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Sunday, January 15, 2006

Peter Tomasi's New Batman

When Peter Tomasi became Green Lantern editor, he brought back Hal Jordan. Now that he's taking over Batman, Detective Comics, and Robin, he's giving the "One Year Later" Darknight Detective a slightly different outlook.

From the Newsarama interview:

Bruce/Batman to me, is not driven by the death of his parents anymore. Yes, it was the catalyst and a driving force at first, and yes, seeing his parents murdered before his young eyes is something that will stay with him forever, but I don't feel he's haunted by it anymore. What Bruce does now is honor their memory each and every night by going out into Gotham as its protector and in a strange way its advocate. Because what he does each and every night is saying something to the people of the city: This city will never fall prey to the evildoers. It may be banged up and kicked around sometimes, but it's always gonna get back up and keep fighting, keep living, because as trite as it may sound, to keep on keeping on is what it's all about.

[...] Batman never gives up the fight and therefore is not only a hopeful beacon to Gotham, but is a hopeful man when all is said and done.

It's not quite the fulfillment of Mark Waid's "Batman will no longer be a jerk" prophecy, but it does sound like a happier Batman than readers might have seen in a while. In fact, it picks up from Bruce's extended "dream sequence" visit with his parents in Batman: Death and the Maidens. Whether created psychotropically or not, it allowed Bruce to admit to them that after twenty-five years, he no longer felt the pain of their deaths.

Of course, Death and the Maidens was written by Greg Rucka, late of The OMAC Project and co-architect of Infinite Crisis. Although DatM ended around the time Identity Crisis began, I'm not entirely convinced that it was designed to lead into Infinite Crisis, and from there into a kinder, gentler "OYL" Batman. If Thomas and Martha Wayne were put off by the very existence of "The Batman," imagine how they'd feel about the corruption of Brother Eye. Still, Death and the Maidens' subplot certainly supports Tomasi's conception of Batman.

By giving Batman a necessary subtext of hope, Tomasi goes a step further. On one level Batman's motivations make no difference -- he fights crime because he is driven -- but in terms of dramatics and character interaction, a Batman who acts out of hope is more appealing than one who perpetually expresses his own anger. Arguably, a hopeful Batman would be more likely to reach out to his colleagues than one who remains distrustful of them. (Conversely, a hopeful Batman might also see that hope severely tested by the revelation that they had violated his own memories.) Regardless, for those who see the character constantly growing and changing, this is a logical step in his development, and perhaps even a sign that he had been acting against his nature the past few years.

The proof will start to come out in March's Batman and Detective, but so far it looks promising.

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1 Comments:

At 1/16/2006 01:30:00 AM, Blogger Michael May said...

A few years ago I sat in on a writing class taught by Greg Rucka. He was talking about knowing your characters and said that every character has a Dark Secret, something that he'll barely admit to himself, much less anyone else.

Since Rucka was THE Batman writer at the time, someone asked him what Batman's Dark Secret was and Rucka replied that is was that Bruce is over the death of his folks. That enough time had passed that he'd gotten through the grieving process, but that his realizing that was eating him up.

I thought that was pretty cool and I'm glad that Rucka got to explore it in an actual story with Death and the Maidens. It certainly wasn't an intentional precursor to Infinite Crisis, but it makes sense that as a RESULT of Infinite Crisis it's no longer a Dark Secret, but something that Batman's able to admit and turn into something positive.

I like it.

 

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