National Comic Book Day: "The only fat super hero ..."

I bought a comic book today, got one free (That's what National Comic Book Day is all about; it happens the first Saturday in May every year in case you missed it, though readers in western time zones can still get their free books), and, as a bonus, I got my old comics shop back.

Most of the free books for adults had been scarfed up by the time I arrived, but I bought Frank Miller's Batman: The Dark Knight Returns because it's a classic and because I could not resist the idea of Superman as the tool of a fascist government.

The store itself was the real treat, though. It had vanished without a trace a few months before, as if sucked into a parallel universe. Last night, looking for shops taking part in today's festivities, I found that the parallel universe was two blocks away; the store had moved, and the old location's evil landlord had taken down the signs that directed customers to the new address, the clerk ("Comics Guy") said.

It's good to have a comics shop in the neighborhood again, because where else could I have heard Comics Guy tell a colleague that "I'm going as Bouncing Boy from the Legion of Super Heroes because he's the only fat super hero who's not, you know, embarrassing."?

 © Peter Rozovsky 2012

Freeze!

You may have read a crime novel or ten about a psychotic serial killer with a flair for the dramatic who dispatches his victims in grizzly, gory, elaborate, over-the-top ways: crucified, flayed, dismembered with its long bones rearranged to form a pentagram, murdered in groups according to the Fibonnaci series or the list of prime numbers or the harmonic intervals in a Bach prelude.

That sort of thing gets cartoonish after a while, so why not do it in cartoon form in the first place?

That's what writers Ed Brubaker and Greg Rucka and artist Michael Lark do in "In the Line of Duty," first story in the Gotham Central collection, one of very many tales in which Batman has become a problematic figure.

The tale's villain is Dr. Victor Fries — Mr. Freeze — who wears a cryogenic suit to survive and who takes his revenge by freezing victims — nothing if not over the top. In the story's opening scene, Freeze attacks two police who raid an apartment where he's holed up, zapping one with his freeze gun and snapping his brittle torso in two.

Over the top, but it works. Brubaker, Rucka and Lark, creating a dark, realistic story in the traditions both of Batman's post-1986 return to his dark roots and of Ed McBain's group police procedurals, nevertheless manage to accommodate the most extravagant of superpowers and the most fiendishly violent of killings. No way anyone could get away with that in regular, non-comic-book crime fiction without inducing a fit of eye-rolling.

© Peter Rozovsky 2010

More comics and 1 1/3 Batman movies

A colleague pointed me toward Batman: Year One, and my first reaction is a thumbs-up for some copy on the book's back cover. The copy praises writer Frank Miller and artist David Mazzucchelli for their groundbreaking "reinterpretation" of Batman's origin. I was grateful that it did not call Miller and Mazzucchelli's work a "reboot."

The collection's first story is nicely noirish and ought to appeal to crime fiction fans. It even contains a scene of police-on-police violence that may remind readers of Bill James.

Earlier I'd seen and liked the Batman movie Dark Knight, whose attractions included, in addition to Heath Ledger's celebrated performance as the Joker, a view of city life not normally seen in movies that emphasize views of city life, and the presence of Michael Caine. So I rented the earlier Batman Begins, which has the same director, one of the same screenwriters and many of the same actors.

That movie's rebo— I mean, reinterpretation of Batman's formative experiences, about the first forty-one minutes of the film's running time, is risible, psychobabblish, faux-mystical nonsense, complete with a Bruce Wayne who endures the most rigorous trials the mountains of Tibet can offer and emerges with his beard still neatly trimmed. But the movie does have Michael Caine.

© Peter Rozovsky 2009