is Dini's story, through and through. To say that it's entirely about the attack and its aftermath is also inaccurate. That trauma only serves to highlight a pattern, as Dini's personal traumas begin far earlier than that. And unlike the attack, those traumas were not always caused by someone else.

'Dark Night' is an incredibly honest and unflinching look at a large portion of Dini's life. It is not always sympathetic, and he does not shy away from painting himself with an unflattering brush. He begins by talking about his childhood. He didn't fit in, felt invisible to other children, and was the frequent target of bullies. Awful though it was, Dini seems to admit that he also bought into a sort of romantic self-image as the ostracized and put-upon child. Both painful and indulgent, it was made even more romantic by his growing obsession with comic book characters and his habit of carrying on conversations with them in every day life. Dini carries that habit well into his adulthood.

Frequently engaged in self-pity, Dini recounts awkward relationship stories, confidence issues, flirting with self-harm and substance abuse problems, and all but explicitly reveals a lifelong battle with depression. But he doesn't reveal these struggles to garner sympathy or to be self-deprecating. All of it informs his response to the attack, which takes up the latter half of the book. And every embarassing moment is punctuated by Dini's imagined conversations with Batman and his rogues' gallery.

The centerpiece of the story is, of course, the attack itself. The muggers were never caught, so Dini never knew why he was targeted. Yet, by recounting some of the attackers' words, it almost seems like a gay-bashing attack. They repeatedly call him a 'motherfucking faggot'* (Dini is not gay, btw) and 'bitch' as they beat him with a frightening rage. Stealing his money seems to come secondary to simply trying to hurt him badly. Dini's account of the assault is terrifying. He recounts it in heart-stopping detail, and recounts the horror of realizing that he was about to be murdered.

* 'Dark Night', though a sort-of Batman story, is published through DC's Vertigo imprint, and therefore is absolutely NOT for children. There is strong language and terrifying violence.

Obviously, Dini survived the attack, but definitely the worse for wear. But remember how I said he became accustomed to romantic notions of himself? Despite literally having a broken face, Dini, after making his police report, simply goes home and drinks himself to sleep. It calls to mind various cinematic adventures where the hero takes a beating, but only needs a stiff drink to recover. When he finally goes to the doctor and learns the seriousness of his injuries, (his zygomatic arch was damaged so badly, the bone itself was, as the doctor put it, "powdered") Dini begins to slip even further into depression. And frighteningly, the further he sinks, the more often he's visited by the villains. Especially the Joker, whose insidious ideas come closer to "enabling" than his trademark psychosis.

His drinking worsens, his work suffers, and he struggles with PTSD and agoraphobia. He begins to regularly converse with the Joker, Two-Face, Penguin and Poison Ivy, all of whom encourage and indulge his worsening habits, and darkening thoughts. But while he doesn't bottom out the way a lot of less fortunate alcoholics do, Dini's despair does reach a sort of critical mass that triggers a visit from Batman. And it's these conversations that help him finally pick himself up off the shitheap and begin to not only recover from the attack, but deal with many of his other struggles as well. Batman takes him to task for wallowing, fires up his determination and courage, and inspires Dini to try to put himself back together. The final pages let the reader know the great strides Dini has made since his assault, and though the demons are not entirely gone, he certainly seems to have them under control.

Obviously, the majority of this review is dedicated to Paul Dini, but I do want to briefly point out Eduardo Risso's artwork. I'm not Risso's biggest fan. I've only read a few of the books that he's drawn, and the one that sticks out (because it's a proper Batman story) is his arc with Brian Azzarello - "Broken City". I just...didn't care for his style of art there. All that said, however, his work here is strongly suited to the type of story that is being told. Dini's words are so frequently about emotions and self reflection, that Risso's kind of impressionist style fits it perfectly.

This is an extraordinarily unique graphic novel. It's not always an easy read, with its ugly emotions and sometimes unsympathetic protagonist. It is, at times, so unbelievably personal that it feels illicit. As though you are reading someone's diary - invading their most personal thoughts and fears. But ultimately it's a story of courage. The courage it took to admit these personal shortcomings, and to revisit what must be a painful and fearful memory, is incredible. That alone is worth commending. But the real courage is Dini getting back up after he's been knocked down. The attack he suffered is simultaneously his lowest point, and his catalyst for self-improvement.

What a coincidence that this story was published a few weeks after I wrote my own essay about my personal relationship with Batman and using him as a source of real-life inspiration. And even before I read this book, I would have definitely said that Dini is one of those writers who just "gets" Batman. And he gets how Batman, though he is fictional, can still have an impact on our everyday world. He may not have been able to save him from a mugging, but there is no doubt, the Batman still saved Paul Dini's life.



FINAL SCORE - 9/10

Author Paul Dini

THE DARK KNIGHT STRIKES AGAIN - A Comic Review

There's absolutely no denying that Frank Miller is a talented writer. There was a time when he was Midas, and everything he wrote garnered critical acclaim. "The Dark Knight Returns" is widely regarded as not only one of the greatest Batman tales ever told, but one of the greatest graphic novels ever written. "Batman: Year One" was so beloved that it is essentially regarded as canon in the Bat-lore. But Frank Miller is...a touch inconsistent. If TDKR is a masterpiece, and "Year One" is flawless, is Miller's return to Gotham in "The Dark Knight Strikes Again" as amazing? Well, let's talk about that.

I was 21 years old the first time I tried to read "The Dark Knight Strikes Again". I'd just finished TDKR and Y1 by happenstance earlier in the year, and loved them, so when I'd heard that Frank Miller was writing a new Batman mini-series, I was totally stoked about it. But I had no idea what was going on through much of the first chapter of DK2. I felt lost, as if there was something that had happened between TDKR and DK2 that I had missed. It is a direct sequel but leaps into the future in a way that feels a bit disorienting.

Having faked his death three years prior, Bruce Wayne has re-emerged with his young Bat-army, many of them reformed mutant gangmembers from TDKR. He is also aided by his most recent Robin - Carrie Kelly, who has ditched the yellow cape and now wears a skin tight catsuit, roller blades and goes by "Catgirl". When the Batman first came out of retirement in the previous book, it was not only to combat the growing crime problem in Gotham, but also his own personal demons. The entire book was spent with Bruce Wayne coming to terms with who he is and what he wants. But what he wants in the second book is none too clear. Yes, he is fighting for freedom, but he does it with an almost unappealing arrogance, as if he is fighting only to prove he is right, rather than for true justice.

Cool, but ultimately pointless. 

In addition to Batman and Carrie, there at least a dozen other major characters, all servicing multiple plot lines. Ray Palmer (the Atom) and Barry Allen (the Flash) have been held prisoner until they're released by Batman's forces. Green Arrow comes back into the fold with a mechanical arm. Hal Jordan emerges from a psychadelic netherworld where he exists and an embodiment of pure will. Superman is back, still reeling from the beating Bruce put on him three years prior, and he and Wonder Woman have a surprise for everyone - a child named Lara, who mixes Superman's power with the Amazon's skill and thirst for battle. While there are many forces at work trying to keep the people of not just America, but all of Earth in check, Lex Luthor and Brainiac are the two foremost antagonists of the book.

That is until the "Joker" seems to come back from the dead toward the very end of the story, in a way that seems forced, and unecessary. I'd explain more about it, but I don't want to give away a pretty major spoiler. But...it really doesn't make any sense.

While the original Dark Knight graphic novel had dozens and dozens of panels of talking heads dissecting each and every action of the newly re-emerged Batman, DK2 brings the talking heads back, but without the same satiric punch they brought before. Miller seems to only be interested in exaggerating their absurdity even further than before, with either their over-the-top sexuality (one fictional segment is called News in the Nude) or their relentless fearmongering. The talking heads were once there to poke fun at the way the media examined and re-examined and re-examined ad nauseam the various newsmakers of the world. But DK2 pushes the media to the forefront, making them as ubiquitous a presence as Batman himself, yet he doesn't say anything new or particularly interesting about it.

In addition to sending up the media, Miller does not waste an opportunity to poke the Bush administration with a stick. This is a series that was written in a world that had just been through 9/11, and though the president in Miller's world is a CGI illusion, his words are pretty spot-on for what politics sounded like in those shaky, scary years, where many people were happy to let the politicians do whatever they like as long as they said we were safe. There are even illustrated members of the fake-president's cabinet who bear striking resemblance to Donald Rumsfeld and John Ashcroft.

Slightly exaggerated features here.

But it takes the better part of all three issues (they are not short - all coming in at close to eighty pages long) for the entire picture Miller is painting to become clear. Lex Luthor is trying to control the world, and Batman is trying to stop him. TDKR was a tightly written story with very clear arc throughout. DK2 is a much more meandering story, with frequent bursts of colorful insanity. Much of it plays like an illustrated acid trip.

Like the story itself, Miller's artwork is raw and exaggerated. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't. No one looks realistic in any way, with hunched heads, and giant hands and feet. It's a far cry from Miller's stylized yet still basically traditional work with Klaus Jansen on TDKR, and not nearly as good. While all those spirals and geometric gibberish with trippy colors may look really cool, they don't add anything and frequently break any kind of momentum the story itself is building by making your brain stop and think "What the fuck am I looking at?"

Once you do make it past all the zaniness, Miller's annoying habit of creating his own slang and dialect, and way too much focus on what TV is like in the future, it actually isn't a bad story. The bottom line Miller presents is that Batman wants the world to be free to forge its own path, out from under the control of the Luthors of the world. But that gets lost though in all the other noise he presents. Like I said - not a bad story, but it is in desperate need of editing. And maybe Miller needed someone to say to him "maybe tone it down a little, Frank. Not everyone needs swastika-styled shurikens." If he'd had a voice of reason guiding him (as he does with DKIII), this could have been a worthy follow up to his masterpiece. But...it isn't.


FINAL SCORE: 5.5/10

OLD MAN LOGAN - A Comic Review

I'm on vacation this week, but that doesn't mean I'm not all business! SO...the rumor came down a while back that Hugh Jackman's final outing as the Wolverine would be based on Mark Millar's 2008 story arc "Old Man Logan". And then I decided to read it. And review it, because it really is quite good!

Spoilers up in hurr - they're not really big spoilers, but they're still spoilers nonetheless.

I'm not the world's biggest Mark Millar fan. He's quite talented, for sure, but fairly inconsistent, too. I dug his run on "Ultimate X-men" and I enjoyed "Kick-Ass" (and "Kick-Ass 2", though not so much "Hit-Girl" and "Kick-Ass 3") "Wanted" was weird and not really my cup of tea, and "Secret Service" was just plain awful. But he also wrote "Civil War", which is a truly amazing mini-series. Inconsistencies aside, when Millar is on, damn...he is on. So when I realized Millar had re-teamed with Steve McNiven, the artist on "Civil War", to bring us the story of a dystopian future starring a nearly unrecognizable Wolverine, I was on-freakin'-board.

To start, Millar creates a truly desperate image of the world. Imagine a future where the supervillains teamed up to finally, completely destroy almost every superhero in the world, and seize control. America is cut into quadrants, each with a tyrannical villain ruling over it. Imagine fifty years later, an old farmer lives in extreme poverty, desperately struggling to make rent or face the wrath of a bunch of redneck, violent, sociopathic Hulk descendants threatening the farmer's wife and children. They promise his family terrible violence, yet this farmer could easily kill them all, if he weren't a pacifist, sworn to avoid violence at all costs. Now imagine that old farmer is Wolverine, who hasn't picked a fight, killed a man, or even popped his claws in half a century.

That is the backbone of "Old Man Logan". Wolverine has essentially been de-fanged, and is trying to lead a normal, if difficult, life in peace and quiet with his young family. When he finds himself a month behind on rent, he must take a job with an old friend (spoiler alert - it's HAWKEYE!) to travel across the wasteland that America has become, or risk the lives of his entire family.

There are really two stories wrapped in one here. The first really begins when Logan and a now-blind Hawkeye ride across the country, they come across various towns and people in need of a hero, yet Logan refuses to fight, refuses to get involved, almost to the point of absurdity. The second story is the mystery of why that is. First of all, what exactly happened to all the heroes? And how was Wolverine defeated so badly that he swore to never fight again?

Both stories are good and interesting in their own right, but finding out the truth of what really happened fifty years ago is far more brutal and devastating than I can describe without ruining the story. But rest assured, "Old Man Logan is Mark Millar at the height of his talent. He is ON in this book.

Millar brings sympathy when it's due, anger when it's deserved, and an insane amount of excitement when the action breaks out. Though Logan may have sworn himself to peace, that doesn't mean everyone around him has, and the sight of a glaucoma-ridden Hawkeye still having plenty of tricks up his sleeve is certainly a ton of fun. There are plenty of twists, turns, and unexpected surprises along the way. What happened to the cities that just seemed to disappear overnight? Who's is the President? Where is Mjolnir? Why is that Ultron clone wearing a Hawaiian shirt and khakis? And just how did those redneck Hulks even come about? There's a ton of story to explore, and Millar handles it all with aplomb.

Art-wise, Steve McNiven brings a similar art to his previous work on "Civil War" to this book, creating both a cinematic and realistic feeling to the serenity of Logan's peaceful life, and the chaos that results when that serenity is broken, either by violence, or by the emergence of an unexpected villain. Logan spends nearly the entire book refusing to show his claws, and when he finally breaks his oath, McNiven spends three pages giving you an ear-to-ear grin at the unbridled badassness of it.

Millar and McNiven craft a wonderful complete story, create a horribly dystopian future, and expertly weave in awesome action, humor, and even some heart-wrenching poignancy, too. If 'Wolverine 3' decides to go this route and adapt the "Old Man Logan" story arc for their movie, it's going to have a tough time living up to the quality of this book. I really, really hope they succeed.

FINAL SCORE - 8.5/10