Nerds That Geek Comic Book Review - 'Batman: Damned' #1

Written by Joel T. Lewis

DC Comic’s Black Label imprint is a puzzling experiment. For a company whose traditional avenue of releasing more mature themed content has been its Vertigo Imprint, and whose numerous collaborations with IDW and Dynamite Comics for Batman, Shadow, Ninja Turtles, and even the upcoming mini-series with the Maxx in October indicate the flexibility of the company in terms of non-traditional or mature content, to create another subset of publication doesn’t seem to make a whole lot of sense. But with a Batman title, the creative team behind the (2008) graphic novel entitled Joker, and a storyline about a murdered clown prince of crime and an amnesiatic Batman I wasn’t one to balk at buying in to the latest DC gimmick. The strength of that team, and the story concept was what swayed me as I stood in my local comic shop, agonizing over the oversized (with a price to match) issue. I brushed away my misgivings over the summaries I read and the prominence of John Constantine they spoke of. Nothing against the Hellblazer, but I’ve never been a big fan of the chain smoking cockney occult expert so the idea of him featuring heavily in this mini-series was enough to give me pause. The long and short of it is that this title is hobbled by a number of factors and despite the strength and skill of creators Azzarello and Bermejo the issue falls short.
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The premise of Brian Azzarello and Lee Bermejo’s Batman: Damned series can be summed up by two central elements: 1) the Joker is dead and 2) Batman can’t be sure he didn’t kill him. Throughout this issue we follow the Dark Knight as he wades amid hazy short-term memories and vivid flashbacks trying to piece together what happened the night the Homicidal Harlequin was murdered. Narrated by John Constantine, this issue has a heavy Justice League Dark leaning as Batman interacts with the Hellblazer, Boston Brand (Deadman), and Enchantress who continues to pop up in Bruce’s sinister remembrances of the period before his parents died. Azzarello hints pointedly at the Wayne’s shaky marriage in Bruce’s flashbacks, showing Thomas to be kind of an unfaithful sleaze and highlights Bruce’s desperation as he tracks down leads as to who might have killed the Joker. Bruce must find any scrap of evidence that leads away from him as the prime suspect because to entertain that he’d finally gone too far, would break the Bat’s spirit and undermine his whole crusade. Now just from a purely subjective standpoint, I don’t like the notion of a morally corrupt Thomas Wayne, though that does not discount the important narrative point Azzarello makes with these unfaithful overtures.

Bruce Wayne never grew up to discover the fallibility of his parents. Ripped from him as they were so violently in that dark alley years ago, Bruce only ever saw them as the bright shining beacons of hope and generosity for the city of Gotham. They were martyrs, unfortunate victims of a city they only ever wanted to improve and benefit. This is in part why Batman exists; seeing the cruelty of Gotham in response to the public generosity and benevolence of the Waynes, Bruce opts for a darker approach as a way of creating a Gotham in which the brutal murder of his parents could never happen again, but also the Gotham that his parents worked so hard to create. In a way, Bruce is filling the void in Gotham created by the murder of his parents with Batman, a way of externalizing the loss he himself experiences and the void he can never fill for himself. But also, Bruce in blaming himself for his parents’ murder plays the role of Batman as a way of making up for having himself deprived the city of his parents, of who he always perceived as Gotham’s saviors. When we learn, as Bruce does through these flashbacks, that Thomas and Martha Wayne were on the rocks and that the extramarital overtures of his father threatened the sanctity of their union it is startling how similar those implications are to what Batman finally murdering the Joker would mean.

Discovering that our parents aren’t gods can be earth-shattering. It reshapes how we understand the world and our role within it. Finding out the idyllic impression of his parents, the pillars of Gotham’s upper crust in matters of philanthropy and good will were fallible, cruel even, threatens the foundation of the theory of Batman. In the way Batman murdering Joker would undermine the integrity of the Dark Knight’s Crusade, so too would discovering that the Waynes’ fallibility call into question Batman’s existence and the foundation of his philosophy. Azzarello seems to posit that the vision Bruce had of his parents, the void he feels compelled to fill for Gotham, is a boy’s vision of his parents; illogical, idyllic, and foolish. Which is a great point to make, if an uncomfortable one. Now where this issue really struggles for me, is in narration.

The Brit Noir style narration is not an inherently bad choice especially for character like John Constantine who serves as a morally ambiguous occult Detective. But rather than acting as a frame or setting the scene for the action we see following Bruce as he investigates Joker’s murder, the way Constantine‘s narration appears on the page is not so much integrated as it is an interruption. The letters take on a kind of journal-ed handwriting typeset cascading down the larger splash pages of the issue which are not only difficult to read within the color schemes chosen but is not helped by the fact that what you’re trying to read is Constantine‘s colloquial cockney dialect. Dialect and accent are elements of character that when spelled out phonetically as they are in this hinder the pacing of the issue by forcing you to stop to re-read passages. Opting for this phonetic spelling of Constantine’s unique manner of speaking is not in itself problematic but when combined with the typeface chosen the effect is compounded as what was difficult to interpret because of the colloquial nature of the speech is now indecipherable. Now this might be a grievance for me to level at the feet of this issue’s Letterer Jared K. Fletcher, but I think the failure of the narration must be shared by Azzarello in scripting the book.  

Where Azzarello really shines in this book is in his creation of a spiritual sequel to his own mediation on the Clown Prince of Crime Joker published in 2008 and Alan Moore’s sinister exploration of the character in 1988’s The Killing Joke. In the opening lines of Constantine’s narration, he talks about the thin line between black and white, love and hate, and life and death reminding him of an old joke about insanity and a beam of light. The joke in question deserves its own treatise but to summarize rather than ruminate it hinges on one lunatic’s insane belief in something that is not possible existing in the same breath as his practical faith in humanity’s proclivity for cruelty. Even in a world mad enough for man to walk across lamplight, the charity of man is too much to hope for. The ambiguity of Moore’s ending; the long duet of bat and clown laughter which stops as a beam of light is fractured and disappears on the ground beneath them strongly suggesting that Batman has finally killed the Joker is arguably the most appropriate conclusion to their narrative. Batman’s final realization of Joker’s inability to be redeemed and the equally likely outcomes of murder or mercy maintain the tension that defines the two characters and their inability to solve each other. 

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In the climax of his own mediation on the Joker, Azzarello likens him to a disease. Chronicling the infection of generic henchmen extraordinaire Jonny Frost as he descends further and further into a borrowed madness that graphic novel ends with a particularly brutal bridge fight between hero and villain with the newly mad Frost leaping away from the escalating violence. The concluding page of the novel depicting Jonny’s final leap is mirrored on page 9 of Damned with Batman’s injured leap off the bridge and the news coverage reporting the discovery of the Joker’s body in the Gotham River strongly suggests that this story picks up where the previous one left off.
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Now I’ve gone a far distance in this review without acknowledging the limp shadowy elephant in the room but the time has come at last to discuss the first appearance of Bat-Genitalia in a Comic Book. We see Bruce Wayne’s penis in this issue. There have been complaints, memes, and finally cancelled reprints. Here’s my problem with the penis: it added nothing to this book. It seems to be the only element of this issue, apart from language to warrant the black label mature content imprint. DC created a whole new imprint, a new division of their publishing company in order to show me Batman’s dick. This is no way a prudish objection to the concept of full-frontal male nudity, with the gratuitous oversexualization of female characters in comics from every publisher since their inception I believe it is time at last to bring on the dongs. What I object to is creating a whole new imprint with the expressed purpose of generating mature content and turning out an issue as flaccid as this was.

I will again compare this issue to the Joker graphic novel, which was released as a single volume with no mature content warning 10 years ago with no phallic-fueled internet buzz whatsoever. On page 20 of that book Joker pushes a man he’s skinned from the neck down on to the lit stage of a strip club. Joker murders an elderly couple in bed with a straight razor and sleeps on top of their still bleeding corpses. Broken bottle skull-bashing, hangings, at one point Joker shoots through both Jonny’s cheeks thus creating another ghoulishly smiley villain in the process. You might say this comparison is unfair but that’s not the case. This issue demands comparison. The same author with the same artist with panels that directly reference the graphic novel? Azzarello means this to be a continuation of that story at least in spirit, and it’s a poor heir indeed.

My point is this: Azzarello is your guy for a mature Joker centered book, no question. He’s shown us before that he can make comics gory, mature, terrifying, and quality. But what this issue seems to indicate is that Azzarello came to DC with a story which they proceed to chop up and shove into a trendy little package, playing on the adult imagery of the ‘Black Label’ title. And who knows? Maybe the following issues will find a way to better justify the mature content warning, but in 48 pages of overly-wordy and distracting exposition the only element to warrant the mature label is a penis cloaked in the Batcave’s lighting? Give me a break. This is yet another of DC’s outdated and feeble cash-grab ploys that shore-up audience anticipation and utterly fail on delivering anything promised.

You know what sold me on this book? The reason I ignored my better judgement in picking this title up was remembering the strength of Lee Bermejo’s artwork on Joker. I thought, ‘Well if it sucks, at least the artwork will be killer.’ I was right. The only fault I can lay at Bermejo’s feet in this issue is that his artwork is spoiled with the interruption of the lettering and diminished by its inclusion in so feeble a marketing exercise. This is a frustrating state to be in dear reader, and I hope to level subjective criticism rather than fanboy niggling. This is an ambitious story and an important story with incredible artwork, it’s just a shame it’s so poorly put together. Until Next Time, Geek On.

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