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Robin: Year One (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on August 1, 2014 by Darren

23rd July is Batman Day, celebrating the character’s 75th anniversary. To celebrate, this July we’re taking a look at some new and classic Batman (and Batman related) stories. Check back daily for the latest review.

Chuck Dixon is one of the definitive Batman writers, particularly in the context of the nineties. Dixon enjoyed a long and well-regarded run on Detective Comics in the nineties, serving as one of the three writers driving the Batman franchise – along with Doug Moench and Kelley Jones on Batman and Alan Grant on Shadow of the Bat. Dixon even got to stay involved with the Bat titles for a little while after No Man’s Land in 1999, when the entire line had a massive turnover in talent.

However, while Dixon is an incredibly influential writer on Batman, he had as much of an influence on Dick Grayson. Dixon was the writer who handled Dick Grayson’s first on-going Nightwing series, building off a miniseries written by Denny O’Neil. Dixon worked on Nightwing for seventy issues between 1996 and 2002. He even returned to the title with collaborator Scotty Beatty after its one hundredth issue to write Nightwing: Year One, an origin story covering the former Robin’s transition into his new superhero persona.

Swinging into action…

As such, it makes a great deal of sense for Dixon to collaborate with writer Scott Beatty on Robin: Year One, a prestigious miniseries spanning four extended issues and featuring wonderful artwork from Javier Pulido. Pulido’s distinctive artwork lends itself to vibrant colours and dynamic expression, as demonstrated during his wonderful stint as part of the rotating art team on The Amazing Spider-Man. If ever a comic book lent itself to Pulido’s style, Robin: Year One is it.

Dixon does some nice work trying to explain the dynamic between Batman and Robin, and even to argue why Robin is an essential part of the mythos. Most interestingly, he, Beatty and Pulido try to integrate the arrival of Robin with the atmosphere and mood established by Frank Miller and David Mazzucchelli in Batman: Year One.

Suit up!

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: bad guys, batman, dick grayson, evil, gordon, harvey dent, mr. freeze, robin, robin: year one, two face, villains, year one | Leave a comment »

Ed Brubaker’s Run on Detective Comics – Dead Reckoning (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 30, 2014 by Darren

It remains quite surprising that DC have never capitalised on the work that Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka did on their Batman line during the early years of the twenty-first century. Given the popularity of Batman as a character, and considering the success that has been enjoyed by Brubaker and Rucka in the years since, it seems strange that DC has never made a consistent or concerted effort to package and release high-profile collections of their work on the character.

It is a shame, because the work is very good – both as solo writers on various titles and in collaboration with one another. Ed Brubaker enjoyed a solo run on Batman with artist Scott McDaniel shortly after No Man’s Land and through the end of Bruce Wayne: Fugitive. A few years later, while collaborating with Greg Rucka on the underrated and sorely missed Gotham Central, Brubaker also had a short run on Detective Comics.

Putting on his game face…

He wrote a team-up between Bruce Wayne and Alan Scott in Made of Wood. However, Brubaker also wrote the epic six-part story, Dead Reckoning. On the surface, Dead Reckoning appears quite familiar. It follows a fairly standard set-up. It’s an adventure that features the width and breadth of Batman’s iconic rogues’ gallery, and unearths a terrible secret about the history of Gotham that – in Brubaker’s style – is a clever updating of a classic piece of continuity.

However, underneath the surface, Dead Reckoning is something much more harrowing and unsettling. It’s the story of lives destroyed by calamities and forces outside the normal human experience – it’s about wounds inflicted on ordinary people by monsters playing a very strange game. It feels like a post-9/11 superhero story, treating Batman’s world as something hostile and horrifying.

Snow escape…

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Filed under: Comics | Tagged: 9/11, batman, collateral damage, detective comics, ed brobaker, ed brubaker, jim gordon, joker, millennial, paul sloan, paul sloane, random violence, rogues, spore, terrorism, the charlatan, tommy castillo, tragedy, two face | Leave a comment »

Non-Review Review: The Dark Knight Returns, Part I

Posted on November 20, 2012 by Darren

Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns might just be the most influential Batman comic ever written. It offers a glimpse an alternate future where Batman has retired as Gotham’s protector, and where a new wave of violence brings him back out of that retirement. It is also, and perhaps more notably, a study of the character’s psychology. It’s notable for suggesting that Bruce Wayne’s obsessions might be ultimately self-destructive and that there’s a primal conflict between the “Batman” part of his persona and Bruce Wayne. Like Watchmen, it’s generally recognised as one of the comics that represented a maturity in the medium.

Warner Brothers have produced an animated adaptation of Frank Miller’s classic, and I can’t help but admire it a great deal. While Alan Moore’s Watchmen was a novel that never really lent itself to film, Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns always had a cinematic quality that I think director Jay Oliva captures remarkably well.

A dark and stormy knight…

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Filed under: Non-Review Reviews | Tagged: arts, batman, Bruce, bruce wayne, ChristopherNolan, Dark Knight Return, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rises, DarkKnight Rises, Dent, frank miller, FrankMiller, gordon, gotham, gotham city, Harvey, joker, Lana Lang, Michael McKean, Paget Brewster, Peter Weller, two face, Warner Bros | 2 Comments »

The Adventures of Batman & Robin – Riddler’s Reform (Review)

Posted on September 10, 2012 by Darren

This September marks the twentieth anniversary of Batman: The Animated Series, and the birth of the shared DC animated universe that would eventually expand to present one of the most comprehensive and thorough explorations of a comic book mythology in any medium. To celebrate, we’re going back into the past and looking at some classic episodes.

Batman: The Animated Series always did a great job with villain origins. Heart of Ice gave us the best Mister Freeze story ever told, The Clock King made the eponymous third-stringer a credible threat and Mad as a Hatter reimagined the Mad Hatter as a deeply tragic figure. That said, I don’t think that the show got a proper handle on the Riddler until his third appearance in Riddler’s Reform. The green-suited trickster has long been one of my favourite Batman bad guys, and while I mostly blame Frank Gorshin’s manic portrayal from the sixties Batman! television show, Riddler’s Reform played a pretty significant part in that as well.

Knight caller…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: animation, art, arts, batman, batman animated series, bruce wayne, comic book, Comics, Dark Knight Rises, dc animated universe, riddler, two face | 2 Comments »

Recommended Batman Comics 104: Adam West’s Batman!

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, July is “Batman month” here at the m0vie blog. Check back daily for comics, movies and television reviews and discussion of the Caped Crusader.

I know that movies traditionally have a minimal impact on comic book sales, but to celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises, I thought I’d make a list of accessible jumping-on points for fans of Batman in mass media. There are several wonderful things about Batman. There are two especially relevant to this article. First, Batman is an infinitely adaptable character. He can literally be anything to anybody. It is entirely possible for somebody to love one interpretation of Batman while loathing others. So I’ll be breaking down my recommendations by source, so you can look at your favourite interpretation of Batman and find the most thematically and tonally relevant jumping-on points:

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy
Batman: The Animated Series
Tim Burton’s Batman Films
Adam West’s Batman

The second factor is that Batman is one of the few characters blessed with a back catalogue of accessible runs and stories, so there’s quite a few recommendations for each. It’s as simple as finding one that works for you.

Finally, we’re going to take a bit of a leap backwards and dig into one of the first truly iconic representations of Batman outside of comics. No, I’m not talking about the film serial. I’m talking about the camp-tastic Adam West Batman! television show.

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Filed under: Comics, Movies | Tagged: adam west, arts, batman, batman begins, batman: the long halloween, christian bale, Christopher Nolan, ChristopherNolan, comic book, Comics, dark knight, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rise, Dark Knight Rises, Dark Knight [Blu-ray], frank miller, gotham city, nolan, tim burton, tim sale, two face | Leave a comment »

Recommended Batman Comics 103: Tim Burton’s Batman Films…

Posted on July 27, 2012 by Darren

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy
Batman: The Animated Series
Tim Burton’s Batman Films
Adam West’s Batman

And now we’ll take a trip back in time to the late eighties and early nineties, when Tim Burton’s take on the character (with his films Batman and Batman Returns) seemed to dominate pop culture’s impression of the character.

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Filed under: Comics, Movies | Tagged: arts, batman, batman begins, batman: the long halloween, christian bale, Christopher Nolan, comic book, Comics, dark knight, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rises, Dark Knight [Blu-ray], nolan, tim burton, tim sale, two face | 2 Comments »

Recommended Batman Comics 102: Batman – The Animated Series…

Posted on July 26, 2012 by Darren

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy
Batman: The Animated Series
Tim Burton’s Batman Films
Adam West’s Batman

We’ll continue with perhaps the most comprehensive and consistent portrayal of the character in mass media, Bruce Timm and Paul Dini’s Batman: The Animated Series.

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Filed under: Comics, Movies | Tagged: arts, batman, batman animated series, batman begins, batman: the animated series, batman: the long halloween, bruce timm, christian bale, Christopher Nolan, comic book, Comics, dark knight, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rises, Dark Knight [Blu-ray], detective comics, Harley Quinn, nolan, paul dini, tim burton, two face | 2 Comments »

Recommended Batman Comics 101: Christopher Nolan’s Batman Films…

Posted on July 24, 2012 by Darren

Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Trilogy
Batman: The Animated Series
Tim Burton’s Batman Films
Adam West’s Batman

We’ll start with the most recent of the bunch, Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight trilogy.

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Batman: The Animated Series – Two-Face, Parts I & II (Review)

Posted on July 20, 2012 by Darren

Two-Face is probably the most tragic of Batman’s foes. Appropriately enough, there are really two reasons why the character works so well as a Batman villain. The first is that he’s a perfect reflection for Bruce: he is one man with a dual identity; one half upstanding pretty boy citizen, the other a monster. The other is an element touched on here: he’s a friend who Bruce failed in a pretty profound way, a character who underwent a massive tragedy, and whose every subsequent appearance is a grim reminder of that failure. Interestingly enough, I think it’s fair to argue that Two-Face has often had difficulty matching the potential he offers as a Batman villain. While I think that the Two-Face episode of Batman: The Animated Series does an effective job encapsulating a lot what makes the character great, it also misses a vital element as well.

Face-Two-Face…

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Filed under: Television | Tagged: batman, Bruce, Christopher Nolan, dark knight, dark knight returns, Dark Knight Rises, Dent, gotham central, Harvey, joker, Scott Snyder, two face | 8 Comments »

Batman: Bride of the Demon (Review/Retrospective)

Posted on July 18, 2012 by Darren

To celebrate the release of The Dark Knight Rises this week, today we’ll be reviewing the complete “Demon” trilogy, exploring the relationship between Batman and Ra’s Al Ghul.

Bride of the Demon is generally agreed to be the weakest of the Demon trilogy. Written by Mike W. Barr, with artwork from Tom and Eva Grindberg, it’s hard to argue that it isn’t the most conventional story in the set. While Son of the Demon and Birth of the Demon both justified their one-shot graphic novel status by telling fairly unique Batman stories, Bride of the Demon feels like an adventure that could have been written during Barr’s run on Detective Comics. That’s not to say that it isn’t an entertaining story, or that it doesn’t fit within the context of the trilogy, just that it feels relatively straight-forward and a tiny bit mundane.