Sin City Film

A fully authentic dramatization from page to screen. Nancy age 11 and age 19 are superb.

Hero, heroine and villain seem to endure more than is humanly possible.

Hartigan was wrong to mutilate the perp. I thought that his partner shot him because he was doing this, not because the partner was corrupt. He also kills cops on his way to rescue Nancy which means that he crosses another line that would have made him a fugitive if he had not committed suicide.

The Senator practices injustice on an incredible scale. How could he prevent the examination of Nancy to confirm whether she was raped and, if so, by whom?

I have the second film on dvd and will watch it shortly.

10 June 2015: A very confusing film! I now realize that I have watched and commented only on "That Yellow Bastard," which is only one of four stories in one film. More comments might follow.

Give Me Liberty

Written by Frank Miller and drawn by Dave Gibbons, Give Me Liberty is like a cross between Dark Knight and Watchmen. High tech action-adventure in a bizarre near future political scenario where a hamburger company literally wages war to defend its destruction of the rain forest and parts of the US secede, waging civil war. It begins with the heading "1995" but the collected edition was published in 1990 so 1995 is in the future.

The story seems to be complete because the continuing villain is dead in the concluding panel but there is a sequel, Martha Washington Goes To War, which maybe I should get after completing the Boys collection. Not visually but conceptually, Martha, the central character of Give Me Liberty, is like Alan Moore's Halo Jones - a young woman who goes to war and gets to be good at it although the reader knows that the war itself is bad.

Halo spans the galaxy whereas Martha does not go beyond Earth orbit but the sf cliche of easy faster than light interstellar travel is not needed to make points about overcrowded cities, unemployment, political bankruptcy and the reasons for wars.

The action of Give Me Liberty becomes implausible and ends in 2012.

Poul Anderson On Comics

Poul Anderson wrote many works of fiction in prose but not in the visual media of cinema or comic books. I have found three references to comics in his novels.

(i) In There Will Be Time, time traveller Jack Havig comments that, despite Superman's telephone kiosk, the most convenient place in a modern city for a time traveller to disappear is a public toilet cubicle.

Greek dramatists sometimes commented on and corrected errors or implausibilities in the works of their predecessors. In this vein, in the first Superman film, Clark Kent, responding to an emergency, approaches a public telephone that is not even enclosed in a kiosk, realises that it would afford him no privacy for a costume change and instead uses a revolving door at super speed.

Thus, the film, like Anderson, commented on a familiar scene from earlier Superman comics.

(ii) In Operation Luna (New York, 2000), Steve Matuchek remarks:

"It's only comic-book heroes and their ilk who bounce directly from one brush with death to the next, wisecracking along the way. Real humans react to such things." (pp. 158-159)

Yes, real humans in real life and in realistically written novels or comics. There is nothing in the latter medium that obliges that it be written unrealistically.

(iii) Matuchek also speaks against vigilantism even if conducted in "...comic-book costumes" (p. 140). Right. Again, comics comment on earlier comics. Frank Miller's Batman is a vigilante wanted for assault, breaking and entering, child endangerment and, when the Joker's dead body has been found, murder. In Alan Moore's Watchmen, the public demonstrates and the police strike ("Badges, not Masks") until anonymous vigilantism is banned. In Garth Ennis' The Boys, superheroes are untrained and get a lot of people killed on 9/11. So the critique of comic book implausibilities is conducted in comics.

I would like to see high quality film and graphic adaptations of Anderson's works.

Watchmen And The Dark Knight

Neither of these DC Comics graphic novels influenced the other but, because both reflected the current state of comics in relation to the real world, they developed some parallels.

(i) The Dark Knight Returns is set in a near future where there is a danger of nuclear war. Watchmen is set in an alternative present with nuclear war imminent.

(ii) Each has a US President who is known to us: Reagan in Knight; Nixon in Watchmen. (Near the end of Watchmen, a headline raises the spectre of "RR" as President but a character ridicules the idea of a cowboy actor in the White House. They refer, of course, to Robert Redford.)

(iii) In both, independently operating costumed crime fighters are banned although a masked vigilante defies the ban and a powerful superhero works for the US government.

(iv) In both, the ban is expressed by a diagonal red line across the image of a crime fighter. (In the DC cross-over series, Legends, a temporary ban was expressed in the same way. Super-powered mutants were persecuted in the Marvel Universe.)

(v) In both, a powerful superhero leaves Earth.

(vi) Because both involve a character falling from a skyscraper, they both raise the question of whether such a person would lose consciousness before reaching the ground.

(vii) Watchmen involves an attack on New York; Knight involves an attempt to destroy the Twin Towers of Gotham City: Two Face's clue is that his next target will be twice as big as you can possibly imagine...

Batman Titles

How do titles convey beginnings, endings, returns and new beginnings? The Return Of Sherlock Holmes tells us that it is a sequel, thus that there was at least one previous volume, and His Last Bow tells us that this volume was intended to be a conclusion. (In fact, there were four volumes before The Return and there is one after His Last Bow.)

Batman titles can vary because an alternative phrase, "the Dark Knight," also refers to the central character. Batman comics written by Frank Miller give us:

a beginning, Batman: Year One;
a return, The Dark Knight Returns;
an ending, The Dark Knight Falls;
a second return, The Dark Knight Strikes Again.

I regard ...Strikes Again as a text book case of how not to write a sequel, throwing away all the subtleties of the original and adding content completely out of tune with the original. I really would have liked to read a sequel that simply followed from the Dark Knight mini-series, showing us:

Bruce and his survivalist army getting organized in the "endless Cave";
Gotham City continuing to decline above them;
Bruce spying on the world above but keeping out of sight;
no superheroes, apart from the flawed Kent (they were kept out of the original, which got it just right).

However, since I am here primarily considering titles, it has to be acknowledged that ...Strikes Again, like ...Rides Again, Return Of.., ...Returns, Son Of... and Children Of..., is a recognized kind of sequel title.

The Batman film tetralogy gives us:

a beginning, simply Batman;
a return, Batman Returns;
an on-going title, Batman Forever;
a new beginning, Batman And Robin

- although it would have made more sense if the third and fourth titles had been reversed.

The Batman film trilogy gives us a beginning, Batman Begins, then two titles that look as if they belong to a different series, albeit about the same character:

another beginning, The Dark Knight;
a sequel, The Dark Knight Rises, the exact opposite of Miller's "ending" title above.

However, these films follow Miller's lead in switching from a "Batman" title to some "Dark Knight" titles. When they are explained, the titles in the trilogy make sense. The anonymous vigilante, whose career begins in the first film, has to become the Dark Knight of Gotham City because its District Attorney has failed to be its White Knight. The Dark Knight, having fallen out of Gothamites' favor, rises again in their esteem in the concluding film. Thus, these titles, when explained, are fully coherent.

Trilogies: Final Year?

Certain DC comics are classics, including these three "trilogies" (I am calling them that but they do fit together, as I will show):

The Man Of Tomorrow by Alan Moore;
The Man Of Steel by John Byrne;
Lex Luthor: The Unauthorized Biography by James D Hudnall.

Batman: Year One by Frank Miller;
The Killing Joke by Alan Moore;
The Dark Knight Returns by Frank Miller.

The Longbow Hunters by Mike Grell;
Green Arrow: Year One (GAY1) by Andy Diggle;
Batman: Rules Of Engagement by Andy Diggle.

(By The Man Of Tomorrow, I mean a collection of Alan Moore's three Superman stories, which include a two parter. Titan Books collected them under this title albeit in black and white.)

The common themes here are high quality writing and art, beginnings and endings:

Moore concludes and Byrne re-creates Superman;
Hudnall writes the origin of the new Luthor;
thus, an end for Superman followed by new beginnings for him and his main opponent.

Miller begins and ends a new Batman;
Moore rewrites the origin of the Joker;
thus, new beginnings and an end for the Batman and his main opponent.

Grell presents a mid-life crisis for the then current Green Arrow and slightly revises his origin;
Diggle presents the origins of a new Green Arrow, the Batplane and Wayne Charities;
thus, a middle age, a retold beginning and a new beginning for Green Arrow and some beginnings for the Batman.

These lists refer to three continuities:

the first began with Action Comics no 1, June 1938, and ended with Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?, 1986;

the second began with The Man Of Steel and Batman: Year One and ended with The Dark Knight Returns;

the third began with GAY1 (many other works are involved but here I highlight a few peaks of quality).

Byrne's Superman, Grell's Green Arrow and the Joker come together with Miller's Batman and Selina Kyle in The Dark Knight Returns. Mindy Newell's Catwoman miniseries continued the character of Selina directly from Batman: Year One.

Since Batman: Year One begins the Batman's career and since The Dark Knight Returns describes his return from a ten year retirement, it has been suggested that Miller could also have written a Batman: The Final Year, describing the build up to retirement.

This would have disclosed events only hinted at, like what had happened (something bad) to Jason, the second Robin. In later comics set in current continuity, the Joker brutally murdered Jason but there is no hint in Miller's story that whatever had happened to Jason had been done by the Joker. Also, whatever it was had caused the Batman to cover it up, then retire, while superhero activity was governmentally banned or covered up as in Watchmen, but this did not happen in continuity, except for the temporary superhero ban in Legends, so there is still a different story to be told here. The Dark Knight Returns, no longer a possible future, becomes an alternative timeline.

Dead, Not Really

How often do we think that a hero was dead, only to find out that he isn't? Almost never. We usually assume rightly that he must have survived. We only need to learn how. But we had better be given a good explanation. Dr Who, in one of his less serious periods, once joked, "I'll tell you about it sometime!" That is not good enough.

Three times I have been fooled into thinking that a hero really was dead when he wasn't.

"Whatever Happened To The Man Of Tomorrow?" by Alan Moore, a "last Superman story," set ten years in the future, in 1997, begins by telling us that Superman died ten years ago. We accept this. A young Daily Planet reporter interviews Lois Elliot for "The Last Days of Superman," the lead feature in a Superman Memorial Edition. Lois says that Superman, whose secret identity as Clark Kent had by then been revealed, relinquished his powers and deliberately froze to death in the Arctic although his body was never found. He had killed an opponent and felt that he could no longer be Superman. Of course, as with Jim Morrison and Bruce Lee, there are rumours that he is still alive somewhere.

When the reporter has left, Lois and her husband, Jonathan, hope that the media will not bother them for another ten years. (What happened in 2007?) Only when Alan Moore wants us to, in the last three panels, do we begin to realise that Jonathan Elliot is, as his name suggests, the son of Jor-El and the foster son of Jonathan Kent. Lois says that they will live happily ever after and Jonathan winks at the reader. Since this version of Superman is ending, a little metafiction is appropriate. The author had begun the story with "This is an IMAGINARY STORY...Aren't they all?" At the end of Lois' story within the story, the Batman had described the scene of death and destruction in and around Superman's Arctic Fortress of Solitude as "like walking amongst the fragments of a legend..." - so let's see how the Batman ends both in a comic book and in a film.

The Dark Knight miniseries by Frank Miller, collected as The Dark Knight Returns and set in a possible future, describes the Batman's return from a ten year retirement. Since this is a limited series and a possible future, anything can happen. Since the four installments are entitled:

The Dark Knight Returns;
The Dark Knight Triumphant;
Hunt The Dark Knight;
The Dark Knight Falls

- we expect a defeat if not a death at the end.

In the collected edition, Alan Moore's Introduction, "The Mark of Batman," prepares us to expect the capstone of a legend, Batman's equivalent of Alamo, Ragnarok or Robin Hood's last arrow, in an "...engrossing story of a great man's final and greatest battle..."

We are not disappointed as the outlawed vigilante, having defeated two old foes and one new one, pits himself against the government agent Kent, dies and is buried, with the world now knowing that Bruce Wayne was the Batman. Except that, at the funeral, Clark hears Bruce's heart restart and winks at Robin... Bruce's new life, "...far past the burnt remains of a crimefighter who's time has passed..." is to train an army of survivalists - reformed criminals, Robin and a one-armed archer - in the endless cave.

In Dark Knight, as in Whatever Happened..., both the superhero identity and the secret identity are over but the man behind them lives on and does something new.

That leaves the film The Dark Knight Rises, which I saw yesterday. We know that it concludes a trilogy so that again anything can happen. Near the end, the Batman, in his new flying vehicle called simply "the Bat," carries an about-to-explode atom bomb away from Gotham City out to sea. I thought, "I hope he does die this time because that would be appropriate." We see a mushroom cloud on the horizon. He cannot have survived.

Civic leaders unveil a statue of the Batman. Bruce Wayne's friends, who knew who he was, commemorate Bruce. They include a young policeman. An orphan raised in a Wayne-funded orphanage, he had been prepared to defend his city without wearing a mask but the Batman had explained that the mask is to protect those you care about. Leaving the police force, he finds his way into the Cave after another character has addressed him by his middle name, Robin.

When Bruce was abroad, Alfred Pennyworth had holidayed hoping to glimpse Bruce happily married, thus never to return to Gotham. At the very end, Alfred holidays again and does glimpse Bruce with Selina Kyle. Impossible. Alfred is seeing a ghost or imagining things. Except that, earlier in the film, Bruce and Lucius Fox had mentioned an autopilot for the Bat...

From Superman in a comic to Batman in a comic to Batman in a film is a neat progression.

Superheroes III

(xxxv) Tom Veitch's and Bryan Talbot's The Nazz relates superpowers to yogic powers and superhero art to Indian religious art.

(xxxvi) Kurt Busiek and Alex Ross' Marvels reviews the history of Marvel superheroes from the point of view of a newspaper photographer.

(xxxvii) Frank Miller's run on Daredevil presents Marvel characters realistically.

(xxxviii) Paul Dini's and Alex Ross' Superman: Peace on Earth presents photographic-like painted art and prose without speech balloons. It shows the limits of Superman's powers in relation to world hunger and military dictatorship.

It seems impossible to finish this list as other works recur to memory. The list so far has less Marvel because I have read more DC. It would make sense to sort the list into Alan Moore works, Superman-related works, Marvel characters etc.