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Fucking Batman. I should know better than to trust him by now.
I shouldn't have bought this comic anyway. I didn't have the money, but I'd been so in love with Pope's 100% and Heavy Liquid that I couldn't resist. The presence of a superhero usually turns me away but this was Batman, who I thought was awesome when I was a kid, who I had history with and whose comics I'd enjoyed even quite recently. And Paul Pope. Loopy politics aside, his characters, his imagining of a skewed future, his deliciously intuitive brushwork had taken me from "Who's Paul Pope?" to "Paul Pope's fucking fantastic, here read this," in only two graphic novels.
From now on, I shall exercise more caution.
SPOILERS FOLLOW
What was the point of this Batman: Year 100? Was there one? It began with him bloody and in retreat from repressive futurepolice on a rooftop. He called some people he works with to get away. We never really find out who they are, who he is, or why they're all working together. One is called Robin; one fills the generic hacker role, the sidekick every hero needs. There's also a police commissioner called Gordon, complete with grey walrus moustache, an honest cop being browbeaten by federal bullies. The plot, such as it is, progresses. Batman breaks into the Fed building to find out more about the incident in which he was shot, where it appears someone else was the target. Gordon finds out more about the same incident and also more about the Batman, all mention of which has been deleted from Gotham's files. Nobody ever seems to have heard of this Bat-Man, as others put it above. So the long sequence in which Gordon eventually gets access to the files hidden by his predecessor by guesses like "The Joker" and "Bruce Wayne" is hard to explain. Perhaps he's a big fan of the Adam West series.
Long sequences is what this book's about, really. There's something very European about its style. The story is very much in service to the art. The first quarter is Batman escaping from the cops at length. He seems to be able to kick some ass when challenged but it's not entirely clear how - he jumps about, people shout things, then he's gone, The action is muddy and confusing. Pope's art is somehow ugly. It's self-indulgent. When Bats meditates Pope closes in on the melted candles and I thought, Yeah, that's what the figurework and the buildings and the Batgadgets all remind me of. Melted candles. It seems entirely unsuited to the long action sequences which dominate the comic. Batman has a Batcycle which folds in half and hangs from the roof. I only worked this out by reading the text pages at the end of the book. It wasn't clear in the artwork, at least first time around; it looked like a bag of gears and machinery. There are at least three, possibly twice that number, sequences where Batman's cornered by a bunch of gun-wielding cops and jumps at them, wearing fake bitey teeth, and gets away. Action in comics is entirely dependent on clarity. The skill of a Miller, a Sim, a Cowan appears to be absent here. I'd say it was lost in translation if this was a hot Euro artist drawing for DC for the first time, which is what it feels like, but it isn't. This is Paul Pope. I'd say he's just not the man for lengthy action sequences if he hadn't handled quite a few brilliantly in Heavy Liquid.
Anyway, Batman gets a load of blackmail secrets, goes straight to the corrupt police and takes them out. Previous to this meeting they'd appeared to be the supreme authority. Some fascist junta, I'd figured. As soon as they're taken down there appears to be a higher authority to subject them to and they'll face justice. Gordon and the Batman cement their predictable alliance and Gordon reveals that he knows Batman's really Bruce Wayne. Which comes as news to us, as there's been no exploration of his personality (or indeed his world) whatsoever to make this a valid payoff line.
The Berlin Batman story mentioned upthread's also included in the trade, and is a slight piece of trash with pretty art. Saving von Mises's work appears to be just one part of a campaign against the Nazis. Batman: Year 100 itself seems very... inexplicable. Why did Pope want to waste his time doing this? What did he think he was bringing except a new costume design? Did anyone enjoy this? |
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