Batman Bites, and Dick Dates the Undead Pt4

[icon_uk]

Before I start this part of the posting, superb news! The first ever Gene Colan Batman collection has just been announced for next year.

Click here for details. HELL TO THE YES!

And to keep us going with the post... we start with an out context image... which actually doesn't improve much WITH context.



"Indeed Master Bruce, that's why Master Dick left in the first place isn't it?"

Ahem, after that little bit of "context is for the weak", we now enter into the meat of the thing, the red raw, rare dripping meat of the thing.. the.. ahem, sorry, caught up in the moment.

We left Batman suffering from a slight case of vampire bite, courtesy of the monstrous Monk aided by his sister the delectable Dala and possessed thrall... umm... dead-inside Dick (Sorry, aliteration isn't easy)



I'd almost be prepared to believe that Gene Colan took the Batman gig just so he could draw the next panel!



The Vampire Batman eh... And I bet you thought "Red Rain" was the first to try it.

It's a little unclear as to why the Monk and Dala left Batman to run free after his bite, but perhaps they just assumed that whaetver happened next would contribute to their masterplan, whatever that was.

And like any good horror story, the monster has to have a certain degree of sympathy to it, preferably delivered in dramatic monologue

Alfred discovers Bruce and is as appalled as you'd expect, even moreso when Bruce backhands him savagely.



Something tells me even Alfred might even need a new pair of underwear after THAT.



I love Alfred in that page, he's just had the crud scared out of him, and STILL he wants to go help Master Bruce. That's loyalty!



I told you this guy gets around!

This is actually one of the stories only real flaws. There is no earthly reason for Father Green to know that Wayne Manor is anything to do with Dala or the Monk. Robin never told him his real name or anything. I suppose it's possible he might have trailed Batman here after the Monk attacked him, seen Dick, guessed he was Robin and the like, but it seems a little.. convenient.

Father Green invites himself in and the unfailingly polite Alfred lets him. Father Green starts to relate a little story which, he assures Alfred, will explain why he is there, but that it's not a pleasant story...

And so we get the exposition dump... sorry, backstory. What makes it particularly interesting is that it completely eschews the usual Carpathian vampires, which you might have expected a Gothic series like Batman to go for. Instead we get something closer to Anne Rice (Whose "Interview with a Vampire" novel was about 5 years old by this point).

Basically, in a just-post-Civil War plantation near New Orleans, Louis Dubois was a cruel and vicious plantation owner, where he lived with his sister, Dala. He violently mistreated his slaves.. workers just as badly as he would have done when they WERE slaves, and such things tend to come back to bite you.. literally in this case, as he mistreats an old woman one time to many and she promises a retribution, something he scoffs at.. until he hears the drums that night...

The drums keep a-beatin, and Louis finds himself drawn out of the house at the dead of night...



I'd suggest this was probably the earliest hint at an incestuous relationship in the DCU, not overplayed, or stated outright, but hinted at as being possible by those old enough to understand which it might mean. ICK!



Not a bat, but a snake? How odd... (I also like the clarification that what they were doing to Louis was in many ways crueler than what he had done to them...)





DUN-DUN-DUUUUHHHHH!! Nice to mention this, but a bit cruel to not mention the poor kid who's been bitten longer. Admittedly "Batman is a Vampiri" does sound more dramatic than "The kid in the brightly coloured briefs is a Vampiri", but so be it.

Meanwhile Batman has gone out on patrol again hoping to retain control over his human nature, and finds a safecracker who is about to, one feels, bloster Batman's reputation as an inhuman creature on the Gotham underworld, if anyone believes his story



One has to assume that Batman wasn't far gone enough to infect Marley...

It has to be said though, that fangs WORK on Batman, perhaps he should wear fake ones every now and again to put the fear of Bat into assorted criminals.

In the meantime, in case you've been wondering what happened to Dick and Vicki, well....



Or in this case, next chapter, which see's the finale to our vampiric epic! How will Batman recover himself? What will Dick do to Vicki? Will Father Green show up at an improbably fortuitous time? (You bet!)

Comments

[cricharddavies]

"... but the torture they were about to inflict in return was tenfold worse."

... not to mention being utterly inane. "You are an evil, rotten, wicked person, so in vengeance we will give you supernatural powers that will allow you to go on being evil, rotten and wicked for potentially hundreds of years to come!" All variations of the "curse of the vampire" suffer from this Fridge Logic, and this is a worse example than most, given that if he was being hypnotized by the drum beats, it would have been really easy to, I don't know, stick a knife in him and throw him in the swamp for the alligators?

[icon_uk]

Except he's not Louis any more, though he would be aware of what he had been. In the past he was cruel, and vicious, but wealthy, handsome and powerful, and able to enjoy the finer things in life. Now all he is is a monster with a hunger.

[cricharddavies]

[incredulous] And I'm sure that his future victims, which likely include quite a few of the people who did this to him, are greatly relieved that he's not pretty or rich when he kills them or turns them into monsters with hungers. Because that makes all the difference in the world, when you're being killed or turned into a monster with a hunger, to know that the person who's doing it gets no joy out of existence.

If they wanted to make him suffer, they could have tied him up and killed him slowly over the course of days during which he would also see his family and loved ones brutallly murdered in front of his eyes. That would have much less of a chance of backfiring on them, not to mention not requiring supernatural powers.

[icon_uk]

I seriously doubt that the people who did this to him would be victims, since they are quite aware of what they are making and what his limitations would be. They are analogous to the Transylvanian villagers who are quite aware of the dangers of the Count and who aren't dumb enough to go out at night like the stupid visiting folk who dismiss things as superstition.

And you think a bunch of former slaves murdering a white guy and his family wouldn't be likely to backfire in just post Civil War New Orleans?

[cricharddavies]

As opposed to their disappearance, in which they would naturally be the suspects?

[icon_uk]

Except he doesn't disappear, as far as the locals would be concerned he's become an insane monstrous beast (and he already had a reputation for cruelty), and there would be nothing to tie that to his servants the way a murder/disappearance would.

[crinos]

Yeah, I have a similar problem with The curse Angel has;

"I curse you to have a soul again, but if you ever experience true happiness you'll become the same unspeakable evil bastard you used to be and will likely come back to kill me and everything in my way to do it."

Not that it ever came to that; since the rest of Angel's vampire posse came in to tear their throats out anyways.

[icon_uk]

The Angel one had the world's dumbest codicil in it with "When you know happiness, you become a monster" instead of something like "When you think you are about to know true happiness, THEN you'll die", to the point that even the writers seemed embarrassed about it.

This is slightly different since it's about stripping what there was of his humanity away from a man, making him a monster inside AND out. After that? Not their problem.

[sistermagpie]

Wasn't it sort of a metaphor for "you sleep with a guy and he turns into a jerk?" I remember reading that somewhere.

[recognitions]

Actually, it would have made more sense if the curse had been "you experience true happiness, go evil, then the evil wears off and you have to live with the guilt." As is, it only truly works as a curse if Angel is reensouled, which the Roma couldn't possibly have anticipated.

[spam-monster.livejournal.com]

There's a trope for that: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ThePunishment

::many hours later::

[badficwriter]

Hate. You.

[citygod]

Haven't read this since it was first published and it's really whetted the appetite for that Colon hardcover. (Sure you don't work in the DC marketing office?!)
Gene's style really suited Batman, but what did you think of his Wonder Woman series?

[icon_uk]

Colan, not Colon (Ernie Colon is another artist though)

And if I worked for DC Marketing the Gene Colan collection would be on volume 10 by now, the Don Newton collection would have been completed some time ago and Phil Foglio's "Stanley and his Monster" would have been in continuous print for 10 years ago.

[citygod]

sorry, typo. But I wonder if Colan and Colon ever worked together? It would be like that seltzer/salsa sketch on Seinfeld.

[thanekos]

could've been worse for the then-Monk; he could've gotten the Skeleton Key treatment.

[insectposse]

"It has to be said though, that fangs WORK on Batman, perhaps he should wear fake ones every now and again to put the fear of Bat into assorted criminals."

He does it in Batman Year 100.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_TaqHRVqr160/SVUXEJPcMZI/AAAAAAAACB0/CfotYkH8VDE/s400/Batman_Year_100_01-50.jpg

[retro_nouveau]

Best context for the weak image ever.

When you were young, and your heart was an open book, you used to say "live and let live".

[sistermagpie]

Wow, those voodoo guys are right out of EC comics, aren't they?

For some reason it cracks me up that Batman is splashing water on his face wearing gloves and a cowl.

So they never explain how that guy shows up? Is he a possible immortal or angel or anything?

[badficwriter]

Gothic vampire stories require a priest to wander in and solve everything. He is led by the script!

[mommy]

Obeah woman? Is there any relation between her and the Obeah Man who kidnapped Tim Drake's parents early on?

[icon_uk]

Nope, and Obeah is simply a reference to a type of West Indian folk magic.

[thehefner]

They're collecting classic Gene Colan stuff? AWESOME! Sounds like it includes some of Rupert Thorne's return too, although it can't include the whole saga. Still, awesome to see an interest in that era!

[psychopathicus_rex]

Two quibbles - one, if Batman IS a vampire, then how can he see himself clearly in the mirror when, it has already been established, others cannot, and two, why is the Monk dressed like, well, a MONK in the modern day when there's nothing whatsoever that's monkish about his background? (For that matter, why have his looks changed so radically when Dala's haven't?)

[icon_uk]

The mirror bit might be down to it being a gradual process, and the fact that Dick was bitten by Dala, but Batman was bitten by the Monk, so it's working in a different way.

In terms of appearance Dala isn't the victim of the curse that Louis was, she's a victim of Louis, so it's reasonable to assume that he got hit with the full bad mojo whammy, whereas she "just" got the same treatment that Dick and Bruce did.

As for the Monk not being monkish, yes, that was a poser, and I think I mention it later in the posts. He's living in an old abbey, and I suppose he might find it A) amusing to pretend to be a monk, or B) Is genuinely seeking some sort of repentence for his past sins, but is just backsliding radically.

There are some parts of this story it's perhaps best not to pay too much attention to, like "explanations" or "motivation" (Other than Dala tying up Robin of course, that explains itself)

[psychopathicus_rex]

Hrrm. I guess that makes sense.
Regarding the Monk's appearance, this is one area where the writer backfired by giving him an origin (even though it's a rather interesting one). Other versions of the Monk don't NEED an explanation for why he dresses like that - he's a powerful, ancient vampire whose origins are lost in the mists of time; that's enough. Giving him a non-monkish origin just serves to draw unwanted attention to his monkishness.

[recognitions]

I'm assuming that's supposed to be a voodoo priestess, or some other form of bayou mysticism? Wondering how researched a depiction this is, if at all.

[recognitions]

O nvm, it said Obeah. I can't read.

[saffronhouse]

Just great! I'm enjoying this like crazy --