Batman #1

I hope The White Rabbit survived Rebirth!

The Review!
I'm surprised David Finch didn't kill himself while drawing this comic book since it took twenty pages before he was allowed to draw a female. He must have been so bored! Plus Tom King didn't write any double splash pages for him! How is David Finch supposed to earn extra money selling the double splash page original art if Tom King is going to be a dick about his scripts? Bah, what do I care about David Finch not getting to do a double splash page. I'm ecstatic about that! Way to show Finch whose boss, King! Speaking of King, he dunked this issue, if you'll forgive the cop/doughnut metaphor. It was the perfect Batman story! It had Batman in it and he disappeared on Commissioner Gordon and he saved the day and he gave Alfred heart palpitations by almost dying and he made his sidekick do word problems. Plus no Narration Boxes! I might have a serious crush on Tom King. But don't think I'm biased because of it! If this were a terrible issue, I would say so! Usually even if a comic book is really good I'll say it's terrible because I'm a monster. But this one really isn't terrible at all. It's the best Batman #1 since Snyder's Batman #1! It's also only the second Batman #1 I've ever read so that previous sentence might not really mean anything.

The Commentary!
Batman is now being written by Tom King so it's really going to frustrate the people whose favorite part of Batman books are the First Person Narration Boxes. That's my least favorite part of modern comic books! I much prefer the story be told through dialogue and art. But then I'm not afraid of ambiguity! I don't need Batman to tell me why he's doing everything he's doing while he's doing it. Or from a point in the future looking back on what he was doing in the present and explaining it to a mysterious third person. That's my main problem with First Person Narration Boxes. They act as omniscient narrators but are tethered to a person in the story who shouldn't be explaining things as if that person knows an audience is watching them. Although that's really dependent on the writer, I suppose. Some writers use Narration Boxes as thought bubbles which work fine in that they don't make me wonder, "Why is Roy Harper explaining his own thoughts to himself?" And then some writers use them to have characters explain their thoughts and actions to the audience they somehow know is reading their story which come off as Roy Harper explaining his own thoughts to himself.

Oh! I just had a thought about Narration Boxes and how Tom King doesn't use them. Can you imagine how different Omega Men would have been if we were allowed inside the heads of any of the major characters? It would have wrecked the entire fucking book! That book relied on the reader projecting their ethics and beliefs onto the characters, both the seemingly good ones and the seemingly bad ones. Narration Boxes from the point of view of any of the characters would have nailed down their feelings and motives and left no room for any moral ambiguity. The reader would have known right from the beginning both the selfish and the altruistic intentions of each character which could easily have left the reader not caring about how things ended or which terribly flawed person triumphed.

This issue is called "I am Gotham" because a character is going to be introduced who goes by the name of Gotham. This is clever in the way that somebody is clever but you don't realize how clever it is because nobody takes the time to think about anything. Mostly people see something like this and think, "Got it. A guy is named Gotham. Simple title." But Grandmaster Comic Book Readers who are in love with Tom King think things like, "I appreciate how Tom King is taking the reader right back to the beginning of Snyder's run where Bruce explains what Gotham is. King is taking what Snyder did on a figurative level in making Gotham a major character of the comic book and doing it literally. While Snyder's Batman battled Gotham on a psychological level where he was constantly feeling betrayed and reduced by the city, King is now going to have Batman battle Gotham on a physical level. And yet within those physical confrontations will be the understanding that the battle is inherently figurative too! And all of that will be up to the reader to interpret because King abstains from using the crutch of narration boxes."

I didn't actually think those things! What I really thought was, "Der! Gotham is real person now! Wowzers!" That other stuff was just random bullshit.

The story begins with a plane being shot out of the sky with a rocket launcher stolen from the military. This isn't a job for Batman at all but he rushes off to figure out how to save the day. I would think the way to save the day is to call Superman immediately even if Commissioner Gordon is standing right beside you and now knows you sometimes ask for help.

Well, at least he made the call, even if he had to waste some time getting out of earshot of Gordon before asking for help.

Knowing that Hal and Clark don't always respond immediately because they're sometimes dealing with their own problems that are usually more important than the few hundred people who are certainly about to die in Gotham whenever Batman calls, Batman asks Duke to find a place in Gotham where Batman can jump his Batmobile onto the plane. Or some other stunt of that sort. This is the second job we've seen Duke perform in his role as Batman's sidekick and it's another math problem. Before he had to count to 240. This one is a little more complicated, what with having to figure out timing and speed and angles and trajectories and all that other stuff that I would have assumed the Batcomputer could do better.

Superman and Green Lantern are busy on the toilet or whatever so Batman has to save Gotham himself. That means ejecting out of the Batmobile and onto a crashing plane. Does he have a Bat-Grapple strong enough to save a plane plummeting to the earth?

When is Gotham going to save the day and make Batman feel useless and impotent and short-dicked?

Batman swings about the plane setting up Bat-rockets and Bat-gadgets to take over control of the plane. Then he sits on top of it ready to steer it through the Gotham skyline like Doctor Strangelove playing Grand Theft Auto.

Alfred, this is no time for one of your droll bon mots. Although that was a really good one.

Watching Batman save the day is a dark figure who has just killed the Kobra agent who shot the rocket at the plane. Unless this person killed the Kobra agent and then used the Kobra agent's rocket to shoot down the plane himself. I don't want to make too many assumptions because when you make assumptions, you might wind up being wrong. I mean the "you" literally. I don't mean it as in "you and I and everybody included." I mean you specifically. Me? I can't make all the assumptions I want because I always just deny having made the wrong ones.

Batman is prepared to die steering the plane into the proper angle so that it affords the people on board the best chance of survival. He says his goodbyes to Alfred and Alfred goes along with it like he always does. I don't think it's ever mentioned but Alfred must have serious heart problems, shot nerves, and a billion ulcers, right?

At the last second, two other superheroes arrive to catch the plane so that Batman doesn't have to die. Which is perfect because he gets to live but with his reputation increased all the more! What a true hero! Willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good! I'm fairly certain Bruce was willing to ride the plane to his death mostly just to shove in Clark's face who the most heroic member of the Justice League actually is. That would be a good death.

The heroes who save Batman (but not the people on the plane because they were already fucking saved! They better not get credit for that!) are Gotham and Gotham Girl. They're here to save the city! The issue ends before Batman can tell them that that job is already taken and it's probably going to be weird saving some place like Sacramento or Omaha while named Gotham. But thems the breaks! Those cities need heroes so and Omaha has some of the same letters as Gotham. That should be an easy name change. Although the costume already has a huge "G" on the front, so maybe they can become Green Bay and Green Bay Girl instead.