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The Question IRL posted:But there is a genuine attempt at fleshing him out. I don't think those things are as mutually exclusive as you're implying. They can flesh out the character and still have him be an unlikable and repugnant indictment of contemporary comic book trends.
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Aug 11, 2018 00:40
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It seemed pretty clear Azrael was meant to be a bad Batman. Never mind that it's a story about replacing BATMAN but his extreme loner tendencies, his alienation of everybody, his cultish religious background (is that ever a good sign in comics?), and his violent programming resurfacing all pointed to him being set up to be the villain by story's end.
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Aug 11, 2018 01:13
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I really don't get the logic of "publisher intentionally tries to make a bad comic to prove the point", it doesn't make sense for a corporation to hurt itself like that, but I have not read Knightfall. Was it clear that Azrael was only a temporary replacement and was being set up to be a villain?
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Aug 11, 2018 02:24
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They weren't bad comics. It was just a negative character. You were supposed to root for Bruce to get better and take it back. e: It's like how the protagonist in the new Twin Peaks was replaced by an evil doppelganger for 90% of the series. You're hoping for the good version to return, but in the mean time his legacy being perverted is still very entertaining. Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 02:35 on Aug 11, 2018 |
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Aug 11, 2018 02:28
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Teenage Fansub posted:They weren't bad comics. It was just a negative character. You were supposed to root for Bruce to get better and take it back. Yeah, they weren't making a bad *comic* they were making a bad *character* (for certain definitions of "bad"). The story itself was okay, but you were definitely supposed to want Bruce to win out in the end.
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Aug 11, 2018 02:45
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I would go so far as to say that Knightfall is, conceptually, a pretty good comic and definitely in the top echelon of 90s events, really what drags it down is that a lot of Bane's lieutenents are very dull and it tries to hype up some not very interesting late 80's/early 90's villains without much success. This was during a time, IIRC, when Batman's rogues' gallery was kind of in flux, as the cartoon was still in the process of establishing his "canonical" stable of A-list enemies (for example, in an early 90s Robin miniseries Mr. Freeze is killed off in one panel with all the gravitas of a Rainbow Raider or Goldface), so overall the part of the story where he's just swamped with crises is an interesting artifact-- you get stuff with, like, totally dire characters like Cornelius Stirk and Abattoir right alongside early attempts to build up the Ventriloquist, as well as more interesting efforts that didn't catch on like Film Freak and the Cavalier. I'd say it was definitely, definitely a product of a time when Batman was a very dynamic, very visible property with a lot of compelling visions of the character out in the popular consciousness, and the comics reflect a gleeful willingness to just throw poo poo at the walls and see if it stuck. It's not high art or anything but I'd recommend skimming the entire arc (because it is after all a very very long crossover with a pretty slow build-up) for anybody at all interested in Batman or in the state of cape comics in that era. Edit: Oh, and on the Dick question-- from what I recall there's a little bit of retroactive handwaving later on in the story where it turns out that Batman was terrified of Bane hurting or killing whoever he picked as his successor, and knew that for Dick it would be personal enough that he wouldn't be able to stop himself from tracking him down and starting something. How Wonderful! fucked around with this message at 03:53 on Aug 11, 2018 |
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Aug 11, 2018 03:51
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If people had responded more favourably to Azrael even if he was being written as an "intentionally bad" character (or whoever you put it) he probably would've been kept around/stayed as Batman for longer than he did.
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Aug 11, 2018 15:17
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Incidentally, this would have been a more appropriate question a few months back, but - Why on earth has no one ever found the Rainbow Raider's old gear and used it to defend a Pride parade? Like... it just seems so obvious.
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Aug 11, 2018 15:28
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Knightfall is mostly great, Knightquest is pretty awful since it's basically the same story over and over (Batzrael faces a Batman Rogue, looks like he won't be up to the task, but then rises to the occasion- but by doing something creepy and violent that Batman wouldn't! ooooh!!!) and has pretty dire art in some places, and KnightsEnd is decent but way too long. Rejuvenated Batman vs Azrael should've been one issue not... was it 3? 4? More??? What's aged the most poorly about the whole storyline is that, aside from one incident where he carves his name in the Tally Man's chest and another where he lets a serial killer fall to his death because he's too busy having a mental freakout to help him, Azrael's edgy, x-treme violent take on being Batman seems downright tame compared to some Batman stories that were published in the 2000s and on. Batman himself got a lot more violent and gritty, and some of his allies are out and out murderers that he inexplicably forgives. Hell, the second Azrael went around cutting people's limbs off and Batman was like "As long as you don't kill people we're good". It's kind of like how when you read old Carnage stories, the "violence" is incredibly tame for a character that's advertised as being the ultimate avatar of it, compared to some modern stuff.
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Aug 11, 2018 15:38
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Lurdiak posted:What's aged the most poorly about the whole storyline is that, aside from one incident where he carves his name in the Tally Man's chest and another where he lets a serial killer fall to his death because he's too busy having a mental freakout to help him, Azrael's edgy, x-treme violent take on being Batman seems downright tame compared to some Batman stories that were published in the 2000s and on. I thought the major issue was that when he let the serial killer (that was Amygdala I think? Maybe Cornelius Stirk? Both were awful) die there was some trapped hostage that also got killed as a result. Similarly, and I'm hazier on this, what was framed as most objectionable about his big showdown with Bane was just that he was smashing up a lot of other stuff in the middle of town. It wasn't that Azrael was too violent against villains, it was that protecting people was way less important to him than loving people up.
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Aug 11, 2018 15:45
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Archyduke posted:I thought the major issue was that when he let the serial killer (that was Amygdala I think? Maybe Cornelius Stirk? Both were awful) die there was some trapped hostage that also got killed as a result. Nah. He saved the hostages, barely. Batman was really on his case about letting the insane killer die, though. There were a lot of moments where he endangered civilians and that time he beat up Catwoman, but that wasn't really the stuff that was supposed to be the most damning about him. His fight with Bane was portrayed as his most heroic moment because he just whooped Bane's rear end in front of all the cops. Even Tim was like "Ok well I don't like how you do stuff but clearly it works, so I'm sorry I was so preachy, just try not to go crazy and turn into a red demon that we have to beat up for 6 issues". Lurdiak fucked around with this message at 16:35 on Aug 11, 2018 |
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Aug 11, 2018 16:32
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Lurdiak posted:What's aged the most poorly about the whole storyline is that, aside from one incident where he carves his name in the Tally Man's chest and another where he lets a serial killer fall to his death because he's too busy having a mental freakout to help him, Azrael's edgy, x-treme violent take on being Batman seems downright tame compared to some Batman stories that were published in the 2000s and on. Batman himself got a lot more violent and gritty, and some of his allies are out and out murderers that he inexplicably forgives. Hell, the second Azrael went around cutting people's limbs off and Batman was like "As long as you don't kill people we're good". Even Huntress, who I liked, got 'you can't go around with a Bat-logo if you're going to kill people.' *Huntress kills somebody* 'Take off that costume but you can still be Huntress I guess.'
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Aug 11, 2018 16:49
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Is Huntress being used in any of the current DC Books? I forgot about her.
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Aug 11, 2018 16:53
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Sinners Sandwich posted:Is Huntress being used in any of the current DC Books? I forgot about her. No idea, but I do like when she was on Arrow and she pretended to be a stripper to kill a mob guy. Her stripper outfit was a reference to her classic costume, but since it's a network TV show it was actually less revealing than the real costume.
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Aug 11, 2018 19:52
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Sinners Sandwich posted:Is Huntress being used in any of the current DC Books? I forgot about her. She was in Birds of Prey but I am super behind on comics so she might not be anymore.
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Aug 11, 2018 20:18
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TwoPair posted:She was in Birds of Prey but I am super behind on comics so she might not be anymore. I think Batgirl and The Birds of Prey ended back in May. Shame, I was enjoying it.
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Aug 12, 2018 17:55
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Jedi posted:I think Batgirl and The Birds of Prey ended back in May. Shame, I was enjoying it. It was fun, even if it was a little odd to see Helena go from being spymaster to street-level vigilante.
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Aug 12, 2018 22:43
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My first experience with Knightfall, due to my poverty at the time, was the novelization, which I was able to get at the library (I could've gotten the graphic novels in too, but I would've had to ask for them, and, you know, interacting with people,) . It was pretty good. The comics feel like everything went on a lot longer and it felt like Bruce let Az have more of a chance to succeed or fail, whereas in the novel it feels like he's almost instantly trying to come back to get rid of him, but other than that I think I prefer the pacing of the novel just because they cut out a lot of the fluff.
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Aug 13, 2018 00:19
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Lurdiak posted:Nah. He saved the hostages, barely. Batman was really on his case about letting the insane killer die, though. I recently reread it and a hostage was killed as he let the insane killer die.
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Aug 14, 2018 00:25
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bobkatt013 posted:I recently reread it and a hostage was killed as he let the insane killer die. In fairness to him, Azreal either didn't know about the hostage. Or assumed he was dead already. I mean he didn't try and interrogate him over it, but it's not like the killer was yelling "you must stop hitting me. Or I'll never tell you where the hostage is!" Like it acts as a good counter point to Batman (he focuses so much on taking down the Bad guy, because that's what Batman does, that he forgets Batman is about saving innocents.) It's also funny because Azreal ends up using the same moral lesson from Christopher Nolan's Batman. ("I'm not going to kill you. But I don't have to save you either.")
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Aug 14, 2018 13:08
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Batman's code against killing is the least interesting and most tedious aspect of his character. The whole time he's agonizing over why he doesn't kill the Joker, again, for the four hundredth loving time, everyone reading the book knows it's because the Joker is a valuable piece of intellectual property. It's poo poo.Archyduke posted:I thought the major issue was that when he let the serial killer (that was Amygdala I think? Maybe Cornelius Stirk? Both were awful) die there was some trapped hostage that also got killed as a result. The general trait of a lousy Batman villain is that they're just a serial killer with a gimmick. Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 15:35 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 15:33
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Halloween Jack posted:
Which is why Joker has sucked since the 80's outside of the Animated series.
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Aug 14, 2018 15:47
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remusclaw posted:Which is why Joker has sucked since the 80's outside of the Animated series. He's really good in Arkham Knight.
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Aug 14, 2018 16:01
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Halloween Jack posted:Batman's code against killing is the least interesting and most tedious aspect of his character. The whole time he's agonizing over why he doesn't kill the Joker, again, for the four hundredth loving time, everyone reading the book knows it's because the Joker is a valuable piece of intellectual property. It's poo poo. There is a really good additional argument why Batman shouldn't kill dudes, which Chris Simms hit upon. Bruce Wayne is a driven super athlete who made himself into Dracula with a rocket car to end all crime. If he is supposed to be the Worlds Greatest Detective/ Martial artist etc....then there shouldn't be a situation which has to end with him killing someone. (Dan Slott had Peter Parker come to the same realization in his run on Amazing.) Like it's a defining trait of Batman. There will never be a situation where he believes that he has to kill someone to resolve the situation. Heck even the most recent time this came up (in the War of Jokes and Riddles), it was because he lost control.
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Aug 14, 2018 16:11
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Captain America doesn't kill people in cold blood, but agonizing over it isn't a frequently revisited aspect of his character. Also, I'm pretty sure that he's perfectly willing to kill the Red Skull, yet they manage to write him not killing the Red Skull without making him look like a failure. Edit: This is also a good argument for giving Batman's villains a motive beyond "Indiscriminately kill as many people as possible." Halloween Jack fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Aug 14, 2018 |
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Aug 14, 2018 16:26
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I've said it before but the problem isn't Batman's ethics against killing, the problem is that every writer that writes the Joker feels the need to up the body count into the hundreds making Batman into an idiot every time he confronts the Joker. By making the Joker some super-effectual murder machine Batman's rules against killing him seem sillier and sillier and this is the corner a lot of the writer's paint Batman in.
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Aug 14, 2018 16:33
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Yeah, you can write a Batman that doesn't need to kill in a million different stories, it only begins to seem contrived if you deliberately start tellng stories designed to make that policy look silly (which is what makes so many Joker stories since The Killing Joke so tedious to me). Like, I don't think its particularly weird that Doug Funny never killed anybody, but then again they never had an episode of Doug where Roger Klotz was going to blow up the Bluffington Dam if he wasn't put out of his misery. In fact, they didn't have almost thirty years of tedious Doug episodes where Roger Klotz and his weird sidekick with the one bug-eye engage in escalating acts of mayhem and terror, because, well, Doug was a kid's show, why on earth would they. It's a matter of what kind of stories you put characters in, and this question about Batman's ethics would never come up if people didn't keep writing the same "but what if he REALLY WANTED TO KILL" schlock. Chris Sims is right-- Batman should be slick enough and sly enough that killing his bad-guys isn't the most efficient way to deal with them, and his enemies should be operatic and gleefully cornball enough that killing them would seem like a jarring betrayal of tone.
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Aug 14, 2018 16:57
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I like the theory that Batman doesn't kill Joker because then you'd get a ghost Joker or demon Joker, or disembodied psychic entity Joker or somethign wors.e
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Aug 14, 2018 17:06
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Soonmot posted:I like the theory that Batman doesn't kill Joker because then you'd get a ghost Joker or demon Joker, or disembodied psychic entity Joker or somethign wors.e Like in Fantastic Four when Mark Waid was writing it and Reed explains to Doom that he's rescued him from Hell and trapped him in a Mobius strip prison with him forever because he knew if he left him in Hell he'd have been ruling it within a month.
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Aug 14, 2018 17:16
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Doctor Spaceman posted:He's really good in Arkham Knight. That is true but I think so much of what appeals in those games out of the play itself is the good will people have toward the Animated series and it's cast, Mark Hammil included. Those games have some serious tonal issues.
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Aug 14, 2018 17:20
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Arkham City and Knight are absurdly Joker-centric to the detriment of the larger narratives.
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Aug 14, 2018 17:36
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I like how the ending of City has Ra's al Ghul conveniently killing himself so that Batman can get on with being upset about the Joker some more.
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Aug 14, 2018 17:51
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Soonmot posted:I like the theory that Batman doesn't kill Joker because then you'd get a ghost Joker or demon Joker, or disembodied psychic entity Joker or somethign wors.e Or a joker with god like power that tortures and murders Batman every night and then bring him back so he can do it again
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Aug 15, 2018 00:09
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Archyduke posted:Yeah, you can write a Batman that doesn't need to kill in a million different stories, it only begins to seem contrived if you deliberately start tellng stories designed to make that policy look silly (which is what makes so many Joker stories since The Killing Joke so tedious to me). For real. I get that "Joker is a murderer" has always been part of his character, but it wouldn't hurt to play down that aspect in the same way the animated series did and play up the more fun parts of him.
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Aug 15, 2018 09:54
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Has the Joker always been a murderer? I never read earlier Batman, but I've always thought he was mostly clowning around until a certain point the writers decided to make him a murderer as well. I've made my peace with Batman (or PG-13 heroes) not killing bad people, as genre convention and you can't really sell colorful costumed murderers to kids (I mean you totally could, but imagine the parental outrage!). Chris Sims does touch upon that in his counter-argument on the incredibly dumb take that "if Batman really cared about making Gotham a better place, he'd spend all his time and money on developmental programs that actually matter instead of punching the mentally-ill". (Because it's NOT REAL, so real-world logic does not apply, nobody pumps the Batmobile's tires, etc)
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Aug 15, 2018 10:34
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Schneider Heim posted:(Because it's NOT REAL, so real-world logic does not apply, nobody pumps the Batmobile's tires, etc) What about that mute hunchback he had hanging around the Batcave as his Bat-mechanic for a while?
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Aug 15, 2018 10:49
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Schneider Heim posted:Has the Joker always been a murderer? I never read earlier Batman, but I've always thought he was mostly clowning around until a certain point the writers decided to make him a murderer as well. His debut story back in the 1940s had him as a serial killer, so it's definitely part of the character's DNA. In his very first appearance, he's more of a crazed murderer who uses the clown theme to add some drama to his killings than anything else. It was in the Silver Age period from the late 50s through to the early 70s, where both Batman and Superman were significantly rounded off in order to fit within the boundaries set by the Comics Code, that the Joker's iconic "goofy clown" personality came to the fore. Then, when the Code relaxed, writers began to emphasise elements of the Joker's old, murderous characterisation more and more and more, until you get to where we are today.
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Aug 15, 2018 10:56
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Batman's blind moralism isn't for the kids, it's his defining interesting characteristic. Check out the current storyline spending three issues with him fretting over sending Mr Freeze to jail for killing three women cause in his anger he might've unduly influenced the investigation. That's just Batman. If you want something else, read those recent Midnighter volumes. They're pretty good. If you do have him finally break and be the badass every 15 year old boy thinks he wants and throw a batarang through the Joker's head once and for all, we'd have to have at least a year of Bruce being haunted by it Arkham Knight style, and then some Joker protege would pop up anyhow, which is probably more Joker story than you'd get if Batman just stuck him in the asylum again for five-to-eight months. edit: I love the Burton Batman movies to death, but I think they'd be improved (or at least they wouldn't be worse) if he went out of his way to not kill the Joker and Penguin's goons. Anyway, canonically... 
Teenage Fansub fucked around with this message at 12:02 on Aug 15, 2018 |
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Aug 15, 2018 11:01
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Android Blues posted:His debut story back in the 1940s had him as a serial killer, so it's definitely part of the character's DNA. In his very first appearance, he's more of a crazed murderer who uses the clown theme to add some drama to his killings than anything else. It was in the Silver Age period from the late 50s through to the early 70s, where both Batman and Superman were significantly rounded off in order to fit within the boundaries set by the Comics Code, that the Joker's iconic "goofy clown" personality came to the fore. Then, when the Code relaxed, writers began to emphasise elements of the Joker's old, murderous characterisation more and more and more, until you get to where we are today. I like Joker best when he has a sort of nihilistic (if that's the right way of describing it) sense of humour which means he thinks that shooting someone dead and tricking them into slipping on a banana peel or getting hit in the face with a pie are all equally funny, so his schemes could well be deadly or harmless (or at least not as likely to be lethal) depending on what mood he's in and it means Batman has to treat them all as equally serious threats. I think that's what makes Hamill's Joker my favourite. I think a lot of the time people get stuck on the "unstoppable serial killer" part, though, so you see fewer and fewer stories where he's doing stuff like the Laughing Fish plot.
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Aug 15, 2018 11:12
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Joker the murderer is absolutely part of that period where Batman still kills people. Both of them changed from that characterization, and for the better. Joker changed back. Golden Age Batman is obviously real important, but it isn't the Batman anybody really thinks of when the characters come to mind, except possibly when they want to justify doing stuff that is now wildly out of character for them.
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Aug 15, 2018 11:57
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