Batman 75th Anniversary Commemorative CollectionMiller, Snyder, Loeb, et alDC Comics, 2014It was seventy-five years ago, in 1939, that the character of Batman first appeared, in Detective Comics #27, and DC comics (the company's name deriving from that early magazine title), and the ranks of the character's fandom have been enormously expanded in the last quarter-century by a steady series of pop culture adaptations – especially a string of extremely popular movies featuring young Bruce Wayne losing his parents to a Gotham City gunman and vowing to hone his mind and body into a weapon of vengeance against evildoers (and later adopting his Batman identity because, as he famously declares, criminals are a superstitious, cowardly lot). With one eye trained beadily on this huge fan-base, DC has also been lavishing on the anniversary dozens of pricey, attractive items to tempt the character's countless fans. The latest of these, the Batman 75th Anniversary Commemorative Collection, consists of three popular Batman graphic novels printed in new matching paperbacks and collected in a sturdy black box with Bat-artwork on its boards.Taken left to right (the spines all placed together display the bat-signal), these three graphic novels start with the “Hush” saga written by Jeph Loeb and drawn by Jim Lee in 2003. This series was designed to capitalize on the enormous popularity of Lee as an illustrator; it's a very broad-brush omnium gatherum of a story that manages to both introduce a new villain (a successful surgeon who had been a childhood playmate of Bruce Wayne) and a whole slew of familiar faces in the extended Batman cast, from faithful butler Alfred to temptress-thief Catwoman to Robin (many Robins, in fact – the current boy-version and all the various grown-up retirees from the position) to steadfast Commissioner Gordon to the biggest and best gallery of villains any comic book character has ever accumulated: Two-Face, Poison Ivy, the Penguin, Mister Freeze, Clayface, Ra's al Ghul, the Riddler, and of course the Joker. As a bonus, “Hush” also includes Superman and his supporting cast, mainly so Lee could indulge himself in that most popular and most hilariously uneven superhero-fight of them all (and one movie-goers are finally going to see on the big screen in 2016), Superman v.s. Batman.Lee's artwork in these issues is incredibly antic and highly detailed – it's easy to see why he'd have such a large fan-following, and it's possible that this graphic novel would have been included here even if Lee weren't a heavyweight architect of DC Comics' “New 52” company-wide reboot that's been so popular it now constitutes the canonical version of these characters. But even so, the normally-talented Loeb doesn't exactly distinguish himself in the writing of “Hush,” which is labored, repetitive, and head-scratchingly odd at times, as when Batman – surrounded by friends and students and allies and in the actual act of kissing Catwoman – broods:
Criminals, by nature, are a cowardly and superstitious lot. To instill fear into their hearts I became a bat. A monster in the night. And in doing so, have I become the very thing that all monsters become … alone?
“The New 52” surely explains the inclusion of the next graphic novel in the collection, “The Court of Owls,” written by Scott Snyder and drawn by Greg Capullo beginning in 2011. The volume we get in this commemorative collection isn't the whole of the “Court of Owls” storyline – it's only half that story, stops literally in mid-action, and so has no place here whatsoever as a standout work in the Batman mythos. The irony is that the full “Court of Owls” in one volume features some excellent writing by Snyder and, from Capullo, some of the best Batman artwork the character has ever seen – we just don't get that whole story here. This is a shame; Batman was virtually the only DC character not to be lessened or bankrupted by the conceptual changes of “the New 52,” and the Snyder-Capullo run on the Batman title has been one for the ages, with Snyder capturing perfectly the all-or-nothing tenor of the character and Capullo dazzling with powerful, slightly sketchy art. Something from the “New 52” incarnation had to be included here, of course, on corporate mandate, but it's impossible not to feel the defects of the choice.The third graphic novel in the collection was the only absolutely mandatory choice, the only book that simply must be included in any commemorative set of the greatest Batman stories ever told: Frank Miller's gigantically famous 1986 storyline “The Dark Knight Returns.” In this story – certainly the most hallowed (and one of the most-reprinted) graphic novels of all time, we encounter a thickset, middle-aged Bruce Wayne, retired from crime-fighting for ten years, increasingly resentful of the cesspool Gotham has become under the almost-unopposed depredations of criminals and gangs.Eventually, the pressure becomes too much for Wayne, who resumes his Batman identity and leaps back into the fray:
This should be agony. I should be a mass of aching muscle – broken, spent, unable to move. And were I an older man, I surely would … but I'm a man of thirty, of twenty again. The rain on my chest is a baptism … I'm born again.
In the course of Miller's story – the writing of which has all the seedy glory of Mickey Spillane dashing off an action-thriller for Playboy and the artwork of which is a veritable symphony of perfectly-deployed motion – this older and more fanatical Batman confronts older and more fanatical versions of enemies like Two-Face and the Joker, a young and inspired female version of Robin, and, notoriously, an ageless Superman here depicted as the lickspittle errand-boy of his Republican masters in the White House. Comics fans can quote “Dark Knight Returns” as though it were Holy Writ, and as a hypothetical story set in the future, it stands safely outside creative shake-ups like “the New 52.”Of course, its inclusion in this commemorative set highlights the singular omission: Miller's almost equally-seminal “Batman: Year One” with spectacularly cinematic artwork by David Mazzucchelli. That it should be absent while one-half of “Court of Owls” is present speaks volumes about how readily corporate clout trumps any kind of creative canon. But it's a pretty collection just the same, and if you're willing to sacrifice that little bat-signal on the spines, you can always substitute your “Batman: Year One” right in the middle slot. Alfred will forgive you.
