1) Due to a freelance assignment I reread Alan Moore and Brian Bolland’s Batman: The Killing Joke today. As I did it I had in mind the oft-voiced criticism that the book has no relevance to real life, a line taken not just by reviewers but also by, and perhaps most vociferously by, and maybe originally by, Moore himself. I totally disagree. Even if you haven’t been in one yourself, surely you know someone who’s been locked into a mutually destructive love-hate relationship with someone that brings out the worst qualities in both parties. Perhaps you’ve also known someone who is or was, for lack of a better word, addicted to illness. I think there’s at least as much personally relatable heft to the emotional core of this book as there is to, say, the Gordian Knot thing at the end of Watchmen. It’s also a pretty great Batman story in which both he and the Joker are actually pretty scary, which is harder to pull off than most writers seem to think. And Brian Bolland can draw, boy howdy.
2) Over the past few months I’ve talked occasionally about the un-selfconscious craziness of ’80s action movies like Rambo and Invasion U.S.A.. I wonder: are the slick, gratuitously violent superhero comics of today, like Countdown to Final Crisis or Mark Millar’s Wanted, an equivalent entertainment? I mean, there’s caveats in both cases, to be sure: Countdown has that sprawling “to be continued in the pages of Title X” would-be mega-crossover thing going on, and Wanted thinks it’s Fight Club. But both appear to have that love of bloodshed and lack of self-awareness that characterize the slaughterfests of yore. I guess it just comes down to whether they succeed as entertainment, which, well, compared to Road House? Not so much. (I enjoy Wanted well enough, I guess, though the glib rape references leave a terrible taste in your mouth and like all Mark Millar comics the hero just starts winning at the end because it’s time for the hero to start winning.)
3) So I guess it’s now out there that Spider-Man is going to swap his marriage to Mary Jane for the life of Aunt May courtesy of Marvel’s satanic stand-in Mephisto. I try not to comment on these “how dare they” superhero plot points because there are 40,000,000 other blogs where you can find that if you want and because there are more productive ways to spend one’s blogging-about-comics time and energy, but I’ll make an exception here because Spidey was my first superhero favorite as a little guy and because this is just so colossally wrong-headed that it practically demands scorn and derision, like that “rappin’ John Wayne” song from the ’80s.
For starters, it should be self-evident that having your flagship superhero, your exemplar of heroic values and morality, the guy whose book gave us the phrase “with great power comes great responsiblity,” the most popular fictional character in the world whose name isn’t Harry Potter, literally make a deal with the devil is just a terrible, terrible idea on the face of it. That he does so to scrap the romance at the center of his multi-billion-dollar, zeitgeist-bestriding film trilogy should probably have sent up a few red flags too.
But it’s worse still because, much like all the mystical “avatar of the Spider-God” poppycock writer J. Michael Straczynski has shoehorned into the character’s mythos–including his origin, which with Batman’s and Superman’s was among the most famous and note-perfect origins of any heroic character ever as-is–it runs counter to every core aspect of the character: his roots in science fiction, his role as the Marvel superhero community’s everyman in the city, his nature as not some Chosen One blessed and cursed by the gods but just some loser teenager who got dealt a crazy hand by dumb luck.
The final, fatal, unforgivable flaw, of course, is that it doesn’t even work from a standpoint of emotional realism. Simply put, if you ask any happily married couple to trade away their entire marriage, past present and future, to save the life of a septuagenarian mother figure, no matter how beloved, who probably is just a few years from dying anyway, the answer would be no.
I always had kind of the opposite problem with Killing Joke: it felt too much like a story about two rivals who are much less distinct and well-developed than Batman and the Joker. It would have felt more like a story about those particular characters if neither had ever felt free to share their reactions, and try to guess what the other’s thinking.
About Spider-Man: another thing is that May wouldn’t want the sacrifice. She’s seen her nephew grow up to become one of the most famous heroes in the world, marry happily, do good, and thrive as a good man. She has so much to be proud of in his accomplishments. I can’t see her choosing life for herself at the expense of his heart. There are some old people who cling to life at any cost, but May never seemed to me like one of them. She reminds me of the folks I saw in hospice when Dad was there, who felt that they’d had a good run and were willing to go rather than clinging to life for its own sake.
A story in which May throws the devil’s offer to Peter back in his face and revitalizes the morale of a weakened, worried Peter would be good fun.
That’s a great point–it’s like he has no idea what kind of person Aunt May is/was and what her wishes would be. So add that one to the list.
Also add “What kind of fucking moron of a superhero makes a DEAL with MEPHISTO?”
Re: The Killing Joke, I guess it is sort of out of character, but I also guess that’s the point–they’ve been arch-enemies for so long that there’s an intimacy they share. I like that better than Bats calling the Joker a “filthy degenerate!” in Arkham Asylum, which always struck me as a false note in a book I otherwise love.
The way Part III ended, it looks like MJ may be the one to make the deal, and S-M will just do whatever MJ says she wants.
Re: Killing Joke, I think you nailed it on the head with “I also guess that’s the point–they’ve been arch-enemies for so long that there’s an intimacy they share”
LIke Henry Rollins said, (I paraphrase) hate is intimate. You have to give of yourself to hate someone, and after years of Bats fighting Joker, of course they’re rubbing off on each other. I don’t claim to be an expert fanboy, but as a casual reader, I think the big defining thing of the Joker is that he’s crazy and homocidal. And I like the more recent Batman stuff where they demonstrate that he is barking mad also! But fighting against crime makes him a hero, even if he’s as nuts, so the punchline of the whole book, when he and Joker start laughing at joker’s rediculous joke, they share this comraderie, joking together… it’s flawless.
Carnival of souls
Looks like the ranks of those unhappy with J. Michael Straczynski’s “One More Day” Spider-Man storyline include…J. Michael Straczynski, who’s basically throwing “OMD” artist and Marvel Editor in Chief Joe Quesada under the bus for the arc and saying …
Damn those wheatcakes!
Carnival of souls
* It blows my mind that Della’morte, Dell’amore/Cemetery Man director Michele Soavi hasn’t directed a horror film since then, and has actually only directed one other movie of any kind in that time (he’s been doing TV work). But Fangoria…