So that’s why there aren’t more women in comics: Becky Cloonan keeps picking fights with them. (Via The Beat)
“What I really dug was the exchange of ideas, which is ultimately what any book group, regardless of genre, is about”: The Philadelphia Inquirer has a nice little feature story on local comics shop Brave New World’s book club.
I call foul: Jenna Weissman Joselit’s story about the relationship between the Catholic church and comic books is interesting, and features a cool illustration, but didn’t quite live up to the “When Moses Saved the Man of Steel” headline.
“It’s not about violence. That’s too easy. It’s about evil”: In my last link dump, I had linked to a post of Christopher Bird’s making fun of Mark Waid’s new-ish series Irredeemable, and I gave it some pretty negative reviews myself, so here’s a nice, positive one. April Snellings writes about the book, and talks with Waid about it here. Balance!
The Long Halloween is “possibly the best Batman graphic novel of all time”: I completely agree with Ian O’Connor. Jeph Loeb and Tim Sale’s Batman: The Long Halloween really is the best Batman graphic novel of all time. Except for Batman: Year One. And The Dark Knight Returns. And A Death in the Family. And A Lonely Place of Dying. And Batman: Child of Dreams. And Batman: Gothic. And Mad Love. And The Killing Joke. And Batman: Year 100. And Arkham Asylum. And The Many Deaths of The Batman. And Batman: City of Crime. And Batman: City of Light. Oh, and Batman: The Cult. And all of the Matt Wagner Batman comics, especially that first Grendel crossover. And The Dark Knight Strikes Again. And All-Star Batman and Robin, The Boy Wonder. And Batman Black and White, if collections of shorter stories count as graphic novels. Oh, and if so, then certainly Batman: Ego and Other Tails. And all those Showcase Presents, Archives and Batman Chronicles collections. And, come to think of it, I even liked Dark Victory better, as it has my favorite Loeb-written sequence ever.
So how old are Batman and sons?: Regular reader “batmansgirl” posted a link in the comments section of my post yesterday to Tom Bondurant’s discussion of how old Bruce Wayne, Dick Grayson, Tim Drake and other Bat-characters must be, given the introduction of Damian Wayne. I’m going to re-link to it here, because Bondurant’s post is fun and fact-filled. And his conclusions hew close to my own assumptions about the characters’ ages, with the exception of Tim Drake, who needs to still be high school-aged. Unless he keeps flunking junior year to keep up the pretense that he’s just not smart enough to be Robin…? As impossible as Damian makes it for Batman to still be in his mid-thirties as editors so often insist when pressed, even bigger problems for Batman’s generation of heroes were raised by the introduction of Black Lightning’s college graduate-aged daughter Thunder, and Green Arrow’s nineteenish or so son Connor Hawke.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:48 am
Oh come on now… Dark Knight Strikes Again? Or All Star B&R? I admit liking All Star as humorous, tongue-in-cheek Elseworlds take on Batman (hey, when the hell is that series going to wrap up anyhow??). But those books are in no way better than Long Halloween. DK Strikes Again is one of the worst ones ever. I like most of Matt Wagner’s Batman stuff, but I don’t like Grendel. Faces, Monster Men, and Mad Monk are all good stuff though. I also feel that Black & White, while containing a couple of decent entries, is incredibly overrated.
Pehaps Long Halloween is a bit overrated too (I actually like Dark Victory better myself), but it’s still a fine story. I haven’t read every single Bat-story you’ve mentioned here, but I’ve read most of them and I like or love just about all of them. I’d also throw both The Cult and Blind Justice on your list, BTW. Anyhow, Long Halloween still belongs on that list.
June 13th, 2009 at 8:53 am
Speaking of all things Batman, Tom Bodurant did a nice job on trying to pin down Bruce’s age, even if trying to wrap one’s mind around all of that can induce a headache! What it really comes down to is that Morrison’s introducing the character of Damian sure messed things up. IMO, at least. I really liked Son of the Demon (and all of those older Ra’s Al-Ghul stories make my list of “best” Batman tales too), but I could’ve lived without Damian.
June 13th, 2009 at 9:15 am
You must have really hated Batman: Long Halloween if you placed A Death in the Family above it. Oh sure, it’s important to the comics, but man was it a stupid read.
June 13th, 2009 at 1:38 pm
It seems Mr. O’Connor was getting so much flak for his insipid choice that he has deleted all ensuing comments.
I should know~ I posted early yesterday listing almost all the titles you did as well as “Batman: Snow” (for Seth Fisher’s art alone). Now all comments have vanished. Hmmmmm?
June 13th, 2009 at 4:37 pm
Oh, The Cult’s on there. I didn’t really spend a lot of time considering what’s better than what in the Batman trade library, and that paragraph is at least half-joking (I do like Dark Knight Strikes again and ASBaR,tBW an awful lot though).
I liked Long Halloween a lot when it was originally released (and there are probably some letters with my name on them in the letter col of those original issues to prove it), but I don’t think it aged all that well. The art and cover design are still great, Loeb’s “greatest hits” approach is still fun, but I don’t think it holds up as a mystery story, and man, you could lose every single caption in the book and not lose a thing.
June 13th, 2009 at 7:29 pm
I’m so glad you linked the Brave New Worlds article. It’s probably the only thing I miss about Philly…
You know you’re a comics junkie when you miss your comic shop more than anything else.
June 14th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
As long as we’re throwing out Batman things that are better than The Long Halloween let’s not forget Arkham Asylum: Living Hell, Batgirl Year One, Batman: Anarky, Batman & Son, Batman/Huntress: Cry for Blood, Batman R.I.P., The Black Glove, Broken City, Brubaker’s early Catwoman run, Going Sane, Gotham Central, The Greatest Batman Stories Ever Told trades, Huntress: Darknight Daughter, JLA: New World Order, Azzarello’s Joker, Justice League v1 (“one punch!”), The Last Arkham, Robin Year One, Shaman, Strange Apparitions, Tales of the Demon, and that collection of Sale Batman not written by Loeb.
Caleb, are Child of Dream and City of Light really that good? Would you mind doing a blog post on those more obscure Batman titles sometime?
Cheers,
Bob