Short version: fun read, interesting story, and thought-provoking without providing a full emotional or intellectual lobotomy. Worth a read, but you may want to wait until it is available in paperback or at the library... it isn't life-altering. Just good.
Long version:
I like it. I haven't seen anyone challenge Batman "canon" like this since the Frank Miller era (The Killing Joke, Batman Year One, the Dark Knight Returns). There was a time in my life when I would join in the squalls of outrage when anyone had the nerve to change the way the story was "supposed to be" for one of my comic book idols. As I've gotten older, I find that I actually respect anyone with the salt and creativity to turn a comfortable feature on its head. I don't get any stimulation out of the same thing over and over again.
Time has passed, and I've re-examined my comic book heroes, just as I have everything else in my life. Adulthood and parenthood have piled new layers of meaning to the heroes that I have been watching my whole life. Hickman's story brings a lot of those adult questions into the four-color comics of my youth.
As long as I can remember, Bruce Wayne's parents have been set-pieces. They are a necessary foundation for the more interesting story of Batman. Hickman's preliminary question is a simple one: Just who the hell are these people? Clearly they are the motivation behind the whole Batman story, but they are often just idealized shells of real human beings.
Or perhaps, more accurately, they are people who retain the giant stature that parents occupy in the minds of their young children. An interesting piece in the Batman puzzle is how early he loses them. I can tell you about the unsettling journey I took in my twenties, when I started seeing my parents as real, flawed human beings instead of the giants I perceived them to be in my youth. I remember that time in my life as a series of painful revelations, which made the world seem a lot less simple than it had previously been. I remember questioning who I was and where I came from.
In my late teens and early twenties, I was very idealistic and set out to pursue a life that would honor the heroes, both real and imagined, in my life. As I got into the actual process of doing so, I realized that it wasn't so simple. Not all the heroes were heroes. And I didn't always get to be the "good guy", and the person I opposed wasn't always the "bad guy". In fact, most of the people I dealt with were just... guys. Or girls. Gender irregardless, most people tended to exist somewhere in the middle of the moral spectrum, as did I. It made life a lot more difficult to understand and pursue. I had to come to a much deeper understanding of who I was, and why I did what I did.
I imagine what it would be like if that journey didn't happen until my fifties. I imagine what it might be like if I built my entire life, my entire world-view on an inaccurate illusion of people who did not really exist.
I don't have to imagine too hard, because Hickman pulls it off pretty damn well in the book. The psychological conflict is often portrayed in terms of symbols and images, instead of out-and-out narrative, but I think that works fairly well in the course of his work. Some might opine that there are too many dark and decaying buildings in Hickman's landscape, but remember that the landscape is ultimately just a reflection of the mindscape of the creature who is definitely Batman and, at times, Bruce Wayne.
The apex of the book resonates pretty strongly with me, and I think it goes something like this: you come from a complex, difficult, and to some extent (greater or lesser) fucked up system (read: your family), and like it or not, their baggage is yours. Ultimately, though, you choose who and what you are, and no one else is responsible for that choice. And at times, that might mean putting to rest pieces of your identity from childhood that no longer matter.
No comments:
Post a Comment