Flashpoint - Batman #3

[history79]

Trigger Warning for Violence and Gore

Comments

[tugrul]

This is laughable.

[captainbellman]

I wish. If it had any decent jokes in it, it might be worth looking at.

[thanekos]

" .. the world's a sheep?

.. the world's ALL sheep? I don't know. "

[zapbiffpow]

I hate myself for just now getting that.

[locuatico]

you know? i like Martha's design here. I would be interested in a version of Harley dressed like that.
but yeah. this take the whole "Batman & Joker" relationship into a whole new level of messy...

[captainbellman]

Eh, I feel it relies too heavily on Heath Ledger. I'd love for a designer to create a design for the Joker that starts from scratch with how a woman would approach the design, rather than "It's regular Joker but with boobs."

[locuatico]

well, it is probably because of that. i really like designs like that one for female characters

[glprime]

Well... *I* at least liked the bit where Thomas couldn't meet her eyes when he had to admit Bruce went on to be Batman. That that was all their son survived to do. Important for some people's survival, but barely living for him.

[silverhammerman]

I actually like that bit as well. It does kinda hinge on a pretty dark, and imo inaccurate, reading of what Batman is about, but it makes sense that Thomas Wayne would see it that way.

I can't say that I care much for Martha/Joker's reaction though, more "hysterical woman" bullshit from Azzarello.

[captainbellman]

Except (like THE REST OF THIS GODDAMN TRIPE) it doesn't even make sense, because Bruce isn't going to "follow in his father's footsteps" at all. They're two parallel variants of the same universe. Sure, Johns has Thomas somehow pass a letter on to Bruce in the Nu52, but even despite that there's no single moment when he says "I shall become a Bat...just like my dad!".

There is nothing in this story of any worth.

[doctor_spanky]

Yeah I don't get why Thomas Wayne becomes a Batman and not any other kind of ___man or Captain ____ or his own thing

Have you ever seen or played Buoshock: Infinite?

[deh_tommy]

That's probably a case of constants and variables - no matter what universe, there's always a Batman, always a Joker, always a Gotham, always a tragedy of sorts, etc.

[jekylls_salvation]

Well, the Wayne grounds have a lot of bats. Because of the caves. They'd been meaning to call animal control for some time, they just... never got around to it.

[silverhammerman]

I don't think he's being literal, so much as trying to put the dark (as far as he knows) truth as delicately as possible. It could still have been phrased better, but the line doesn't throw me.

[lbd_nytetrayn]

Same here.

[deh_tommy]

She wasn't thinking properly - she discovered he would 'become Batman', but the only Batman she ever knew was a murderous shadow of what he used to be before the accident with Joe Chill.

[silverhammerman]

Again, that's still built on the profoundly misogynist stereotype of the hysterical woman, who reacts to bad news by literally blubbering and running. And it's not even consistent with Martha/Joker's actions and characterization within the rest of the story; she's a woman who reacted to her son's death by carving up her own face and murdering children, having her weepily jog off to die doesn't work.

[deh_tommy]

Well, that's her reaction to her son's death, not his livng as Batman which if he's anything like Thomas would be a fate far worse. What difference does her gender make in this situation? If this is an example of a 'hysterical woman' cliché, then her having her role reversed with Thomas as Batman would be no different, since their both crasiness in different ways.

[silverhammerman]

Both characters are definitely supposed to be damaged, but let's be real; this is a superhero book. Bruce Wayne's death turned Thomas into a brutal and effective Hard Man superhero. At worst, he's an antihero with a little moral ambiguity and some pathos. Martha on the other hand became a deranged mass murderer and criminal, who exits the story by crying until she falls down a hole. Additionally, Thomas takes his grief out on the bad guys, whereas Martha hurts everyone. It's some pretty basic "women are emotional and those emotions are dangerous" misogyny.

You do make a valid point that Martha's reactions to Bruce dying and to his being Batman could be different. Still though, having her cry until she falls into a whole and dies, is still a pretty melodramatic and frankly laughable, way to portray that.

[zapbiffpow]

That was sad for me, too: not because Bruce went on to be Batman, but because "Bruce became Batman" is probably the extent of what Thomas was able to glean in the short time he had with Barry, and so that was all Martha was able to read off him.

Bruce didn't have the perfect life, but during this point in time (after his 'resurrection') he was definitely getting better mileage out of his life as Batman (family, friends, the occasional lovelife, a successful company with a strong charitable bent) than Thomas ever had in his (none, underlings, Joker, gambling empire, respectively).

[janegray]

Yeah, Bruce!Batman may have a reputation as a loner but he actually has tons of friends and family. Selina, Alfred, Dick, Jason (who is now mostly redeemed), Tim, Damian, Stephanie and Cassandra are getting reintroduced, Barbara, Jim, Clark, Diana, Wally, Arthur, Lucius Fox, etc etc. And people in Gotham actually look up to Batman as a saviour and greatly respect him.

[zapbiffpow]

Damn straight Sometimes it just gets a bit bogged down by execution and interpretations, but he's got a pretty solid support system for a loner.

[walkingthroughforest]

I really liked this series. The only great thing to come out of flashpoint.

[informationgeek]

I liked Flashpoint, but I didn't think it worked as an ending to the DC Universe upon reflection. As it's own thing or just telling its own little Elseworld or unique universe story, it's fine.

[locuatico]

That's why i really dislike those who claim Secret Wars is a Flashpoint rip-off.
Like it or not, Secret Wars at least feels like an ending of the marvel universe while flashpoint feels like a flash event that was changed at the last minute to do the reboot.

[informationgeek]

Well the first issue felt like an ending to the Marvel Universe... the rest of the comic is just Hickman's Dr. Doom and Reed Richards story extended into an event comic.

[locuatico]

But even that i feel was handled different. In flashpoint, it is mostly about these people of an alternate universe and Barry.
In secret wars? we have different characters from different series like Thor or Captain Marvel being allowed to at least have a pressence in the event (if that presence is pointless...well, we shall see...). We have Loki and Silver Surfer survive the end of the world by their own means, etc.
that, in my opinion, is more what i would expect of a story that is supposed to be about the supposed end of this universe.

[informationgeek]

Well I'm only counting the main book and none of the tie-ins. I'm sure the tie-ins are doing alright with sending off the Marvel universe (I'm only reading Ant-man one this week), but I'm referring to the main story only.

[locuatico]

i'm not talking just about the tie-ins. something as simple as having that many characters survive in the main story made me able to enjoy it a lot more.

[quatoria]

But that is literally the worst possible way to view Secret Wars. It's all about playing and remixing and having fun with the full history of marvel to tell a massive list of really fucking cool stories the creators never could have otherwise done. The main plot is just a framework for the side-stories to exist!

[informationgeek]

I... don't have that big of a connection with Marvel's history. I never read any of the events prior to Marvel Now nor I have read any of the previous runs with characters. The side-stories, while I assume are fine, I just don't have that connection or energy to read them or even get that excited for them.

[quatoria]

Oh, well, that's fair enough. It's just, it's worth understanding that the point of this appears to have been able to let Marvel, as a company, tell a huge array of totally new stories, and offer really passionate creators the ability to tell nearly any tale they want. And given the stagnation of mainstream comics... that really seems worth getting excited about, you know? This made us subscribe to a bunch of comics, when we had been reading almost *no* superhero books, before this, for a decade.

[beyondthefringe]

I just love that of everyone, Loki survives the end of everything by noping the fuck out of the narrative altogether and choosing to skip ahead to the next chapter. When everything dies, he finds the loophole. :)

[mrstatham]

This. Secret Wars has literally become Hickman hoping that no-one else remembers the other times Doom gained infinite power and then squandered it, even an event with the same name.

[draganoche]

Yes, clearly directly taking the name of the event, the place it occurs at and the main antagonist being the same was Hickman trying to hide the similarities to that little known marvel event.

[q99]

Flashpoint is an Age of Apocalypse or Age of Ultron with a reboot tacked on.

[captainbellman]

Dead child = crazy mum.

Crazy mum + dead child-killer = mutilated, child-killer crazy mum.

In the world of Brian Azzarello...

[seisachtheia]

I was thinking it might have been more interesting (or perhaps, less reliant on a cliche) if she'd become the masked super hero and he became the villain. Not that either option is a particularly sane response to tragedy, but the way it's framed in these scans, she's the one that goes off the deep end, while his particular form of madness is presented as maybe grim & gritty, but possessed of reason.

Or maybe if they'd chosen a different villain to have her take the place of, and avoided the whole 'women go craaaazy' thing.

[lego_joker]

I have a friend who wrote a fanfic going that exact route. Want a link?

[seisachtheia]

sure!

[lego_joker]

Here y' go: https://www.fanfiction.net/s/11240486/1/Past-the-Point

(English isn't his first language, so there may be some clunky wording, but I find it overall solid.)

[janegray]

I liked the beginning well enough (despite the unfortunate implications of "women are craaaaaaaazy"), but the ending really sucked. Talk about Shoot The Shaggy Dog.

Convenient death hole...

[7dialsmystery]

...is convenient!

Seriously, talk about convenient deaths! No prison time or real punishment for you Mrs Crazy Child Killer! Nope! You conveniently fall into a hole and die when the plot no longer needs you!

BTW, was Martha killing random kids or was she specifically targeting the children of people in the criminal justice system? Because mother of a murdered child randomly killing other people's kids doesn't make a whole hellova lot a sense. Killing the kids of people who fail to put away criminals like Joe Chill, on the other hand, sort of does.

[jaybee3]

This was intriguing for a very short one-shot (kinda) alt-verse UNTIL DC decided people really wanted to read about an old Thomas Wayne Batman with his son dead and we got the Earth-2 version. I'll never understand that.

[icon_uk]

Earth-2 Thomas Wayne is even worse IMHO, since it's revealed he was a Mob Doctor to boot.

[jekylls_salvation]

Yeah Gotham is super corrupt. Worse than Chicago. And it's supposed to be in Jersey? How is Chris Christie not able to fix Gotham? Doesn't everyone know there are people dressed as clowns and scarecrows going around releasing deadly nerve agents and so on in Gotham?

[silverzeo]

... is Bruce's mom as the Joker is suppose to BE a joke? I mean.. a joke that is to be taken seriously or not... over whatever the idea was to make this good?