Dark Victory

By now I have already gotten used to the dark passageways of this long abandoned mansion in ruins. The dark shadows don’t scare me anymore the way they used to, and the dark statues littered around the hallways don’t bring my heart racing as they did before. But there are still some dark secrets this place has refused to tell me, there are still more rooms to explore. As I open another door I see it in front of me.

Dark Victory

The third book in my series, Dark Victory is a strange one to give any kind of opinions on. Although the book itself is a continuation of the one from Long Halloween, it’s not just an addition of more story to the series, but instead does give it its own sense of specialty. Without further ado, let’s get into the story summary:

The story starts out a couple of months after the events of the Long Halloween. Harvey Dent’s position as the Gotham City’s DA has been taken up by a new character by the name of Janice Porter, who doesn’t like Batman’s methods and despises them despite Commissioner Gordon’s attempts to convince her otherwise. Batman feels guilty about what happened to Harvey, and breaks connections with the Catwoman and Gordon. Albert Falcone is released, and suddenly a new killer appears: The Hangman hangs police officers and staples a game of hangman on their chest, and it’s later revealed that all of the papers that were used for the hangman game were closely related to Harvey Dent. The Gotham police force and Batman both try to figure out the identity of the Hangman, but they of course take until the last issue to truly understand. Before that we have some major plot points, including the appearance of one Dick Grayson, better known as Robin.

Story wise this story arc is so much better than the Long Halloween, mostly because the murders themselves aren’t tied to any specific dates. The constant jumping forward in time confused me when reading the Long Halloween, and that wasn’t really a problem with the Dark Victory. Dark Victory also has a lot lighter approach to the situation which is admittedly very similar to the one in Long Halloween; Batman has to figure out who this mysterious killer is, and what their relation to the Falcone family is. Instead of having everything be real gloomy all the time, it lightens up with some scenes, especially the ones featuring Dick Grayson, who brings in a whole new dimension to the comic.

The art on the other hand doesn’t change much, but then again it didn’t really need to. The art part of the Long Halloween was right on the spot, and the similarity of Dark Victory’s story just begs for a similar art style.

Overall: this book was better than Long Halloween, but unfortunately it’s so deeply tied into its predecessor that I can’t say you can skip that one real easy. So if you’ve already read the Long Halloween and didn’t like it, then I still recommend giving Dark Victory a try.

The Killing Joke

I take in another deep breath, and sprint forward. There’s a sting in my lung, and I have to stop yet again. The steps behind me are gaining, and I glance backwards, panicking. Without much thought I lunge behind one of the park’s benches, and try to control my loud breathing. The person following me slows down and stops right in front of the bench I’m hiding behind, but doesn’t even look in my direction. For a moment I dare to think that he has lost me, that he’s scanning the darkness in front of him for me. But then the man speaks, the sound crackling slightly.

“So this clown and a blogger run into a park…”

He turns his head to look at me, his white face covered in an unnaturally wide grin.

The Killing Joke (WARNING! Major Spoilers!)

The Killing Joke is the third of my Batquest, and has shown me dimensions that I couldn’t fathom before. This comic, although featuring some major events that affected the whole Batverse and maybe even the DC universe (haven’t really read any other DC so I can’t say :D), does not build it’s awesomeness on that. Instead it’s breathtaking art style and colouring coupled with an absolutely fantastic storyline really show what a graphic novel can be.

The story starts off with Batman going into Arkham Asylum to have a little chat with the Joker. Instead of doing what I expected him to do (“WHERE ARE THEY?”), he just wants to have one sane conversation with the one person in the world who’s faith is so deeply tied to his own. Of course, this can’t happen; Batman quickly discovers that the Joker has escaped and the person in the cell is just a stooge pretending to be him.

This is where we’re introduced to our first flashback. Before we go into it, I have to say a few words: although the flashbacks seem to depict the origin story of the Joker, I don’t believe this to be the case. Rather than being something that actually happened, I think it’s one of the many crazy beginnings the Joker has imagined up for himself, and symbolizes his relationship with the Bat. But let’s talk about that a little later.

In the first flashback we’re introduced to a failing comedian, and his pregnant wife. They live in a tiny little shack, and the comedian can’t find any work because he’s shit at what he does. He’s desperate for anything that could save him and his little family. Eventually he finds a job; some thieving kind have decided to rob a chemical plant that the comedian used to work in, and they ask him to guide them for a share of the loot. They offer him the mask of the Red Hood to use so that no one can recognize him. However just before the men are about to leave for their heist, a police officer comes into the bar they’re sitting at and tells the comedian that his wife and the baby are both dead. The comedian tries to back away from the heist after this, but the robbers won’t let him and force him to come with them. They make their way to the chemical plant, where the Batman finds them and captures the other robbers. The comedian runs away from him but trips into the sewage of the plant, getting away from the Batman but discovering at the shore that his face is pure white, his lips rosy red and his hair bright green. This is the last straw, and the comedian breaks down. Insanity takes hold of him and the Joker is born.

Back to the present day. Joker buys an abandoned amusement park, and sets up his planned amusements. Then he goes to Gordon’s house, shoots Barbara snapping her spine and paralyzing her from the waist down, and kidnaps Gordon. He takes Gordon down to the amusement park and forces him to go through the haunted house ride naked, with all of the usual decorations removed and replaced with giant pictures of Barbara, lying on the floor of their apartment bleeding. Joker is doing this to prove to Gotham, Batman, Gordon, and himself that anyone could go crazy, they just need to go through one really bad day.

Eventually Batman finds his way to the scene, and a fight ensues.

As I said earlier, this comic book was brilliant.  The whole story is built upon the idea that Batman and the Joker are different sides of the same coin, and that one wouldn’t exist without the other. This is further reinforced by the flashback scenes, where Batman plays a part in Joker’s creation; since the Joker exists psychologically because of the Batman, he has created a past in his mind where the same happens physically.

It’s also argued by Joker that the Batman is as crazy as the Joker is, and this is really the first time I thought of Batman this way. This was the first time I thought of the Batman series as a bunch of psychopaths fighting for the control of Gotham rather than a hero trying to stop criminals. The only difference is that the Batman refuses to steal things or kill people, and Joker even argues that Batman himself was created by one bad day. Of course, this is all the more compelling argument when we know this to be partially true; it’s certain that the childhood trauma of having his parents killed right in front of him contributed to his crime fighting, and this makes you wonder whether Batman would even exist if it weren’t for that one day. What if only one of his parents got killed? What if Alfred got killed instead? What if his dad had killed the druggie first?

Other than these very interesting ideas about the whole essence of Batman, the story itself works very well. The pacing is tight and no scene feels like it’s dragging on too much, and the story itself gets told in just enough time to grasp the main points but not so long that the reader gets bored. Each scene has something important to say in relation to the story, unlike a certain other Batman comic I read recently *cough*The Long Halloween*cough*.

The art on the other hand is well done, but not on par with other works I’ve seen. It gets its point across simply, with most of the comic being fairly bland coloured except for the objects important to the plot. This style has been tried before, but it definitely works, even if it can’t hold up to the deep symbolism that the Long Halloween showed in its artwork.

Altogether, this was an amazing comic book. It’s a must read for anyone interested in Batman or comics in general, and I demand you read it right now. Do it. Do it now.

The Long Halloween

The door of the gothic mansion creaks loudly as I push it aside, revealing the long, dark passageway in front of me. I’m not sure of what awaits me here, but I do know it’s different from what I’ve seen so far. This time it will be more serious. More gothic. More artsy, you might say.

The Long Halloween

The Long Halloween is the second of the series of Batman comics I was recommended to read first. After reading it, it’s clear why it was recommended; some of the things the Long Halloween tells about are quite canon for the Batman series, as some of the more recognizable villains emerge in this story arc.

But first, let me quickly summarize the story in Long Halloween. I suggest you skip this paragraph if you haven’t read the series yet, and want to keep from some of the spoilers.

The book starts off in a very familiar setting to anyone who has seen the new Batman movie trilogy, with the Falcone crime family in control of Gotham. To combat this, as in the movie, Batman, Harvey Dent (the DA) and Jim Gordon make a pact to stop the Falcone and restore peace to the streets of Gotham. However things don’t go nearly as smoothly as the trio expected; a killer appears, setting the tone for the rest of the story arc. See, this story isn’t nearly as much about building Batman’s character as Year One, but rather focuses on the “World’s Greatest Detective” part of his title. This killer, nicknamed Holiday for only killing on holidays (much like the Calendar Man), uses a signature set of weapons, only seems to kill people from the competing crime families of Gotham, and is very hard to catch. This whole Holiday business upsets the balance of organized crime within Gotham, and Falcone tries to restore this balance by using the ‘freaks’ of Gotham as his aid. Will Batman find out who the Holiday killer is? What happens to Harvey Dent? Will the Falcones be taken down by the Terrific Trio?

Although the Long Halloween is adored by many Batfans, it’s not nearly as good story wise as everyone makes it out to be. The core mystery itself is very interesting and gripping, as Batman hunts for clues about Holiday’s identity, but the progress on this part is slooow. The clues themselves are drip-fed, and a lot of the books in the story arc don’t really have anything to do with the rest of it other than the obligatory Holiday killing. And I think that strikes at the heart of why this one didn’t work out nearly as well as it seems to on paper; the story itself requires Holiday to commit a murder on each holiday, and they just had to include all of them. This gives a lot of the books a feeling that they were just added as a filler, and it feels like a lot of the characters just needed something to do in those filler books. I lost interest in the story quite a few times, and it was hard to recover from those lows.

The art on the other hand. The art. The art in this story arc is amazing. It’s visually clear, and the reader can always see exactly what the artist wants the reader to see, while still creating a sense of atmosphere and presence. The art is dark, but still manages to convey meanings other than “I’m Batman, I’m dark and brooding so I’m awesome”. A good example of this is the composed, with each of the shots intricately designed, either to convey a plot point or to symbolize the relationship between two characters.

That brings me to characters. Although most of the characters in the Long Halloween are the usual stock-Batman, acting as they normally do, there are a couple of exceptions. The most notable of these are probably Catwoman and Joker. Catwoman is superbly presented, and acts in the way she is “supposed to” act while giving herself some quirks and mannerisms that raise her character even further than in any other Batman comic I’ve read. As a polar opposite of Catwoman is the Joker, who is presented in the worst possible way I can imagine. Instead of being over the top crazy, doing anything for a good laugh, the Joker is given more sanity and then used as a hit man by the Falcone family. This just seems so far out of character to the Joker, and just adding that little bit of seriousness to his character makes him bland and uninteresting.

Overall, it’s not the best book I’ve ever read, but it is still worth a read for the terrific artwork and some of the more canon stuff that happens in the books.

Batman: Year One

So to start off my journey into the dark cave made completely out of the hundreds (or is it thousands?) of Batman comics ever published. I light up a torch and follow the tunnel that leads me further on, the floor under me making a ruffling sound as I stomp on the cheesy issues where Ace the bat-hound was first introduced.

Finally I reach my destination, the treasure I’m looking for right in front of me, shining on its pedestal. A wise man on the internet told me that this would be where I should start, and where I should first delve into the dark street of Gotham.

I pick up Batman: Year One, and start reading.

So, Batman: Year One. As the name suggests, this is clearly the comic that describes the first year of the Dark Knight as the protector of Gotham, and it seemed like a sane suggestion when random people on the internet said I should read it first.

Going into Year One, I was expecting something slightly different than what it is. Instead of being a collection of stories about his first encounters with his various villains, each story contained within itself and not interfering too much with the other stories, Year One offers shots from various days in the lives of Gotham. For example, the very first page starts out in the fourth of January, and on page six it skips forward to February 12^th. Although at first confused, I grew accustomed to this style of storytelling fairly quickly and it grew on me.

The second surprise of Year One is that there are no supervillains. There’s no Joker, there’s no Clayface, not even Bane shows up to beat on the Batman. Instead the book concentrates more on Batman’s growth as a character and how he starts defining himself, and how he learns to properly be the Batman. The villain in the book throughout is the Falcone crime family, and although most of the action is centered around taking down the Falcones, it still isn’t the focus of the story.

It’s obvious that this whole book was crafted as a stepping stone for further Batman reading, and I do agree that anyone new to the comics should start with this one. However the story suffers from the same things that the Lord of the Rings books in parts did; there’s too much description of some events that no one cares about. In LOTR it was traveling through an open field with absolutely nothing in it, in Batman: Year One its Batman contemplating about him being Batman.

I still have to say, the book was a very good read. The depiction of the character is dark but not overly dark, and he has those human flaws that every character needs in order to be interesting. This isn’t some god descended down on humanity, this is a man with a set of extraordinary skills. He can take down an entire SWAT team, but not without facing real danger and taking some damage himself.

Overall, this was a very good book. I recommend you pick it up if you have the chance.

I'm the god-damn Batman!

NANA NANA NANA NANA NANA NANA NANA NANA BATMAAAAN!

If you didn’t figure it out yet, this post is about Batman. You know, the multimillioner who dresses up as a bat and goes around his city beating up shoplifters and the like. Thomas Wayne was his real name I think.

Joking aside, I haven’t admittedly newer really gotten into reading Batman. Yes, I said it, I haven’t read the Long Halloween or Knightfall, or even Year One. I’ve seen the movies, starting with Batman Forever (which was quite cheesy) to Dark Knight Rises. No, I haven’t seen the animated movies, but I did watch a lot of the animated series, not the old one but the new one that’s just called “The Batman”. Way to confuse people, eh?

In any case, I know you’re wondering why I’m telling you all of this. Well, it’s all to set the stage for a new serial blog thingie that I’m going to do about, you guessed it, Batman comics. Basically I’m just going to read through the Batman comics/story arcs listed below, and give you my opinion as someone who hasn’t read much Batman.

The list:

1.       Batman: Year One

2.       The Long Halloween

3.       The Killing Joke

4.       Dark Victory

5.       Hush

6.       Gotham by Gaslight

7.       Arkham Asylum: A Serious House on a Serious Earth

I’ll be putting up the first of these posts very soon, so keep refreshing that page!

What I thought of: Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

So just yesterday I went to see the long awaited sequel to the Rise of the Planet of the Apes. If you don’t know, this is a part of a sort of remake of the whole series, with Planet of the Apes being the first one (astronauts travel forward in time to find apes have taken over the earth), Rise of the Planet of the Apes being the second one (backstory to how the apes became intelligent and how most of humanity died), and the third one being Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. Needless to say, the two earlier movies were very, very entertaining to watch, and even posed some very good questions to the viewer such as “What separates a companion and a pet?”.  But can the latest movie in the series hold up this standard?

Yes. It definitely can.

To start off, the visuals of the movie are amazing. The body language of the apes looks very natural, and the images of San Francisco’s suburbs taken over by the forest are very believable. Throughout the movie you get a clear sense of presence, and you rarely get confused about where everything is happening. This sense of presence goes so far that I honestly think that I could probably draw a map of the movie locations off the top of my head. The reason you will not see one below is that I am horrible at drawing and also because I can’t be bothered.

Probably the worst part of the movie were main human characters. Very bland, I can’t even recall their names now. For some reason it feels like all the actually interesting human characters were kind of pushed to the side and didn’t get nearly enough screen time. With the humans being so bland, the focus of the film’s drama side turns to the apes. The apes are amazingly well done. Every single ape shown seems to have their own character, and the movie draws heavily on the backstories that were established in the earlier movie; Koba (Chimpanzee), who was used as a test subject by humans in the earlier movie carries a deep hatred that eventually leads him to war. Maurice (Orangutang) and Rocket (Chimpanzee) were held in a primate sanctuary where one of the keepers teased them for fun. Although they aren’t exactly fond of the humans either, they still follow Caesar (Chimpanzee) since he was the one who lead them out to freedom.

The story was fairly good as well, even though it did have some flaws. I’m not going to touch on it too deeply, but at its best it created an attachment between the viewer and Caesar’s son by comparing his experiences with one of the teenage humans’ experiences. At its worst, the story focused on some asshole who had a gun with him when he shouldn’t have, creating a random extra scene that the movie would’ve been fine without.

Final verdict: Go see this movie as soon as you can! (of course, remember to watch Planet of the Apes and Rise of the Planet of the Apes first)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes on IMDB: www.imdb.com/title/tt2103281/

How'd you like the movie? Share your thoughts below!