This is what happens when Techland goes to the comic book store: we end up discussing what we picked up. This week, Graeme McMillan and Douglas Wolk talk about the first issues of Batman: The Dark Knight and Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead.
DOUGLAS: I suspect Batman: The Dark Knight #1 may be the first comic of its kind in a long time: an in-continuity ongoing series launched specifically for a single writer/artist to do his thing. The last times DC did that might’ve been John Byrne’s Superman and George Pérez’s Wonder Woman. The differences in both cases, though, were that Byrne and Pérez were legitimately top-of-the-heap star attractions–Finch is popular, but not that popular; that they got to lead the franchise–Finch is clearly following Grant Morrison’s prospectus; and that they were capable of meeting a monthly deadline, which Finch obviously isn’t. The fact that the release date of this first issue was pushed back several times is a dubious sign.
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I’ve mentioned it elsewhere, but this really feels like the closest thing DC is publishing right now to an early-’90s Image comic: it distinctly puts story second to cool over-the-top hyperdetailed visuals of ultra-muscular dudes (and Finch rarely draws his characters’ feet if he can get away with it). Some of them really are cool: that splash image of Batman crouching down in the rain is what Finch gets paid the big bucks for. (Some of them are less so: I would love to see a Batcave scene that involves trophies other than the giant penny, the giant joker and the dinosaur.) But the story is fundamentally really shaky, which I guess is what happens when you turn things over to somebody who’s never written a comic before. Really, having a character whose name is Dawn Golden–and whose father’s name is Aleister, of all things–is pushing it. I’m also kind of surprised that this takes its cues from “Hush” more than from any other comics I can think of: the setup involves a previously unseen childhood friend of Bruce Wayne’s, Killer Croc is involved, Scott Williams is inking…
Honestly, I don’t see why The Dark Knight wasn’t a standalone miniseries a la Batman: Odyssey. Is it going to continue as a fifth ongoing Batman title once Finch is done with it? What’s its premise, other than “the Batman series that David Finch is doing”?
GRAEME: I had an odd reaction to this. The first time I read it, I was pretty much the same as you: It seemed like a flashback to the 1990s, complete with awkward dialogue and a surplus of style over substance. But I re-read it a couple of days later, and felt much more… charitable, I guess, towards it. Yes, the dialogue is weak (gor some reason, the Killer Croc/Batman exchange seems like the worst offender in this to me, although I couldn’t tell you why), but in terms of plot and pacing, I realized that there were actually things that I appreciated and didn’t expect: Starting with a flashback to li’l Bruce Wayne and his first crush, absent any “And that was the day before my parents died” narration? The homeless subplot being placed where it was? Using the police scene as expositionary intro? Maybe I’m just revealing my own prejudices, but all of that was more subtle than I’d been expecting, if not necessarily good. I wondered whether I wouldn’t have enjoyed the book more if Finch had had someone else handle dialogue, a la Rob Liefeld, Jim Lee and other Image folk back in the day.
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As to what this series is for… Good question. The cynical answer is “a way to lure Finch from Marvel,” but beyond that, I’m not entirely sure. I’m interested to see from future solicits that Finch won’t be the only artist on the series – Andy Clarke is drawing the second story arc (written by Finch), it seems – so it seems as if DC is placing an awful lot of trust in Finch-as-writer, instead of Finch-as-artist-and-nobody-cares-about-the-story. If interviews are to be believed, this’ll be the “supernatural Batman book,” which could be interesting, if done properly? You can’t tell that from this first issue, but I’m trusting that things will shake out in that direction fairly quickly.
DOUGLAS: I don’t know that “supernatural Batman” is an avenue that can yield a lot. I also don’t know that Finch is the guy to do it–his artwork is all about dazzlement and detail, not the mystery that you’d think supernatural stuff would be about. Batman often seems more interesting to me when it’s about the suggestion of the supernatural: flaming skeletons and demonic laughter and so on…
GRAEME: Also worth noting: This is the only non-Morrison BRUCE WAYNE Batman book. Detective, Batman, JLA, Batman and Robin – they’re all starring Dick Grayson under the cowl. Maybe that’s another point of this book: Giving the original Bat more presence on the racks on a (fairly) regular basis?
DOUGLAS: I enjoyed the first issue of Hellboy: The Sleeping and the Dead a lot more than I thought I might–I go on and off with Hellboy, because I dig its atmosphere but sometimes don’t feel like there’s a lot more than atmosphere to it. The Mike Mignola stuff I like best is the really unhinged material like the stories collected in The Amazing Screw-On Head; I like the ideas underlying his Hellboy stories (his take on “European vampire culture” here is mighty clever), but I find Hellboy himself to be a pretty one-dimensional character.
GRAEME: Douglas, I could almost hug you for saying that. I always feel a little guilty for not enjoying Hellboy more than I actually do. It’s not that I dislike it; every time I read it, it always raises a smile and gets my admiration for the artwork no matter who’s doing it, but there’s nothing about Hellboy that really holds my attention for a very long time. The understatedness that I think is the character’s strength – there really is something fun about a supernatural comics character that doesn’t act mysterious or talk in Doctor Strange-like language all the time – is the series’ weakness as a whole, I can’t help but feel… Especially when the BPRD characters were split off into their own series.
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DOUGLAS: What sold me on this one, though, was Scott Hampton’s artwork. Hampton’s an interesting artist who isn’t always well-served by the stuff he gets to draw; by the end of Simon Dark, there was a palpable sense of “I don’t want to do this any more” on almost every page. Here, he’s obviously really into it, and Dave Stewart’s colors click with his art from the get-go. Nearly every scene is shrouded in darkness and shadows, and nearly every scene feels like it’s set in a real place anyway.
GRAEME: Yeah, the art is definitely the star here. Specifically, for me, Dave Stewart’s coloring, which is just amazing – understated for the most part, but popping when it really needs to (that blood red sky towards the end of the issue is spectacular, and as dramatic as it needs to be). Stewart’s one of the best colorists in comics, these days – I seem to remember that he did the amazing colors in Vertigo’s Daytripper as well – and even so, I don’t think he gets nearly enough praise.
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Hampton’s no slouch, though. What I appreciate here is that he’s very much working within Mignola’s style, but softening it just enough to bring a completely different atmosphere to everything. Between what I’m guessing were inkwashed Hampton originals and Stewart’s coloring, there’s almost a watercolor effect to these pages, which feels very different from what I’ve come to expect from Hellboy, and all to the better. It still reads as Hellboy, but there’s enough shock of the new to keep my attention all the way through the issue.
Storywise, it’s… I don’t know. It’s Hellboy, really. There’s nothing particularly new or original in the writing – Hellboy wanders into a situation that isn’t as it seems, mysterious characters show up, give backstory and then there’s a monster. Like I said above, it’s fun enough, and there’s definitely nothing bad about it, but without the Hampton/Stewart art, I don’t think there’d be anything particularly great about it, either. If you like Hellboy, you’ll like this, but if he doesn’t do anything for you and you don’t really care about artwork, then I’m not sure I’d really recommend it that highly, sadly.