Pg. 1:
This would have to be a lost moment from BATMAN: SON OF THE DEMON. As would the fourth panel on the next spread. Oh, Bruce, you hairy-chested love god.
Pp. 2-3:
"What The Butler Saw" is probably best known now as the title of a Joe Orton play, but it's a commonplace phrase dating to the early 20th century--one might have seen it, for instance, in this not-suitable-for-work machine. Appropriately enough for the salacious glimpse at the conception of Damian here.
This spread, in general, is a tribute to the Neal Adams-drawn period of Batman. The shirtless swordfight is a commonplace of Batman/Ra's stories--BATMAN #244, for instance. The wheelchair/shark/Joker bit is from "The Joker's Five-Way Revenge," in BATMAN #251. The werewolf/Batman fight happened in BATMAN #255.
Pg. 4:
We're back in the Black Mercy-style fantasy from the end of last issue. That first fight with Man-Bat happened in DETECTIVE COMICS #400. Anyone able to name an early-'70s story in which something particularly horrible almost happened to Gordon? Alfred's still relatively young here... and why would milquetoast-Bruce be looking at "case files"? (Answer, as a commenter suggested: because, like his father, he's become a doctor.)
Pg. 5:
"Unlikely tales," you say?
"Chemical racketeers" again--this time connected to Boss Zucco from Robin's origin. Those chemicals, man, gotta watch out for them.
"I can't seem to get it out of my head": even the Kirbytech brainwashing can't expunge something this deeply rooted in Bruce's psyche.
Pg. 6:
Catwoman called herself Elva Barr in BATMAN #15, in which she enters a beauty contest for beauticians (!!). (What do you mean Batman never uses a gun? Just look at that cover.) (R.I.P. Eartha Kitt, by the way.) The glasses, as Uzumeri noted, make Bruce look awfully Clark Kent-like, but since when does he need corrective lenses? Mokkari is visible in panel 3.
Pg. 7:
We saw Bruce's mom starting to be overprotective last issue.
Pg. 8:
Might as well mention that Ace, the Bat-Hound, created by Bill Finger and Sheldon Moldoff, first appeared in 1955's BATMAN #92.
Pg. 9:
I love the intimation that if Bruce's parents had never died, he'd have eventually become Batman anyway--!
Pg. 10:
Batman/Deadshot fight from DETECTIVE COMICS #474 (thanks for this and other issue references, David U.). For a good chunk of the '70s and '80s, Bruce Wayne lived in a penthouse at the top of the Wayne Foundation building, rather than at stately Wayne Manor; this was the period after Dick Grayson went off to college (and subsequently became Nightwing) and before Jason Todd became the second Robin. And that would be Jason in the final panel, from BATMAN #408. (Created by Gerry Conway and Don Newton, he had initially appeared in BATMAN #357 and became Robin as of BATMAN #368, but had his origin revised post-Crisis to be a tire-stealing punk.) (Wow--Morrison's really making a lot of references to "Batman Year One" and the issues immediately before and after it, isn't he?)
Pg. 12:
Batman and Jason fought the Scarecrow in DETECTIVE COMICS #571. The Joker killed Jason in BATMAN #427. "My watch has stopped": recalls Groucho Marx's line "either this man is dead or my watch has stopped."
Pg. 13:
The Batman Pieta, from BATMAN #428. (And now we know why Batman put his outfit up in the Batcave: to hurt more.) The Joker bit is from THE KILLING JOKE.
Pg. 15:
Tim Drake appears as Robin in BATMAN #442 in the top panel. (And apparently I was right about what tipped Batman off about Lump/Alfred.)
I'm guessing the fight with the Mad Hatter is the one that happened right near the beginning of "Knightfall," in BATMAN #492.
Pg. 16:
The backbreaking bit is from BATMAN #497; the Azrael fight is from BATMAN #510 or thereabouts. Yes, they've done the "Bruce can't be Batman any more" story before.
Pg. 17:
I think the first panel is just a generic image from the "No Man's Land" Bat-event of 1999; can anyone provide a specific reference? The Batman/Hush fight was from BATMAN #619; Batman comforted Tim after Jack Drake's death in IDENTITY CRISIS #6.
Pg. 18:
"What do you deserve?"--a riff on INFINITE CRISIS #7.
Pg. 19:
The payoff for all the chemical mentions we've seen.
Pg. 20:
"If you flinch" etc.: from 52 #30. We saw bits of Batman's Thogal experience in BATMAN #673 and elsewhere. Damian snarking is from BATMAN #656. The "zur-en-arrh" image here is from BATMAN #680.
Pg. 21:
Very shortly after the end of BATMAN #681, and a bridge to FINAL CRISIS #1. (Bruce is cowl-less here, as he appeared when he attacked the helicopter in #681; perhaps Alfred is bringing him a backup cowl.
"The bat-costume my father wore to the masquerade": the one that inspired Bruce's own costume, first seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #235.
Back to Alfred's narration--although this seems to be the real one, as opposed to the fake Alfred from the beginning of last issue. Weirdly not-quite solicitations for this issue and last, compared to the actual content: #682 was described as "In his last hours, Alfred the Butler tells the life story of the Batman as you've never seen it before...," and this one was supposed to be "narrated by Sir Alfred Pennyworth." Maybe the "his" had a misplaced antecedent, but "sir"?
Pg. 22:
There was another scene (on pg. 16 of last issue) in which Batman put something important in his utility belt... and I am quite sure that bullet is going to turn up again.
Monday, December 22, 2008
Friday, December 12, 2008
Final Crisis: Revelations #4
Really not a whole lot to annotate this time out--to the point where this issue feels like nearly pure time-marking. Nonetheless! Ever onward!
Pg. 1:
"The things I don't could fill a book": is the Crime Bible a book of unbelief? (I'd still like to see the theology here disentangled and explained a bit more.)
Pg. 4:
"No God who would allow this to happen": the old omnipotence problem. And Cain being "condemned to an immortality of agony": first of all, the Genesis 4 business was just about Cain being protected via threat from anyone killing him, and second, if he really was masquerading as Vandal Savage all this time (without a visible mark), he sure didn't seem to be complaining about long life.
Pg. 6:
White guy forcing black guy to call him "master" loses some of its impact when the latter is now a chalky-white husk without the black guy attached to him. (And it appears that the story from last issue could just as well have picked up here.)
Pp. 12-13:
The Huntress, who is wearing a Bat-logo on the soles of her boots, was created by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Bob Layton, and first appeared in ALL STAR COMICS #69 in 1977. (She was slightly revised post-Crisis.)
Pg. 19:
"Bat-Might": maybe she means Bat-Mite (since the character by that name got referred to as "Might" in Batman R.I.P.), but as it is this doesn't quite make sense.
Pg. 21:
Longinus's name came into Christian tradition via the Gospel of Nicodemus, several centuries after Christ. "Gaius Cassius" apparently got appended to that name in Louis de Wohl's 1955 novel The Spear. The WWII flashback here refers to incidents in ALL-STAR SQUADRON. Although, as commenter jgoldscher points out, what's the Earth-2 Superman doing here?
Pg. 24:
Catwoman, last spotted perching on a building last issue, has joined Cain's charnel cuddle-puddle; this all has to be happening long before they join the Female Furies seen over in FC.
Odd visual storytelling decision to see a speaker's back in three consecutive panels (and do three consecutive 180-degree turns on Cain). A director might say "cheat out."
Pg. 28:
So that's where the Statue of Liberty from FC #1 went!
See you in two weeks for BATMAN--it now appears that SECRET FILES has been bumped to Dec. 31. (Which means that REVELATIONS #3 may be the only FC-related title between, er, REVELATIONS #2 on Sep. 10 and the end of the year released on its originally announced release date--possibly RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS too, depending on how you're counting.)
Pg. 1:
"The things I don't could fill a book": is the Crime Bible a book of unbelief? (I'd still like to see the theology here disentangled and explained a bit more.)
Pg. 4:
"No God who would allow this to happen": the old omnipotence problem. And Cain being "condemned to an immortality of agony": first of all, the Genesis 4 business was just about Cain being protected via threat from anyone killing him, and second, if he really was masquerading as Vandal Savage all this time (without a visible mark), he sure didn't seem to be complaining about long life.
Pg. 6:
White guy forcing black guy to call him "master" loses some of its impact when the latter is now a chalky-white husk without the black guy attached to him. (And it appears that the story from last issue could just as well have picked up here.)
Pp. 12-13:
The Huntress, who is wearing a Bat-logo on the soles of her boots, was created by Paul Levitz, Joe Staton and Bob Layton, and first appeared in ALL STAR COMICS #69 in 1977. (She was slightly revised post-Crisis.)
Pg. 19:
"Bat-Might": maybe she means Bat-Mite (since the character by that name got referred to as "Might" in Batman R.I.P.), but as it is this doesn't quite make sense.
Pg. 21:
Longinus's name came into Christian tradition via the Gospel of Nicodemus, several centuries after Christ. "Gaius Cassius" apparently got appended to that name in Louis de Wohl's 1955 novel The Spear. The WWII flashback here refers to incidents in ALL-STAR SQUADRON. Although, as commenter jgoldscher points out, what's the Earth-2 Superman doing here?
Pg. 24:
Catwoman, last spotted perching on a building last issue, has joined Cain's charnel cuddle-puddle; this all has to be happening long before they join the Female Furies seen over in FC.
Odd visual storytelling decision to see a speaker's back in three consecutive panels (and do three consecutive 180-degree turns on Cain). A director might say "cheat out."
Pg. 28:
So that's where the Statue of Liberty from FC #1 went!
See you in two weeks for BATMAN--it now appears that SECRET FILES has been bumped to Dec. 31. (Which means that REVELATIONS #3 may be the only FC-related title between, er, REVELATIONS #2 on Sep. 10 and the end of the year released on its originally announced release date--possibly RAGE OF THE RED LANTERNS too, depending on how you're counting.)
Thursday, December 11, 2008
Final Crisis #5
Well, jeez: now that Jog's done the very funny review and David's done his usual first-rate job with the notes, what's there left for me? Maybe a little bit of extra mop-up. Let's see.
Pg. 1:
Malet Dasim, created by Bob Toomey and Alex Saviuk, first appeared in GREEN LANTERN #130; he's a lawyerly type, and tends to switch off between prosecution and defense roles. (Athough it always strikes me as particularly odd that intergalactic justice is based on the Anglo-American trial system.) And you'd think that it'd have occurred to somebody to draw Hal's scar this issue.
Infallibility by decree: always a tricky thing.
Pg. 2:
Guy Gardner, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in 1968's GREEN LANTERN #59.
Ion/Kyle Rayner, created by Ron Marz and Darryl Banks, first appeared in 1994's GREEN LANTERN #48.
Pg. 3:
Poor visual storytelling: what's happening in the third panel with the green armored dude & Guy? (David's explanation that they're ring-avatars to fight Kraken's caterpillars kinda makes sense, but why wouldn't they just fight them themselves?)
Pg. 4:
Krona hasn't been mentioned by name in FC until now, surprisingly enough, although he's a big part of the giant-hand-holding-a-galaxy creation-story imagery referred to in DC UNIVERSE 0 that goes back to 1965's GREEN LANTERN #40. (As David pointed out, the "Krona protocol" is to protect the battery against, say, being blown up the way Krona did in TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS.) He's also a significant part of TRINITY, of course, which might be why he's offstage here.
The dialogue here skirts around an idea that's been a major subtext of Green Lantern stories for a while (and has been more so under Geoff Johns): the relationship of the Lanterns' power to will being made manifest in the world. If that's connected to the Krona origin-story business, it's essentially voluntarism in the philosophical sense. The "ultimate technology" that Metron gave Anthro in the first issue is fire, which is in some sense the very most primitive form of the Green Flame--"a deadly plasma that responds to the dictates of pure will," if not very conveniently...
Pg. 5:
A good left cross beats an evil god every time.
Pg. 6:
Crumpled spacetime provides a good explanation for all the timeline weirdness around the FC project; might as well throw that chronology out the window, huh? (Although I'll probably still try to update it at some point.)
Pg. 7:
The M in M-theory "could stand for master, mathematical, mother, mystery, membrane, magic, or matrix." Or... Morrison! "Science speculation" is a little closer than "science fact" here.
The nu-OMACs are conveniently packaged à la OMAC #1. Checkmate as "the last move in the human game"; interesting, if kind of pumping up its significance. (But it's worth noting that the original Checkmate started as The Agency, which was founded by Amanda Waller!)
Do they want Renee to be part of it because of her significance within the Crime Cult, per REVELATIONS? (Which appears to be happening some time earlier than this, crumpled spacetime aside?)
Pg. 8:
Those scars on Wonder Woman's back: cree-py.
Pg. 10:
Donna Troy finally gets a speaking line, so I might as well note that she was created (as Wonder Girl) by Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani, and first appeared in 1965 in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #60.
Pg. 18:
The Spanish-speaking guy is Iman, created by Oscar Pinto, F.G. Haghenbeck and Giovanni Barberi, who first appeared in 2000's SUPERMAN ANNUAL #12. His dialogue translates roughly as "What hit me? Ah, $&#*! My armor's useless. Weighs a ton... what would Superman do...?" (I might be wrong about that last bit.)
Frankenstein on a motorbike, sword in his right hand and gun in his right, quoting Milton's Satan. This is why I read superhero comics. (The Paradise Lost line is followed, a few lines later, by the more familiar "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heaven.")
"Wait for the lightning to strike": obviously this is the Marvel Family lightning, but the lightning business is also echoed by the Flash and Legion angles to FC. The solicitation for this issue included the line "Does the secret of humankind's salvation lie in a mysterious cave painting and a bolt of lightning?"
Pg. 20:
Mary Marvel is of course possessed by Sakker-Masokk, one of the lesser-known Kirby-created Darkseid henchmen. (And of course her dirty new power word would be an acronym for a different group of new gods, right?)
Pg. 21:
"You're not facing Freddie this..." --well, he's drawn like Freddie! Is someone else possessing him?
Pg. 22:
The mute cube-solver seems to be the version of Metron from SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE. Points to David for noting the "different... unforeseen" bit as a reference to Metron's self-description in NEW GODS #7.
"Nobody ever did it in less than 18": well, that's a mighty poor explanation of God's number. It's not the minimum number of moves to solve a Rubik's Cube (that would be 0), it's the minimum number of moves to solve a maximally scrambled Rubik's Cube.
Pg. 23:
"If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real": this is as good an explanation of magic as any--you have to have a will, and inscribe it in some symbolic way, before you can turn it into reality. "Rings only work if you can think!"
The cube image also echoes the cubes and dice that turn up all over SEVEN SOLDIERS: a two-dimensional act of imagination (like Nix's drawings, or a comic book) that becomes a three-dimensional thing (entering the world).
Pg. 24:
Not Mokkari, but part of the Mokkari-cult he was boasting about earlier in the issue.
Pg. 25:
The Calculator, created by Bob Rozakis and Mike Grell, first appeared in 1976 in DETECTIVE COMICS #463; he was obsessed with Oracle in BIRDS OF PREY. And yes, it sure looks like Luthor was the one who betrayed the villains (he wasn't too keen on knuckling under in #3). Treason to Darkseid is loyalty to humanity, and if there's one thing Luthor thinks he stands for, it's humanity--that's why he hates Superman. Although he looks uncharacteristically remorseful about having thrown the Calculator under a bus.
"If you show willing": it's odd that a panel as closely analyzed as this one includes this grammatical error. But there's the idea of "will" again.
Pg. 26:
Now we know what happens in the next issue of Batman! Darkseid's crew had been begging him not to kill them earlier in the issue: BZZT all around.
"The idea of a god is a god"--Alan Moore
Pg. 27:
"Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star": Paradise Lost I, 745. (The dropt one was Mulciber/Hephaestus.) I love how compassionate Supergirl is.
Pg. 29:
The President would have to be Jonathan Horne, per #2.
The current population of Earth is about 6.7 billion, so what are the other 3.7 billion up to? Or have they already died for Darkseid?
Pg. 32:
Nix Uotan as Vykin the Black from FOREVER PEOPLE, sort of, except with Rubik's Cube surveillance headgear (the transparent images I can make out seem to be panels from this issue)--the person who's able to step outside the narrative and see it all at once.
OK--what'd I miss?
Pg. 1:
Malet Dasim, created by Bob Toomey and Alex Saviuk, first appeared in GREEN LANTERN #130; he's a lawyerly type, and tends to switch off between prosecution and defense roles. (Athough it always strikes me as particularly odd that intergalactic justice is based on the Anglo-American trial system.) And you'd think that it'd have occurred to somebody to draw Hal's scar this issue.
Infallibility by decree: always a tricky thing.
Pg. 2:
Guy Gardner, created by John Broome and Gil Kane, first appeared in 1968's GREEN LANTERN #59.
Ion/Kyle Rayner, created by Ron Marz and Darryl Banks, first appeared in 1994's GREEN LANTERN #48.
Pg. 3:
Poor visual storytelling: what's happening in the third panel with the green armored dude & Guy? (David's explanation that they're ring-avatars to fight Kraken's caterpillars kinda makes sense, but why wouldn't they just fight them themselves?)
Pg. 4:
Krona hasn't been mentioned by name in FC until now, surprisingly enough, although he's a big part of the giant-hand-holding-a-galaxy creation-story imagery referred to in DC UNIVERSE 0 that goes back to 1965's GREEN LANTERN #40. (As David pointed out, the "Krona protocol" is to protect the battery against, say, being blown up the way Krona did in TALES OF THE GREEN LANTERN CORPS.) He's also a significant part of TRINITY, of course, which might be why he's offstage here.
The dialogue here skirts around an idea that's been a major subtext of Green Lantern stories for a while (and has been more so under Geoff Johns): the relationship of the Lanterns' power to will being made manifest in the world. If that's connected to the Krona origin-story business, it's essentially voluntarism in the philosophical sense. The "ultimate technology" that Metron gave Anthro in the first issue is fire, which is in some sense the very most primitive form of the Green Flame--"a deadly plasma that responds to the dictates of pure will," if not very conveniently...
Pg. 5:
A good left cross beats an evil god every time.
Pg. 6:
Crumpled spacetime provides a good explanation for all the timeline weirdness around the FC project; might as well throw that chronology out the window, huh? (Although I'll probably still try to update it at some point.)
Pg. 7:
The M in M-theory "could stand for master, mathematical, mother, mystery, membrane, magic, or matrix." Or... Morrison! "Science speculation" is a little closer than "science fact" here.
The nu-OMACs are conveniently packaged à la OMAC #1. Checkmate as "the last move in the human game"; interesting, if kind of pumping up its significance. (But it's worth noting that the original Checkmate started as The Agency, which was founded by Amanda Waller!)
Do they want Renee to be part of it because of her significance within the Crime Cult, per REVELATIONS? (Which appears to be happening some time earlier than this, crumpled spacetime aside?)
Pg. 8:
Those scars on Wonder Woman's back: cree-py.
Pg. 10:
Donna Troy finally gets a speaking line, so I might as well note that she was created (as Wonder Girl) by Bob Haney and Bruno Premiani, and first appeared in 1965 in THE BRAVE AND THE BOLD #60.
Pg. 18:
The Spanish-speaking guy is Iman, created by Oscar Pinto, F.G. Haghenbeck and Giovanni Barberi, who first appeared in 2000's SUPERMAN ANNUAL #12. His dialogue translates roughly as "What hit me? Ah, $&#*! My armor's useless. Weighs a ton... what would Superman do...?" (I might be wrong about that last bit.)
Frankenstein on a motorbike, sword in his right hand and gun in his right, quoting Milton's Satan. This is why I read superhero comics. (The Paradise Lost line is followed, a few lines later, by the more familiar "The mind is its own place, and in itself/Can make a heav'n of hell, a hell of heaven.")
"Wait for the lightning to strike": obviously this is the Marvel Family lightning, but the lightning business is also echoed by the Flash and Legion angles to FC. The solicitation for this issue included the line "Does the secret of humankind's salvation lie in a mysterious cave painting and a bolt of lightning?"
Pg. 20:
Mary Marvel is of course possessed by Sakker-Masokk, one of the lesser-known Kirby-created Darkseid henchmen. (And of course her dirty new power word would be an acronym for a different group of new gods, right?)
Pg. 21:
"You're not facing Freddie this..." --well, he's drawn like Freddie! Is someone else possessing him?
Pg. 22:
The mute cube-solver seems to be the version of Metron from SEVEN SOLDIERS: MISTER MIRACLE. Points to David for noting the "different... unforeseen" bit as a reference to Metron's self-description in NEW GODS #7.
"Nobody ever did it in less than 18": well, that's a mighty poor explanation of God's number. It's not the minimum number of moves to solve a Rubik's Cube (that would be 0), it's the minimum number of moves to solve a maximally scrambled Rubik's Cube.
Pg. 23:
"If it don't exist, think it up. Then make it real": this is as good an explanation of magic as any--you have to have a will, and inscribe it in some symbolic way, before you can turn it into reality. "Rings only work if you can think!"
The cube image also echoes the cubes and dice that turn up all over SEVEN SOLDIERS: a two-dimensional act of imagination (like Nix's drawings, or a comic book) that becomes a three-dimensional thing (entering the world).
Pg. 24:
Not Mokkari, but part of the Mokkari-cult he was boasting about earlier in the issue.
Pg. 25:
The Calculator, created by Bob Rozakis and Mike Grell, first appeared in 1976 in DETECTIVE COMICS #463; he was obsessed with Oracle in BIRDS OF PREY. And yes, it sure looks like Luthor was the one who betrayed the villains (he wasn't too keen on knuckling under in #3). Treason to Darkseid is loyalty to humanity, and if there's one thing Luthor thinks he stands for, it's humanity--that's why he hates Superman. Although he looks uncharacteristically remorseful about having thrown the Calculator under a bus.
"If you show willing": it's odd that a panel as closely analyzed as this one includes this grammatical error. But there's the idea of "will" again.
Pg. 26:
Now we know what happens in the next issue of Batman! Darkseid's crew had been begging him not to kill them earlier in the issue: BZZT all around.
"The idea of a god is a god"--Alan Moore
Pg. 27:
"Dropt from the Zenith like a falling Star": Paradise Lost I, 745. (The dropt one was Mulciber/Hephaestus.) I love how compassionate Supergirl is.
Pg. 29:
The President would have to be Jonathan Horne, per #2.
The current population of Earth is about 6.7 billion, so what are the other 3.7 billion up to? Or have they already died for Darkseid?
Pg. 32:
Nix Uotan as Vykin the Black from FOREVER PEOPLE, sort of, except with Rubik's Cube surveillance headgear (the transparent images I can make out seem to be panels from this issue)--the person who's able to step outside the narrative and see it all at once.
OK--what'd I miss?
Thursday, December 4, 2008
Batman #682
[ETA: comments now enabled! Don't know what was going wrong there.]
It's been a while, and the schedule keeps on slipping slipping slipping--check out the schedule post for details. Fortunately, there's a tremendous issue today...
Pg. 1:
The "that's it" is a quote from Batman's origin as first seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #33 (you can see the image here): the bat flies in the "open window," and Bruce exclaims "A bat! That's it! It's an omen. I shall become a bat!" (He's even wearing a green jacket.)
In this version, taking after Frank Miller's depiction of that event, the bat actually smashes the window; Bruce has been cut by flying glass, I initially thought, but then saw David Uzumeri pointing out that it's after the undisguised Bruce has been beaten up in BATMAN #404. (Which is why it always pays to look at Funnybook Babylon before hitting "post.") I don't know what that thing on Bruce's arm is, though.
Pp. 2-3:
Bruce Wayne, sybaritic playboy, ringing a little bell to summon the butler. I love it. "The Butler Did It" is a cliché of crime fiction that seems to have started circulating in the late '20s. It also has to be a reference to the widely circulated theory that Alfred, one way or another, is the force behind everything that's been going awry in Batman's life in the Morrison run. (White gloves, Black Glove...)
Worth mentioning, too, that Alfred was created by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson and first appeared in BATMAN #16 in 1943; it was established in BATMAN #131 that he likes to write stories about what might happen to Batman and his associates in the future. Like, say... Bruce giving up being Batman and Dick taking over.
Pg. 4:
Yeah, nobody ever thinks about what happened to the poor bat.
Julie Madison, created by Gardner Fox, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, was introduced in DETECTIVE COMICS #31 as Bruce Wayne's fiancée. She went into film acting (hence her departure for Hollywood later this issue), and called off the engagement in DETECTIVE COMICS #49, since Bruce was evidently never going to make anything of himself.
"I need a disguise": this is the moment before the bat shows up, rendered in DETECTIVE #33 as "I am ready... but first I must have a disguise."
Pg. 5:
Panel 3 imagines if Bruce had chosen a much stupider Bat-outfit (whose goggles recall the Third Batman from the earlier parts of Morrison's run); panel 4... Snakeman? ETA: Commenters point out that this is a variation on a bit from BATMAN #256, which RAB has kindly reproduced here.
Pg. 6:
This is Doctor Death, as seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #29 (and #30 and then not again until 1982, although he did turn up on Oolong Island in 52); this panel is a variation on the first panel of the Batman story in #29.
Owlman is the evil Batman analogue of Earth-3/the antimatter Earth, although it's worth mentioning that Robin became an Owlman when he grew to adulthood in BATMAN #107. I can't imagine why Morrison keeps alluding to all these stories about Robin growing up and taking over a Batman-like role...
I don't know of a Skeleton/Phantom Skeleton in any Batman stories.
Pg. 7:
Commissioner Gordon, created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #27; the panel with him is in fact a slight paraphrase of a panel from that story. (In the original, Bruce is smoking a pipe and is wearing a really horrible plaid jacket.)
Panel 3 is Generic Death-Trap #84, I think. Is there a better reference?
Pg. 8:
I know I recognize that top image from somewhere; anybody?
Anybody know when it was established that Alfred had been the Waynes' butler when Bruce was a kid? Is that a post-Crisis thing exclusively?
Pg. 9:
Apex Chemical was the chemical corporation from DETECTIVE COMICS #27.
Pg. 10:
This is the Bat-Gyro, which predated the Batplane, first appearing in DETECTIVE COMICS #31. It's actually a sequence from DETECTIVE COMICS #33, "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom."
Oh, Bruce, you heartbreaker. ("I'll just put this with the notes from all the other jilted socialites, shall I?")
Pg. 11:
The fight with two big dudes is a scene from BATMAN #1. Bruce's trip to the circus is Robin's origin, from DETECTIVE COMICS #38.
Pg. 12:
"My parents were killed by a criminal, too": slightly altered from DETECTIVE #38.
Pg. 13:
"Blitz of a boy": a quote from Charles Causley's poem "Timothy Winters." Not previously applied to Robin, as far as I know.
Pg. 14:
I don't know of a vintage Batman story involving quotes from Hamlet (the Joker is quoting Laertes; Robin's not quoting an actual line)--this is Alfred's memories (of being a failed Shakespearean actor) bleeding into the story. And if anybody knows where the Joker-Copter appeared in this form before, please tell me. (I also don't know of a "laughing contest" story, but I wouldn't be surprised.) The thing Batman's holding in panel 4 is the Bat-Radia as it originally appeared in BATMAN #113.
Arkham Asylum seems like it's always been part of the Batman story, but in fact it first appeared in BATMAN #258 in 1974.
Note that we can't see Batman's chest insignia through most of this sequence--it's unclear here when it went yellow and when it changed back, exactly.
Pg. 15:
Ace the Bat-Hound finally makes an appearance! This is where we've veered off of continuity a bit; this isn't quite like how Batwoman's career went in her original '50s-'60s appearances.
The giant typewriter Robin's perched on, a.k.a. the archetypal Bill Finger prop, is from BATMAN #115.
And the other Ace, the chemical company, is the one where the Red Hood fell into the vat of chemicals and became the Joker, per DETECTIVE COMICS #168.
Pg. 16:
The Batgirl he's referring to isn't the Barbara Gordon one, but the earlier Bat-Girl who was Batwoman's niece, Betty Kane. The extraplanetary adventure with Batwoman really did happen, in BATMAN #153.
Pg. 17:
Ace in the background again. "I was a circus kid. I knew about Katy Kane": Kathy-with-an-H Kane was a "circus daredevil performer." A very, very rich circus daredevil performer.
"Hugo Strange"/"Monster Men": another reference to BATMAN #1. The isolation experiment was in BATMAN #156, "Robin Dies at Dawn," another story that's been pretty significantly echoed in the Morrison run--yes, two extraplanetary adventures in three issues. Those were different times.
Pg. 18:
Ah, the Lump--another Jack Kirby creation, first seen in MISTER MIRACLE #8, which is discussed at length here.
Alfred apparently died in DETECTIVE COMICS #328 (which inspired Bruce to start the "Alfred Foundation" in his memory), then became the Outsider and bedeviled Batman for a while starting in DETECTIVE COMICS #334, then came back to life in the rather Batman R.I.P.-themed DETECTIVE COMICS #356 (at which point the foundation became the Wayne Foundation we know and love).
"Pop Criminals": love it.
Pg. 19:
Dick became Nightwing in TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #44 in 1984, which means we've just skipped over about 20 years' worth of stories.
One of these things is not like the others. That would be the Eraser, from BATMAN #188. It's almost as if Bruce's subconscious is trying to tell him something, you think?
Pg. 21:
I'm guessing what Bruce is looking at in the top panel is Jason Todd's costume, after Jason's death. "Say goodbye to the Batcave" recalls the cover of BATMAN #217.
What gave Alfred away, I suspect, was that in DETECTIVE #356 Bruce tried to make sure he'd never learn about his time as the Outsider.
Pg. 22:
...And the Waynes never got killed, so Bruce never did anything much with his life. Note that the beginning of this scenario is pretty much identical to his Black Mercy fantasy in the imperishable SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11.
The Joker threatened to poison the reservoir in BATMAN #407--that was the final scene of "Year One."
Pg. 23:
Thus, we loop back around to where Batman was in FC #2. And we'll pick up the threads again next week, although I should note that the phrase "Grant Morrison's recent run on Batman" from the next-issue box is oddly inconclusive.
It's been a while, and the schedule keeps on slipping slipping slipping--check out the schedule post for details. Fortunately, there's a tremendous issue today...
Pg. 1:
The "that's it" is a quote from Batman's origin as first seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #33 (you can see the image here): the bat flies in the "open window," and Bruce exclaims "A bat! That's it! It's an omen. I shall become a bat!" (He's even wearing a green jacket.)
In this version, taking after Frank Miller's depiction of that event, the bat actually smashes the window; Bruce has been cut by flying glass, I initially thought, but then saw David Uzumeri pointing out that it's after the undisguised Bruce has been beaten up in BATMAN #404. (Which is why it always pays to look at Funnybook Babylon before hitting "post.") I don't know what that thing on Bruce's arm is, though.
Pp. 2-3:
Bruce Wayne, sybaritic playboy, ringing a little bell to summon the butler. I love it. "The Butler Did It" is a cliché of crime fiction that seems to have started circulating in the late '20s. It also has to be a reference to the widely circulated theory that Alfred, one way or another, is the force behind everything that's been going awry in Batman's life in the Morrison run. (White gloves, Black Glove...)
Worth mentioning, too, that Alfred was created by Bob Kane and Jerry Robinson and first appeared in BATMAN #16 in 1943; it was established in BATMAN #131 that he likes to write stories about what might happen to Batman and his associates in the future. Like, say... Bruce giving up being Batman and Dick taking over.
Pg. 4:
Yeah, nobody ever thinks about what happened to the poor bat.
Julie Madison, created by Gardner Fox, Bill Finger and Bob Kane, was introduced in DETECTIVE COMICS #31 as Bruce Wayne's fiancée. She went into film acting (hence her departure for Hollywood later this issue), and called off the engagement in DETECTIVE COMICS #49, since Bruce was evidently never going to make anything of himself.
"I need a disguise": this is the moment before the bat shows up, rendered in DETECTIVE #33 as "I am ready... but first I must have a disguise."
Pg. 5:
Panel 3 imagines if Bruce had chosen a much stupider Bat-outfit (whose goggles recall the Third Batman from the earlier parts of Morrison's run); panel 4... Snakeman? ETA: Commenters point out that this is a variation on a bit from BATMAN #256, which RAB has kindly reproduced here.
Pg. 6:
This is Doctor Death, as seen in DETECTIVE COMICS #29 (and #30 and then not again until 1982, although he did turn up on Oolong Island in 52); this panel is a variation on the first panel of the Batman story in #29.
Owlman is the evil Batman analogue of Earth-3/the antimatter Earth, although it's worth mentioning that Robin became an Owlman when he grew to adulthood in BATMAN #107. I can't imagine why Morrison keeps alluding to all these stories about Robin growing up and taking over a Batman-like role...
I don't know of a Skeleton/Phantom Skeleton in any Batman stories.
Pg. 7:
Commissioner Gordon, created by Bill Finger and Bob Kane, first appeared in DETECTIVE COMICS #27; the panel with him is in fact a slight paraphrase of a panel from that story. (In the original, Bruce is smoking a pipe and is wearing a really horrible plaid jacket.)
Panel 3 is Generic Death-Trap #84, I think. Is there a better reference?
Pg. 8:
I know I recognize that top image from somewhere; anybody?
Anybody know when it was established that Alfred had been the Waynes' butler when Bruce was a kid? Is that a post-Crisis thing exclusively?
Pg. 9:
Apex Chemical was the chemical corporation from DETECTIVE COMICS #27.
Pg. 10:
This is the Bat-Gyro, which predated the Batplane, first appearing in DETECTIVE COMICS #31. It's actually a sequence from DETECTIVE COMICS #33, "The Batman Wars Against the Dirigible of Doom."
Oh, Bruce, you heartbreaker. ("I'll just put this with the notes from all the other jilted socialites, shall I?")
Pg. 11:
The fight with two big dudes is a scene from BATMAN #1. Bruce's trip to the circus is Robin's origin, from DETECTIVE COMICS #38.
Pg. 12:
"My parents were killed by a criminal, too": slightly altered from DETECTIVE #38.
Pg. 13:
"Blitz of a boy": a quote from Charles Causley's poem "Timothy Winters." Not previously applied to Robin, as far as I know.
Pg. 14:
I don't know of a vintage Batman story involving quotes from Hamlet (the Joker is quoting Laertes; Robin's not quoting an actual line)--this is Alfred's memories (of being a failed Shakespearean actor) bleeding into the story. And if anybody knows where the Joker-Copter appeared in this form before, please tell me. (I also don't know of a "laughing contest" story, but I wouldn't be surprised.) The thing Batman's holding in panel 4 is the Bat-Radia as it originally appeared in BATMAN #113.
Arkham Asylum seems like it's always been part of the Batman story, but in fact it first appeared in BATMAN #258 in 1974.
Note that we can't see Batman's chest insignia through most of this sequence--it's unclear here when it went yellow and when it changed back, exactly.
Pg. 15:
Ace the Bat-Hound finally makes an appearance! This is where we've veered off of continuity a bit; this isn't quite like how Batwoman's career went in her original '50s-'60s appearances.
The giant typewriter Robin's perched on, a.k.a. the archetypal Bill Finger prop, is from BATMAN #115.
And the other Ace, the chemical company, is the one where the Red Hood fell into the vat of chemicals and became the Joker, per DETECTIVE COMICS #168.
Pg. 16:
The Batgirl he's referring to isn't the Barbara Gordon one, but the earlier Bat-Girl who was Batwoman's niece, Betty Kane. The extraplanetary adventure with Batwoman really did happen, in BATMAN #153.
Pg. 17:
Ace in the background again. "I was a circus kid. I knew about Katy Kane": Kathy-with-an-H Kane was a "circus daredevil performer." A very, very rich circus daredevil performer.
"Hugo Strange"/"Monster Men": another reference to BATMAN #1. The isolation experiment was in BATMAN #156, "Robin Dies at Dawn," another story that's been pretty significantly echoed in the Morrison run--yes, two extraplanetary adventures in three issues. Those were different times.
Pg. 18:
Ah, the Lump--another Jack Kirby creation, first seen in MISTER MIRACLE #8, which is discussed at length here.
Alfred apparently died in DETECTIVE COMICS #328 (which inspired Bruce to start the "Alfred Foundation" in his memory), then became the Outsider and bedeviled Batman for a while starting in DETECTIVE COMICS #334, then came back to life in the rather Batman R.I.P.-themed DETECTIVE COMICS #356 (at which point the foundation became the Wayne Foundation we know and love).
"Pop Criminals": love it.
Pg. 19:
Dick became Nightwing in TALES OF THE TEEN TITANS #44 in 1984, which means we've just skipped over about 20 years' worth of stories.
One of these things is not like the others. That would be the Eraser, from BATMAN #188. It's almost as if Bruce's subconscious is trying to tell him something, you think?
Pg. 21:
I'm guessing what Bruce is looking at in the top panel is Jason Todd's costume, after Jason's death. "Say goodbye to the Batcave" recalls the cover of BATMAN #217.
What gave Alfred away, I suspect, was that in DETECTIVE #356 Bruce tried to make sure he'd never learn about his time as the Outsider.
Pg. 22:
...And the Waynes never got killed, so Bruce never did anything much with his life. Note that the beginning of this scenario is pretty much identical to his Black Mercy fantasy in the imperishable SUPERMAN ANNUAL #11.
The Joker threatened to poison the reservoir in BATMAN #407--that was the final scene of "Year One."
Pg. 23:
Thus, we loop back around to where Batman was in FC #2. And we'll pick up the threads again next week, although I should note that the phrase "Grant Morrison's recent run on Batman" from the next-issue box is oddly inconclusive.
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