Hmm, I know its meant as satire or parody of Batman, but Garth Ennis' little story really is the perfect metaphor for a good chunk of his career and writing.
I thought it was a specific satire of Scott Snyder's favorite trope of the Forever Batman - the idea that Bruce is so obsessed he finds ways to clone his body and copy his mind over and over again.
" That Manhattan Batman was becoming something more, but then I, the effective combination of two popular corporate properties, lobotomized him and hollowed him out. Now, I'm wearing him as a costume, so that I can destroy a varied universe until there's nothing left but what I think. "
Modern DC's handling of Alan Moore co-creations inadvertently outlining the limitations of work-for-hire produced in long running shared universes will never not be the funniest thing.
Ehhhh, isn’t Geoff Johns normally the guy who *lightens* the tone? If anything, both Metals are more extensions/expansions of what Grant Morrison did than they are take thats.
We are talking about *the* Geoff Johns, right? The one who gave Barry Allen the backstory of a murdered mom? Who gave Sinestro the backstory of his wife being killed by a child suicide bomber? Who has limbs ripped off at any available opportunity? That Geoff Johns?
see, I feel the same way. A lot of his darkness is set in the past, or accidentally. It's there in a shit happens sort of way.
I mean Superman exists because an entire planet blew up, Batman because of his parents murder. People don't think that their premises are inherently dark.
The people I think who darken the tone are the ones who do things that setup the idea the world is shit and there's nothing anyone can do about it
Snyder's totally riffing on Morrison ideas, though he doesn't carry them off as well. But also, Geoff Johns might talk a big game about lightening the tone, but historically he hasn't followed through at all. That tension between what Johns preaches and what he actually writes most of the time is the most interesting thing about him.
Has Geoff Johns EVER actually lightened a tone of anything from before? Not everything he writes is darker than it was before him, but I can't recall any single property he worked on that became more lighthearted or less violent and serious/dark after he came along.
His influence on the DCEU seems to have been largely positive, though his insistence that the Flash movie adapt Flashpoint, which is what held that movie back for years. I think Grant Morrison mentioned it in a recent interview, though I don’t have the link offhand.
Rebirth, I think is him in classic preaching mode. Lots of “aw shucks, what happened to FUN?” That never really works as a mea culpa for the New 52’s flaws because he made the bizarre choice to bring in Watchmen and essentially blame Alan Moore. On top of that, I maintain that while the Rebirth era was good, the New 52 had finally found its footing with DCYou and didn’t actually need to be relaunched. In any case, as a one-shot Rebirth was a perfect platform for Johns to trot out his disingenuous nonsense about how it’s someone else’s fault that the comic universe which he’d steered for the past decade was dark. Just contrast Rebirth with the projects he did before and after: Darkseid War and Doomsday Clock, neither of which is all that representative of the “classic fun” Johns pretends he wants to get back to.
Yeah that’s fair, Darkseid War is hardly the nadir of his career. It’s over the top and has some fun designs and the tie-ins are quite good. That said, it’s still an overblown event comic with some bizarre lore (remember the introduction of Mobius, he of the Mobius chair, and Grail, daughter of Darkseid?) where a bunch of Justice League members get “corrupted”.
It’s not bad, fun even, but it’s not exactly reconstructed superheroics.
1. Only thing AFAIK he was writing was Shazam, which he made lighthearted and fun again, after HE made it darker and edgier.
2 The closest thing you could consider the "main" book of New 52 was his Justice League, so again, him gracefully saving us all from himself.
3. One of the first things was Jon in his introduction burning his cat alive. Other things Rebirth brought to us was a sequel to Multiversity killing off a gay character made to subvert killing off gay characters and turning Bizarro into a child abuser and, regardless of its quality, Metal, King's Batman, DCeased, Black Label, Heroes in Crisis ect. If he deserves credit for Rebirth, it can't just be the good shit (which he also didn't write).
Johns? Lightens the tone? Ummmm, i dont have a problem with it but he turned Superboy from goofy and light-hearted to actual brooding/depressed struggling about his Lex connection. He turned Bart Allen from super silly to serious.
I havent read all his work, but being the guy who lightens things up is something I would never apply to him.
I think that's giving Snyder too much credit, because whatever the intent, he's still doing it, y'know? If all of these things were introduced and roundly labelled ridiculous in the span of 20-pages it would be one thing, but we've had several years and multiple events about this dude and as a result he looms over most of Snyder's own latter day career. Even if he was originally intended as a pretty good dunk on Johns, by this point he's just as emblematic of Snyder's own worst impulses.
It's like Superboy-Prime going from a fanboy strawman to Geoff Johns' signature character/unintentional(?) avatar.
Kind of surprised to see the conceit of "The Dark Knights are manifestations of Batman's fears" being brought up again, given how thoroughly Death Metal has drifted from that. This issue has a story with B-Rex, the Batman who is a robot T-Rex, that doesn't represent something deep about the character.
Speaking of the B-Rex story though, it's nice to see something from Marguerite Bennett. Is it just me or has she been absent from Big Two books for some time now? It looks like she's still doing licensed stuff, but mostly for smaller publishers. Be nice if she hadn't only gotten the book because the original writer exited in a hail storm of controversy, but that's comics.
Well... if one were to try and read some depth into the idea of "Batman as a robot T-Rex", a possible explanation could be that it's Bruce's fear of losing his humanity, which the Dark Multiverse has realized in the most warped and ludicrously literal fashion possible.
Note: "if".
B-Rex is clearly just supposed to be silly, which is why his "origin" story is just two pages.
That’s kind of weird and amusing to me to go from a haunting tale about an evil shadow Batman wanting to break free from the circumstances of his creation to Batman T-Rex deciding “screw all this, I’m the king now” to Batman taking “I am Gotham” WAY too literally to Batman accidentally turning himself into a baby.
I love silly stuff in comics, but along the lines of Batman's cape in Batman #98, or Jeff the land shark, or Dex-Starr, or Batroc the leaper using Gwenpool's onomatopoeia to pull a heist. That stuff brings me joy.
This stuff is too nonsensical and navel-gazing to be entertaining. I didn't think it was possible to make a Batrex boring, but they found a way, and it's still the best story of the three.
I'll admit, the dark 'n' brooding writing gets in the way of truly appreciating B-Rex and the Sentient Gotham. Which is probably why I found the Bat-Baby one so funny, when it threw all of that out the window.
I don’t know, I thought the sheer horror of the narration in the B-Rex story made the reveal/juxtaposition of giant robot dinosaur Batman all the more hilarious, because that’s like “oh no, Batman went too far” or “Batman came out wrong” and then BAM! T-Rex.
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scans_daily2020-09-03 09:00 am
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Modern DC's handling of Alan Moore co-creations inadvertently outlining the limitations of work-for-hire produced in long running shared universes will never not be the funniest thing.
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Is this about Goeff Johns building connected multiverses that intersect or what is the connection?
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We are talking about *the* Geoff Johns, right?
The one who gave Barry Allen the backstory of a murdered mom?
Who gave Sinestro the backstory of his wife being killed by a child suicide bomber?
Who has limbs ripped off at any available opportunity?
That Geoff Johns?
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I mean Superman exists because an entire planet blew up, Batman because of his parents murder. People don't think that their premises are inherently dark.
The people I think who darken the tone are the ones who do things that setup the idea the world is shit and there's nothing anyone can do about it
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Rebirth, I think is him in classic preaching mode. Lots of “aw shucks, what happened to FUN?” That never really works as a mea culpa for the New 52’s flaws because he made the bizarre choice to bring in Watchmen and essentially blame Alan Moore. On top of that, I maintain that while the Rebirth era was good, the New 52 had finally found its footing with DCYou and didn’t actually need to be relaunched. In any case, as a one-shot Rebirth was a perfect platform for Johns to trot out his disingenuous nonsense about how it’s someone else’s fault that the comic universe which he’d steered for the past decade was dark. Just contrast Rebirth with the projects he did before and after: Darkseid War and Doomsday Clock, neither of which is all that representative of the “classic fun” Johns pretends he wants to get back to.
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It’s not bad, fun even, but it’s not exactly reconstructed superheroics.
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2 The closest thing you could consider the "main" book of New 52 was his Justice League, so again, him gracefully saving us all from himself.
3. One of the first things was Jon in his introduction burning his cat alive. Other things Rebirth brought to us was a sequel to Multiversity killing off a gay character made to subvert killing off gay characters and turning Bizarro into a child abuser and, regardless of its quality, Metal, King's Batman, DCeased, Black Label, Heroes in Crisis ect. If he deserves credit for Rebirth, it can't just be the good shit (which he also didn't write).
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I havent read all his work, but being the guy who lightens things up is something I would never apply to him.
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It's like Superboy-Prime going from a fanboy strawman to Geoff Johns' signature character/unintentional(?) avatar.
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What Baby Bruce does ?? He broods.
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Speaking of the B-Rex story though, it's nice to see something from Marguerite Bennett. Is it just me or has she been absent from Big Two books for some time now? It looks like she's still doing licensed stuff, but mostly for smaller publishers. Be nice if she hadn't only gotten the book because the original writer exited in a hail storm of controversy, but that's comics.
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Note: "if".
B-Rex is clearly just supposed to be silly, which is why his "origin" story is just two pages.
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Probably something about sheer force of will, transhuman body modifications, snarky banter...
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I love silly stuff in comics, but along the lines of Batman's cape in Batman #98, or Jeff the land shark, or Dex-Starr, or Batroc the leaper using Gwenpool's onomatopoeia to pull a heist. That stuff brings me joy.
This stuff is too nonsensical and navel-gazing to be entertaining. I didn't think it was possible to make a Batrex boring, but they found a way, and it's still the best story of the three.
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https://youtu.be/EZeOrwiugsM