Gotham Calling

Frank Miller’s objectivist Superman

Posted on February 22, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

As much as Frank Miller milked Superman’s symbolic potential, I also appreciate how much his comics simultaneously ‘humanized’ the character as well. Miller’s interpretation of the Man of Steel may be eccentric, but his Superman is an actual individual and not just a mouthpiece for themes and ideas.

For all of his fascination with over-the-top figures, at his best Miller tends to display a talent for giving his cast gripping individual voices and a believable interiority. If we go back to The Dark Knight Returns, Superman is never *just* a distant symbol. In fact, in one of his first scenes we get to briefly see the world through his perspective, sharing both his sight and his frustrated inner thoughts…

The Dark Knight #3

The book is full of touches like this one. When Superman gets blasted by the nuclear warhead, we feel his pain, confusion, and overall vulnerability (rendered even more striking because of the grotesque way Miller draws him). His future daughter might find it pathetic, but I think there is a beautiful sort of despair in Superman’s thoughts as he begs Mother Earth for understanding towards these ‘tiny and stupid and vicious’ humans who ‘can split the very fabric of reality’ with their nuclear conflict.

While searching for sunlight stored in a flower, Superman seems to be reasoning and negotiating his commitment to his host planet and its inhabitants, conveying the sort of conflicted feelings that make for a more nuanced characterization than DKR is often given credit for.

The Dark Knight #4

In fact, even with that final fight against Batman, Superman is never entirely unsympathetic. Hell, Clark even knowingly helps cover up for Bruce’s fake death at the end!

By the early 2000s, though, Frank Miller pushed Superman’s character traits so far that he almost seemed to be parodying his earlier work. If this was true of The Dark Knight Strikes Again, it was even more so in the case of All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder. In that infamous series, everyone came off like a caricature – if not visually (Jim Lee’s pencils were much more conventional than Miller’s), at least in the way they were written. So, it’s no surprise that the Man of Steel was reduced to a poster boy for blind obedience to authorities, as made explicit by (a similarly caricatural) Wonder Woman:

All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #5

(Check out Plastic Man’s own visual mockery of Supes’ chained condition…)

As I mentioned in the last post, the critique of Superman for failing to stand up for himself was formulated from a libertarian and objectivist viewpoint, creating a facile contrast to a Batman who wasn’t ashamed to flaunt his superiority.

And yet, even a dreck of a comic like All-star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder managed to give readers the impression that there was something more hiding underneath the surface. Sure, Superman was defined – negatively – by the fact that he abdicated from using his full might and greatness… but that determined restraint also created a suggestive tension. If, on the one hand, the Man of Steel appeared to reject his own strength, on the other hand the very act of holding back required its own type of (physical and psychological) force:

All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder #5

This notion paid off near the end of The Master Race, when Miller – and Batman – finally acknowledged Superman’s awesomeness. As described by the Dark Knight himself, the Man of Steel now seemed impressive both because of his ability to kick ass and because of the sense that, all this time, he had been hiding from us the true magnitude of his abilities, thus retroactively conveying a gigantic strength of will and self-control.

Drawn by an Andy Kubert trying his best to channel his inner Frank Miller, the result was an archetypical ‘fuck yeah’ moment.

The Master Race #9

Which brings us to Superman: Year One, 2019’s prestige mini-series chronicling Clark Kent’s childhood and youth, leading up to his early days as Superman. This was Frank Miller’s longest exploration of his take on the Man of Steel, properly fleshing out the motifs that he had been gradually developing for decades.

Unfortunately, it’s a pretty clunky affair: a lot of the writing is corny and heavy-handed, and I don’t much care for John Romita Jr’s artwork either. I much, much prefer Miller’s and Romita Jr’s 1993 collaboration Daredevil: The Man Without Fear, which was a more inspired reimagining of a superhero origin. In fact, even some of the high points of Superman: Year One seem like riffs on that earlier comic, such as the scenes about a young boy adjusting himself to his intrusive powers:

Superman: Year One #1

Daredevil: The Man Without Fear #1

Nevertheless, we do get a deeper dramatization of Superman’s relationship with self-restraint. Clark Kent’s impulses to use his superhuman strength are counterbalanced by his mother’s liberal values (‘Nobody’s really bad, darling. Some people just get confused.’) and by his father’s pragmatic pleas for him to stay grounded (‘If you go and start thinking you’re better than everybody else… well, there’s nothing good can come of that’), although the latter also gives him an opening to act exceptionally against injustice when push comes to shove (‘First you talk to them… then you flatten them…’).

It becomes a matter of figuring out the correct strategy and proportion of force. For instance, Clark acts to prevent the gang rape of his high school sweetheart (yep), but he doesn’t kill or maim anyone. Thus, arguably, Frank Miller’s objectivist convictions give way to a more nuanced search for balance, although, in fairness, Ayn Rand’s philosophy also placed a high value on self-control (seen as a triumph of reason over emotionalism).

The first issue of Superman: Year One is ultimately a coming-of-age tale about controlling one’s body and one’s emotions…

Superman: Year One #1

It’s by issue #2 that things get weird. Even if you disregard the fact that Clark Kent hooks up with a mermaid (like he did in the Silver Age, only more so) and spends dozens of pages fighting the krakens of her incestuous father (Poseidon), you have to cope with a storyline about him joining the US Navy and learning to respect military men, who are ‘fragile’ (compared to him) but nevertheless ‘work so darned hard.’ Frank Miller even shoehorns a SEAL Team Six mission against Muslim-looking pirates (uncomfortable echoes of his Holy Terror!) before having Clark move on to less murderous conceptions of heroism…

Now, for a general Superman story, this is a terrible move. Although he was raised as an all-American farm boy, Clark is so intrinsically defined by his ethics and respect for life that it’s very hard to swallow him enlisting in the US military (except perhaps during World War II), even if driven by a curiosity to see and experience the rest of the world beyond Smallville (it’s much easier to imagine him becoming a reporter in West Africa trying to grasp the complexities of human conflicts, like in Mark Waid’s Birthright).

However, if you accept Superman: Year One as the origin of the Millerverse version of the Man of Steel (the same that shows up in DKR, etc), then I suppose this helps establish Superman’s upcoming relationship with the armed forces, as he continued to identify with their values, accepting orders in the name of the United States’ interests (including acts of war). It’s as if you took Clark out of the military, but not the military out of Clark.

Superman: Year One #2

Not that the continuity fits very smoothly… Among other inconsistencies, the future technology of The Dark Knight Returns looks rather quaint compared to the one on display in Superman: Year One, although comic book fans are used to sliding timelines, so it doesn’t require too much imagination to wrap one’s head around it.

The main connection is in terms of spirit anyway: these works speak to each other. For example, the confrontation between Batman and Superman near the end is clearly intended as a reversal of DKR’s climax, with the Man of Steel now appearing as (supposedly) more dignified and badass and the Dark Knight as somewhat pathetic and ineffective. Either that or Miller was actually taking the piss out of Zack Snyder’s Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice, treating both characters like jerks while coming up with even more awful dialogue…

Superman: Year One #3

Batman looks particularly off-putting. I don’t mean the visual, which combines various designs (including the notorious gun holster he sported back in 1939, when Bob Kane and Bill Finger were still figuring out the character). I mean that he sounds stupid and much less cool than in either DKR or Batman: Year One… although it’s not that far from his characterization in All-Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder.

I suppose ridiculing the Caped Crusader (if that is indeed what Frank Miller is intentionally doing, which I’m not sure) helps make Superman less of an easy target for Batman’s objectivist voice. In turn, Miller transfers some of that voice to Superman himself, as the latter constantly weights whether to crush or to save humanity.

In other words, at the end of day, Miller turns the Man of Steel into the Dark Knight. Or, better yet, into Rorschach:

Superman: Year One #3

Posted in WRITERS OF SUPERMAN COMICS | Tagged Andy Kubert, Frank Miller, Jim Lee, John Romita Jr, Mark Waid, politics | Leave a comment

COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (19 February 2024)

Posted on February 19, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

A reminder that comic book covers can be awesome… and also quite bizarre:

Posted in GLIMPSES INTO THE PAST | Tagged Adventures into the Unknown, Bill Molno, Bill Savage, Boris Karloff Tales of Mystery, covers, Ira Schnapp, Jack Sparling, Joe Orlando, Jon D'Agostino, Luis Dominguez, Midnight Tales, Mystery in Space, Mystery Tales, Ogden Whitney, Ruben Moreira, Sid Greene, Sol Brodsky, Space Detective, Spy Cases, Stan Goldberg, Strange Adventures, Tales of the Unexpected, Unusual Tales, Vince Alascia, Wally Wood, Wayne Howard | Leave a comment

Gotham Calling’s 120 Cold War movies – part 12

Posted on February 15, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

We’ve arrived at the end of Gotham Calling’s long-running Cold War cinema retrospective… And if you think depictions of the conflict were winding down in the final years, you’re in for a surprise. This is probably the bloodiest – and certainly the most testosterone-heavy – installment on our list!

In contrast to the kind of mature, experimental cinema of the 1960s and ‘70s, Reagan-era productions largely reduced the Cold War to teen-geared, over-the-top (if narratively conventional) popcorn blockbusters full of sound and fury, perhaps to compensate for the anti-climactic real-world denouement. What happened outside of fiction was in many ways mind-boggling, world-changing, and certainly fascinating (see, for example, Lea Ypi’s highly amusing and thought-provoking memoir Free, about seeing the transition in Albania through a young person’s eyes), but most popular films I know weren’t quite ready to imagine a new reality… and so, while the Cold War did not end in a bang after all, there were still plenty of explosions on the screen.

111. The Blob (USA, 1988)

This fun horror comedy about – you guessed it – a killer blob engages with the Cold War in a pretty direct way about two thirds of the way through, when we finally learn a bit more about the titular mysterious organism. Yet there is also a meta level: like much of eighties’ American culture, The Blob is a throwback to the fifties (it’s a remake of a 1958 B-movie), but by adding a satirical element – as well as a few echoes of The Crazies – the film ends up underlining the gap between the alleged consensus of the early Cold War (which Reagan sought to recapture) and the more cynical attitude of subsequent generations.

112. Miracle Mile (USA, 1988)

Because nuclear fears were a part of the zeitgeist practically until the very end, in the final years of the Cold War you could still find an urgent sense of existential anxiety in films like Miracle Mile, a quirky (yet very dark) indie one-crazy-night romcom/apocalyptic thriller about a shy trombone player trying to track down the girl of his dreams even as the world seems about to get blown away.

113. Rambo III (USA, 1988)

The one where one-man-army John Rambo fights alongside the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan! I had to include at least one of Sylvester Stallone’s iconic anti-Soviet trilogy – along with Rambo II and Rocky IV, this film is the epitome of the Reaganite macho action cinema mocked by the Dead Kennedys, although I still find it comparatively less campy than its immediate predecessor, perhaps because of all the gritty neo-western imagery, complete with a proto-cavalry climax in the desert… Fans may appreciate the subtle nods to the previous Rambo movies, even if an earlier monologue further subverts the spirit of First Blood (‘We didn’t make you this fighting machine. We just shifted away the rough edges.’). At least as many are bound to laugh, not just at the sheer over-the-topness of the whole thing (the laconic hero speaks almost exclusively in badass quips), but at how poorly its propaganda has aged (including the scene were a dead-eyed Stallone learns about the brave Afghans’ ‘holy war’). Plus, there is one more layer of irony: Rambo III was shot in Israel and it’s full of Israeli actors pretending to be Arabs fighting against invaders of their land.

114. Red Heat (USA, 1988)

It’s perestroika as a buddy cop action comedy, with stoic Soviet officer Ivan Danko teaming up with a sleazy jerk from Chicago PD and the two learning to sort of begrudgingly respect each other despite their differences, much like the superpowers were doing during Mikhail Gorbachev’s leadership. That very specific moment of rapprochement is signaled not only by the fact that the film was partially shot on location in Moscow itself, but also by the decision to depict Schwarzenegger as a heroic embodiment of Soviet strength and honest conviction (as imagined by Americans) rather than as a defector (like in the next movie on this list). Indeed, while Red Heat is all about thick national stereotypes, the result practically feels like an inversion of Hollywood’s traditional propaganda: the United States are a dirty hellhole where cops envy the Soviets’ authoritarian methods (‘Do you know Miranda?’), openness to the West has mostly served to flood the USSR with cocaine, and Danko doesn’t fall in love with consumerism, Ninotchka-style, although he does get a lesson on Marxism from an African-American gang leader in a scene that has to be seen to be believed.

115. Red Scorpion (USA, 1988)

From the Congo Crisis to the Ogaden War, postcolonial Africa was certainly a key geopolitical battlefield, yet there aren’t many movies about it… One brazen exception is yet another exponent of the golden age of absurd macho bullshit: giving Rambo III a run for its money when it comes to warnography, this revisionist version of the Angolan Civil War pits pure-hearted African freedom fighters against sadistic Cuban occupiers. Ingeniously, Red Scorpion focuses on a Spetsnaz operative (the gigantic Dolph Lundgren, still in Rocky IV mode) who first pretends to desert and then truly deserts, so that he spends both the initial and the last stretch of the film massacring commies *and* we still get a classic ‘anti-authority conversion’ story out of it. Sure, above all this is an utterly tasteless piece of exhilarating exploitation (one of the characters, played by M. Emmet Walsh, even risks his life during an explosive chase scene to ensure there’s kickass music playing in the soundtrack, Baby Driver-style), but it’s hard to deny the film’s agenda, as it shamelessly reduces the MPLA to mere puppets, thus implicitly endorsing the support to UNITA provided by the Reagan administration and by South African troops… Indeed, the politics here are so comically grotesque – and so in-your-face – that it hardly comes as a shock that the production itself, shot in Namibia, broke the international boycott against apartheid South Africa.

116. Bullet in the Head (Hong Kong, 1990)

Maoist protesters, the Vietnam War, and the specter of the CIA have all shown up on this list before, but Bullett in the Head provides an original perspective, looking at them through the eyes of three friends from Hong Kong fighting their way through southeast Asia in the late 1960s. Don’t be fooled by the cheesy opening: this is a deliriously violent epic and, for my money, John Woo’s greatest masterpiece. (As far as I can tell, though, there is no connection to Rage Against the Machine’s awesome song that came out just a couple of years later.)

117. The Hunt for Red October (USA, 1990)

Set in 1984 (i.e. pre-Gorbachev), this submarine spy thriller shows Hollywood trying to hold on to old narratives in a rapidly changing world. Still, as far as spectacle goes, The Hunt for Red October does the job: John McTiernan, who feels at home directing spatially-defined narratives where he methodically moves the pieces around, confidently interweaves sub battles and diplomatic maneuvers, piling twists on top of twists.

118. Robot Jox (USA, 1990)

A delightfully cheesy update of The 10^th Victim-style strand of futuristic narratives where nuclear confrontation is superseded by other forms of competition: in this case, international disputes are resolved by one-on-one combat between mecha fighting machines (rendered in adorable stop-motion animation). Suitably for this closing era, Robot Jox feels like you’re watching children of the Cold War playing with their toys and inherited stereotypes (from the cruel, Russian-sounding antagonist to the simplistic espionage subplot), reproducing the conflict’s cycle of one-upmanship while also making it seem childish and ridiculous. I wonder if the final shot is a ‘fuck you’ to the opening of Rocky IV…

119. Terminator 2: Judgment Day (USA, 1991)

In isolation, 1984’s awesome sci-fi/horror/action classic The Terminator did not add much to existing Cold War narratives (its spin on familiar fears about AI-based defense programs was that this time the result was not only atomic war, but the rise of human-enslaving machines). When taken in conjunction with its first sequel, though, we get one of the great meta-texts about the Cold War’s endgame: while the original has a foreboding sense of imminent doom (personified as a badass time-travelling cyborg killer) that seems quite appropriate to the rising tension in the early Reagan years, Terminator 2 is ultimately about moving on from nuclear nightmares towards an open-ended future. So, yes, James Cameron addressed the Cold War more directly in The Abyss (especially in the extended version), but T2 is the perfect coda to this cinematic journey.

120. Tribulations 99: Alien Anomalies Under America (USA, 1991)

Tribulations 99 is surely the weirdest damn film on this entire list, but I can’t think of a more suited endpoint than a trippy collage of footage from old movies documenting an alternative history of the Cold War in Latin America that stitches real-world events (from the coup in Guatemala prompted by the United Fruit Company all the way to the invasion of Panama) with all sorts of conspiracy theories, thus recognizably framing the Red Menace in a continuum with tales of flying saucers and lizard people. I think of it as a prelude to The Department of Truth.

Posted in COLD WAR CINEMA | Tagged Cold War, espionage, horror, movies, politics, science fiction, Vietnam | Leave a comment

COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (12 February 2024)

Posted on February 12, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

Pre-Crisis Wonder Woman comics (from the 1940s to the 1980s) were marked by constant experimentation. Perhaps unsure about what to do with the character, creators kept throwing her into all sorts of genres, from war to fantasy, from adventure to sci-fi, from Silver Age surrealism to Bronze Age horror, not to mention espionage and straight-up superheroics… You can see the ensuing versatility plastered all over her covers:

Posted in GLIMPSES INTO THE PAST | Tagged Bernard Sachs, covers, Dick Giordano, Frank Miller, Gaspar Saladino, Harry Peter, Ira Schnapp, Irwin Hasen, Jeff Jones, Mike Esposito, Mike Sekowsky, Neal Adams, Rich Buckler, Robert Kanigher, Ross Andru, Vince Colletta, Wonder Woman | Leave a comment

Frank Miller’s symbolic Superman

Posted on February 8, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

Although Frank Miller is best known for his world-shattering – and controversial – takes on Batman since the 1980s, he has been doing comics about Superman for just as long… and his approach to the Man of Steel is actually quite thematically rich in terms of his depictions of both the ‘super’ and the ‘man’ sides of the character.

Let’s start with the ‘super’ angle – that is to say, with the dimension that transcends humanity. I don’t mean the super powers, like flying or shooting lasers out of the eyes; I mean Superman’s larger-than-life symbolic potential, which Miller began exploring as early as his masterpiece The Dark Knight Returns, back in 1986.

Revealingly, in Superman’s first appearance on that classic mini-series, all we see of him is, precisely, the symbol:

The Dark Knight #2

I’ll point out the obvious: by smoothly transitioning from the US flag to Superman’s costume, this sequence suggests a continuity between the two symbols – a point reinforced by the dialogue, with a subservient Man of Steel (‘your time is precious’) at the direct service of the president (‘I like to keep you out of domestic affairs…’), who considers him a ‘good boy…’

In the story’s world (a then-future DCU), superheroes have been shunned by parents’ groups and by a political sub-committee, allegedly because regular humans felt intimidated by these powerful beings who rose above them. Supes explains the process in terms that would make Ayn Rand proud: ‘the rest of us recognized the danger – of the endless envy of those not blessed.’ He therefore gave his obedience to Washington in exchange for a license to continue to save lives, invisible to the media.

From the start, then, Superman represents the power of the state, enforcing the will of the US president (unnamed, but clearly Ronald Reagan, as evinced already here by the way he disguises authoritarian ticks through a folksy, cowboy-allusive rhetoric). It is heavily implied that Superman even helped hunt down and imprison the heroes who resisted the new status quo (including by amputating Green Arrow’s arm!).

The notion that the Man of Steel is essentially a manifestation of an abstract entity (in this case, state power) is reinforced by the fact that, initially, Superman – much like Batman himself – is not shown, but merely suggested. Diegeticaly, this makes sense because, as mentioned, Supes has become a secret government operative, so he’s meant to act without being seen… But it’s also a way for Miller to tease us, drawing on our knowledge of the character’s powers and of the franchise’s signature catchphrases to build up our anticipation.

The Dark Knight #3

I guess it’s also Frank Miller showing off his technical prowess, as he keeps coming up with inventive ways of insinuating Superman’s presence: a beam of blue light, an unseen barrier stopping bullets, an ellipse preceding a twisted metal pipe and a burned-up machine gun…

When Superman does fully show up, as Clark Kent, he comes off as a telluric Adonis, embodying not only the US government but the Earth’s life force as a whole. Not only is he framed from a low angle (which makes him look strong and heroic), but it looks like nature is sprouting around him, as underscored by Batman’s narration:

The Dark Knight #3

The character’s magical aura and godlike qualities are reinforced by the way Frank Miller plays with Superman’s iconicity. It’s not just that we recognize his costume or the references to the famous opening of the 1940 radio show The Adventures of Superman. It’s that Miller weaves in all these intertextual nods to convey the sense that the Man of Steel really is the stuff of legends – a kind of mythological figure deserving of awe.

This culminates in the first full-page splash showing readers a clearly visible Superman (no more hints, no more silhouettes), which evokes the cover of the character’s very first issue, 1937’s Action Comics #1… but, instead of a car, now Supes is lifting up a damn tank!

The Dark Knight #3

The fourth issue of DKR brings together all these symbolic dimensions (Reaganite policy, earthly elemental, cultural icon) in two unforgettable sequences.

The first one is the follow-up to the scene you see above, where Superman – ordered by the president – fights off the Soviets from the island of Corto Maltese. In retaliation, the USSR launches an advanced nuclear warhead, which the Man of Steel manages to divert to a desert, where the detonation seriously fucks him up. As argued here, in just a few pages Superman thus simultaneously allegorizes the US military machine (and foreign intervention), Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative (and its limitations), and the environmental collapse derived from nuclear war… And all of this is made particularly forceful by the contrast between the iconic Superman (shown above) and the disfigured creature practically destroyed by the atomic blast (which I’ll revisit in an upcoming post).

But it’s the other sequence that would turn out to be the most influential: the ultimate fight between the Man of Steel and the Dark Knight, which inspired countless riffs over the years (on the pages and on the screen). Because this was Batman’s book, the deck was stacked against Superman – and, indeed, in part the fight served to show off the awesomeness of a courageous, resourceful, defiant human going up against a god…

The Dark Knight #4

As stressed by Batman’s words, at the end of the day Superman didn’t represent divine power as much as he represented the federal government, especially since the very reason he fought the Dark Knight was because the latter refused to bow down to the authorities. In other words, in order to make Batman a libertarian underdog, Frank Miller ended up reducing Supes to a mere stooge.

A big part of the vilification of Superman entailed the charge that, by agreeing to remain invisible and bowing down to the government, he was undermining Randian ideals, which brings us back to objectivism… According to this philosophical system – which Miller has acknowledged as a major influence – the highest moral purpose in life is to enjoy one’s own productive achievements, as opposed to conforming and compromising to the oppressive hostility of the ‘looters’ who want you to sacrifice for society’s good (here seen as the good of undeserving weaklings who exploit the genius of the strong).

I’m going to let Fred Van Lente and Ryan Dunlavey explain it better:

Action Philosophers! #2

You can hear Ayn Rand’s whisper when the Caped Crusader, speaking for the true heroes, condemns the Man of Steel for giving in to the looters: ‘You sold us out, Clark. You gave them – the power – that should have been ours.’ Later, Batman adds: ‘I’ve become a political liability… and you… you’re a joke…’

He’s not wrong. DKR’s Superman is a joke, in the sense that there is something amusingly iconoclastic and subversive (at least at the time) about beating up such a respected boy scout figure. Miller then expanded the joke in 2001’s sequel, The Dark Knight Strikes Again, where the Man of Steel now got humiliated both by the villains (Lex Luthor and Brainiac blackmail him by holding the Bottle City of Kandor hostage) and by other heroes:

The Dark Knight Strikes Again #1

You can also sense Frank Miller having a naughty, irreverent laugh when he depicts Superman impregnating Wonder Woman as they have aerial sex and then fall into the ocean, causing a tsunami, a volcano eruption, and a massive hurricane (‘The Pentagon denies any thermonuclear deployment’). It’s an incredible, visually arresting sequence whose impact derives, in large part, from the fact that it flies against the character’s wholesome connotation. (You can find a more elegant version of this scene in ‘The View from Above,’ from Astro City (v3) #7.)

As the New York-based Miller was working on The Dark Knight Strikes Again, however, the 9/11 attacks happened. This had a profound effect on him, resonating in Miller’s comics – and in his public statements – for years to come. One of the first things he did was to use Superman and his beloved cast to render gravitas to a potent tribute on the pages of the series’ final issue, where a Metropolis devastated by an alien monster blatantly stands in for the ruins of the World Trade Centre:

The Dark Knight Strikes Again #3

Notice how the Man of Steel now looks like Sin City’s Marv, albeit with laser-red eyes highlighting his rage. Indeed, these events, along with the influence of his daughter Lara (that’s the creepy girl you see hovering on the pages above), pave the way for Superman to become much more assertive, unashamedly embracing his power while crying out for revenge.

Rather than accepting it as a mere character arc, this shift can be read by taking into consideration Superman’s wider history, namely his association with the so-called ‘American Way.’ As he raises himself above humanity, then, the Man of Steel appears to be embodying a chauvinistic post-9/11 discourse about the USA aggressively reaffirming its superpower status above other nations…

The Dark Knight Strikes Again #3

To be fair, Frank Miller eventually addressed the fascistic implications of this transformation. Twelve years later, he co-wrote with Brian Azzarello a third installment of the Dark Knight saga, suitably titled The Master Race, which now used Superman as a vehicle to confront the rise of the far right (a topic that became even more relevant throughout the series’ publication, from 2015 to 2017).

The premise of The Master Race was that Lara, who despised her father’s submissive attitude (‘Why did you let the ants knock you from the sky?’), managed to restore the inhabitants of Kandor to full-size (because ‘they’re tired of being small’) – but this time we got to see the dark side of such an ideological stance, as Kryptonian supremacists proceeded to terrorize and enslave humanity.

And so, for once, these comics actually endorsed Superman’s humanism. Rather than a foe, the Man of Steel was now treated as Batman’s ally in the resistance against Kryptonian tyranny. Hell, the series actually finished with an inspirational monologue in which Superman praised humility, altruism, and solidarity, teaching his daughter that, rather than proudly tower above regular people, they should admire and learn from them. At the very end, Clark Kent’s glasses thus became an anti-Trump metaphor:

The Master Race #9

In a couple of weeks, we’ll see how Miller, having explored the symbolic potential of the Man of Steel, also dug into his personality, in Superman: Year One.

Posted in WRITERS OF SUPERMAN COMICS | Tagged Brian Azzarello, Cold War, Frank Miller, Fred van Lente, politics, Ryan Dunlavey | Leave a comment

COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (5 February 2024)

Posted on February 5, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

A February reminder that comic book covers can be awesome, Captain edition:

Posted in AWESOME COVERS | Tagged Alan Davis, Bob McLeod, Bob Smith, C.C. Beck, Captain Action, Captain America, Captain Atom, Captain Britain, Captain Canuck, Captain Carrot, Captain Carter, Captain Marvel, Captain Science, covers, Excalibur, Gaspar Saladino, George Freeman, Irv Novick, Jamie McKelvie, Joe Orlando, Mike Zeck, Pat Broderick, Paul Neary, Scott Shaw, Shaky Kane, Todd Klein, Wally Wood | Leave a comment

Gotham Calling’s 120 Cold War movies – part 11

Posted on February 1, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

We are now entering the final stage of Gotham Calling’s mega-list of Cold War cinema… and we are firmly in Reaganite territory, including an obsession with foreign intervention along with a vigorous resurgence of nuclear panic.

101. Threads (UK, 1984)

Let’s start with a very, very different approach to apocalyptic nightmares than those of the last post. This is the most violent – and certainly the most maximalist – of the early 1980s’ cycle of realistic docudramas drawing on cutting-edge nuclear and social sciences to present a credible speculation about the effects of an atomic exchange (a la The Day After and Testament). Threads starts off as a low-key kitchen sink TV movie about Sheffield’s working class paying little attention to an international crisis brewing over Iran until it gradually (and literally) blows up in their face… and then the film just keeps going and going, relentlessly envisioning the breakdown and possible evolution of society in fiercely uncompromising terms.

102. Top Secret! (USA, 1984)

I’ve written before about this absurdist comedy in which a version of Elvis Presley gets entangled in foreign intrigue during a trip to East Germany, spoofing the spy genre while throwing in a bunch of further oddball references (from The Blue Lagoon to The Wizard of Oz). As I mentioned at the time, the movie ‘derives most of its gags from playing with cinematic language in general (constantly subverting typical shots, sounds, and editing in unexpected ways), including a remarkable scene at a Swedish bookshop shot backwards (because everyone knows backwards English sounds just like Swedish!). Yet there is an additional meta element that arises precisely from […] amalgamating WWII and the Cold War (not only do the East Germans dress like Nazis, at one point Elvis joins the French Resistance… in the GDR!). The result places Hollywood propaganda in a continuum, ultimately mocking its long tradition of caricatural approaches to international politics, but also paying homage to the industry’s willingness to throw good taste and logic out the window in the name of thrilling fun.’ (One of the co-writers and co-directors, Jim Abrahams, went on to do Hot Shots! and its sequel, which hilariously spoofed two epitomes of what has been labelled Reaganite ‘warnography’: Top Gun and Rambo III.)

103. Kiss of the Spider Woman (USA/Brazil, 1985)

Just to jarringly shift gears once again, here is an intimate, bottom-up perspective of the Cold War as experienced, not by larger-than-life heroes, but by those who nevertheless had to make brave choices every day. In Brazil, one of the many right-wing dictatorships fostering – and fostered by – the anti-communist crusade, we zoom in on a prison where a flaming homosexual entertains his cell mate – a macho Marxist political prisoner – by recounting old movies (you know I’m a sucker for stories about the power of imagination…). And no, despite the title, Kiss of the Spider Woman does not feature Jessica Drew.

104. O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization (Poland, 1985)

The West had no monopoly on soul-crushing post-apocalyptic fiction, as seen in Czechoslovakia’s minimalist Late August at the Hotel Ozone or the USSR’s sepia-tinged Dead Man’s Letters. In fact, Eastern Bloc filmmakers used futuristic dystopias to work around censorship and comment on current politics, making a case for peace while visualizing the destruction of their respective countries. My favorite of this lot is O-Bi, O-Ba: The End of Civilization, about a community of survivors of nuclear war stuck in a decrepit shelter and trying to remain sane while clinging to the hope of being saved from the surrounding radioactive fallout. It’s a majestic piece of neon-lit sci-fi surrealism whose themes are simultaneously universal (faith, social control, state propaganda) and allegorical of Poland’s own authoritarian regime falling apart. (Writer-director Piotr Szulkin had already pulled a similar trick a few years before, with The War of the Worlds: Next Century, a twist on H.G. Well’s classic that doubled as a satire of Soviet occupation and subsequent dictatorship, but that one was so blatant that it got immediately banned.)

105. The Delta Force (USA/Israel, 1986)

I guess I should include at least one of Cannon’s B-movies starring Chuck Norris, whose reactionary politics put Red Dawn to shame (and which apparently were quite popular in Romania, via smuggled, dubbed VHS tapes). And since this was also a time of airplane hijackings, post-Carter reaffirmation of US might, and rampant Islamophobia, I might as well go with The Delta Force, which is a fascinating picture on multiple levels. One layer of propaganda urges for a tough-on-terror policy through an alt-history of the highjack of flight TWA 487, recreated, up to a point, in almost docudrama detail (but with the terrorists now led by Robert Forster in brownface). In this timeline, US special forces, still frustrated over the failed Operation Eagle Claw (in Iran), instead of leaving it up to politicians to negotiate a solution, sneak into the Middle East to kick some ass. A second layer has to do with Israel, where the movie was shot (and whose IDF supported the production), with writer-director-producer Menahem Golan presenting his country as an example (especially Operation Entebbe) and as a strategic ally in the fight against a common enemy, namely clichéd Muslim Arabs shown as cruel fanatics threatening sympathetic passengers from other religions, particularly Jews (a simplistic narrative that continues to resonate uncritically in many people’s imagination, with devastating effects… and which has somehow become even more tragic and revolting in these past few months). As manipulative and racist as it is, Delta Force’s first half nevertheless delivers a taut, tense Airport-style disaster drama (it even features George Kennedy!), including shameless – yet still effective – references to the Holocaust… And then the second half gleefully embraces such cartoony violence (Norris rides a super-motorcycle!) that one wonders if the filmmakers were more committed to their hawkish agenda or to the joy of blasting the screen with slam-bang action over a catchy soundtrack. The display of fighting skills and technology is surely meant to instill a form of gung-ho catharsis, but the result can be baffling: at one point, near the end, there is a mano-a-mano combat that feels so disproportionate that it’s almost as if they’re teasing you to root for the underdog villain. That said, don’t doubt for a moment that the picture will end on the schmaltziest of notes!

106. Platoon (USA, 1986)

The best companion piece to Apocalypse Now is not the string of right-wing revisionist movies about betrayed POWs (the likes of Missing in Action and Rambo II), but rather this more autobiographic approach to the experience of US soldiers in the Vietnam War, written and directed by a veteran clearly struggling with his own ghosts. Instead of Martin Sheen, this time it’s his son Charlie who serves as our entry point into the struggle for the US soul being fought in the jungles near the Cambodian border… The atmosphere and action are just as immersive in their own way, yet Platoon oozes authenticity and treats its characters as actual human beings rather than operatic figures in a grandiose epic.

107. Salvador (USA, 1986)

The manic foreign correspondent Richard Boyle (a slimy weasel if there ever was one) travels to 1980 El Salvador and finds a manic place (one of the most terrifying pits of violent chaos ever committed to the screen) in this manic film, revealingly set against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s first presidential election. With righteous anger, a fair amount of sadism, and not without racism, Salvador rubs in viewers’ eyes the viciousness of the very bloody civil war (treated as a ‘proxy war’ by Washington) and the notorious death squads of the US-backed military dictatorship. Like Under Fire (which I recommended weeks ago), this movie looks into the recent tragic past of Central America through the eyes of a journalist (the real-world Boyle co-wrote the script), yet it’s more ruthless in denouncing the ignorance and acquiescence of the press and, ultimately, of the public itself: along with Platoon, this is part of Oliver Stone’s one-two punch to US foreign policy via the lost naiveté of North-Americans acknowledging their brutal role in the Third World.

108. No Way Out (USA, 1987)

It seems like No Way Out’s protagonist can’t catch a damn break: not only does he get involved with the lover of the Secretary of Defense, he also gets embroiled in a murder *and* in an investigation into a mole at the Pentagon. This horny, labyrinthine mix of sex and political intrigue cleverly updates classic Hitchcockian trappings as filtered by the conspiracy thrillers of the 1970s and seasoned with a generous pinch of its era’s cynicism. And what an ending!

109. Predator (USA, 1987)

Two awesome Cold War movies for the price of one. The first part of Predator, which follows a full-on military mission carried out by a US rescue team who gradually suspect they’re getting embroiled in someone else’s dirty op, is packed with references to real-world conflicts. The rest of the film veers into sci-fi adventure/horror territory, but it provides its own geopolitical echoes in the form of a grisly life-or-death fight against a terrifying adversary hiding in the Central American jungle. Damn quotable.

110. Wings of Desire (West Germany/France, 1987)

Melancholic, quasi-plotless until the final stretch, and (mostly) shot in gorgeous black & white, Wings of Desire is an extended mood piece that follows a couple of angels in West Berlin voyeuristically gazing into people’s inner thoughts and personal dramas (and into concerts by Nick Cave & the Bad Seeds). Besides providing a beautifully immersive experience if you’re in a contemplative frame of mind, the film belongs on this list for the way it portrays divided Berlin as a resigned status quo: the Wall has been integrated into the city’s sadness, but there’s hardly any overt anticipation that in just a couple of years people will actively tear it down. Then again, the angels’ free movement is obviously an enduring fantasy of freedom and circulation… and this proto-fairytale does involve separate entities ultimately coming together, as suggested by Solveig Dommartin’s haunting monologue near the end. (Wim Wenders did an underwhelming sequel a few years after the fall of the Wall, Faraway, So Close!)

Posted in COLD WAR CINEMA | Tagged Cold War, espionage, horror, movies, politics, science fiction, Vietnam | Leave a comment

COMICS CAN BE AWESOME (29 January 2024)

Posted on January 29, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

One of the greatest additions to Batman comics in the 21^st century was the introduction of Bruce Wayne’s hyper-arrogant, borderline psychopath son, who went on the become a particularly offbeat version of Robin. In fact, as flawed and uneven as Grant Morrison’s run certainly was, it earned a lot of goodwill from me because of Damian Wayne, a walking – and jumping and kicking – reminder that you can’t give too much power to an actual child. Hell, Damian proved to be such a hilarious character that artists soon jumped at the chance of spotlighting his original physique and personality in a series of awesome covers:

Posted in COVERS OF BATMAN COMICS | Tagged Alé Garza, Alex Sinclair, covers, Damian Wayne, Dustin Nguyen, Frank Quitely, Gene Ha, Grant Morrison, Guillem March, John Kalisz, Mick Gray, Oliver Nome, Patrick Gleason, Peter Doherty, Rian Hughes, Robin | Leave a comment

Spotlight on Slam Bradley

Posted on January 25, 2024 by I.M. Baytor

The Dark Knight isn’t the only detective in Batman comics. In fact, having finally read last year’s six-part mini-series Gotham City: Year One, my mind has been on the astounding significance gained by one of the oldest detectives around: Slam Bradley.

Commissioned by Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson and developed by Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster (the duo that created Superman), this character made his debut back in 1937, in the very first issue of Detective Comics – in a dreadfully racist ‘yellow peril’ yarn – and kept a regular presence in that anthology for the first 152 issues, until 1949.

Detective Comics #2

Originally based in Cleveland and, later, Manhattan, Slam Bradley embodied his era’s dominant conception of manliness – he was strong, sharp, and attractive to the dames (even though this latter aspect was eventually downplayed).

Nevertheless, his feature was one of the cartooniest in the early years of Detective Comics (albeit not as much as Batman’s, of course). Bradley even got a cute goofy – and bewilderingly horny – sidekick, Shorty Morgan, who worked with him in his Wide-Awake Detective Agency…

Detective Comics #59

The thing is that, while the character of Slam Bradley himself was played straight as a tough-as-nails sleuth, the tone of his escapades was quite light-hearted. Tales like ‘The Hollywood Murders,’ ‘The Mystery of the Unfortunate Teddy Bear,’ ‘The Case of the Deceased Ham,’ or ‘X Marked the Spot at the Tee!’ fused proper mystery plots with proper comedy, thus belonging to a long lineage of similar hybrids ranging from old movies like The Murderer Lives at Number 21 or The Thin Man (and its absurdly titled sequels) all the way to hilarious novels like Eduardo Mendoza’s The Mystery of the Enchanted Crypt, not to mention Rian Johnson’s recent throwbacks in Glass Onion and the very neat show Poker Face. In comics, the absolute masters of this quirky subgenre are John Allison and Max Sarin (who struck gold once again with last year’s The Great British Bump-Off).

Detective Comics #92

Not that all of Bradley’s cases were necessarily comedic mysteries… A number of them were just straight-up two-fisted action yarns, including plenty of fight scenes and deathtraps that wouldn’t look out of place on a Dynamic Duo story. The twist-filled ‘Slam Bradley in the Stratosphere’ (Detective Comics #18) is pulp adventure at its purest!

It was thrills rather than cerebral games what got highlighted in the lovely splashes that introduced each story’s premise, especially once Howard Sherman took over the pencils in the 1940s:

Detective Comics #97

And, just like with Golden Age Batman comics, the title splashes were often used to teasingly evoke rather than to accurately depict – they frequently translated the story’s key elements into symbols, creating surrealist compositions (complemented with plentiful puns):

Detective Comics #91

Although he basically disappeared for over three decades, Slam Bradley was such a staple of the initial era of Detective Comics that it’s no wonder creators brought him back for anniversary issues and special occasions.

In the 1980s, when American comics were becoming increasingly self-referential and prone to explore their own history (because a new generation of lifelong fans had taken over the industry, because the direct market had developed more of a niche specialized audience with easier access to back issues, or just because postmodernism was generally expanding in the cultural zeitgeist…), Bradley repapered twice, both times in commemorative tales. The first time was for a big team-up of sleuths in Detective Comics #500 (courtesy of Len Wein and Jim Aparo), where he got some of that story’s best lines…

Detective Comics #500

The other time was for Detective Comics’ fiftieth anniversary, in 1987, which featured the awesome tale ‘The Doomsday Book.’ Scripted by Mike W. Barr – one of comics’ greatest mystery writers – that tale paid tribute to various traditions of detective fiction, with Slam Bradley’s demeanour and dialogue patterns evoking the writings of Dashiel Hammett (‘When a man’s client is kidnapped, he’s supposed to do something about it.’)

Seeing the hard-hitting Bradley interact with outlandish characters far out of his element – like Batman, Robin, and the Elongated Man – was one of the many, many cool things in that classic issue:

Detective Comics #572

What’s more, Slam Bradley even got a small character arc in ‘The Doomsday Book.’ Slam started the story as a burned out detective who felt old and, after meeting a still fresh Sherlock Holmes, he ended up with a renewed conviction that he still had much to look forward to. This, I assume, was Mike Barr’s metafictional comment about Detective Comics’ own longevity.

Bradley no doubt represented the series’ evolution. He had apparently moved to Gotham City a while back (signalling the shift in Detective Comics’ primary location) and his reality had become substantially grimmer, in contrast to the lighter misadventures he used to have alongside his old partner:

Detective Comics #572

(Shorty Morgan wasn’t just gone, he was ‘slain by pushers’ – welcome to the eighties!)

It would take until 2001 for Slam Bradley to return, but this time he came for a longer stay. His character type fit in like a glove within the works of Ed Brubaker and Darwyn Cooke, who were heavily inspired by vintage crime fiction and who fully injected their influences into Batman comics…

Detective Comics #760

Brubaker and Cooke revived Slam Bradley in Detective Comics’ backup feature ‘Trail of the Catwoman,’ where Slam was hired by Gotham’s mayor to find Selina Kyle (who was presumed dead at the time). It was essentially a housecleaning job, streamlining Selina’s post-Crisis continuity, but these two outstanding creators still managed to pull it off as a satisfying hardboiled tale, precisely by telling it from the POV of an engaging outside investigator (i.e. Bradley).

‘Trail’ would prove to be the start of a whole new era in which Slam Bradley became a regular supporting character in Catwoman’s corner of Batman comics. Crucially, the tale established quite a nice rapport between Slam and Selina:

Detective Comics #762

Like Selina, the two creators had clearly found a guy they dug. ‘Trail of the Catwoman’ took place between the pages of Darwyn Cooke’s knockout graphic novel Selina’s Big Score, where Slam Bradley also played a key role. A few years later, Cooke used him to provide the framing story in Solo #10.

Likewise, Ed Brubaker made Slam Bradley a regular player in his acclaimed run on Catwoman. As I’ve mentioned before, Brubaker enjoys revisiting – and reimagining – the genre stuff he consumed when he was younger, so keeping Bradley around allowed him to juxtapose the ‘voice’ of older crime fiction with 21^st-century modernity:

Catwoman Secret Files and Origins #1

More than a mere pastiche or empty exercise in self-reflexivity, musings like the one above helped flesh out Slam Bradley to unprecedented degrees. He gained a more complex personality than the brawling detective of the 1930s-40s. For one thing, he grew in love with Selina Kyle and became jealous of both Bruce Wayne and Batman (with whom he got into a fistfight over her… Bad call!).

Slam and Selina even developed a beautifully melancholic and precarious relationship, laden with realistic and recognizable insecurities… This tough he-man thus revealed a whole new layer of inner vulnerability:

Catwoman (v2) #17

Visually, Slam Bradley’s rugged, square-jawed PI always brought to my mind Dick Tracy, especially in the context of Catwoman’s stylized art in this era…

But then Paul Gulacy came in as artist and drastically changed the series’ aesthetics into more photorealistic designs – it was as if everyone had suddenly been recast mid-season. Typically drawing on influences from cinema, Gulacy turned Slam Bradley into Robert Mitchum (who had not only played a private eye in the amazing film noir Out of the Past, but had also gone on to play an ageing Phillip Marlowe in the 1970s’ adaptations of Farewell, My Lovely and The Big Sleep).

Further shaking things up, Catwoman introduced Slam’s son – a young cop named Sam with a chip on his shoulder:

Catwoman (v3) #29

Regardless of changing looks, in the early 2000s Slam Bradley had become a recognizable character once again, at least among a certain kind of mid-level fan. What’s more, he was now a bona fide Gothamite. He popped up in Gotham Central #26-27 and was seriously tortured by Black Mask in Catwoman #51. In 2014, Adam Hughes included Slam in a short story he did for Batman Black & White (v2) #6 and, five years later, the character lent his gravitas to yet another cool commemorative tale, Scott Snyder’s and Greg Capullo’s ‘Batman’s Longest Case,’ in Detective Comics #1000.

Given all this background, it makes sense that Tom King chose Slam Bradley as the protagonist of Gotham City: Year One, a noirish mystery yarn revealing/retconning the origin of Gotham’s fall from grace into urban chaos two generations ago (in the early 1960s). Bradley feels right at home in this type of story and the fact that he inaugurated Batman’s ‘home’ (he was right there at the beginning of Detective Comics, whereas the Caped Crusader only made his debut in issue #27) adds the sort of subtext King is usually fond of.

Slam Bradley’s advanced age – both as a character (he’s 94 in present day continuity) and as an intellectual property (created 87 years ago) – lends resonance to the tale’s theme of reconsidering the past, exposing how one’s clean, nostalgic era of safety and prosperity can be someone else’s dirty, traumatic nightmare of police brutality and systemic inequality. The notion of a black community starkly marginalised from the wealthier side of town plays a central role in Gotham City: Year One, which makes it even more pertinent to use Slam as a bridge between the two worlds, given the character’s historical links to racism in comics and in his wider branch of macho adventure narratives. The book is full of brutal situations, even if the swear words are replaced by symbols (because language is apparently the greatest taboo). In particular, there is an emphasis on the issue of racist violence and torture (the reason Bradley quit the force), which may be a way for Tom King to work through his own seven-year stint at the CIA’s counterterrorism operations in the early 2000s.

Before delving further into the books’ themes (including a couple of *major* spoilers), let us consider the dazzling artwork:

Gotham City: Year One #2

Penciller Phil Hester, inked by Eric Gapstur, pushes his typically blocky, angular figure work to Frank Miller-esque levels, which colorist Jordie Bellaire superbly builds on to create a series of mesmerizing visuals (like the orange squares in the panels above, translating the city lights through the window of a moving car). The black & white in the penultimate panel evokes classic film noir and the PI with the broken nose evokes Chinatown, perhaps filtered through Miller’s Sin City. Although you can’t see it in this scan, letterer Clayton Cowles joins the game by presenting Slam Bradley’s narration as torn pieces of typewritten paper…

Tom King’s script takes intertextuality even further. Besides doing the usual trick of naming Gotham’s streets and locations after real-world Batman creators (‘Went to the old Austin junk between Aparo and Grant.’), thus inscribing the comics’ past into the city’s toponomy, King also adds some significant twists to the franchise’s mythology, including: 1) Slam Bradley’s mother is black; 2) he is probably Bruce Wayne’s biological grandfather.

The first of these twists wouldn’t be all that remarkable, except for the fact that race and genes occupy such a vital place in US culture. I suppose it inserts Bradley into yet another subset of crime fiction, namely all those great gritty novels about the African-American experience, like Chester Himes’ Harlem Detectives series or J.F. Burke’s Sam Kelly trilogy, not to mention Gil Scott-Heron’s The Vulture. What makes this revelation more meaningful is the articulation to the second twist, since it means that Bruce Wayne has black ancestry, which can be seen as ironic given that he is often presented as a bastion of white privilege.

The second piece of revisionism works better on a meta level than on a diegetic one. Thematically, it recasts Batman as a direct descendent of a hardboiled private eye (again, one who kicked off Detective Comics). And while Gotham City: Year One tarnishes the legacy of the Wayne surname – and even of the Batcave, as it was previously used to collect sexual trophies – the series arguably makes Bruce himself a more romantic hero: rather than just a product of the elites, his history is now linked to the downtrodden masses.

In turn, the detective skills of both Slam Bradley and the Dark Knight don’t come off well, since neither of them appears to even consider the possibility that they’re related – but hey, I guess we all have our blind spots. Their failure to explicitly acknowledge what’s at stake may be just an editorial strategy to preserve ambiguity (so that DC doesn’t have to commit to this story’s implications in the future), even though the likely link between the two characters is pretty much telegraphed to the readers (Cowles even highlights the word ‘grandfather’ through bold and italics, in the final page).

Tom King is an intelligent writer, but it seems he just can’t help himself. He manages to add a connection to the Joker’s origin and, just before the series is over, he closes the larger narrative even more tightly, making Slam responsible not only for Bruce’s birth, but also for the very creation of Batman… at least according to the oddly prescient (and sexist) perspective of Bruce’s grandma: