Project and content management for Contemporary Authors volumes
WORK TITLE: Batman, Vol. 1: I Am Gotham
WORK NOTES: illus by David Finch
PSEUDONYM(S):
BIRTHDATE:
WEBSITE:
CITY: Washington
STATE: DC
COUNTRY:
NATIONALITY:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tom_King_(comics) * http://www.salon.com/2017/06/10/tom-king-batman-vision-cia-the-sheriff-of-babylon-omgea-men/ * http://www.cbr.com/batman-rebirth-year-one-recap-comic-book/ * https://www.amazon.com/Tom-King/e/B0066F3XJS/ref=dp_byline_cont_book_1
RESEARCHER NOTES:
PERSONAL
Born 1978; married; children: two.
EDUCATION:Graduated from Columbia University, 2000.
ADDRESS
CAREER
Novelist; author of comics. Formerly worked for Central Intelligence Agency as counterterrorism operation officer.
AWARDS:“Best Graphic Novel” citation, USA Today, 2012, for A Once Crowded Sky.
WRITINGS
Coauthor, Grayson, DC Comics, 2014-16. Contributor to stories to comic book series, including The Vision, Marvel Comics, Mister Miracle, DC Comics, and Batman, DC Comics.
SIDELIGHTS
Tom King has become one of the most celebrated writers of comic books in the early twenty-first century. “In the span of just two years, Tom King has established himself as one of the must-read writers in modern comics,” wrote Chris Neill in CBR. “When it was announced he would succeed Scott Snyder as the writer of Batman for DC Comics’ Rebirth initiative, how could you not have been excited? Over the course of twenty-five issues, with a rotating art team of David Finch, Mikel Janin and Mitch Gerads providing some of the best work of their careers, the first year of Rebirth’s Batman has been one of the most consistently great books on the stands.” In addition to his work on the “Batman: Rebirth” series, King has contributed stories to magazines featuring the original Robin, Dick Grayson, as well as a separate series based on his service during the Iraq War: “The Sheriff of Babylon.”
A Once Crowded Sky
King’s involvement in comics, stated Mark Peters in Salon, began when “the path to comic stardom took an unusual detour. King was working toward a career in comics when the industry was in a mid-’90s tailspin, so he switched gears and ended up working in the Justice Department.” He draws on that experience in A Once Crowded Sky. “A Once Crowded Sky,” wrote Kevin McFarland in AV Club, “explores a city of superheroes and villains reduced to normalcy. The narrative structure roughly separates into chapters titled as if they were comic-book issues, weaving a dense mythology through a wide array of original characters. It’s a visceral prose response to the War on Terror era, but with added costumed fighters. The conceit is reminiscent of Alan Moore’s Cold War doomsday dread…. It’s a story of coping with limitations and repeating history in an epic interconnected scope.”
A Once Crowded Sky is set in a world in which superheroes once existed, but do so no longer. The leader of the superheroes, known as Ultimate sacrificed himself—and the powers of his fellow heroes—in order to stop a disaster that threatened the world. The one hero who retained his powers is Ultimate’s former sidekick Pen. “The most relatable and engaging aspect of A Once Crowded Sky,” declared Timothy C. Ward in SF Signal, “is Pen’s struggle between his promise to his wife and his promise to his dream job. Pen starts the story rushing between saving the day and coming back home to apologize for broken promises to be with his wife. As a reader, we too want him to save the day for the innocents, but we also want a happy ending for him and his wife.” “King’s work is beyond postmodern,” said a Kirkus Reviews contributor, “complex in conception, perhaps too esoteric for mainstream fiction fans, but relevant to the graphic-novel, video-gaming generation.”
Critics enjoyed King’s graphic novel. “Everything we love about comics–origin tales, a worthy villain, team-ups … conspiracies, super technology, disgraced heroes, redeemed villains–it’s all here. And it’s a fun read,” enthused James Floyd Kelly in Wired. “There are surprises galore, and I really didn’t see them coming. I think it’s appropriate that the last page of the book be an actual single page of three panels that you might find at the beginning of an actual comic book. And maybe that’s a sign that the story isn’t over yet for the ex-heroes of Arcadia City.” “This intriguing novel and comic book hybrid,” concluded Julie Elliott, writing in Xpress Reviews, “will attract graphic novel fans.”
"The Sheriff of Babylon" series
King’s “The Sheriff of Babylon” series references his government-service career even more directly than A Once Crowded Sky. It traces the story of a military contractor who investigates the murder of a trainee police officer in Baghdad. “The Sheriff of Babylon” “is a murder mystery,” observed a Comic Bastards reviewer, writing about the first volume of the series, “and, though I have read far too many murder mysteries recently, it manages to feel fresh and different through its setting…. In the manner of all detective stories, the case starts simple and unravels a larger conspiracy, but the raw immediacy and bluntness of the post-war city elevates the story into something more.” “In the end, we witness an incompetent American bureaucracy spun into a death cycle that has no end game in mind, and an Iraq that seems all too willing to cooperate in the completion of this cycle,” concluded Jack Murphy in Sofrep. King “asks a lot of questions, the type of questions that we probably should have asked ourselves before invading the country. Few answers are forthcoming, perhaps because the author is internally conflicted himself.” “The Sheriff of Babylon … is one of the brightest spots among a host of bright spots in Vertigo’s series rollouts,” stated Jed W. Keith in Freaksugar. Even if the story “makes you think, creates anger, or leaves you longing, it is sure to stay with you long after you’ve set the book aside.”
"Batman: Rebirth" series
Based on these and other stories, King was invited to take over telling the story of comicdom’s most famous superhero: the Batman. The author took advantage of DC’s “Rebirth” to take the iconic character in new and different directions—inspired by the work of classic comics writers like Jack Kirby, who explored the depths comics were capable of reaching in the 1960s and 1970s. “It’s hard to ever compare yourself to the generation that fought Hitler and saved the world,” King said in an interview appearing in Paste magazine “I do feel a kinship with and draw inspiration from artists who did go through that experience, and came out to the other side with their eyes a little too open to the world. Kirby served, and I served in my way, but that guy was in gunfire and I was just trying to get terrorists to spy on each other. Both of us want to punch Nazis in the face, so we have that.” Kirby “touched the id of America and let it flow through his fingers,” King told the Paste interviewer. “Yet somehow, that utter insanity became the modern myth of America. You read New Gods, and you say that’s where Star Wars came from…. This is why when I walk out in the street every day, I see half of the people wearing superhero t-shirts. This is the spine of our modern American myth.”
In the volumes of “Batman: Rebirth,” King explores the Batman in ways that look at his humanity as much as his superhero reputation. “King has said that one of his goals is … to explore the Caped Crusader as a social creature, like the rest of us a mortal embedded in a system of obligations and relationships,” stated a Weekly Comic Book Review contributor. This is a natural approach, considering the Rebirth project focuses on continuity and legacy.” “Compared to the previous takes on the character, King’s Batman is the most human, the most vulnerable,” said Neill. “Grant Morrison’s Batman was more or less a God, who was two steps ahead of literally everyone. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo ended their run with an amnesiac Bruce sacrificing his humanity to become Batman again, because only he’s capable of carry the burden of the cape and cowl. With King’s take on the character, it actually feels like there’s a man under the mask, a being of flesh and blood and full of insecurities.” In I Am Gotham, for instance, “what we get … is straightforward in just highlighting what it is that makes Batman Batman,” declared Chris Beveridge in Fandom Post. “Here, Batman’s been tracking down some top secret arms gone awry that ended up in a Kobra cell in the city, two members of which were apprehended with two of the rocket launchers. The third’s on the run and in a panic, hence shooting down a plane circling Gotham ahead of its landing.” King’s Batman work “is accessible to new readers,” assessed a Publishers Weekly reviewer, writing about I Am Gotham, “… while checking off every item on a longtime fan’s wish list.”
BIOCRIT
PERIODICALS
Kirkus Reviews, July 15, 2012, review of A Once Crowded Sky.
Publishers Weekly, January 30, 2017, review of I Am Gotham, p. 188.
Xpress Reviews, July 13, 2012, Julie Elliott, review of A Once Crowded Sky.
ONLINE
Adventures in Poor Taste, http://www.adventuresinpoortaste.com/ (August 30, 2017), Rory Wilding, review of I Am Bane.
AV Club, https://aux.avclub.com/ (July 23, 2012), Kevin McFarland, review of A Once Crowded Sky.
CBR.com, http://www.cbr.com/ (June 27, 2017), Chris Neill, “Batman Rebirth, Year One: A Look at Tom King’s Bat-Epic, So Far.”
Comic Bastards, https://comicbastards.com/ (July 19, 2016), review of Bang, Bang, Bang.
Fandom Post, http://www.fandompost.com/ (June 15, 2016), “Batman #1.”
Freaksugar, http://www.freaksugar.com/ (December 5, 2015), Jed W. Keith, “The Sheriff of Babylon #1.”
IGN, http://www.ign.com/ (April 5, 2017), Jesse Schedeen, review of I Am Bane.
Paste, https://www.pastemagazine.com/ (May 12, 2017), Sean Edgar, “Exclusive: Tom King & Mitch Gerads Attempt to Escape the Absurdity of 2017 in Heady New Mister Miracle Comic.”
Primary Ignition, https://primaryignition.com/ (April 10, 2017), review of I Am Suicide.
Rogues Portal, http://www.roguesportal.com/ (April 19, 2017), Nico Sprezzatura, review of I Am Suicide.
Salon, https://www.salon.com/ (June 10, 2017), Mark Peters, “One of Comics’ Best Writers Is a Former CIA Agent.”
SF Signal, https://www.sfsignal.com/ (December 13, 2012), Timothy C. Ward, review of A Once Crowded Sky.
Sofrep, https://sofrep.com/ (February 11, 2017), Jack Murphy, “Comic Review: The Sheriff of Babylon Vol. 1 and 2.”
Weekly Comic Book Review, http://weeklycomicbookreview.com/ (June 23, 2016), “Batman #1.”
We Got This Covered, http://wegotthiscovered.com/ (November 8, 2017), Eric Joseph, review of I Am Suicide.
Wired, https://www.wired.com/ (July 26, 2012), James Floyd Kelly, review of A Once Crowded Sky.
Word of the Nerd, http://wordofthenerdonline.com/ (June 1, 2016), “Batman #1.”
Tom King is the author of A Once Crowded Sky, a postmodern super hero novel named by USA Today as one of the best Graphic Novels as 2012. Prior to becoming a novelist, King served in the CIA as an operation officer in the Counterterrorism Center. While in college at Columbia University, King interned at Marvel and DC Comics. He lives in Washington DC with his wife and two children.
Tom King (comics)
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Tom King
King during an appearance at Midtown Comics in Manhattan
Occupation
Author, comic book writer
Language
English
Nationality
United States
Genre
Comic books
Superheroes
Science fiction
Notable works
The Vision
Batman
Tom King is an American author, comic book writer, and ex-CIA officer. He is best known for writing The Vision for Marvel Comics, and The Sheriff of Babylon for the DC Comics imprint Vertigo, his 2012 superhero novel A Once Crowded Sky, and Batman for DC Comics.
Contents [hide]
1
Early life
2
Career
3
Personal life
4
Bibliography
4.1
Novels
4.2
DC Comics and Vertigo
4.3
Marvel
5
References
6
External links
Early life[edit]
King primarily grew up in Southern California. His mother worked for the film industry which inspired his love of storytelling. He interned at both DC and Marvel Comics during the late 1990s. He studied both philosophy and history at Columbia University, graduating in 2000.
Career[edit]
King interned both at DC Comics and Marvel Comics, where he was an assistant to X-Men writer Chris Claremont, before joining the CIA counterterrorism unit after September 11.[1][2] King spent seven years as a counterterrorism operations officer for the CIA before quitting to write his debut novel, A Once Crowded Sky, after the birth of his first child.[3][4]
A Once Crowded Sky, King's debut superhero novel with comics pages illustrated by Tom Fowler, was published in July 10, 2012 by Touchstone, an imprint of Simon & Schuster, to positive reception.[5][6][7]
King was chosen to co-write Grayson for DC Comics, along with Tim Seeley and Mikel Janin on art. After penning Nightwing #30, King, Seeley, and Janin launched Grayson on May 2014, featuring Dick Grayson leaving behind his Nightwing persona at age 22 to become Agent 37, a Spyral spy.[8][9] King and Seeley plotted the series together and traded issues to script separately, with King providing additional authenticity through his background with the CIA.[10][11]
A relaunch of classic DC Comics series The Omega Men was published in June 2015 by King and debut artist Barnaby Bagendas, as part of the publisher's relaunch DC You.[12][13] The series follows a group of rebels fighting an oppressive galactic empire, and feature White Lantern Kyle Rayner.[14] The Omega Men, created in 1981, are DC's cosmic equivalent to Marvel's Guardians of the Galaxy, though significantly more obscure.[15] King's and Bagenda's use of the nine-panel grid, popularized by Alan Moore's and Dave Gibbons' Watchmen, has been praised by reviewers.[16]
In San Diego Comic-Con 2015, Vertigo revealed a new creator-owned project written by King with art by Mitch Gerads titled The Sheriff of Baghdad.[17] The project, a crime series in the vein of Vertigo titles like Preacher and Scalped, was set to launch in late 2015, and was inspired by King's time in Iraq as part of the CIA.[18] Initially an eight-issue miniseries, it was later re-titled The Sheriff of Babylon and expanded into an ongoing series.[19][20] The first issue launched on December 2015 to critical acclaim, with reviewers praising its "deeply personal" storytelling and the "intriguing" and "captivating" personalities of its characters.[21][22]
Also during San Diego Comic-Con 2015, DC announced "Robin War", a crossover storyline set for December that would run for five week through titles Grayson, Detective Comics, We Are Robin, and Robin: Son of Batman; King was set to orchestrate the crossover's story-line and pen two one-shots to open and close the series.[23]
As part of Marvel Comics' All-New, All-Different relaunch, King was announced as the writer of The Vision, a new ongoing following the titular character and his newly created family, with artist Gabriel Hernández Walta, colorist Jordie Bellaire, and covers by Mike Del Mundo, launching in November 2015.[24][25][26] The Vision has been well received by the public, with reviewers calling the series one of Marvel's "biggest surprises" and praising the narration, art, and colors.[27][28]
On September 2015, DC cancelled King's The Omega Men, along with four other titles, with the series ending with issue seven.[29] After negative fan response to the cancellation, Jim Lee, DC's co-publisher, announced that they would be bringing back The Omega Men through at least issue 12.[30] Lee described the decision to cancel the series as "a bit hasty," crediting the book's critical acclaim and fan social media reactions as the reason the title would go on for the planned 12-issue run.[31]
King penned a Green Lantern one-shot that ties into the "Darkseid War" Justice League storyline, titled "Will You Be My God?", which James Whitbrook of io9 praised as "one of the best" Green Lantern stories.[32]
King and co-writer Tim Seeley announced they would leave Grayson after issue #18, with King clarifying on Twitter that they were working on something "big and cool" and needed time.[33] King and Seeley officially left the series on February with issue #17, with Jackson Lanzing and Collin Kelly taking over for its last three issues with issue #18 in March.[34]
DC Comics announced on February 2016 that King had signed an exclusivity deal with the publisher, which would see him writing exclusively for DC and Vertigo.[35][36] King revealed via his Twitter account that he would stay on The Vision as writer through issue 12, finishing the story arc he had planned from the beginning.[37][38]
In March 2016, it was announced that King would be writing the main bi-weekly Batman series beginning with a new #1, replacing long-time writer Scott Snyder, as part of DC's Rebirth relaunch that June.[39]
Personal life[edit]
King lives in Washington, D.C. with his wife and three children.[3]
Bibliography[edit]
Novels[edit]
A Once Crowded Sky (with illustrations by Tom Fowler, 336 pages, Touchstone, 2012, ISBN 1-4516-5200-3)
DC Comics and Vertigo[edit]
Time Warp: "It's Full of Demons" (with Tom Fowler, anthology one-shot, 2013)
Nightwing v3 #30: "Setting Son" (with Tim Seeley, Javier Garrón, Jorge Lucas, and Mikel Janín, 2014) collected in Volume 5: Setting Son (tpb, 200 pages, 2014, ISBN 1-4012-5011-4)
Grayson (with Tim Seeley, Mikel Janín, Stephen Mooney (#7, 14, Annual #1, Futures End one-shot, and the short story from Secret Origins v3 #8) and Álvaro Martínez (Annual #2), 2014–2016) collected as:
Agents of Spyral (collects #1–4, Futures End one-shot and the short story from Secret Origins v3 #8, hc, 160 pages, 2015, ISBN 1-4012-5234-6; tpb, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-5759-3)
We All Die at Dawn (collects #5–8 and Annual #1, tpb, 160 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-5760-7)
Nemesis (collects Divergence preview, #9–12 and Annual #2, tpb, 160 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6276-7)
A Ghost in the Tomb (collects #13–17, tpb, 184 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6762-9)
Vertigo Quarterly: CMYK #4: "Black Death in America" (with John Paul Leon, anthology, 2015) collected in CMYK (tpb, 296 pages, 2015, ISBN 1-4012-5336-9)
Teen Titans v5 Annual #1: "The Source of Mercy" (with Will Pfeifer, Alisson Borges, and Wes St. Claire, 2015) collected in Volume 2: Rogue Targets (tpb, 192 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6162-0)
The Omega Men v3 #1–12 (with Barnaby Bagenda and Toby Cypress (#4), 2015–2016) collected as The Omega Men: The End is Here (tpb, 296 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6153-1)
Justice League: Darkseid War: Green Lantern: "Will You Be My God?" (with Evan Shaner, one-shot, 2016) collected in Justice League: Power of the Gods (hc, 200 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6149-3; tpb, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6524-3)
Robin War (hc, 256 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6208-2; tpb, 2017, ISBN 1-4012-6811-0) includes:
"With the Greatest of Ease" (with Rob Haynes, Khary Randolph, Mauricet, Jorge Corona and Andres Guinaldo, in #1, 2016)
"The Daring Young Man" (with Carmine Di Giandomenico, Khary Randolph, Álvaro Martínez, and Scott McDaniel, in #2, 2016)
The Sheriff of Babylon #1-ongoing (with Mitch Gerads, 2016–...) collected as:
Bang. Bang. Bang. (collects #1–6, tpb, 160 pages, 2016, ISBN 1-4012-6466-2)
Pow. Pow. Pow. (collects #7–12, tpb, 160 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-4012-6726-2)
Batman v3 (with Scott Snyder (Rebirth one-shot), David Finch, (#1–6), Mikel Janín (Rebirth one-shot, #9-ongoing), Steve Orlando + Riley Rossmo (#7–8), 2016–...) collected as:
I am Gotham (collects the Rebirth one-shot and #1–6, tpb, 192 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-4012-6777-7)
I am Suicide (collects #9–15, tpb, 168 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-4012-6854-4)
I am Bane (collects #16-20, 23-24 and "Good Boy" short story from Batman Annual v3 #1, tpb, 176 pages, 2017, ISBN 1-4012-7131-6)
Batman/Elmer Fudd Special #1 (with Lee Weeks, one-shot, June 2017)
Mister Miracle v4 #1-12 (with Mitch Gerads, August 2017–...)
The Kamandi Challenge #9 (with Kevin Eastman, September 2017)
Marvel[edit]
The Vision v2 (with Gabriel Hernández Walta and Michael Walsh (#7), Marvel, 2016) collected as:
Little Worse than a Man (collects #1–6, tpb, 136 pages, 2016, ISBN 0-7851-9657-9)
Little Better than a Beast (collects #7–12, tpb, 136 pages, 2016, ISBN 0-7851-9658-7)
Batman Rebirth, Year One: A Look At Tom King’s Bat-Epic, So Far
06.27.2017
by Chris Neill
in CBR Exclusives
Comment
In the span of just two years, Tom King has established himself as one of the must-read writers in modern comics. That he somehow missed out on a 2017 Eisner Award nomination for his work on The Vision, The Omega Men and The Sheriff of Babylon is a mystery, and when it was announced he would succeed Scott Snyder as the writer of Batman for DC Comics’ Rebirth initiative, how could you not have been excited? Over the course of 25 issues, with a rotating art team of David Finch, Mikel Janin and Mitch Gerads providing some of the best work of their careers, the first year of Rebirth’s Batman has been one of the most consistently great books on the stands.
RELATED: Batman: War of Jokes and Riddles’ Inciting Incident Revealed
I was worried King might be constrained by Batman’s standing as a flagship character, that he wouldn’t be allowed to shake up the character as much as he had with Vision or Kyle Rayner in The Omega Men. It was an unnecessary fear, however, as the amazing character nuance and emotional depth of King’s previous series are on display here.
With his first year with the Dark Knight completed, we’re taking a look at what exactly King, Finch & Co. have been trying to say with the character. They’ve spent 24-issues dissecting Bruce Wayne; so it’s only fair we take a closer look at their examination in return. Just who is Batman, and what does he stand for? Is there a man under the mask, or is there just the Bat?
KEEP GOTHAM WEIRD
One the best aspects of this run is how much the creative team embraces the inherent goofiness and weirdness of the character. They paint with a wider brush of emotions, instead of using just the grimmer and darker tones that are part and parcel of Gotham City. This isn’t Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, of course; there are limits to how funny certain characters and their books can be. But sometimes you need some levity, and King isn’t afraid to embrace Batman’s more humorous elements.
We have Alfred dressed as Batman attempting to distract Gotham, a character with Superman-level powers. The Dark Knight goes full Inigo Montoya when raiding Bane’s island. The Ventriloquist is used as a great Chekhov’s gun. I never knew I needed to read a comic in which Batman and Swamp Thing team up to solve a murder until I read Batman #23, where the duo finds the assailant they’re hunting… because the grass at the Gotham Museum of Art tips off Swamp Thing.
There’s an issue in which Bruce warns Dick, Jason, Damian and Duke to stay away from Gotham because Bane will kill them, all while they bicker like brothers in a Batman-themed fast food restaurant called Batburger. It’s now canon that Bruce Wayne eats hamburgers with a knife and a fork.
RELATED: DC Unleashes Evil Versions of Batman in Dark Nights: Metal One-Shots
Even “The Button” – a crossover I do have some problems with – contains this kind of offbeat weirdness. Batman grappling himself to the Flash’s cosmic treadmill and hanging from it like a water-skier is so goofy, and yet it works in that special way that only comics can pull off.
King also pulls out some of the stranger deep-cuts from the Dark Knight’s rogue gallery, including Colonel Blimp, Amygdala and the series’ true MVP, Kite Man, who’s used as a running gag that gets funnier each time he shows up, demonstrating how committed King is to maintaining that thread of levity.
RELATED: REVIEW: Batman #21 Builds Rebirth, Pays Terrific Homage To Watchmen
THE CHANCE TO BE BRAVE
There’s a flashback that opens Issue #3, in which Batman saves a young Gotham and his parents from the same fate as Thomas and Martha Wayne. Leaping into the night, the Dark Knight tells the future hero, “Everyone gets scared. But remember, all that means is everyone gets the opportunity to fight that fear. Everyone gets that chance to be brave.”
Gotham falls because he’s unable to fight that fear. He wants to be brave, but he can’t; his namesake city is just too much for him. No matter how much good he tries to do, the city throws it back in his face. Even with Kryptonian-level powers, he’s scared of failing, of not being strong enough. The city grinds Gotham down, and he gives into his fear and it transforms into a blind, unrelenting anger.
RELATED: How Gotham Girl (And Tom King) Saved Batman
King and Finch revisit this idea in Batman #18, drawing a parallel between Bruce Wayne and Bane as children. They’re two young boys who have both lost their parents, left broken and scared. Where they differ is how they chose to channel their respective fear. Bruce chooses to be brave and sets out to create a world where no child has to watch his parents be murdered in cold blood. Bane chooses are darker route – he wants to conquer all criminals. They both want to bring order to a chaotic world, but one wants peace while the other wants ultimate power.
Batman is able to overcome that fear. Bane can’t. The only way he can feel brave is by having the Pirate manipulate his emotions. He’s no longer addicted to Venom, but he is addicted to the Pirate projecting emotions into him.
“SO I HELPED HER.”
Tom King and David Finch open their run with a massive action sequence that finds Batman guiding a crashing passenger jet through the skies of Gotham City, fully accepting that saving these people means he has to die. Just before the jetliner hits Gotham’s bay, he asks Alfred if his parents would’ve been proud of him, whether his imminent demise is a “good death.” A mournful Alfred tells him that, yes, his parents would be proud, and that this was a good death. That Batman is subsequently saved by the debuting Gotham and Gotham Girl does nothing to undercut that moment – Batman was sacrificing himself, selflessly, in order to save thousands of lives — a “good death,” indeed.
King revisits this concept of a “good death” in the final moments of Batman #20, where it’s revealed that a bloodied and beaten Bruce has been speaking with his mother. On the edge of life and death, Martha calls her son to the afterlife. By helping Gotham Girl, he has finally achieved a victory because she’s the key to saving Gotham City. And now that Batman has achieved victory, he’s finally earned his death. It’s in that moment that Bruce realizes it’s never been about whether or not he’s earned a “good death.”
RELATED: Tom King’s Impact on Batman Is Defined As A Turning Point Looms
Batman helps people; whether it’s one person or an entire city. He’s a superhero — that’s what he does. He exists to help us overcome that fear and become brave. It doesn’t matter if he goes down with the plane, has his back broken, or is almost beaten to death by the one villain to ever break him. He’ll get up and keep fighting the good fight if it means saving a single person’s life. At his core, that’s what Batman is about: overcoming trauma and coming out the other side, stronger. No matter what happens, he’ll be out there making the world a better place. In a sense, Gotham Girl is irrelevant, because if not her he’d be off helping someone else.
The idea of a “good death” doesn’t matter, because Batman’s death is unimportant. What matters is everything leading up to it – whether it’s saving a jetliner full of passengers or one scared person. Death isn’t karma; you don’t sacrifice your life because you earned a “good death”, you sacrifice your life because it’s your responsibility to make the world a better place.
“The girl needed help. So I helped her,” Bruce explains to his mother. “That’s all it is. That’s all it’s ever been.”
THE MAN UNDER THE MASK
Catwoman asks Batman to let her spend one last night with him before she’s sent to Blackgate Prison to serve a life sentence; she then spends most of the evening tagging along as the Dark Knight takes down various C-list members of his rogue gallery. Despite this being the last chance to share an intimate evening with one of the few people on the planet that actually understands him, Batman can’t stop being Batman. No matter how much he does, he’s never finished.
This leads to King closing out his first year with the Dark Knight asking an important question: Can Batman be happy? During “The Button” arc, the Flashpoint timeline’s version of Thomas Wayne urges his son to hang up the cowl and finally find happiness. “Don’t be Batman.”
During the “I Am Suicide” arc, we learn that Bruce Wayne slashed his wrists as a child. It’s an act of self-sacrifice as much as a cry for help; that’s the moment “Bruce Wayne” died, and Batman is born. It’s an act of selflessness, with Bruce giving up everything that makes him “normal” to become an unstoppable force of justice. But if Bruce Wayne is dead, does that mean Batman can’t stop being Batman? If the person under the mask is “dead”, then what happens when he stops being Batman and takes it off?
RELATED: Batman’s Tom King Ranks the Batfamily by Combat Prowess
Compared to the previous takes on the character, King’s Batman is the most human, the most vulnerable. Grant Morrison’s Batman was more or less a God, who was two steps ahead of literally everyone. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo ended their run with an amnesiac Bruce sacrificing his humanity to become Batman again, because only he’s capable of carry the burden of the cape and cowl. With King’s take on the character, it actually feels like there’s a man under the mask, a being of flesh and blood and full of insecurities.
For all his talk of overcoming your fear and being brave, Batman is still scared. In Batman #24, Gotham Girl and Batman discuss the concept of happiness, something that eludes the Dark Knight. He fights crime in an attempt to be happy, and no matter how much he tries he ultimately fails because he’s scared.
That’s why the Bat proposing to the Cat is significant, because he’s trying to overcome that fear. He finally wants to be happy. So the question is now: Can Batman actually be happy, and what will it take to achieve it?
BATMAN BEYOND
King could’ve ended his tenure with Batman #24, and this run would be chalked up as another amazing limited series under his belt. Finch, Janin and Gerads were firing on all cylinders throughout their respective arcs, their rotating art duties a good example of how to overcome the uneven art that can come from shipping a series twice a month.
That’s not what’s happening, however; Janin and colorist June Chung have re-joined King for the upcoming “The War of Jokes and Riddle” arc, which is set just after “Zero Year” and sees the Joker and the Riddler facing off against one-another and tearing up Gotham in the process. It’ll be fascinating to see how King’s sense of humor translates to a villain whose entire shtick is being the funniest man in the room, and how his intricate plotting pays off for a villain whose entire shtick is being the smartest man in the room. If it’s anything like the rest of this run, it’s going to be a good one.
Exclusive: Tom King & Mitch Gerads Attempt to Escape the Absurdity of 2017 in Heady New Mister Miracle Comic
By Sean Edgar | May 12, 2017 | 9:00am
Main Art by Mitch Gerads from Mister Miracle #1 Variant Cover
Comics Features Miracle Man
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Shortly before the release of his debut issue on Batman last summer, Tom King awoke in the emergency room. The former CIA officer and comic writer behind such modern classics as The Sheriff of Babylon, The Vision and The Omega Men anticipated a heart attack that would send him to an early grave. Fortunately, the diagnosis revealed a severe panic attack. Though King didn’t pass into the great beyond, he returned to a reality that didn’t quite feel the same. “I’d flirted with the edge of death and came back from it, and I woke up and the whole world seemed different. I don’t mean this in a political way, but the world as it is today—what’s happening every single day—doesn’t seem to make any sense. And that can be as simple as the Super Bowl didn’t make sense. Or it can be as crazy as people are breaking laws in our country that shouldn’t ever be broken,” King explains on the phone.
His illustrating partner on Sheriff, Mitch Gerads, chimes in: “The Cubs won the World Series.”
The pair is discussing their upcoming series, Mister Miracle, about a cosmic Jesus Christ analogue who’s also an escape artist, and how in this moment, it’s very, very hard not to feel trapped in a never-ending loop of the bizarre, anxious and absurd. But if their previous collaboration is any indication, the project won’t offer any escapism. King and Gerads excel at creating incredibly likable characters who attempt to untangle doomed causes—a legacy perfect for this new book.
Mister Miracle was created by comic trailblazer Jack Kirby in the early ‘70s after his fallout with Marvel over creator rights. The yellow, red and green superhero fronted a line of comics loosely identified as The Fourth World, a kaleidoscope-colored remix of the Bible with Wagnerian battles and sci-fi bombast. In the mythos, Miracle (born Scott Free) was imprisoned on an industrial hellscape planet called Apokolips before escaping to his family on the paradise of New Genesis. King describes the saga—which ran through comics including the New Gods and The Forever People—like “dipping your head into madness.”
And though Mister Miracle could escape any terror orphanage, death trap or elaborate constraint, Free perpetually felt trapped in his childhood nightmare. The character fits perfectly in King’s oeuvre of tragic irony, including the tortured space radicals of The Omega Men and the imploding dreams of The Vision—all portraits of gods with destructive vulnerabilities. It’s also a new, bright canvas for Gerads, whose work has mostly addressed military and street-level intrigue, further adding empathy to the almighty. The artist channels an intoxicating array of visuals for the project, mimicking distortion lines on antique tube TVs and tactile watercolor backdrops.
Lettered with dire detail by Clayton Cowles and edited by Jamie Rich, the first chapter of this 12-issue series launches in August. (Spoiler Alert: it’s excellent.) Publisher DC offered Paste a first look at the comic as well as chance to discuss this ambitious new series with King and Gerads.
Paste: The first time I heard about this project, I thought, you guys are going to humanize the divine. Kirby specialized in these grand, spectacular space operas that don’t have the subtlety or vulnerability I associate with The Sheriff of Babylon. Is that the challenge, to unite the cosmic with the intimate?
Tom King: I don’t think that’s the challenge, I think that’s the theme. In going back and reading all of Kirby, you’re dipping your head in genius. No one can out-Kirby Kirby. You can’t make an epic as great as he did. It’s like trying to make Star Wars again, or like trying to rewrite the Iliad. You can take those grand cosmic space opera themes and internalize them and use them to tell a very personal story. That’s what appealed to me about it. We were going to take the bigness of Kirby and turn that into the intimacy of Mister Miracle’s life. Kirby used a metaphor for his time, written in the late ‘60s early ‘70s when the world was going utterly insane. We’re going to use it as a metaphor for our time, the late 2010s, when once again the world is going insane. It’s almost like we’re holding up a mirror to that work, or internalizing it. We’re going step-in-step with him.
Mister Miracle #1 Cover by Nick Derington
Paste: Tom, your Best Intentions trilogy of The Sheriff of Babylon, The Omega Men and The Vision personally referenced your experience resolving conflict in the middle east as a CIA agent. Do you feel a kinship with Kirby, whose time in World War II served a similar purpose inspiring his comics?
King: It’s hard to ever compare yourself to the generation that fought Hitler and saved the world. I do feel a kinship with and draw inspiration from artists who did go through that experience, and came out to the other side with their eyes a little too open to the world. Kirby served, and I served in my way, but that guy was in gunfire and I was just trying to get terrorists to spy on each other. Both of us want to punch Nazis in the face, so we have that.
Paste: Mitch, there’s so much going on in Mister Miracle #1. I’m seeing Ben-Day dots, selective blurring, watercolor textures, tube TV distortion. It’s heavily atmospheric. How is this challenging you as an artist? What are your main goals?
Mitch Gerads: The book has been a crazy experience. It’s very challenging and it’s also exactly the opposite of that. Because of the theme of how Tom and I are approaching the story, it allows me to play with reality. When I do my art, I tend to be very inspired by what I’m consuming at that time, and I remember doing issue one of Mister Miracle and being very inspired by ‘60s magazine illustrators: Austin Briggs, Al Parker. I think a lot of that came through, but one of the nice things is, because of the nature of the book, as we go forward I can still be influenced by what I’m consuming at that time and just evolve with it. I get to use the reality-bending nature of the book as an excuse to do that.
Mister Miracle #1 Interior Art by Mitch Gerads
Paste: Mister Miracle seems more cinematic and visual than your previous collaboration.
Gerads: Sheriff is completely grounded in reality. For all intents and purposes, it definitely could have happened. Mister Miracle is super fun because I get to play with fantasy, but at the same time, I think I play with fantasy differently than most comic book artists. I still play with it in the real world. One of the fun things for me is taking all of these Kirby designs and taking the crazy world of New Genesis and the crazy world of Apokolips and boiling it down to more Game of Thrones. All that stuff is still there and the motifs can still be there. But I’m bringing it down to a base level that everyone can understand, and feels a bit more tactile and real.
Paste: Why do you think Kirby’s neo-Christian mythos is still relevant today?
King: I think it’s a few things. If you actually read the New Gods tetralogy, this epic without an ending, it’s like dipping your head into madness. You feel a little bit like the Joker for a little while. And I mean that in the best way possible. It’s that feeling you get when you see a piece of art you can’t comprehend. I’ve been at this long enough and I know a lot of the creators, and I can see behind comics. I see what you’re trying to do, I see how they did this. I read Kirby’s stuff and I don’t see how they did this. He touched the id of America and let it flow through his fingers. There are a thousand ideas on one page and they don’t add up and then they do add up and they come apart and they come back together. Half of them are an easy metaphor to see and then the metaphor falls apart. It’s just utter insanity.
Yet somehow, that utter insanity became the modern myth of America. You read New Gods, and you say that’s where Star Wars came from. It’s 100%. You can just see it on the page. This is why my kids wear Fantastic Four pajamas. This is why when I walk out in the street every day, I see half of the people wearing superhero t-shirts. This is the spine of our modern American myth, and it came from this outpouring of insanity from a man who, for all accounts and purposes, should have been past his prime. He should have done his best work, but instead, he channeled the energy of this new generation that was rebelling against this new perceived fascism into a child art form. How can you not try to catch that in your hands and do something with it?
Mister Miracle #1 Interior Art by Mitch Gerads
Paste: Reading the first issue, I couldn’t help but think of Mister Miracle as an evolution of The Last Temptation of Christ, a son of a god attempting to escape his identity.
King: When I first started doing this project, I started talking with creators like Mark Waid and one of the things I came across was people saying, you didn’t know Mister Miracle was Jack Kirby’s Jesus? He’s Jesus as an escape artist. That’s utterly ridiculous, but the writer in you is like I get to play with Jesus as an escape artist. On the other side of that you have Darkseid, who’s the horrible evil that walks. There are religious themes in this, but it’s all inspired by Kirby. He was drawing on Old Testament and the New Testament to make a kids adventure. That’s why it worked—he’s telling old stories in new ways. So now we’re going to try the old Jack Kirby stories in new ways. We’re going to go as deep as we can.
Paste: In the first issue, Darkseid is only hinted at through these ominous, rhythmic black boxes with the sole text “Darkseid is” in varying fonts. How are you approaching the character both from a thematic and craft perspective?
King: “Darkseid is” is taken from Grant Morrison’s JLA run in the early ‘90s. He captured what Kirby had captured, which is that Darkseid isn’t just a big guy who wants to take over the world. He’s not Mongul. He’s not even Thanos, a guy obsessed with death. He’s the evil inside of us. He’s the darkness. He’s the thing inside of us that calls us to do the wrong thing or be warped the wrong way. That’s inescapable: Darkseid exists. That’s there.
Gerads: He’s the only comic book villain that I’m legitimately afraid of. When I was a kid, Darkseid scared the heck out of me. I don’t think it ever went away. My mom brought home a Burger King happy meal, and it had this little cup holder. Different DC characters have their arms outstretched, with cups that go in front. My mom brought home Darkseid and I just started crying. I wanted no part of it.
King: I want to credit a webcomic artist named Julian Lytle. He’s an old friend of mine, and we met at a con. I was telling him about Mister Miracle, and he said: “Darkseid is.” And I said, “What do you mean Darkseid is?” He’s that thing that you can’t deny is there, that’s pushing you toward darkness. And he kept saying “Darkseid is” over and over again, and as I was talking to him, I saw the black panels. It’s always there in the background. It comes from that conversation with Julian.
Mister Miracle #1 Interior Art by Mitch Gerads
Paste: Tom, you’ve described this as “an epic about a harrowing tale trying not to be told.” That’s an amazing contradiction. Why would an epic not want to be told?
King: I think because it’s your epic, or it’s like in an interview like this, or when you talk to someone—you don’t want to reveal the actual epic that’s inside of you. The core of you. That’s something that you always keep hidden from everyone. The actual struggles you have every day. You make up things, and you say things and biographers or autobiographers write about them. The real hidden secrets and the real hidden battles—that’s the story that you don’t want told. You don’t want that exposed. That’s what we’re doing for Mister Miracle. He’s confronting that part of him that doesn’t want to be told.
Paste: Looking at the entire concept of escape, what do you both try to escape in your own lives that’s going to trickle into the themes here?
King: I try to escape two things at once, and I think that’s the problem. If you’re a writer, you’re constantly doubting yourself. You’re constantly saying this isn’t right, this is shit, this is terrible. But then on the other side, overconfidence will kill any writing you do: you stop doubting yourself, you’re fucked. You escape this trap of doubt to this trap of confidence, you escape the trap of confidence to the trap of doubt. You’re stuck in a catch 22 of screaming anxiety. And that’s when you write, “Page One, Panel One.”
Gerads: I think Scott Free, in this book, really embodies what a lot of us, if not the vast majority of us, are feeling right now: being surrounded by a world that doesn’t make as much sense as it used to. I really sympathize with Scott, and as the book goes on you sympathize with him more. There’s so much in the book of just him giving weird looks to people. In a way, it’s Jim from The Office giving looks to people half the time. He’s just trying to process the absurd. I think that’s something I try to escape. It’s hard to do this interview and not get super political. There’s so much in this world right now that isn’t lining up. You assumed there were safeguards in place to make sure things always do line up. It’s escaping that kind of world and trying to find the real world again. Hopefully that real world is still a thing that exists.
King: I wanted to write about the Trump era, but I didn’t want to write, “Fascism sucks” or “Trump sucks.” That doesn’t get you anywhere. You’re taking your Twitter feed and putting it in panels. What I wanted to do is capture the emotion of the period, and the anxiety, the way Alan Moore captured the anxiety of the ‘80s or Kirby captured the anxiety of the ‘70s or even Lee captured the optimism of the ‘60s; to capture the feeling, more than the politics. That’s what interests me. That’s how you make something that’s just not a polemic. After page four, the whole thing goes into a 9-panel grid, and it’s to give you a sense of that claustrophobia. To give you a sense of what it is to be trapped, not only in the themes and the words, but in the actual panel structure. He’s trapped behind those bars we had in Omega Men, and how does he break out?
One of comics’ best writers is a former CIA agent
Tom King cut his teeth in counterintelligence — now he’s behind one of the best Batman runs in recent memory
Mark Peters
06.10.2017•10:30 PM
How do you become a comic book writer? Take a class? Schmooze at comic conventions? Start a web comic and hope it catches someone’s eye?
For Tom King, the path to comic stardom took an unusual detour. King was working toward a career in comics when the industry was in a mid-'90s tailspin, so he switched gears and ended up working in the Justice Department.
When 9/11 happened, King joined the CIA, where he became a counterintelligence officer. After spending seven years in the agency — and writing a novel about superheroes called “A Once Crowded Sky” — King landed a job co-writing “Grayson” for DC in 2014.
In the short time since, King has penned three legit 12-issue classics: “Omega Men” and “The Sheriff of Babylon” for DC and “The Vision” for Marvel. He’s in the midst of a best-selling run on “Batman” and has another 12-issue series coming out in August: “Mister Miracle” (one of Jack Kirby’s New Gods) with Sheriff co-creator and artist Mitch Gerads. No writer in comics has made a bigger impact in so short of time, thanks to well-crafted, unflinching, humane comics — which are often about best intentions gone wrong.
Most of King’s work has been for DC, who he has an exclusive contract with, but before signing that deal he pulled off one of the best Marvel series in recent memory: “The Vision.” This multi-colored synthezoid (a type of android) is a longtime supporting character and member of the Avengers who had never been featured in his own series.
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King (with artist Gabriel Hernandez Walta and color artist Jordie Bellaire) stayed away from superhero stuff and made straight-up, Stepford-ish sci-fi, featuring the Vision’s bizarre attempt at making (literally) his own family in the D.C. suburbs: a synthezoid wife and two children. This artificial family’s real problems compound over time, much like the tragic plot of TV shows such as “The Shield” and “Breaking Bad.” The result is a horror story — and the worst advertisement for the suburbs, ever.
“Omega Men” (illustrated by Barnaby Bagenda) touches a little closer to King’s CIA experience, creating analogues for real-life terrorism in the 8-decade-old DC universe. The chief MacGuffin of the series is a substance with a classic comic book name: stellarium.
The theory is that if you pump your planet full of stellarium, the core will stabilize and never explode, like poor Krypton. The only problem is stellarium extraction leaves other planets uninhabitable. Using this concept, King constructs a brutal war story with no white knights. The closest thing to heroes are the terrorists — the Omega Men — who fight the Citadel, the government that extracts and sells stellarium, casualties be damned. “Omega Men” is a devastating story that flips real-life situations on their head, much like the best episodes of “Battlestar Galactica.”
The third of King’s trio of modern classics is based directly on his CIA experience: “The Sheriff of Babylon” is a crime story set in Iraq during the time King was there, from February to July 2004.
Batman, Vol. 1: I Am Gotham
264.5 (Jan. 30, 2017): p188.
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2017 PWxyz, LLC
http://www.publishersweekly.com/
Batman, Vol. 1:1 Am Gotham
Tom King and David Finch. DC, $ 19.99
(192p) ISBN 978-1-4012-6777-3
DC's current Rebirth project aims to relaunch the publisher's well-loved core characters in their most iconic forms. King's (The Omega Men) new Batman is accessible to new readers (or fans of the films) while checking off every item on a longtime fan's wish list. There's a properly brooding but heroic Batman; a looming Gotham City with enough atmosphere to function, as the subtitle hints and the dialogue hammers on repeatedly, as a character itself; crisp, detailed artwork by Finch (Brightest Day); and a mix of classic characters (hey, the Calendar Man!) and newcomers like Gotham and Gotham Girl, two mysterious heroes with Superman-level powers. If anything, the book suffers from being too much by the numbers. Batman's adventures are thrillingly drawn but light on emotional heft, despite some stirring moments. Strong themes run through the first volume, but they're delivered unsubtly, with characters forever opining darkly on the symbolism of it all. It's a good, solidly entertaining Batman comic--nothing less, not a touch more. (Jan.)
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"Batman, Vol. 1: I Am Gotham." Publishers Weekly, 30 Jan. 2017, p. 188. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA480195215&it=r&asid=1033d21d158130cafd159c947860f528. Accessed 3 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A480195215
King, Tom: A ONCE CROWDED SKY
(July 15, 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Kirkus Media LLC
http://www.kirkusreviews.com/
King, Tom A ONCE CROWDED SKY Touchstone/Simon & Schuster (Adult Fiction) $26.00 7, 10 ISBN: 978-1-4516-5200-0
King's debut novel is mostly textual narrative highlighted by random, comic-book-style illustrations. The Liberty Legion are superheroes, gods generated from the friction between good and evil, each with sublime powers. The Legion's leader is a robot. Ultimate, The Man with the Metal Face, was born at his human creator's death. Cognizant but confused, asking an existentialist "Why?," Ultimate soon stumbled upon a superhero comic as his awareness expanded. Ultimate decides "This was why I was built....The mission to save the world." And decades later, it was Ultimate alone and without explanation who chose to face The Blue, transcendental evil. With Ultimate gone, the Legion flounders. Left behind are The Soldier of Freedom, the cryogenically preserved bastard grandson of George Washington; Star-Knight; Distant Sun; Mashallah; Sicko; Runt; Freedom Fighter; Strength; Doctor Speed; Devil Girl; Prophetier; and PenUltimate, adopted as a boy by Ultimate and trained for succession. Each has a superpower; each deals with a tension-charged back story. With Ultimate gone, the superheroes are left powerless, and their home, Arcadia City, is in peril. The story is composed of alternating sequences of surreal narratives and crash-bang-boom action scenes, with the saga of brutality and betrayal climaxing at the Villains' Graveyard. Literary exposition--"The glimmering particle in the glimmering fountain becomes a glimmering picture, becomes the sketch of a man frozen against the sky"--alternates with streetwise dialogue--"What job, yo?...It'd help, help jack this thing, beat it?" King's work is beyond postmodern, complex in conception, perhaps too esoteric for mainstream fiction fans, but relevant to the graphic-novel, video-gaming generation.
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
"King, Tom: A ONCE CROWDED SKY." Kirkus Reviews, 15 July 2012. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA296121340&it=r&asid=81cbe49fd34ebd3d7564687dd61fc5f8. Accessed 3 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A296121340
King, Tom. A Once Crowded Sky
Julie Elliott
(July 13, 2012):
Copyright: COPYRIGHT 2012 Library Journals, LLC
http://www.libraryjournal.com/lj/reviews/xpress/884170-289/xpress_reviews-first_look_at_new.html.csp
King, Tom. A Once Crowded Sky. Touchstone: S. & S. Jul. 2012. c.320p. illus. ISBN 9781451652000. $26. F
Former Marvel Comic intern and CIA operations officer King combines his two backgrounds in an original, assured debut that follows the daily frustrations of a group of superheroes who sacrificed their power and their leader, Ultimate, to save the world. The heroes now face a new threat and turn for help from the one superhero who did not sacrifice his power (walking away for love). PenUltimate, or Pen, reluctantly steps back into the fight. King sets up intriguing backstories for his characters, and the illustrations (by Tom Fowler) enhance the gripping fight and flashback sequences. The novel is hard to get into at first (especially for readers unfamiliar with comic book conventions), but once the narrative pattern is established, the story is impossible to put down.
Verdict This intriguing novel and comic book hybrid will attract graphic novel fans as well as readers who enjoy stories heavy in serialized mythology but who have not yet explored this format.--Julie Elliott, Indiana Univ. Lib., South Bend
Elliott, Julie
Source Citation (MLA 8th Edition)
Elliott, Julie. "King, Tom. A Once Crowded Sky." Xpress Reviews, 13 July 2012. General OneFile, go.galegroup.com/ps/i.do?p=ITOF&sw=w&u=schlager&v=2.1&id=GALE%7CA297427631&it=r&asid=833bbe4b0550c024137836df758d554b. Accessed 3 Oct. 2017.
Gale Document Number: GALE|A297427631
Batman Rebirth, Year One: A Look At Tom King’s Bat-Epic, So Far
06.27.2017
by Chris Neill
in CBR Exclusives
Comment (10)
In the span of just two years, Tom King has established himself as one of the must-read writers in modern comics. That he somehow missed out on a 2017 Eisner Award nomination for his work on The Vision, The Omega Men and The Sheriff of Babylon is a mystery, and when it was announced he would succeed Scott Snyder as the writer of Batman for DC Comics’ Rebirth initiative, how could you not have been excited? Over the course of 25 issues, with a rotating art team of David Finch, Mikel Janin and Mitch Gerads providing some of the best work of their careers, the first year of Rebirth’s Batman has been one of the most consistently great books on the stands.
RELATED: Batman: War of Jokes and Riddles’ Inciting Incident Revealed
I was worried King might be constrained by Batman’s standing as a flagship character, that he wouldn’t be allowed to shake up the character as much as he had with Vision or Kyle Rayner in The Omega Men. It was an unnecessary fear, however, as the amazing character nuance and emotional depth of King’s previous series are on display here.
With his first year with the Dark Knight completed, we’re taking a look at what exactly King, Finch & Co. have been trying to say with the character. They’ve spent 24-issues dissecting Bruce Wayne; so it’s only fair we take a closer look at their examination in return. Just who is Batman, and what does he stand for? Is there a man under the mask, or is there just the Bat?
KEEP GOTHAM WEIRD
One the best aspects of this run is how much the creative team embraces the inherent goofiness and weirdness of the character. They paint with a wider brush of emotions, instead of using just the grimmer and darker tones that are part and parcel of Gotham City. This isn’t Unbeatable Squirrel Girl, of course; there are limits to how funny certain characters and their books can be. But sometimes you need some levity, and King isn’t afraid to embrace Batman’s more humorous elements.
We have Alfred dressed as Batman attempting to distract Gotham, a character with Superman-level powers. The Dark Knight goes full Inigo Montoya when raiding Bane’s island. The Ventriloquist is used as a great Chekhov’s gun. I never knew I needed to read a comic in which Batman and Swamp Thing team up to solve a murder until I read Batman #23, where the duo finds the assailant they’re hunting… because the grass at the Gotham Museum of Art tips off Swamp Thing.
There’s an issue in which Bruce warns Dick, Jason, Damian and Duke to stay away from Gotham because Bane will kill them, all while they bicker like brothers in a Batman-themed fast food restaurant called Batburger. It’s now canon that Bruce Wayne eats hamburgers with a knife and a fork.
RELATED: DC Unleashes Evil Versions of Batman in Dark Nights: Metal One-Shots
Even “The Button” – a crossover I do have some problems with – contains this kind of offbeat weirdness. Batman grappling himself to the Flash’s cosmic treadmill and hanging from it like a water-skier is so goofy, and yet it works in that special way that only comics can pull off.
King also pulls out some of the stranger deep-cuts from the Dark Knight’s rogue gallery, including Colonel Blimp, Amygdala and the series’ true MVP, Kite Man, who’s used as a running gag that gets funnier each time he shows up, demonstrating how committed King is to maintaining that thread of levity.
RELATED: REVIEW: Batman #21 Builds Rebirth, Pays Terrific Homage To Watchmen
THE CHANCE TO BE BRAVE
There’s a flashback that opens Issue #3, in which Batman saves a young Gotham and his parents from the same fate as Thomas and Martha Wayne. Leaping into the night, the Dark Knight tells the future hero, “Everyone gets scared. But remember, all that means is everyone gets the opportunity to fight that fear. Everyone gets that chance to be brave.”
Gotham falls because he’s unable to fight that fear. He wants to be brave, but he can’t; his namesake city is just too much for him. No matter how much good he tries to do, the city throws it back in his face. Even with Kryptonian-level powers, he’s scared of failing, of not being strong enough. The city grinds Gotham down, and he gives into his fear and it transforms into a blind, unrelenting anger.
RELATED: How Gotham Girl (And Tom King) Saved Batman
King and Finch revisit this idea in Batman #18, drawing a parallel between Bruce Wayne and Bane as children. They’re two young boys who have both lost their parents, left broken and scared. Where they differ is how they chose to channel their respective fear. Bruce chooses to be brave and sets out to create a world where no child has to watch his parents be murdered in cold blood. Bane chooses are darker route – he wants to conquer all criminals. They both want to bring order to a chaotic world, but one wants peace while the other wants ultimate power.
Batman is able to overcome that fear. Bane can’t. The only way he can feel brave is by having the Pirate manipulate his emotions. He’s no longer addicted to Venom, but he is addicted to the Pirate projecting emotions into him.
“SO I HELPED HER.”
Tom King and David Finch open their run with a massive action sequence that finds Batman guiding a crashing passenger jet through the skies of Gotham City, fully accepting that saving these people means he has to die. Just before the jetliner hits Gotham’s bay, he asks Alfred if his parents would’ve been proud of him, whether his imminent demise is a “good death.” A mournful Alfred tells him that, yes, his parents would be proud, and that this was a good death. That Batman is subsequently saved by the debuting Gotham and Gotham Girl does nothing to undercut that moment – Batman was sacrificing himself, selflessly, in order to save thousands of lives — a “good death,” indeed.
King revisits this concept of a “good death” in the final moments of Batman #20, where it’s revealed that a bloodied and beaten Bruce has been speaking with his mother. On the edge of life and death, Martha calls her son to the afterlife. By helping Gotham Girl, he has finally achieved a victory because she’s the key to saving Gotham City. And now that Batman has achieved victory, he’s finally earned his death. It’s in that moment that Bruce realizes it’s never been about whether or not he’s earned a “good death.”
RELATED: Tom King’s Impact on Batman Is Defined As A Turning Point Looms
Batman helps people; whether it’s one person or an entire city. He’s a superhero — that’s what he does. He exists to help us overcome that fear and become brave. It doesn’t matter if he goes down with the plane, has his back broken, or is almost beaten to death by the one villain to ever break him. He’ll get up and keep fighting the good fight if it means saving a single person’s life. At his core, that’s what Batman is about: overcoming trauma and coming out the other side, stronger. No matter what happens, he’ll be out there making the world a better place. In a sense, Gotham Girl is irrelevant, because if not her he’d be off helping someone else.
The idea of a “good death” doesn’t matter, because Batman’s death is unimportant. What matters is everything leading up to it – whether it’s saving a jetliner full of passengers or one scared person. Death isn’t karma; you don’t sacrifice your life because you earned a “good death”, you sacrifice your life because it’s your responsibility to make the world a better place.
“The girl needed help. So I helped her,” Bruce explains to his mother. “That’s all it is. That’s all it’s ever been.”
THE MAN UNDER THE MASK
Catwoman asks Batman to let her spend one last night with him before she’s sent to Blackgate Prison to serve a life sentence; she then spends most of the evening tagging along as the Dark Knight takes down various C-list members of his rogue gallery. Despite this being the last chance to share an intimate evening with one of the few people on the planet that actually understands him, Batman can’t stop being Batman. No matter how much he does, he’s never finished.
This leads to King closing out his first year with the Dark Knight asking an important question: Can Batman be happy? During “The Button” arc, the Flashpoint timeline’s version of Thomas Wayne urges his son to hang up the cowl and finally find happiness. “Don’t be Batman.”
During the “I Am Suicide” arc, we learn that Bruce Wayne slashed his wrists as a child. It’s an act of self-sacrifice as much as a cry for help; that’s the moment “Bruce Wayne” died, and Batman is born. It’s an act of selflessness, with Bruce giving up everything that makes him “normal” to become an unstoppable force of justice. But if Bruce Wayne is dead, does that mean Batman can’t stop being Batman? If the person under the mask is “dead”, then what happens when he stops being Batman and takes it off?
RELATED: Batman’s Tom King Ranks the Batfamily by Combat Prowess
Compared to the previous takes on the character, King’s Batman is the most human, the most vulnerable. Grant Morrison’s Batman was more or less a God, who was two steps ahead of literally everyone. Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo ended their run with an amnesiac Bruce sacrificing his humanity to become Batman again, because only he’s capable of carry the burden of the cape and cowl. With King’s take on the character, it actually feels like there’s a man under the mask, a being of flesh and blood and full of insecurities.
For all his talk of overcoming your fear and being brave, Batman is still scared. In Batman #24, Gotham Girl and Batman discuss the concept of happiness, something that eludes the Dark Knight. He fights crime in an attempt to be happy, and no matter how much he tries he ultimately fails because he’s scared.
That’s why the Bat proposing to the Cat is significant, because he’s trying to overcome that fear. He finally wants to be happy. So the question is now: Can Batman actually be happy, and what will it take to achieve it?
BATMAN BEYOND
King could’ve ended his tenure with Batman #24, and this run would be chalked up as another amazing limited series under his belt. Finch, Janin and Gerads were firing on all cylinders throughout their respective arcs, their rotating art duties a good example of how to overcome the uneven art that can come from shipping a series twice a month.
That’s not what’s happening, however; Janin and colorist June Chung have re-joined King for the upcoming “The War of Jokes and Riddle” arc, which is set just after “Zero Year” and sees the Joker and the Riddler facing off against one-another and tearing up Gotham in the process. It’ll be fascinating to see how King’s sense of humor translates to a villain whose entire shtick is being the funniest man in the room, and how his intricate plotting pays off for a villain whose entire shtick is being the smartest man in the room. If it’s anything like the rest of this run, it’s going to be a good one.
Writer: Tom King
Art: David Finch
Inks: Matt Banning
Colors: Jordie Bellaire
Letters: John Workman
Publisher: DC Comics
Publication Date: June 15, 2016
The last time a Batman #1 was released it was done by arguably one of the best creative teams that has worked in comics for a long time, Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo. Snyder breathed new life into the series and character while Capullo’s art added real character to the city of Gotham. After five years on the book, Snyder and Capullo went their separate ways but the show must go on, and this time it has a new creative team with writer Tom King and returning to the bat, artist David Finch. Can this new creative team continue to bring something new to the table for such a timeless character?
Brief Story Synopsis of Batman #1
After regaining his memory and taking back the mantle from Jim Gordon, Bruce Wayne is back to doing what he does best and this time feeling more rejuvenated than ever before. The story begins with a meeting between Commissioner Gordon and Batman to discuss a recent raid of surface to air missiles that have been stolen, until from up in the sky an airplane preparing to land in Gotham is shot while still in the sky. Now he must race against time to save the plane from crashing into his city with his only help coming from Alfred and his new trainee Duke Thomas.
The Creative Team
The story in Batman #1 is fast paced and does something interesting for the character of Batman by giving him the challenge of trying to land a 747 in the Gotham bay by himself. One of the reasons people gravitate towards Batman is because he can’t do what Superman does, he’s a regular man who’s trained himself to the peak of human perfection and still saves the day. Tom King introduces this concept and shows that even when dealing with hell falling from the sky that even a normal man will still try his hardest to stop it. King is best known for A Once Crowded Sky, a superhero novel and also as a co-writing credit for the recent Grayson storyline for DC, he’s also happens to be an ex-CIA agent, so the man knows his stuff.
Returning to the character once more is veteran artist David Finch, he’s worked in the world of Gotham before on various issues, he even wrote and did the art for the the series Batman: The Dark Knight but recently he and his wife teamed together for a run on Wonder Woman during the New 52. Finch has always delivered great pencils, from his work back on New Avengers to currently in this issue, he has a dark and gritty style that he has brought to the series. A must mention is Jordan Bellaire, he is the colorist in this issue and he helps tremendously to capture that darker tone that King and Finch are striving to do with the dark colors to help bring the pages to life.
The creative team as a whole hit the ground running in this issue with an over the top challenge that the Caped Crusader must face in order to save his city. It’s hard to see how the dynamic between Bruce and Duke is going to play out as it was not explored as much as it was in Batman: Rebirth #1 but only time will tell if he can be the sidekick Bruce hopes for him to be. It also introduces us to two new super powered characters, Gotham and Gotham Girl, that intend on letting Batman know that Gotham is their city to protect now.
Conclusion
Overall this issue is a solid start for the new series, the faster paced scenario made for an incredible and exhilarating issue one. And for any readers with trepidation about the creators handling the series there is no need to fear because the Dark Knight is in good hands.
Let us know what you guys think of Batman #1 down below and feel free to rate the issue yourselves with our user rating above.
Batman #1 Review
Posted by Chris Beveridge
June 15, 2016 at 06:37 PM
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1
Showcasing the man of the moment just before he’s usurped.
Creative Staff:
Story: Tom King
Art: David Finch, Matt Banning
Colors: Jordie Bellaire
Letterer: John Workman
What They Say:
No one has ever stopped the Caped Crusader. Not The Joker. Not Two-Face. Not even the entire Justice League. But how does Batman confront a new hero who wants to save the city from the Dark Knight?
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Having avoided the main Batman books since the beginning of the New 52 (and before, to be honest), I’ve really enjoyed the fringe books that focused more on Gotham itself and the curiosities that exist within, such as Gotham by Midnight and Gotham Academy. Having thoroughly enjoyed Tom King’s work on The Omega Men and Sheriff of Babylon, following him to Batman was a no-brainer, even though I abhor the biweekly schedule. Pairing him with David Finch and Matt Banning makes for a dynamic looking book that plays well to King’s quick grasp and utilization of Batman himself, which shines through in this first ongoing installment in a big way as his world is about to be thrown into a tailspin. I’m sure it’s not new – I haven’t read a Batman book since the 90’s for the most part – but it can be executed in fun and new ways.
What we get with this book is straightforward in just highlighting what it is that makes Batman Batman. In a way, it’s similar to a lot of recent Superman origin stories with the whole plane crashing into Gotham and seeing how he handles it. We saw that in Superman Returns and recently in the Supergirl TV series. Here, Batman’s been tracking down some top secret arms gone awry that ended up in a Kobra cell in the city, two members of which were apprehended with two of the rocket launchers. The third’s on the run and in a panic, hence shooting down a plane circling Gotham ahead of its landing. It’s a good setup and King captures the mood well between Batman and Gordon while also showing some of the events on the plane that feel like portents and signs of things to come. Slow moving plane crashes aren’t the easiest thing to illustrate, but Finch nails the dual purpose here of showing us what this Gotham looks like at this time – something that Bellaire colors rather hauntingly.
What really keeps things engaging here is watching how Batman solves the problem of the plane itself, being just a man, albeit a man with a real gift of intelligence on top of his physical training. With a solid team that he uses with Alfred and Duke (and now, the book still doesn’t really make his role clear for me, a newcomer to the property) while also acknowledging the rest of the Justice League and why they don’t show up for every damn thing, it’s thrilling to watch as he basically overperforms not just as hero but as a superhero as well. Yes, there are instances where it’s almost comical, but it’s pulled off because it’s done with enough nods toward the tech side, math, and general science. It works with his strength in intelligence as well as physical while also making it clear that he’s willing to go the distance to sacrifice himself to save others. It’s a quick character study overall, one that will be challenged even more as the newly arrived Gotham Super-characters show up and explore what it’s like for Superman level types to set up shop in the city.
In Summary:
Tom King opens us up to a potentially interesting story here, one that I hope is given room to breathe and really be explored while punctuating it with some tense and intriguing moments. This issue is all about setup and really introducing us to how King views the character in terms of story and execution while paving the way for what’s to come. I’ve learned to have faith in his work so I’m along for the ride for quite some time. Artistically, David Finch just nails it with the layouts, providing the scale to what’s going on while also personalizing it with some great close-up moments and background nods and winks. There’s some great style here that I expected from him and working with Banning and Bellaire just elevates the work as a whole to make it moody and interesting without being murky and minimal. Definitely a very solid opener that may not light the barn on fire but establishes a hell of a lot very quickly all while tantalizing at the end.
Grade: A-
Age Rating: 12+
Released By: DC Comics via ComiXology
Release Date: June 15th, 2016
MSRP: $2.99
Batman #1
by Loukas — Posted in DC Comics on Jun 23, 2016
Batman riding an airplane like a rodeo bull. Who can think of that and not smile?
Do bats make good parents? I honestly have no idea, although I suppose that when you come down to it very few animals treat their children well, humans being no exception. When it comes to Batman, his status as a father is one of the most fraught subjects in all of American superhero comics. As Tom King, DC’s new main Batman writer, has observed, the man is something of a psychopath. During his time as one of the creative minds behind Grayson, King was known to say that there is a Dick Grayson story that writers automatically want to tell (and that some have, in fact, told). It’s the story of how orphaned Dick Grayson was abused and terrorized by the dark, obsessed billionaire who forced him into a pathological life as a vigilante. There’s just something about Bruce Wayne that invites that kind of thing.
King has said that one of his goals is to challenge this view, not with an intention to turn Batman into a cuddly character, but certainly with the aim to explore the Caped Crusader as a social creature, like the rest of us a mortal embedded in a system of obligations and relationships. This is a natural approach, considering the Rebirth project focuses on continuity and legacy. Granted, the particular story in this issue, focusing on Batman saving a crippled jet by attaching a rocket to the fuselage and riding the whole ramshackle contrivance to a water landing, seems to contradict the idea of Batman as anything like an ordinary human being.
King has a rather bad habit of pounding on his themes a bit much, and Batman #1 is no exception. One of his favorite tricks is repetition and mirroring. In this issue, an anguished cry about Gotham from a passenger on board the falling aircraft gets answered near the end of the issue in an unusual, but somewhat precious, development. More importantly, Batman has the habit of engaging Alfred in rather deep and personal conversations at what one would think to be awkward moments, like in the midst of guiding the aforementioned plane into the bay. His paternal feelings for the Robins, expressed roughly but sincerely, are touching. His question as to whether his own parents would be proud, on the other hand, is cringe worthy.
David Finch brings his trademark house style to this issue with good effect. Like Superman, Batman calls for a classic art treatment, being by definition a classic character. Matt Banning provides Gotham with appropriate deep shadows. Jordie Bellaire uses purples and oranges to evoke the look of a nighttime city lit with cruel, garish floodlights. This Gotham is awesome and awful, but strong and defiant. We don’t know yet if it is the evil entity of Snyder’s run, but we can believe this is a city unbowed by threat or tragedy.
Grade
A-
Conclusion
All of King's creativity is on display in this issue, as are many of his quirks. Unlike the previous issue, King is now able to clearly present his Batman without cooperation from Scott Snyder. This is a human hero in a great and terrible city. The question, which we are confronted with in very concrete form by the end of the book, is whether being human is enough. Can even a social hero be the defender Gotham deserves. Not to spoil anything, but I am confident that he will do just fine. But we may see a few more wild action rides, and many closer calls than we have had in the recent past. Then again, what's wrong with that?
Tom King: A Once Crowded Sky
Kevin McFarland
7/23/12 12:00amFiled to: Books
158
Book Review
A-
A Once Crowded Sky
Author
Tom King
Publisher
Touchstone
In the final pop-culture-laden monologue of Quentin Tarantino’s reference-heavy epic Kill Bill, David Carradine espouses the difference between heroes with alter egos (like Batman and Spider-Man), and Superman, a born superhero who assumes an alter ego to blend in. But what if Superman and every other superhero in the world had to give up what makes them special in order to save the world, and become their meek alter egos forever? Tom King’s debut novel, A Once Crowded Sky, explores a city of superheroes and villains reduced to normalcy. The narrative structure roughly separates into chapters titled as if they were comic-book issues, weaving a dense mythology through a wide array of original characters. It’s a visceral prose response to the War On Terror era, but with added costumed fighters. The conceit is reminiscent of Alan Moore’s Cold War doomsday dread.
The novel opens in Arcadia City, just after the world has been saved once again, but at great cost. The Blue, a mysterious energy force leaking through a tear in space, threatened to end all existence—and caused a behavioral disorder in all supervillains, leading to their suicide. Ultimate, a deified robotic hero dubbed “The Man With The Metal Face,” uses a belt belonging to über-wealthy hero Star Knight to absorb all the superheroes’ powers, then burns to nothing while using the energy-filled belt to seal the rift. His once-faithful sidekick PenUltimate refused the call to surrender his powers, and is the only remaining superhero. But attacks on the city keep coming, and some unseen puppetmaster is pulling the strings to bring Pen back into action; he unites with bitter, aging former hero Soldier Of Freedom to uncover why Ultimate’s sacrifice hasn’t quelled the disasters.
In spite of the original character names, A Once Crowded Sky is heavily indebted to previous superhero stories and high-profile comics characters. Star-Knight has strains of Ozymandias from Watchmen. Prophetier is a blend of Watchmen’s Rorschach and Unbreakable’s Mr. Glass, with a little dash of Spider Jerusalem from Transmetropolitan. Strength is a cross between Watchmen’s Silk Spectre and Wonder Woman. And Soldier Of Freedom is a heavily darkened version of Captain America. But King does create some heroes who escape the shadow of well-worn characters, like alcoholic super-surgeon Doctor Speed, devout Muslim superheroine Mashallah, and Devil Girl, a maniacally charming woman who pops up throughout Soldier’s story as his supernatural companion.
But while it’s a little too obvious about its influences, A Once Crowded Sky is more than some chop-shop Frankenstein of Watchmen, The Avengers, and The Incredibles. It hits its highest notes when it departs from the heavy influence of totemic, complex superhero tales and mirrors modern military concerns—a natural fit, since King is a former CIA officer who worked in counterterrorism. One of Watchmen’s greatest aspects is how it oozes with Cold War paranoia, and its structure mirrors the ’80s impending fear of nuclear apocalypse. A Once Crowded Sky strikes an eerily similar note about the War On Terror.
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King’s heroes give up their power to fight The Blue. After the threat is gone, those heroes remain as shells of their former selves, much like soldiers returning from war, adrift in a world they no longer connect with or understand. Some, like Strength and Doctor Speed, descend into self-destruction, even as their city continues to get blown apart. It turns out that taking a page out of war films serves the story better than any comic influence—the book conveys the sense that at any moment, anywhere, danger can strike. Friends can die quickly and without warning, in concussive, seemingly never-ending succession. It’s simultaneously exhilarating and exhausting to read.
The world in The Avengers never truly seems in danger, because the film is designed as such a raucous good time, and the characters are such well-established canon heroes, there’s no chance the filmmakers will let them fail. Not so in A Once Crowded Sky. All the characters are wounded, missing parts of themselves—even PenUltimate, who retains his powers, but loses his mentor and his self-confidence. The terrorist attacks are sudden and confusing, with unclear motives and no one to claim responsibility for the horror. It’s like a comic-book interpretation of The Hurt Locker, with adrenaline-junkie former heroes hurling themselves into danger, while others watch from the sidelines, transfixed with crippling guilt.
There are certainly rough patches. King tries to create his own transcendent crosscutting Watchmen sequence three times, with different characters, but only fully hits the mark once, with the grieving PenUltimate. And it’s hard to read a novel this blatantly patterned after comics without wondering whether it would have been better off as an actual graphic novel, rather than as prose capped with the occasional illustrated page. Though the story packs a meta-narrative wallop concerning the repetitive, cyclic nature of comic-books plots (yet another Watchmen influence, though more subtle and integral to the plot than Tales Of The Black Freighter), the twists are compacted by the end, jolting the characters around in a way that threatens to be unsatisfying.
But A Once Crowded Sky carves out some small semblance of originality and novelty from all the direct influences. It’s a story of coping with limitations and repeating history in an epic interconnected scope. This is an exciting post-millennial conflict allegory, which echoes the terror of Alan Moore’s writing for Watchmen while sidestepping out of its shadow.
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Date of Publication: 07.26.12.
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Heroes and Villains Are Gone From A Once Crowded Sky
When I first read the premise of Tom King’s new novel, A Once Crowded Sky, I was doubtful — a novel about a world of superheroes and villains where they’ve all lost their powers? Seriously? The title of the book is obvious, but I was really wondering if a story about heroes and villains minus powers could be called a superhero novel? Of course, there are plenty of comic books out there with heroes (and villains) who have no real powers given to them by magic or science experiments gone wrong. But an entire world without super powered humans? Hmm….
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Okay, that’s not 100% true. There is one left — PenUltimate. Pen was the sidekick of Ultimate, The Man with the Metal Face. Ultimate sacrificed himself by taking all of the powers from the heroes to stop a world-ending catastrophe — a catastrophe that mysteriously forced all the villains to take their own lives. And where was Pen? Home… with his wife. He’d given up the superhero gig before the world changing event and didn’t answer the call to show up, shed his powers, and let Ultimate save the day.
Why didn’t he show up? He was a hero, right? Heroes do the right thing — they make sacrifices. They don’t worry about their own lives. It’s all about those they protect. But Pen is an outcast in the ex-hero community. Oh, they’re still civil to his face, but he’s totally aware of the coward label they use when speaking about him. But he doesn’t care. He’s got a good life with his wife Anna. He’s got some great memories of fights galore with Ultimate, and he’s still pretty unstoppable.
As for the ex-heroes, however, life goes on. And it’s not all that great when you’ve had the powers and the glory and admiration all taken away. Then you’ve got to find work. You’ve got to deal with the fact that your bones ache. Your bruises and cuts don’t heal so fast. Your aim is off. That’s what heroes like Strength (the strongest woman on the planet) and Prophetier (knows the future) and Dark-Knight (no powers, but super rich) and Soldier (think Captain America with twin pistols named California and Caroline) experience as the story unfolds. They’ve got to deal with the real world now, and ex-heroes really aren’t cut out for it.
The days fly by, with only Prophetier to remind them all that heroes always come back. That they’ll all get their powers back. But no one’s listening. Because they all know the truth. They’re not coming back. Ultimate took their powers and died. And their home, Arcadia City, is currently under attack by an unknown enemy who targets normals and ex-heroes equally. A few, sans powers, are ready to investigate, help the injured, jump into the fire. Many more are perfectly willing to duck their heads, powerless to do anything.
And then there’s Pen. He’s still got his powers. And he’s being hounded by a few ex-heroes to join the fight and try to help. He’s got a good life, so he’s not interested… until the attacks become personal. Only then does he begin putting the pieces together, uncovering secrets that were meant to be kept hidden forever, and questioning just who are the good guys and who are the bad?
A Once Crowded Sky is a novel, not a comic book. But apparently no one told Tom King. He’s crafted a series of scenes that read like a comic book; there aren’t chapter numbers either. There are Ultimate Battle Call One Shot #1, Soldier of Freedom Annual #11, Adventure Team-Up #25. And scattered here and there between stretches of text are actual comic book pages, illustrated by Tom Fowler, that do a great job of reminding you that you’re reading a series of comic book panels converted to pure text (as well as provide visuals of the various characters and the occasional plot device or hint).
Everything we love about comics — origin tales, a worthy villain, team-ups (a team-up is only two heroes — there’s some great rules provided by actual dialogue between ex-heroes that is awesome), conspiracies, super technology, disgraced heroes, redeemed villains — it’s all here. And it’s a fun read. There are surprises galore, and I really didn’t see them coming. I think it’s appropriate that the last page of the book be an actual single page of three panels that you might find at the beginning of an actual comic book. And maybe that’s a sign that the story isn’t over yet for the ex-heroes of Arcadia City. In my mind’s eye, the cover of this book has a big Collector’s Issue #1 on it. Maybe Issue #2 is already in the works. Maybe a comic book that doesn’t have actual super humans in it could work. This book has certainly proven that it’s the ex-heroes, not their powers, that can save the future… or destroy it.
I’d like to thank Jessica at Touchstone Books for providing a review copy.
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BOOK REVIEW: A Once Crowded Sky by Tom King
Posted on December 13, 2012 by Timothy C. Ward in Book Review, Comic Books // 1 Comment
REVIEW SUMMARY: Comic book in prose sends us inside the heads of heroes and villains fighting for the world and those they love.
MY RATING:
BRIEF SYNOPSIS: A mysterious threat to Arcadia forces the last superhero to choose between being a husband and saving the world.
MY REVIEW
PROS: Superhero adventure with heart, mystery, and immersive action that makes reading about these characters a moving experience.
CONS: The prose may take too many liberties in what the reader understands to be happening, and the mystery of The Blue may be too slow of a burn to hold some reader’s attention.
BOTTOM LINE: May require more concentration and patience than some readers will give, but if they do, they’ll be rewarded with a philosophical gem on heroes, sacrifice, and the meaning of life in a corrupt world.
I don’t read comic books and I’m not really a fan of superheroes. That said, I can appreciate a tremendous cover, and was intrigued by the premise of a world where all but one of the superheroes gave up their powers to save the world.
The one who didn’t, PenUltimate, chose to stay home with his wife instead of joining the rest of the superheroes on the day they gave up their powers to Ultimate so that he could defeat The Blue. Ultimate is killed entering The Blue and all the superheroes are bitter, both because they have to live like normal people, and because PenUltimate, the sidekick of Ultimate, was too much of a coward to help them. The story that follows centers on Pen’s struggle to avoid the responsibility of his powers when a new terror starts attacking their city.
The most realtable and engaging aspect of A Once Crowded Sky is Pen’s struggle between his promise to his wife and his promise to his dream job. Pen starts the story rushing between saving the day and coming back home to apologize for broken promises to be with his wife. As a reader, we too want him to save the day for the innocents, but we also want a happy ending for him and his wife. This is emphasized by a powerfully emotional section in the middle of the book in which Pen is forced to choose one or the other, and which springboards the reader toward the end.
Another strong component of the book is the mystery that is The Blue, a source of light that kills everything it touches, including Ultimate, the ultimate superhero. I won’t spoil the fun for you, but the key, as well as the moral of the story, is found somewhere within the metaphor of The Game. In Tom’s world, superheroes are required to play by the rules of The Game, which makes the story feel like comic book characters came to life, spandex and all, both to fight crime and make their wives pancakes. This added an unexpected depth of philosophy and realism in a book about superheroes.
Here’s a sample, as spoken by Soldier to Pen:
“This world’s cruel, this game, and it ain’t got an inch for children… It’s just doing what you can, or else someone else dies. Those are the rules. That’s the choice. Showing up. That’s the game. That’s all it is. That and it never ends.”
Also notable is the author’s immersive style of storyshowing, which is a bad pun meant to say he shows you the story instead of telling it to you, which puts you into the characters’ heads to experience the action as they do. Here’s an example:
The fire blasts yellow-blue and then crackles into waves of orange that rumble through the room. The tips of his hair singe, and Pen drops to the floor, allows the worst of the heat to rest over his head, makes sure to keep his hands locked down on the table. The flames hook into his skin and wrench his flesh upward; but his grip’s sure, and he holds.
The wooden ceiling brace above his head’ll fall, but he can’t move for another fourteen seconds, not until the smacker’s across. He stiffens his body in anticipation of the impact, and when the blow comes—the beam snapping on his back, swaddling foot-long slivers around his skin, slopping sand inside his nostrils and eyelids—Pen retains his stance, his hands slipping, but still pushing, holding.
There is room for improvement, but the prose is unique and very effective. Part of the downfall was in the few parts where the immersive style included flashbacks and thoughts that were lost me. Sometimes the style really added to my interest in the characters, and sometimes it slowed the pace or just plain confused me. The Blue is a riddle, and until it starts making sense, it’s easy to put the book down after one of his scenes breaks. Page 121 is where I decided I was going to finish, so it may take a little perseverance to get to the point where you have to finish as well. I think it’s worth it. I liked the innovative way he made me feel like I was reading a comic, yet with prose that put me deep enough into the character’s heads that I left with a moving experience.
Comic review: The Sheriff of Babylon Vol. 1 and 2
By Jack Murphy 02.11.2017#Featured
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“The Sheriff of Babylon” is a graphic novel penned by former CIA officer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads, who also worked on other military-themed comics including “The Activity” and “The Punisher.” At its heart, “The Sheriff of Babylon” is a detective story that takes place against the backdrop of post-invasion Iraq in 2004 as the country is beginning its descent into Hell. King draws on his CIA background to write a compelling story filled with shades of gray, where institutions are bigger and more important than human lives. Gerads’ artwork captures a specific moment in time when American military might overlaps with Iraq’s complicated cultural landscape.
The story begins 10 months after the invasion of Iraq, when the body of a murdered police trainee is discovered in the Green Zone. The trainee’s teacher is a former LAPD cop turned military contractor in Baghdad. Christopher is emblematic of many contractors and soldiers who were deployed to Iraq, as his heart is in the right place, but he is completely oblivious to realities on the ground as someone who does not understand the language or culture. Feeling responsible, Christopher embarks on a personal mission to bring the trainee’s murderer to justice.
Along the way we meet Sofia, a member of the interim governing body of Iraq, whose grandfather was a founding member of the Ba’ath Party but was ousted by the previous regime. Sofia is in many regards a defector who ran to the Americans and helped direct the U.S. military against Saddam Hussein. In Baghdad, she plays many roles—council member, troubleshooter, dealmaker, and even executioner.
With Sofia’s help, Christopher enlists the help of Nassir, who is a tough Shia cop. With his three daughters killed during the invasion, Nassir has many axes to grind, but before long it is his own dark past that catches up with him. Nassir is the cynical Arab Iraqi. He’s seen a lot of shit and done a lot of shit. Without much left to live for, he’s making deals with multiple devils to try to keep his skin intact a while longer.
The stories of these three characters overlap, but King writes a tale that is not a trite character study into the human condition or a post-modern narrative about the intersections of life—both of which are easily discarded with a shrug. Instead, he writes a graphic novel about cause and effect in a world where various players are stumbling through the dark, hampered by bureaucracy, misunderstandings, and petty self-interests.
Volume one ends in further tragedy for both Sofia and Nassir, with the second volume concluding the murder mystery, as both the NCIS and CIA get involved in a manhunt for a Jordanian-born American citizen who has joined the jihad in Iraq. The murdered police trainee figures into the manhunt, but as Christopher eventually learns, he was not killed by terrorists.
In the end, we witness an incompetent American bureaucracy spun into a death cycle that has no end game in mind, and an Iraq that seems all too willing to cooperate in the completion of this cycle, as the locals are determined to destroy whatever was left after the invasion. The Sheriff of Babylon asks a lot of questions, the type of questions that we probably should have asked ourselves before invading the country. Few answers are forthcoming, perhaps because the author is internally conflicted himself. I certainly don’t have those answers either.
Both graphic novels are illustrated by Gerads, who does an impressive job of capturing the unique look and feel of a specific moment in time, where American military culture overlaps with the world’s oldest civilization: Babylon. Gerads wasn’t holding back in this comic either, as it features quite a bit of brutal imagery, but for those of us who saw this war up close, it really couldn’t be illustrated any other way.
In a recent interview on SOFREP’s podcast, Gerads commented that sometimes he gets hate mail telling him that he sucks, but since comic books come out every four weeks, they’ll see him again next month. After reading “The Sheriff of Babylon,” you’ll see that King and Gerads certainly don’t suck, and you’ll definitely want to see them again next month.
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Filed Under: Featured
Tagged With: 2003, Baghdad, Books, CIA, comic books, Free Content, graphic novel, Headline, Iraq, jihad, military fiction, Mitch Gerads, NCIS, Podcast, Tom King
Review: Sheriff of Babylon vol. 1: Bang, Bang, Bang
July 19, 2016
Considering how much ink is wasted on how comics have grown up (there's an NPR think piece about it every year), it's very rare to see a story truly intended for adults. You of course have your bodily fluid splattered, self-consciously dark comics of the sort Vertigo often publishes, but their lurid approach to sex and violence is obviously juvenile. You also have, of course, your art house, experimental pieces with surreal art and no story to speak of, but these are more often than not self-indulgent and flat out pretentious, enjoyable mainly to connoisseurs of the comic storytelling form itself. And then you have Sheriff of Babylon, a dramatic story with a straightforward plot supporting subtle character and complex real-life issues. In other words, Sheriff of Babylon is both a very good comic and one intended in a very real sense for adults. Sheriff of Babylon is a murder mystery, and, though I have read far too many murder mysteries recently, it manages to feel fresh and different through its setting. In 2004 Iraq, after the invasion, Chris is an ex-cop training Iraqis to become police officers in Baghdad. When one of his trainees is found murdered, Chris realizes there is not police force to investigate and takes matters into his own hands. He is aided by Sofia, an American-born Israeli girl who is working as a fixer and Nassir, an ex-cop and possible war criminal. In the manner of all detective stories, the case starts simple and unravels a larger conspiracy, but the raw immediacy and bluntness of the post-war city elevates the story into something more. Iraq looks like a world so fallen apart and accustomed to death that Chris' crusade seems pointless.
In a book where the setting is so important, it's no surprise that the art needs to be evocative. And while I have no way of knowing if it looks like 2004 Baghdad, Mitch Gerads provides some excellent work here, creating a dusty, sometimes beautiful shell of a city. The review copy I have is of a very low quality, but even so, I can attest to the beauty of Gerads colors and simple panel work. When you use a photo-referenced styles, you run the risk of making your characters and setting look stiff and awkward, but Gerads has a great grasp of body language and action that allow Tom King's script to become minimal in places without losing the momentum of the story.
And King's work here is subtler and more complex than it has been on his superhero books. The characters struggle with a sense of powerlessness in the face of military action that engenders hate and further violence. King's too smart to make a moral statement about the war itself, but he gets across the unnatural horror of war in small, personal moments that stick with you--like Chris offering a suicide bomber a piece of chocolate or Nassir's wife reminiscing about her lost children. King displays his usual sharp sense for clever storytelling tricks like repeated panels and silent visual beats making for a book that moves quickly and expects the reader to keep up.
The one, and frankly only, place that Sheriff of Babylon loses me is in the minutia of government and bureaucracy. My eyes tend to glaze over a little whenever I see a word balloon that references regimes and the names of military movements and events. I don't really think this is a fair criticism to lob at King as I simply don't have enough patience to put these pieces together but it does make a few small portions of the book drag. But that's a minor complaint that did not for a moment stop me from considering this book on of the best I've read all year. I'm anxiously awaiting the second half of the story which promises to be wrenching and smart as anything on stands.
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Sheriff of Babylon vol. 1: Bang, Bang, Bang Writers: Tom King Artist/Colorist: Mitch Gerads Publisher: Vertigo Comics Price: $14.99 Format: TPB; Print/Digital
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Review: THE SHERIFF OF BABYLON #1
Jed W. Keith Dec 5, 2015 Comic Reviews
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Review: The Sheriff of Babylon #1
“The Sheriff of Babylon #1 is one of the brightest spots among a host of bright spots in Vertigo’s series rollouts. Regardless of whether King and Gerads’ tale makes you think, creates anger, or leaves you longing, it is sure to stay with you long after you’ve set the book aside.”
The Sheriff of Babylon #1
Publisher: DC Comics/Vertigo
Writer: Tom King
Artist: Mitch Gerads
Release Date: Wed, December 2, 2015
With so many of its series ending in the past few years, DC Comics’ has made a concerted push this fall in reinvigorating its Vertigo line with new blood, and that’s a tall order. The imprint has a high pedigree of creators who have left their mark with books like Sandman, Preacher, and Fables. Folks who have the most minimal of comic book knowledge know the names of those titles just by virtue of their quality and accolades that have burst through the sometimes-insular four-colored world of comics.
Thus far, Vertigo’s new campaign has more than lived up to its past reputation for engaging tales brimming with thought-provoking concepts, thanks in large part to the bevy of talented creators the imprint has enscripted for its next chapter, with that talent producing nary a bad book in the stable. All of this is said to hammer home just what a revelation writer Tom King and artist Mitch Gerads’ The Sheriff of Babylon is and a crystallization of everything that a Vertigo yarn can be in the hands of deft creators.
Baghdad
The book’s first issue follows the lives of three characters 10 months following the toppling of Baghdad at the beginning of the second Iraq War. All three are adjusting to the changing landscape left in the wake of that fall, all coping with what’s become of the country they’re all tied to. Chris, a former Florida police officer working as a contractor in Iraq, has a crisis on his hands after one of the trainees he’s been hired to train ends up dead. With the fall of Saddam came a dispersing of the police force and no real chain of command as to what to do when bodies turn up. He turns to Sofia, who’s on the Iraqi Council and who, with the fall of Saddam, sees her opportunity to use her calm ruthlessness to reclaim her birthright taken from her when she was forced to move to America. Turning to Nassir, a former officer under Saddam’s rule, Sofia offer of help to Chris could be either altruism at work or part of a long game yet unrevealed.
Chris coping with death
What King has accomplished in the first issue is capture that state of flux and uncertainty people across the globe were experiencing, in and out of the theater of war. Soldiers and their loved one were left without an idea of how long the conflict would span. Saddam was sent fleeing, true, but the Iraqis who were part of his regime were still pressing on against America and her allies. Everyone with even the slightest interest in the region’s future was making a power grab and had their own ideas about the big What Next. King’s plotting and the character development paint a picture of the humans, not caricatures, involved, who have their own morality which shapes their actions. Nobody is depicted as Good, Bad, or Grey, but merely people with their own passions, prejudices, and interests, whether they be selfless or not. While readers might be taken aback by Sofia’s puppeteering to get what she wants, we’re given a window to see why she would see certain people as obstacles to goals. Her cunning and calculation, while perhaps off-putting, make sense in context. Some folks are just trying to control the storm, lest it control them, while others just want to weather it.
Training the Iraqi police force
While King’s plotting and characterization are compelling on their own, Gerads’ use of linework and color help to sell the Iraq of 2004, following the fall of Saddam Hussein, with a nuance rivaling the network news camerawork taking place during that time period. Maybe it’s the visceral immediacy of reading the book in hand coupled with the blood-splattered crime scenes the likes of which never made it to air, but the art gave me a lump in my throat those broadcasts never managed to bring. The blood pooling around Nassir’s feet as he murdered and wept, both in the names of his lost daughters, felt wet and immediate, adding another layer of symbolism atop King’s deft prose and dialogue.
The Sheriff of Babylon #1 is one of the brightest spots among a host of bright spots in Vertigo’s series rollouts. Regardless of whether King and Gerads’ tale makes you think, creates anger, or leaves you longing, it is sure to stay with you long after you’ve set the book aside.
DC Comics/Vertigo’s The Sheriff of Babylon #1, written by Tom King with Mitch Gerads on art, is in comic shops now.
Batman Vol. 2: I Am Suicide Review
By Eric Joseph 6 months ago
This review is based off a volume that collects Batman #9-15.
Although Tom King’s current run on Batman hasn’t been entirely bulletproof, one reason that it’s probably been scrutinized more than other titles is that he was faced with the unenviable task of following Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo, who delivered what was arguably one of the greatest and most definitive eras to make up the Dark Knight’s 78-year history.
In addition to that, Rebirth has given way to some of the best stories involving the likes of Superman, the Flash and Green Arrow this decade has seen, so a benchmark has been set for DC’s entire publishing line. In other words, despite Batman being one of the most recognizable characters in all of pop culture, his laurels really can’t be rested upon.
With that, I’ll fully admit that I was unsatisfied with King’s opening arc, I am Gotham, but his second effort, I am Suicide, is “getting warmer.” Oh, it’s not perfect by any means, but I feel the author is starting to hit his stride with this character and has proven he can strike gold with what’ll be collected into the next volume, I am Bane, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves.
Switching gears to artwork, it should be noted that David Finch is out for this particular volume and Mikel Janin is in. Although Janin’s style is markedly different from that of his colleague’s, it’s undeniably unique and brings a sense of realism to the material, along with putting on a clinic in dynamic visual storytelling. Mitch Gerads also contributed, but we’ll discuss him further a little later.
Batman Vol. 2: I Am Suicide Gallery
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Basically, the premise of this book is that Batman assembles a Suicide Squad of his own – Catwoman, Bronze Tiger, Ventriloquist, Punch and Jewelee – with the intention of storming Santa Prisca and absconding with Psycho-Pirate, whom the Caped Crusader intends to reverse Gotham Girl’s current condition. Rest assured that each character is selected for a specific purpose because, let’s be honest, you need all the help you can get when trying to take down Bane on his own soil.
As for Bane himself, well, I was very tempted to henceforth refer to him as “Nude Bane” because he doesn’t wear a single article of clothing for the duration of this book. It’s baffling, yes. I’m well aware that it probably gets hot down in Santa Prisca, but, sir, put on at least a pair of shorts when you’re expecting company, okay?
You know, the chapter in which Batman infiltrates the island nation in advance of his troops is actually a fair encapsulation of how this collected edition is a mixed bag. Really, you get to see how “quit” just isn’t in Bruce Wayne’s vocabulary as his superior intellectual and physical resolve are on full display, complemented by some powerful narration courtesy of Catwoman. But, remaining on the subject of vocabulary, the titular hero’s comes off as being extremely limited at times when he repeats the same damn phrases over and over again. I’m not joking, he sounds like a toy that can say a select handful of lines when you press a button on his back.
As the story unfolds, rest assured that there are several twists and turns that’ll keep readers on the edge their seats, in addition to the sensitive subject of suicide being dealt with head on and being intertwined with the enduring mythos. And while some of you out there will likely see the opening salvo in Batman and Bane’s latest war as the main selling point, for me, the Batman-Catwoman dynamic is the heart of the book. Their complicated relationship has gripped me for most of my life, and to see it explored from both perspectives while being seamlessly interwoven into the main narrative made my day.
To my delight, a two-parter, “Rooftops,” concludes this collection and it’s all about those two. Brought to life in highly cinematic fashion by the earlier mentioned Gerads, it follows Bruce and Selina as they punch their way through Gotham’s D-listers before engaging in romantic congress under the night sky. Well, that’s the first half, at least, which is easily the stronger of the two.
It’s the second half, however, that experiences a few hiccups. While it was cool to see Gerads pay homage to Batman and Catwoman’s shared past, and to provide closure pertaining to the latter’s murder charge, it just didn’t stick the landing. I may not have despised it in the way that my esteemed colleague did, but it’s very off-putting to see Batman let his guard down enough to have his throat slit by a teenaged girl. Come on, this is the guy who just took down Bane and dozens of mercenaries, for crying out loud.
So, even if you don’t end up digging Batman Vol. 2: I am Suicide – and I can certainly understand why you may not – I urge you to stick around for the next volume because business really will pick up. Still, the stuff involving Catwoman may be reason enough to give this a try.
Batman Vol. 2: I Am Suicide Review
April 19, 2017 Nico Sprezzatura 0 Comment
Batman Vol. 2: I Am Suicide
Writer: Tom King
Artists: Mikel Janín & Hugo Petreus (“I Am Suicide”), Mitch Gerads (“Rooftops”)
Colorists: June Chung (“I Am Suicide”) & Mitch Gerads (“Rooftops”)
Letterer: Clayton Cowles
Cover: Mikel Janín
Publisher: DC Comics
A review by Nico Sprezzatura.
With a hot property like Batman, you best believe that DC Comics isn’t going to leave their prized cash cow in feeble hands — especially after a blockbuster run by Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo for the New 52.
When Tom King (late of DC’s own Omega Men, as well as Marvel’s critically-acclaimed The Vision) was announced to be taking over the Dark Knight in time for DC’s Rebirth relaunch, a collective sigh of relief seemed to wash over an apprehensive public. King’s first arc on the title, “I Am Gotham”, was sufficiently entertaining, but it definitely gave me the sense that his best was yet to come.
Batman Vol. 2: I Am Suicide, which collects the stories “I Am Suicide” and “Rooftops”, build on King’s first arc while adding some intriguing new wrinkles to the mix. The former sees Batman forming an impromptu Suicide Squad for the sake of taking down Bane, while the latter is a reflection on Bruce’s relationship with Selina Kyle, otherwise known as Catwoman. They’re both very different stories, but display the duality of our hero’s dichotomous lives as both Bruce Wayne and Batman.
Perhaps the biggest story to come out of these span of issues—which you may or may not have expected from its title—was the revelation that Bruce Wayne experienced suicidal thoughts after the death of his parents, partly inspired by King’s own struggles with his mortality as a youth.
It’s not a twist that comes out of nowhere, especially if you’re familiar with the character, but I’m fairly certain this is the first we’ve ever ever heard of it in Bruce’s own words. By contextualizing why Bruce does what he does in way that makes so much sense, it lends a new sense of empathy to the character; he wasn’t merely sad or depressed upon losing his parents, but destroyed. Again, it’s a development we probably already knew to be true in some form or another, but that doesn’t make it any less affecting.
The story itself is good, but it’s absolutely heightened by Mikel Janín’s art. Janín, who previously worked with King on Grayson, delivers reliably fantastic visuals here. “I Am Suicide” marks his official debut on the series proper, following the Batman: Rebirth one-shot he illustrated back in June.
My understanding is that he and David Finch (who provided the art on “I Am Gotham”) are officially co-artists to accommodate Batman’s twice-monthly shipping schedule, but I have to say I prefer Janín’s output —and that’s not entirely because he draws one hell of a sexy Bruce Wayne.
Complemented (and in many cases, enhanced) by colorist June Chung, Janín’s art has an interesting softness to it that you may not expect from DC’s flagship Batman title, while still delivering the edge you’d expect in heavier action scenes. If you were a fan of his work on Grayson (and how could you not be?), then you’re in for a real treat here.
Mitch Gerads (who, again, most recently worked with King on their creator-owned Vertigo series The Sheriff of Babylon) illustrates “Rooftops,” a two-part coda to “I Am Suicide” focusing on Bruce’s relationship with Selina. I like “I Am Suicide”, but I love “Rooftops.”
Yeah, there’s punching and superhero shenanigans within, but they’re not the draw. Rather, it’s the shared intimacy and history between Bruce and Selina, which hasn’t gotten much focus in recent years. Batman and Catwoman easily have one of the most iconic romances in all of popular culture, and with “Rooftops”, an interesting quirk of King’s writing proves to be true: he’s at his best when delivering character-based stories.
It was true of his work on Omega Men and The Vision, and it’s especially true of his Batman run thus far. All things considered, King is an odd pick for such a reliable meat-and-potatoes seller like Batman, and that might be the key to its appeal right now. The weirder Batman gets as it moves along, the better.
(And I’d be remiss to not mention letterer Clayton Cowles, whose work is very good here. The bits of narration that are told through letters between Bruce and Selina are rendered in pieces of paper, which is an especially nice touch.)
The Verdict
With “I Am Suicide,” Tom King recontextualizes Batman as a strong —yet exceedingly vulnerable— crimefighter who proves that even the baddest superheroes aren’t bulletproof. If you haven’t been keeping up with King’s Batman up to this point but looking to jump aboard, I’d even recommend starting here.
Posted on 04/10/2017
TITLE: Batman, Vol. 2: I Am Suicide
AUTHOR: Tom King
PENCILLERS: Mikel Janin, Mitch Gerads
COLLECTS: Batman #9–15
FORMAT: Softcover
PUBLISHER: DC Comics
PRICE: $16.99
RELEASED: April 12, 2017
***WARNING: Spoilers lay ahead!***
By Rob Siebert
Editor, Fanboy Wonder
Tom King is a great writer. Read his work on The Vision and tell me different. I dare you. But is he a great Batman writer? That’s not an easy question. I Am Gotham was a mixed bag, as is a large portion of I Am Suicide.
Then we get to issues #14 and #15, and King delivers one of the best Batman/Catwoman stories I’ve ever read. But was that a simple flash in the pan? The culmination of a well-crafted story? Something in between?
Claire Clover, a.k.a. Gotham Girl, remains perpetually terrified thanks to the Psycho-Pirate’s ability to control his victims’ emotions. But he’s been taken to the island of Santa Prisca, inside one of the most savage and inescapable prisons on the planet. To infiltrate its walls, Batman and Amanda Waller assemble a makeshift Suicide Squad. Among its members is Catwoman, who stands accused of murdering 237 people. But murder may become a common theme here, as the Psycho-Pirate is under the protection of a man who spent his unthinkable childhood years in that prison, Bane.
At it’s core, this book is about Batman and Catwoman. Bruce and Selina. One of the most intriguing romances in all of popular culture. A fairy tale romance in many ways. But King puts his own spin on it, and looks at it in a way that’s almost psychoanalytic. Letters the two have sent each other serve as the narrative backdrop for issues #10 and #12. We learn that their relationship is largely about the pain they both feel, how it brings them together, and how when they kiss it briefly goes away. I like that. It’s as if it’s an unspoken truth that’s been there the whole time, and we’re just now seeing it. That’s what so many great writers do with these characters.
I’m less a fan of what King does with Bruce’s famous childhood vow to wage war on crime. In issue #12, Bruce reveals that he almost slit his wrists at age 10, before a moment of clarity showed him his true purpose. He then makes the solemn promise that would take him down the road to becoming Batman. Bruce calls his crusade “the choice of a boy. The choice to die. I am Batman. I am suicide.” We read those words as Batman literally fights off an army of gun-wielding prison guards.
I get what King is going for. I understand the unbearable pain of loss leading to a hero’s self-sacrifice. What I’m less enthralled with is the on-the-nose nature of the wrist cutting. The scene doesn’t need that.
Bruce starts that letter talking about the inherent humor in a grown man dressing up like a bat to “punch crime in the face.” It’s very Joker-ish. We even get what may be a vague reference to Mr. J. with the line: “All of them can laugh. Mother. Father. Him. The whole world.” He brings it around to something more serious, of course. But this dialogue speaks nicely to the yin-yang dynamic between Batman and the Joker, whether King mean it that way or not.
King caps the Batman/Catwoman stuff of in an amazing fashion with the “Rooftops” story in issues #14 and #15. I’ve covered those issues in-depth, but it’s worth repeating: “Rooftops” belongs among the greatest Catwoman stories ever told. Mitch Gerads handles the pencils, inks, and colors, bathing the characters in a gorgeous moonlight. What’s more, some of the expressions he gives Selina are just perfect. Throughout the book, King also has the characters call each other “Bat” and “Cat.” That’s a great little touch.
I credit Scott Snyder with doing a lot of justice to the Riddler during his Batman run. He gave the character his balls back. King begins that same process with Bane here, casting him as something of a mad and savage king. A king who, for some odd reason, has to be naked at all times. While things don’t really pick up in this respect until we get to subsequent issues, but this is where we see flashes of early ’90s Knightfall Bane. He’s not just a monster. He’s feared. He’s respected. He’s merciless. He even breaks Batman’s back again and leaves him to drown…
That last one might have been a little more effective if our hero hadn’t simply given himself an extreme chiropractic adjustment and fixed everything. I’ve heard of comic book science, but that right there is comic book medical science. Now if only he’d known that trick in the ’90s.
Also on Batman’s team is Arnold Wesker, a.k.a. the Ventriloquist. They build up his role significantly, and the payoff involves the character being able to subvert the Psycho-Pirate’s powers by virtue of his multiple personality syndrome. Again, comic book medical science. Though I had less issues with that than seeing Wesker make his bare hand talk as if there were an invisible puppet on it (shown below). Comics are so weird.
The majority of the book is drawn and inked by Mikel Janin, and colored by June Chung. I’ve had issues in the past with Janin’s figures looking too static, but we don’t see much of that here. Static or not, Janin’s work is always interesting. His characters look and feel very real, but they have that little touch of superhero dynamism. Case in point, his Batman looks relatively natural and real. But he also gives him a distinct scowl that really walks that line of exaggeration.
Janin and Chung also create a tremendous mood for the prison. It’s suitably dark and dank. You can almost feel that cold, damp air on your skin. Less subtle is the throne of skulls that we see Bane sitting on. We’ve seen this prison before. But it’s never been quite as haunting as it is here.
Despite the greatness of “Rooftops,” I’m not quite ready to call Tom King a great Batman writer just yet. Some of his choices plucked me right out of the story. But he’s becoming a good Batman writer, and that’s better than a lot of people ever get. Perhaps he just needed some time to get comfortable in Gotham City. Either way, this is an improvement. I’ve been excited to pick Batman up again.
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‘Batman Vol. 3: I Am Bane’ review: A terrific climax for the first year of Tom King’s Batman run
Rory WildingAugust 30, 2017Comic BooksReviews
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Batman Vol. 3: I Am Bane (Rebirth)
Tom King
Price: $11.55 Was: $16.99
It’s been over a year since DC relaunched all of their titles with Rebirth and much like The New 52 from a few years ago, it is a mixed bag. Both its strength and weakness are that the books are evoking the publisher’s glorious past, but feel unable to craft new stories. However, when it comes to a certain Dark Knight Detective, he remains unbreakable, even though his back was indeed broken and speaking of which, this third volume presents a literally smashing climax for the first year of Tom King’s Batman.
After retrieving the Psycho-Pirate from the clutches of Bane at Santa Prisca, Batman is determined to save the emotionally-collapsed Gotham Girl, whilst preparing for the return of his venom-injected nemesis who is not only trying to reclaim the Pirate, but will break the Bat and his family once and for all.
From its initial issues that introduced the super-powered Gotham and Gotham Girl, King’s run was setting up a long arc, which this volume pays off, culminating in a fistfight between Batman and Bane. Bane seems to have become Batman’s arch-nemesis, given the absence of the Joker. Carrying off a key theme from the previous volume, King depicts the hero and the villain as being two sides of the same coin, as both characters at an early age witness a family tragedy and are then consumed by a darkness. The difference is, of course, that Bane lets it control himself, turning him into the villain we all know, while Batman fights through the darkness so that he can see the light.
Throughout the course of five issues, "I Am Bane" builds to the big fight (like the climax of a Rocky movie) as Batman is determined to finish this battle all by himself without the assistance of his Robins or his fellow Justice Leaguers. Much like what Scott Snyder did during his legendary run, King is all about humanizing Batman, even when he does something as extravagant as preventing a crashing jetliner from destroying Gotham.
From the very first issue, Batman has a death wish. It’s a recurring theme throughout the series, from a young Bruce Wayne wanting to commit suicide to put away the emotional scars from the death of his parents, to his final brawl with Bane. Batman goes through enormous physical pain to not save the city, but to save one single life and if this is to result his death, he will find some form of peace.
Given that Batman is a character that has been placed in many stories of thematic darkness, there is always room for humor, as we have learned from the numerous animated Batman movies this year. King embraces this aspect and in perhaps the funniest sequence, Bruce and his various Robins discuss the upcoming terror in a Batman-themed fast food restaurant where you can "Joker-ize" your fries, much to the displeasure of Bruce, who even eats his fast food meal with a knife and fork.
It’s to King’s credit that he wants to provide both levity and weirdness to his stories and although some of his ideas don’t quite land, such as a whole issue devoted to Bane fighting his way from the Arkham inmates for the sake of filler, stories such as the origin of Ace the Bat-Hound adds warmth. The Mitch Gerads-drawn issue showcasing the Dark Knight’s brief partnership with Swamp Thing adds a flourish of strangeness in the Bat-world.
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Batman Vol. 3: I Am Bane (Rebirth)
Price: $11.55 Was: $16.99
Following the fresh visuals of Mikel Janin, the return of David Finch (who is no stranger to Batman comics) adds a more conventional visual approach, which is by no means a criticism — Finch presents his best work to date here. Once again collaborating with colorist Jordie Bellaire, the way Finch illustrates the action sequences makes for a visceral read, as you can feel every punch, especially the final fight between the Bat and his luchador mask-wearing nemesis, neither or which have ever been so bloodied up and battered before.
The Verdict
Ending up an enormous cliffhanger that might alter the status quo of the titular hero, "I Am Bane" is a terrific climax for the first year of Tom King’s Batman run, whilst teasing what is to come in the near future, such as "The War of Jokes and Riddles".
By Jesse Schedeen Batman #20 is a comic that probably shouldn't work as well as it does. On some level, it's basically a flashback issue that races Batman's journey over the course of the series, interspersed with images of Batman and Bane beating the snot out of one another. And in the hands of a less talented creative team, maybe that's all this issue would amount to. But what Tom King, David Finch and Jordie Bellaire deliver is a worthy finale to the "I Am Bane" story arc and a proper end-cap to King's work so far.
King's goal in revisiting recent events clearly isn't just to fill space or offer readers a refresher course, but to solidify the themes of his run. This issue builds directly on the notion of Batman's mortality and the fact that he knows his days are numbered. This entire conflict came about because the Dark Knight saw in Gotham and Gotham Girl a way to keep his city safe after his own life is extinguished. Now, with Bane having overcome every obstacle and the final battle well underway, Batman's death seems closer than ever.
King paints an eloquent portrait of a hero both resigned to his fate and defiant until the very end. Bane really is the perfect villain for this conflict. He's the only one to ever defeat Batman. But as King reminds us in this issue, Batman can't be defeated. He's too stubborn to do anything but rise up and return stronger than ever. One thing that King, Scott Snyder and Grant Morrison's Batman runs all have in common is their emphasis on Batman as a powerful symbol of hope and continuity. And for all this issue's focus on the psychology of the Dark Knight and Bruce Wayne's death wish, the conclusion is appropriately straightforward and to the point. King recognizes that not everything about Batman needs to be dissected or over-analyzed.
Finch and Bellaire have been on fire throughout this arc, and they go out with what might just be their strongest effort on the series to date. The focus on two musclebound combatants really allows Finch to showcase his talent for rendering detailed, powerful figures and brutal violence. It's also fun seeing Finch reinterpret certain events from "I Am Suicide" through his own lens. Bellaire's colors become more crucial than ever, emphasizing the desperation of Batman's losing battle and drawing stark contrast between the present and the flashback sequences. Her colors are especially pitch-perfect on the final page, allowing this arc to end on a terrifically emotional note.
The Verdict
"I Am Bane" has been a worthy addition to Tom King's Batman saga, and it wraps up in strong form in Batman #20. It delivers a visually spectacular finish, one that thrives as much on Jordie Bellaire's mood-enhancing colors as David Finch's ultra-detailed pencils. It also reinforces the central themes of King's work, reminding readers once again that the Dark Knight might be mortal, but he can never be conquered.
Amazing
Batman #20 serves as a gorgeous, thematically resonant conclusion to the "I Am Bane" story arc.
5 Apr 2017
9.0
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