"..when his parents were murdered before his eyes, Bruce Wayne...trained himself to wage relentless war against crime as the dread avenger of the night..."
Born to Kill was the first arc of the series Batman and Robin -- a comic focusing on Batman and his boy sidekick. But this isn't any of the traditional Robins of Dick Grayson or Tim Drake. Rather this is Damian Wayne, Bruce (Batman) Wayne's biological son (apparently from a tryst with lover/enemy, Talia Al Ghul). Batman had only recently learned of Damian (in stories told elsewhere) and this series chronicles their uneasy partnership -- both as crime fighters, and as father & son. It's uneasy because Damian, though only ten, was raised by a cult of assassins to be a sociopathic killer! And in this arc, their already difficult relationship is tested further by the arrival of a murderous vigilante calling himself Nobody -- a vigilante with ties to Bruce's past, and who wants to make Damian his sidekick, arguing to the boy that they have more in common, philosophically, than Damian does with Bruce.
It's a bit unfortunate I chose to read this when I did, because coincidentally I had just watched the animated movie, Batman vs. Robin -- which was basically an adaptation of this same story (meaning it wasn't exactly a fresh plot for me). Although significantly the movie blended this plot with threads from the Court of the Owls saga that ran through many Bat-comics. I'll just leave you to ponder on that, and what it says about the thin-plotting of modern comics: that in order to adapt this seven issue saga for a movie running a measly hour and a quarter, the filmmakers had to pad it out by borrowing from another storyline!
Born to Kill boasts great visuals from Patrick Gleason, nicely mixing detail and realism with dramatic visuals and dynamism -- although there were a few action bits I had a bit of trouble figuring out (though maybe it's just me, because I've noticed that problem with a few modern comics). It's visually quite dark though -- oppressively so, and bordering on monotonously so (we'll come back to that in a moment).
It moves along briskly enough -- even as it's not exactly a busy, complex saga for something originally stretched over seven months. It's mostly focused on the central plot -- as opposed to the Old School of comic book storytelling where the first few issues might have featured self-contained adventures with the Damian/Nobody stuff teased along as a sup-plot that blossoms into the main story in the final few issues. I mean, there's an unrelated battle with some plutonian thieves early -- but it's more just an action scene than a "plot." The dialogue is decent enough.
Okay -- now let's roll up our sleeves and get into the problems (warning: I'm probably going to annoy more than a few readers as some of these criticism can be applied to many comics across the board these days).
Some of the criticisms I've already touched on: it's a fairly simple plot for a seven issue epic -- particularly, as noted, because there's not much else going on (either diversionary adventures-of-the-month or, conversely, other sub-plots bubbling alongside the main Bruce-Damian-Nobody story). There really are only four main characters (with Alfred being the fourth) which means it can feel like basically the same characters, expressing the same POVs, about the same topics, issue after issue. It's all supposed to be about the characters and their moral dilemmas -- but it can also feel a bit obvious and heavy handed and repetitive. And the motives and moral dilemmas themselves seem simple, with neither Batman, Robin, or Nobody really being nuanced, multi-faceted personalities. Rather they are strawman figures -- making it easier for the stories to offer "insight" into their characters.
And then we get into a deeper, more problematic aspect: namely that Batman stories have become an unrelenting horror show over the years -- and not in a good way. Some years ago Batman writers (and readers) crossed a line and they didn't even blink (to borrow a line from the Hollywood-version movie, Insomnia).
Part of this is certainly deliberate I'd noted in other recent Batman TPBs that the stories seemed to have gone all in for a horror vibe. And not vampires/werewolves horror -- but serial killers and Hannibal Lector type horror. Recent stories seem an unrelenting stream of serial killers, psycopaths, and sadism with no counterpoint or leavening of the ugliness. I earlier mentioned the visuals were dark -- and even at the end of this saga, when the script specifically makes a thematic point by having the characters suggest the horizon is lightening...it remains dark.
Perhaps nothing suggest the (I think unconscious) despair and nihilism inherent in modern Bat-comics than a supposedly hopeful scene of Bruce and Damian playing catch in the backyard -- in the middle of the night by some tombstones, like a scene out of the Addams Family!
Ironically Robin's addition to the Batman mythos was often seen as a way of lightening the series, and humanizing Batman -- both in terms of how the writers/artists approached the stories, but also within the world of the characters themselves, other characters sometimes arguing Batman needed the young, cheery Robin to keep him grounded and human.
But now it's 2016 and in a comic specifically titled Batman and Robin, the violence is incessant, with the villain -- slowly -- lowering people into vats of acid, or other villains being baked alive in their own gettaway vehicle (after killing innocent by-standers themselves -- while making quips and jokes as if it's all supposed to be in fun!) While a climactic scene has Robin -- y'know, a ten year old boy -- being systematically beaten over multiple pages, the villain taunting Batman by describing as he methodically breaks different bones in the child. (I don't know if the fact that Gleason's art mostly downplays the visual gore is a good thing -- or makes it worse).
Of course Damian is no peach himself. After all, he was raised by an assassin cult and bristles at Batman's "no kill" policy -- and he does kill people over the course of the story, not to mention sadistically murdering small animals. (The only surprise to the saga is that a pet dog that is added to the Wayne household is still alive by the end of the story -- but I'm guessing it'll get killed off in a few issues just to add to the "drama").
Ah hah, you might say -- but isn't the point of the story Robin's redemption? The damaged, sociopathic child slowly learning to be a good person through the influence of Batman?
Well, putting aside the fact that as depicted in recent years Batman is the last person on earth who should be trying to shepherd anyone to mental health, it's still problematic. The reader is still ultimately supposed to be rooting for Damian (and I remember when Jason Todd was supposedly hated by fandom because he could be a tad lippy!). So we know that no transgression he commits will be unforgiveable by virtue of the fact that it's an on-going comic called Batman and Robin.
After all, in another context that could've been the tension -- wondering if Damian is redeamable. But not here where we know he is (it's like the second season of TV's Daredevil where it's set up as a moral debate between Daredevil and The Punisher -- when press releases had already announced The Punisher would be getting his own series, clearly indicating where the producers land on the "is he a hero or a villain?" debate).
Maybe that's what undercuts so many of these supposedly "sophisticated" "adult" comics -- their complete failure to grapple with the very ideas and themes they pretend they're about. Just as Batman, as a character, is too emotionally stunted to really act as a coinvincing parent for Damian, too many modern comic book writers seem to want to write profound, thought-provoking sagas but without evincing the intellectual gravitas to do so. So they reduce characters to one-note personalities to better "analyze" them, and revolve moral debates around arbitrary axes that don't even scratch the surface of the issues.
One point I'll make -- and I'm sure I've made this before in other reviews -- is the whole emphasis on kill/don't kill moral dilemmas. Look, I'm all for Old School morality in whch squeaky clean heroes don't kill. And if that's the world comics want to present, I'm cool with that.
But if you truly want to treat it as a sincere debate that writers and the readers are engaged in, these stories aren't it. First off, the whole idea of a hero "needing" to kill is really dubious if applied to the real world (in real life people analogous to The Joker go to jail and stay there -- they don't get released every few months so they can kill dozens more people ad infinitum).
But also I would argue the kill/no kill thing is a false line. Because of course sometimes a hero might need to kill someone. Not as an execution (which is what these comics often argue -- ie: some bad guys need killin'). Rather in the line of duty, to protect others (if a suicide bomber is heading toward a busload of orphans and the hero is too far away to reach him except with a bullet -- of course the hero should take the shot). But a hero should always use the minimum force required -- and no more. Yet comic books (and other mediums -- I'm looking at you, Daredevil TV series) set up this ludicrous idea that killing is the only taboo -- and the hero can beat, abuse, torture, and do whatever else they want and get off on it (yes, the heroes are often depicted enjoying their sadism) just so long as the villain can still breathe through a tube at the end of it.
In stories like this Batman isn't teaching Damian right from wrong, and writers like Tomasi aren't challenging his readers to think about morality/immorality. Instead it's just about setting up an arbitrary kill/don't kill line and as long as you stay on one side of it, you're good. I half expect comics to start having heroes get into righteous arguments about, I dunno, violence and wardrobe choices ("Damnit, Robin, heroes never kill wearing green -- that's the one line we must never cross; put on the blue suit if you're going to kill, otherwise you're no better than villains who wear green!")
Of course, even that line in the sand can be waved aside. As mentioned, Robin does kill, and though he gets a finger waving, it's not really a big deal. 'Cause the comic is called Batman and Robin after all.
So after that long philosophical digression, let's just get back to the TPB. Attractive visuals, and a relatively clippy pace and a potentially interesting theme (Batman and Nobody warring for the heart and soul of Robin). But it's thin, barely justifying half the page count, and without secondary adventures or sub-plots to beef up the narrative. And with the character exploration and moral debates upon which the whole thing is built requiring the characters and the issues be reduced to simple, basic factors.
Oh -- and it's about a ten year old sociopathic/sadist who, himself, is savagely beaten across multiple pages.
As I've mentioned other places on this site, I used to read comics, stopped, then came back to them. Arkham Asylum was released in that period when I had fallen out of the fold, but I was certainly aware of it. Even though I wasn't reading comics, I continued to have an interest in the field and kept abreast of trends through things like TV's Prisoners of Gravity. When first released, Arkham Asylum was considered a ground-breaking work, pole vaulting the medium forward into adult narratives with Dave McKean's eclectic painting style and Grant Morrison's dark, tortured script. But as I got back into comics some years later, and gradually collected some of the seminal works that I had missed the first time around, I began to notice something: Arkham Asylum didn't actually seem to get mentioned that often. While The Watchmen, or Neil Gaiman's Sandman, continued to enjoy critical accolades, and even Batman: A Death in the Family continued to evoke debate, Arkham Asylum seemed less like it was a seminal work, and more like it was becoming just a blip on the cultural radar. I'd even begun to come across frankly dismissive reviews of it.
All of which meant I wasn't really sure what to expect going into this graphic novel set within the asylum for the criminally insane that has become one of the touchstones of the Batman mythos.
The story starts out effectively enough, with a flashback to the turn of the Century, and the diaries of Arkham founder, Amandeus Arkham. Then it moves forward to modern times as Batman is summoned by the police after the inmates have rioted and taken over the asylum. Their demands? Batman.
McKean's style is a mixed bag of paint and photography, of surrealism and Impressionism, but also realism, where faces and figures really do look like faces and figures at times. Much was made of the art of the book, but it threatens to get just too jumbled and messy at times, where it's difficult to tell even what's going on. But still, it works reasonably well at first, lending a dark, brooding mood to the piece.
Batman arrives, meeting the Joker...and the first hints of a problem occur. It's unclear how literal scripter Morrison intends the story to be. Batman exchanges himself for the hostages...except not all the hostages are released, but this doesn't seem to phase Bats. As well, he doesn't really seem to have a plan to quell the rebellion at the asylum. Morrison obviously is using the "plot" as just a framework to hinge his ideas on, putting sub-text ahead of text. As such, it doesn't really pass the litmus test of plausibility. Still, things remain O.K. for a bit, as Batman questions whether the treatment inmates like Two-Face have been receiving is really helpful, or even humane, and we periodically flash back to Amandeus Arkham.
However there's a feeling the book is trying to create a sense of complexity, and obliqueness, not through a dense narrative, but just through confusing tricks, like Joker's dialogue written in a jumbled red font that means it is, literally, hard to read -- and it even spills off the page at times, losing words (which may be a printing error).
Then Batman is sent off into the asylum, to be hunted by the inmates...and right about here it completely falls apart.
McKean's art, already a bit murky and confusing, gets even moreso, so that you often can't tell what's happening or why. He also likes to use the "splatter" effect of scattering drops across a page for no reason, presumably 'cause it makes him look like a real artist (other painted comics, and comics that are meant to look painted, have done the same). Morrison's script doesn't offer much clarification, either. Batman wanders through black corridors, encountering inmates that maybe we're supposed to recognize, but it's unclear, because some of them McKean has reinterpreted visually, and Morrison has re-fashioned character-wise. But are they part of the group hunting Batman...or are they just inmates wandering the halls? And why does Batman cold-bloodedly kick a man in a wheelchair down the stairs? Who's the man? You see my predicament.
Alan Moore's Batman: The Killing Joke carried the tagline "A cold hard look at insanity" -- and my opinion of that worthy tome is already a matter of record. Here, Morrison seems to want to treat these comic book villains as if they really were insane people, postulating -- I assume in his mind -- a more realistic vision of them. The Mad Hatter as a child molester, Maxie Zeus obsessed with his own feces. But that takes us...where, exactly? As a story, or as an exploration of the human condition? The characterization is also a little repetative, as well. And does Morrison really have enough insight into mental illness to make this any more plausible than any other comic book, anyway? Allusions to the movie "Psycho" kind of make one infer Morrison's grasp of psychology was gleaned at the local Bijou. As well, he trots out stock cliches: Batman is emotionally scarred, perhaps as crazy as the people he fights. Nothing very fresh or sage there, I'm afraid.
Maybe Morrison has audited a few psychology seminars, and some reviews of this book praise its use of Jungian symbolism, and I'm sure there's plenty of ego and id contrasts and the like. But psychological analysis, first and foremost, is about revealing character. In one scene, Batman performs an act of self-mortification. But it's not enough to say some people do that. A story teller has to convince us this character would do this thing in this situation. And if he can't, then all the psychobabble in the world doesn't make it a penetrating character exploration.
And the episodic nature of the scenes, as Batman encounters various foes, just so they can spout off, before he moves on, is a little, well, dull. Eventually he gets into a fight with Killer Croc, seeming to kill the man -- which just adds to the sense that this is, nominally, an Elseworlds story, not meant to be considered in continuity. While, through flashbacks, we learn Amandeus Arkham was unhinged himself. Though it doesn't seem that Amandeus became deranged (that is, character development)...just that he was like that all along. Eventually there's a twist, relating to a character that, frankly, barely made an impression to begin with (I found myself going: "who's he?") and then Batman leaves...um, with the inmates still in control of the asylum which was, like, kind of why he went in in the first place.
As a plot -- whether an adventure story, or a human drama -- Arkham Asylum starts out O.K., but geets derailed along the way, failing to satisfy as a simple story, while intellectually never justifying its own self-importance. But even as a mood piece, it loses its effectiveness, as McKean's initially intriguing art just gets confusing and unclear. I'm beginning to see why, after all the initial hype, Arkham Asylum may be quietly fading into the sunset of cultural obscurity.
Released after September 11th, 2001, a story about the bombing of a skyscraper that asks whether terrorists can be forgiven, would seem a controversial thesis for a comic -- for any medium! Yet, curiously, Absolution didn't seem to generate the controversy for which I'm sure DC Comics was braced (maybe even for which they were hoping). That may be because the story, for all its real world traipings, exists in its own, somewhat inspecific bubble. While modern America knows the face of terror as either Islamic fundamentalists, or homegrown, ultra-right wing fanatics, the terrorists here seem more modeled after long ago 1960s radicals, and even then, DeMatteis paints them as more apolitical anarchists. And the charity work in Indian is not really specific, I don't think -- are they sheltering the poor? Lepers? Who? What?
I don't entirely object to painting the issues in broad, inspecific strokes, seeking to say something profound by tackling ideas in the abstract. At the same time, it threatens to simplify, to "comicbookfy", what is meant to be a sophisticated, realist story.
Strangely -- and this is something I'vbe noticed in a lot of modern comics, and I'll leave it to the sociologists out there to answer why -- Ashmore seems reluctant to paint truly dark skin pigments. A large part of the story takes place in Indian...yet few of the characters actually look, well, Indian. Mediterranean, perhaps, with lightly tanned, olive complexions, but not the darker hues one associates with many Indians.
DC's Archives books are hardcover, exorbitantly expensive tomes collecting chronological runs of early comics. The Batman Archives volume 1 collects Batman's inaugural appearance in Detective Comics #27 as well as the succeeding 12 page Batman stories from roughly the next two years of Detective Comics (Batman was only one of the features to appear in the anthology title Detective, but the other features aren't reprinted). Of course, during this period Batman began appearing in his own, self-titled comic, so it's not like this is the complete early adventures of the Batman -- the stories themselves are all self-contained but, as an example, the Joker appears in these pages...but Batman had already fought him. Or one issue ends with a panel ad for another Batman story...but it doesn't appear in this collection, because the story actually was published in Batman comics (The stories from Batman comics are collected in the series Batman: The Dark Knight Archives).
(A more economical collection of chronological Batman stories (from bothDetective and Batman) have been released as the softcover Batman Chronicles.)
There are plenty representations of early Batman mythos here...from his origin, to the origin and introduction of Robin ('tec. #38). Bruce Wayne has an occasional love interest, Julie Madison (who is largely written out before this collection ends) and Commissioner Gordon appears, but in a fairly minor role (as Batman has yet to develop his close ties to the police). Alfred has yet to be introduced into the series, and Batman's high tech devices are fairly minor (I'm not sure if the Batcave appears). And the Batmobile -- assuming the colours are reproduced faithfully -- is red!
Batman's costume evolves a bit in these early stories (initially he wore gloves that ended at the wrist, not gauntlets) and Batman shows an occasional ruthlessness, even carrying a gun in a couple of the earliest stories.
These Archive books are useful, in that the original issues would be next to impossible to collect and ridiculously expensive. At the same time...aside from the nostalgia, a modern reader might not find the stories worth the cost (hence the appeal of the cheaper Batman Chronicles). The story and art is rather crude. And though I could say it reflects the period, and the still fledgling medium -- which it does -- it's also true that there were better written and drawn series (particularly in the newspaper strips) even at the time.
Yet there's no disputing Batman struck an instant chord, becoming viewed as one of the archetypes for zillions of later super heroes even as he himself borrowed, sometimes shamelessly, from earlier pulp characters -- a fact acknowledged in this collection's introduction, but not fully (no mention is made of the pulp hero, The Bat, who also dressed in a black, ridged cape).
Then again, the very fact that Robin was introduced maybe hints there was some concern sales needed a boost.
And the stories do improve as things go, both in story and art. The art becomes a little stronger technically but, more to the point, develops more style, introducing intriguing trademark quirks like exaggerated shadows cast by the figures. And the plots, which initially are fairly rudimentary, sometimes incoherent, and emphasizing daring escapes from implausible death traps, become a little more structured, some even being mystery/whodunits (a concept introduced in the very first Batman story). Stories, such as strange happenings at a boy's boarding school (where Robin goes undercover - 'tec. 41) and the introduction of the original Clayface, about murders at a movie studio ('tec. #40), are actually fairly decent gothic mysteries (albeit, since later readers know who Clayface is, the mystery is rather muted). There's even an intriguing Human Drama ('tec. #47) one as Bruce Wayne/Batman becomes embroiled in the troubles of a dysfunctional rich family.
The characterization remains minor, the development of the stories crude and unsubtle...but, frankly, the nature of the stories actually seem more ambitious, more eclectic, than modern Batman comics which tend to rely on repetitively recurring super villains, or unceasing mob wars.
It's hard to imagine a Batman story written in the last decade or so where Bruce Wayne, witnessing the domestic troubles of a friend, decides to look into it as Batman -- even before he knows an actual crime is involved! And you know what? The modern comics are the poorer for it.
In fact, recurring villains only appear in a handful of stories here -- and only the Joker really qualifies as a costumed villain. The others are Hugo Strange, Dr. Death, and Clayface. And, significantly, the stories featuring returning foes are often the weaker ones.
In plot and concept, there's a lot modern writers could learn from these stories...even as, in actual execution (writing, art) these are what they are, reflective of an earlier, less disciplined era in comics.
Interestingly, the period isn't always obviously evoked. Nowhere in these stories would you even be aware that a World War was already raging in Europe, for instance!
For hard core completists, this is, of course, a worthy tome. The introduction by Rick Marschall provides a lot of context, even acknowledging Batman was not just the work of Bob Kane (despite his name alone on the cover), though it is, after all, a hyperbolic ode to Batman, DC and comics in general. At one point Marschall mentions comics' "universal" appeal even as, in the same paragraph, acknowledges they're more popular in the U.S. than elsewhere (and Canada, though he doesn't mention that). But to more casual readers, there's some novelty, some interesting aspects. But there's also a lot of chaff among the wheat, too.
Clover hoop. Inner hoop holds fabric tight while working. The nut is covered so thread or yarn won't catch.