scans_daily | Not every Bat in Gotham wears one.

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Not every Bat in Gotham wears one.

A long, long, long time ago, back when Retro was Noir instead of Nouveau, he asked me where my current default icon came from, and I said I would post that story, because it's really surreal and interesting and has some odd things to say about two of my favorite characters. But of course I never did post it, and then the Great Disaster came, and now I've switched over to this journal where I'm actually using the icon and other people have asked, and hey, right now it's even topical, so. From "No Man's Land: Secret Files and Origins," I give you:

This is a week or so after the quake; Cataclysm and Aftershock are over, Gotham has been declared a No Man's Land, and the bridges over the river are going to be blown up at midnight, trapping anyone who can't leave in the ruined city. A random Gotham citizen named Jason Braun is wandering around the streets taking a last look at the city before he gets out (knowing that this is stupid but feeling compelled to linger nonetheless), when he hears a voice in his head.

handles on the chair Goddamnit This is odd. Babs is all skeptical of him and her dialog is totally flippant... but she knows exactly what he's talking about (even though there really isn't any way she could), gives him the right directions, and quite clearly, from that last panel, believes he's speaking for the city.

I love the hell out of the whole "spiritual senses" version of Oracle, there, though. She's not Batgirl, not in the least - she's a Bat, no question, dark and terrifying and arcane, but she's not in motion, not a teenager, and her most distinguishing feature is her inhuman vision. That image as Barbara's true self... just so gorgeous and right. And that last panel. It's heartbreaking because it's true, DC. She's a better character now, more powerful, more unique, of more benefit to more people. Listen to Gotham. Leave Babs alone.

Anyway, Jason goes running off to the cemetary, and has some random encounters with various Gotham baddies - Penguin chases him into Ivy's lap, Ivy attacks Penguin's goons and ignores him because he does what Gotham tells him to and doesn't look at her, he staggers off into the night and meets Two-Face.

Harvey's weird in this story too.

The bells toll midnight and the bridges blow, as Gotham urges Jason to hurry his ass up and tell the Guardian the message.

And that's that.

I like how very appropriately Batman-y this story is, it's got that sort of not-quite-committed-to-fantasy vibe that the mythos is so suited to - this might have been a supernatural communication between Gotham and her citizens, or then again, it might all have been a rabies-induced delusion. Maybe Scarface is just a doll; maybe the Scary Bat God is real. Both the reader and the characters are free to take it as they want.

Given the DCU, though, despite liking the ambiguity, I just tend to assume supernatural as a matter of course. So what really fascinates me here is... was the message delivered?

Only Harvey and Helena hear what Jason says; he seems to be saying it specifically to Helena, whom he perceives to be Batman, who would be the obvious choice for "Guardian Spirit of Gotham." And the message "you must not desert the city" seems most applicable to Bruce - Bruce, after all, is the one who left, an act Helena never even considered.

But Gotham tells Jason he's done his part. Harvey, too, tells Helena she needs to listen, as though he understands the message to be for her as well. And I kind of think maybe it is. I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here, but I've always been of the opinion that the heroes of No Man's Land are Babs and Helena, and certianly Helena came up with the tagging, which was the single most important thing anybody on the ground did all year (barring maybe Tim's accidental "poor little rich boy" publicity stunt). Her being there, her sticking it out despite having the ability and, as the year went on, more and more reasons to leave, was vital. And maybe that was what Gotham was trying to say, after all.

Or, y'know, maybe it was Harvey. His maintenance of his territory and his bargain with the Blue Boys... it may have been unpleasant for some (Montoya, for example), but it also provided a lot of very needed stability and probably saved a lot of lives. And wouldn't *that* be crazy? And make the whole "Face the Face" thing that much more of a waste.

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I got the impression that Jason is actually talking to both of them. Helena is the one that fits the bat role, but Harvey also follows that motif.

I don't know if I've ever mentioned it here, but I've always been of the opinion that the heroes of No Man's Land are Babs and Helena

As much as I'd love to add Jim to the list, the fact remains that a) he compromised his own principles in taking Harvey's deal and b) his pride put an unnecessary wedge between the Blue Boys and the Bats for too long. Both were completely understandable, and the first kept the most orderly factions from targeting each other, but neither was among Jim's finest moments.

(It's an interesting quirk of the narrative that Jim finally decides to call Bruce on his shit at the time when he can least afford to. It's a completely logical character note, and a long time coming, and important to keeping the tension high from a meta perspective, but still...)

I'm awfully tempted to add Harvey to that list, for the reasons you list later on. I don't think that he's one of the heroes, but one can certainly make the case that he's the anti-hero.

Well, I do think the Jim and the Blue Boys in general did a lot to keep efforts organized, and to provide safe/neutral pockets of territory for people.

The Blue Boys were important and did a lot of good, but I think more in the Alfred way than the Batman way, as interesting and important support characters, even with their own C-plots, who nonetheless are support characters. Most of what they accomplished was due to Babs (hence Pettit's attack on the Tower as the single stroke that would destroy the Blue Boys). Jim was a major character, but his storyarc through NML was basically the on-the-scene mirror of Bruce's - confusion, failure and ineffectiveness, fighting on his back foot for most of the year. The basic structure of NML was the established order, the people who usually have the power and the answers, being totally lost (Bruce, Jim, the government, the JLA, none of them can achieve anything at first in Bruce and Jim's case or at all in the gov't and JLA's), while the disenfranchised underbelly, the people who are usually on the losing end (Huntress, Leslie, the Arkham inmates, crazy mute homeless former assassin girls), immediately construct a working society and cope quite effectively with the disaster. Jim not being able to *be* the hero of the day was sort of a major component of the premise.

(And then there's Babs. But then, she's Babs. And actually she was still straddling the middle between losing-end and on-top at the time.)

(And then there's Babs. But then, she's Babs. And actually she was still straddling the middle between losing-end and on-top at the time.)

There's something about Oracle that straddles that all the time anyway, really. Not just because of the cliche "she's in a wheelchair and therefore the underdog" thing, but she's a character who went through her own personal NML and reinvented herself once. She knows about survival at the most primal level as much as Cass that way, so could have easily created Oracle for a situation like this, if that makes sense.

It is kind of fascinating to think of what characters have even had that experience. The Batboys (except Jason) have more dealt with emotional shattering rather than a real physical loss. Even with something like Bruce's back being broken. He was injured and was fighting his way back to health, not really struggling for survival. Most of the others the same way.

I firmly believe Harvey could be the kind of Gotham antihero that Jason was as the Red Hood. I'd love to see him be the wild card of the underworld, going from mob boss to vigilante to supervillain to protector, all depending on how the coin comes up.

He absolutely has to potential to be one of Gotham's protectors, in his way. It's a shame no writers ever seem to want to tap that potential, with most rather having him just be the crazy bad guy with a gimmick and a skin condition.

Sadly, I think it'll be a few years before people get past Dark Knight's whole "RAAAAAYYYYCHUUULLLL!" impression of Harvey. But, given time, you never know.

It would be interesting to see his character played out the way you suggest.

hahaha, "RAAAAAYYYYCHUUULLLL!"

It's funny, while I was grumbling about that at the time... if that's the public's perception of the character, that's actually a step up from him just being a scarred coin-flipping mobster with a "number two" gimmick.

I've heard some people come out of THE DARK KNIGHT saying how they really felt for Harvey, that they couldn't even consider him a villain. While I have my own issues with how that played out, it could be the first step toward antiheroism for the character in comics, so here's hoping.

This was lovely. I really like the idea of having The City as a character in and of itself, sort of. Not quite in the Grant Morrison sort of way, but this was pretty cool.

Also, Helena is wrong. Rabies IS treatable, providing you catch it on time, before the classic symptoms start to show. Even then, I believe, a few people have survived it, but those were all really wild cases. It's always slightly bothered me that Bruce lives in a cave full of bats...while I love bats, spending any length of time in a closed space with thousands of them is not a good idea, because rabies can occasionally be airborne.

Oh, the possibilities to be done with a Batman suffering from some sort of rare, low-level air-born strain of rabies.

Heh. I like it...it would explain a lot.

Thus Helena is not wrong, since she what she says is, "Once the symptoms show up, there isn't any treatment to give."

"There are only six known cases of a person surviving symptomatic rabies, and only two known cases of survival in which the patient received no rabies-specific treatment either before or after illness onset." (Wiki) And those two cases are pretty darn controversial.

True - I was distracted by "the shots are for prevention" bit. There are vaccines, of course, but even if you've contracted rabies there is a brief time slot where it can be cured before it sets up camp in your brain, and a longer time still before you start showing any signs...Mr. Jason here is definately a goner though.

I haven't really read much Helena pre-NML's, but was she an active superhero then, or was she still just fighting the mafia?

It's difficult to say what's really canon anymore with Hel, but yeah, she was heroing well before NML. In fact, in her own solo series, which isn't really in continuity but still sort of sets the tone for her, she left off the mob stuff pretty quickly and was doing generic-around-Gotham before the thing even got cancelled. The oldest thing that's still probably fully in continuity is the '92 mini she shared with Tim before his own series started, which was about the same time she was showing up in SHOWCASE and getting mind-controlled into joining the JLI, but anyway, she goes way back with the wider protect-Gotham mandate.

Ever since NML, Hel's been feeling this little quibble at the back of her mind. Maybe she shouldn't do this. Maybe it's a bad example for people to take justice in her hand. But the city knows how vital Helena is to saving everyone, and so City needs to convince her to stay, and what's a more effective way to communicate with Helena then death?

"The City says....Gotham says...you serve me better this way than you ever did before."

♥ !

What I'm curious about is, did Oracle know that Huntress would be there? Why did she tell him to go there? I mean, barring the possibility of the spirit of Gotham influencing her there, why? (Because if she were to just assume that he was crazy or lost or needed help, it would have made more sense for her to tell him to head out of the city, so he could make it before the bridges blow.)

and certianly Helena came up with the tagging, which was the single most important thing anybody on the ground did all year

This. That's one element I've always loved about No Man's Land. And I could be wrong, but I kind of assumed that the similarity between the look of the bat-tags and the bat-symbol on Helena's, and then Cass's, bat-suit fits so well. Not just visually, but because Helena set out to be "the Bat", that presence in the city that instills both fear and hope. It was the symbol of the Bat that she saw was needed, not necessarily Batman. And then you have Cass, who is devoted to the idea/symbol of the Bat, and considering that her life as Batgirl began in Gotham during No Man's Land, that same version of the Bat-symbol makes perfect sense for her as well.

But yeah, I love the idea that Gotham, when considered holistically, is some kind of sentient/semi-sentient creature on its own, so this is neat.

I really would like to see, like, an animated series (on direct-to-DVD I guess, since that's the trend now) of No Man's Land. And it would have to be a series, or several little movies, because there's so freaking much in that arc. I've read the novelization and really enjoyed it (Greg Rucka wrote it), but from the portions of the NML comic I've read, there was crapload that got cut out.

...now I'm sitting here, remembering all the Batman Beyond references to the "Cataclysm of '09", and wishing that Bruce Timm and company hadn't burned out on the DCAU (not to mention having CN basically torpedo it with the last two years of JLU), because if they'd kept it going, they could have TOTALLY used Cataclysm as the 2008-2009 season's cliffhanger ending, and then spent the entire next season on NML...

Whoa, I totally missed those references. I'm going to have to watch some Batman Beyond sometime soon.

Ironically, they made those references to it *before* the Cataclysm storyline, as far as I know...

Also, is this in one of the collected volumes? (And are there any TPBs that contain what happens between Cataclysm and Vol. 1 of NML? If there aren't, there really should be.)

I have no idea what's collected and what isn't, to be honest. Being a SF&O story that's not real vital to the plot, though, I wouldn't put high odds on this being in trade.

I think it was meant to be Helena, although with Bruce there in the hallucination... I wonder if it was meant to be Bruce all along and editorial nixed it at the last minute, so the writer made a quick switch with Helena--and wasn't she Batgirl at this point?--and just had it be Bruce in delusion.

That said, I really wish it WAS Harvey. I mean, obviously, but I love your take on why. Even more wasted potential after "Face the Face." Sigh.

Great post and analysis. I remember being puzzled by this story when I first read it, and while I'm still not sure I get it, you've raised some wonderful questions worth pondering. That said, I've always been fond of that moment near the end where Harvey and Helena have stopped fighting and are wondering if there's anything they can do to save him.

Hel didn't become Batgirl (Batman, actually, hilariously, which is why I consider Cass the actual Batgirl II) until a little while into NML, and this takes place right before the bridges blow, so she hadn't started doing the Bat thing yet.

Interesting thought on Bruce, though - that might help explain why Babs knew where to send the guy, because while her knowing Huntress would be there is impossible, her knowing where Bruce is makes a lot of sense.

I've always been fond of that moment near the end where Harvey and Helena have stopped fighting and are wondering if there's anything they can do to save him.

Definitely agreed. I'd never even have thought of having the two of them interact, but it works really well.

I'm not the only one who sees the new Batwoman when they look at the spirit of the city, right?

"You're sort of on a special mission, is that it? And I'm the... high priestess who can direct you to the Grail?"

Of course Babs believed him, four years of reading Drizzt Do'Urden books in high school just kicked her in the ass.

Psh. She finished high school in three years, tops. And let's be honest; she was reading Anne McCaffrey, not RA Salvatore. (Hey, nobody's perfect.)

I think she was reading everything. She was reading V.C. Andrews and shit. Does she have an opinion on who would be perfect to play the characters in a big-budget Dragonlance movie? Yes. Then she tried to talk literature with Robin and he was just "I like Animorphs."

(Dinah is all about the paranormal romance. There were weeks when you'd think the BOP comline was just a True Blood discussion board. "Yes, Dinah, I'll watch the first episode, I'm downloading it right now, now can we please disable the nuclear warhead?")

Ooh, I like this. Gotham City as an living thing is always interesting. And hell yes, even Gotham City agree Babs is awesomest as Oracle. >3 Babs. Poor Jason-guy.

Wow, that was amazing. Thanks for posting it!

Do you know who wrote it? It reminds me a lot of Neil Gaiman.

It was written by Alisa Kwitney, who I guess was an editor at Vertigo for awhile, and also writes romance novels. Her sort-of blog (http://www.alisakwitney.com/bio.htm#kwitney) makes her seem pretty cool.

Love this!

Especially that analysis of Babs. Because really, what isn't bat-like about sitting still in the dark and "seeing" in an almost supernatural way. Just another things that always interests me in the Bat-verse character relationships: how batty is each member of the family and in what way?

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