It's Okay for Characters to Be Flawed

 

I've been around fandom spaces and internet discourse for a long time, since I first hit my teenage years at the turn of the millennium. Most talk of anything is, well, frankly rather embarrassing. People making absolute asses out of themselves over shipping preferences, opinions on what games are the best in a series, film franchises, comics, you name it. People will absolutely gaslight themselves as to the meaning of something or other to fit the view they want to ascribe to the subject. Incredibly strange to watch in action. Few are stranger than one particular behavior I've observed over many years.

Some people absolutely refuse to let go of first impressions they'll have about a given character, good or ill. This can tie into the last thing I mentioned in the previous paragraph, where someone wants to brute force a certain take on a given narrative and will mischaracterize things to fit that. But others, I wonder if it's a case of people just not wanting to engage in a narrative or think about it too deeply beyond a surface level, causing them to miss what a work is saying.

This isn't really anything new. We do it in society and language as well. Calling someone a "Scrooge" has been a pejorative for as long as I've been alive, for example, because for whatever reason people latched on to how Scrooge started in A Christmas Carol as opposed to where he ended. In a way, it's a bit of a misnomer. The entire story of Scrooge is one of reckoning, of coming face to face with and accepting where the characters actions would lead him in the future and changing for the better. But pop cultures image of him remains the miserly, penny pincher he starts as. A Christmas Carol is a story of redemption, though many of us refuse to let go of who he was.

Sadly true of reality as well. It's easy to be skeptical of someone who presents as attempting to atone for their actions. Most refuse to buy it out of principle, some of them in turn incorrectly asserting that they do believe in redemption in other conversations. I've done it at times too. After all, there are plenty for whom it is incredibly obvious they're acting repentant simply to weasel out of whatever trouble they've landed in. You see it a lot with online content creators who get caught doing a slur or plagiarizing (the shit with James Somerton and his reaction to the subsequent fall from grace is ongoing as of the time of writing this). Some people really do want to pretend they understand they did wrong to dodge consequences.

Obviously, I get that, that's somewhat understandable. We can't read another persons thoughts or intentions. But in fiction, we have the answers spelled right out on the page or screen. Often, in prose especially, we're privy to their inner thoughts and private actions you would never see in real life unless you shadowed someone all day. Yet, strangely, we seem to ignore development or actions even in stories we make up.

I'm sure you noticed that I've used an image of Johnny Silverhand, rockerboy and terrorist of Cyberpunk 2077 and its tabletop predecessors. It's because he's genuinely a good example of the phenomenon. This all comes with a caveat that Cyberpunk 2077 launched in an absolutely abysmal state that caused more than a few to give up on it at launch, so the first impression never advanced. It's gotten better since the game got fixed and had a superb expansion that brought a ton of people back to the game. But some people still don't allow that early taste to wash out of their mouth.

When you meet Johnny for the first time, it's at the player characters low point. You just got shot in the head, found out you're getting erased from your own body in favor of Silverhands personality construct and you're being framed for the death of the most important figure in the entire Cyberpunk lore. Johnny comes on strong, to put it mildly. Really, he's an outright prick, freaking out himself over the fact that he's suddenly "alive" and in someones head after getting fried by Soulkiller. He attempts to force you to kill yourself. These are usually the moments I notice people can't get past.

I suspect people ran out into the open world immediately and stuck with that impression until they gave up on the games horrifically buggy and broken launch state. I suspect that because the scene in question is discussed and moved beyond pretty quickly. In the very next main story mission in fact. He was, and is, an abrasive asshole, but he's had time to calm down and assess things. Came to the conclusion he and the player character, V, needed each other. He's got unfinished business dating back fifty years and you need to figure out how to stop your brain rot. The relationship resets a bit and moves on from there. None of this is to say that Johnny isn't an asshole. He absolutely is. But the more you play and the more you try to understand him in your dialogue choices, the more you realize that more than any other character, Johnny's the heart and soul of the game. 

There are plenty of standouts in the cast, but Johnny is in the role of a co-protagonist for a reason. V is a small time merc who dreamed of becoming a legend, now faced with their own mortality and forced to take stock of what they've done with their life and if any of it matters. Johnny's been there, nuked Arasaka and already died once because of it. He's a legend, memorialized by his own drink at the Afterlife. Now some semblance of him is back, fifty years later, and stuck in a body he can't control, forced to look upon what's happened to the world he left behind. When all the bluster and snide comments fall away, subtext becomes text.

Early on, there's a sidequest where you end up meeting a superfan of Samurai, Johnny's old band back in the day. Johnny is at times dismissive and mocking of someone holding onto a band that died fifty years ago, but eventually it becomes clear that at least some small part of that is self loathing. In an early moment of honesty, he lets slip that the thing that bothers him most is that after all this time, not a damn thing he ever did made a single difference. For all the defiance, for all he nuked Arasaka Tower, Arasaka just picked itself back up in his wake, corporations solidified their hold even further than they had in 2023 and both Johnny and Samurai became something of an underground legend of resistance, but ultimately a relic. Something peddled in a shitty street stall in the midst of a local market.

Whatever his various reasons, some more important to the why of his actions than just his ideals, in the end he gave his life fighting a malignant power and is forced to come back, long after it's over, and look at the aftermath. He doesn't like what he sees and as flippant as he tries to be, it's clear it bothers him.

He's forced to confront other things, too, like the broken relationships he'd left behind, broken by his own ego and narcissism. An ex lover who'd become colder in the time away. A fellow bandmate that still, fifty years later, hasn't squared away the sudden loss of Johnny or sorted out for himself what Johnny meant to him. You'll learn about his time in corporate military and the reasons he went AWOL, events that explain a fair bit of who he became. In a small patch of debris in an oil field out north, they search for where Johnny's body may have been dumped and find nothing. For everything he did, good or bad, there's nothing to mark his passing, not even a bit of graffiti. He's just gone, his worst nightmare come to life; his life and soul stolen by the corporation he hated more than anything and trapped in a prison of someone elses mind. An ironic fate given how irritable the flashbacks made him seem about the idea of a corporation coming for your very soul.

From there on, depending on your own choices, he decides to make a change. He'd already dedicated himself to helping save your life, so he knows that this is his last ride. If he and V have a good rapport, they try to make amends, to give a more positive goodbye, to the few people Johnny ever called friend. Johnny Silverhand is a bastard, but in life after death he somehow found some measure of peace and closure he never could find alive.

It's gripping and brings to life one of the most complex characters I've seen in a lot of video games. It's incredibly easy to sand off rough edges out of fear of alienating people from a character too much, but Johnnys attitude and flaws are a large part of what makes the game and the events therin work. How can you have a personal reckoning without a lot of personal failures to reckon with? Johnny is deeply off-putting at the start and the journey forward is long and hard. A lesser actor than Keanu Reeves might not have been able to pull off that mix of charismatic bastard that draws people to him despite all of his rotten actions. The journey to being a better person is improved by the fact that he's such a fucked up person. Maybe even the most self centered person can find some small measure of personal peace and improvement, if only at the end. Maybe it's not too late.

Would any of that growth have hit without the contrast of who he is where you start?

I'll tell you one thing that wouldn't have hit, and that's the Temperance ending. Most people prefer The Star, it being the most bittersweet ending for V themself, where they find freedom and maybe love to hold onto in the six months of life they have left, which they'll spend with the nomads outside Night City. It's my second favorite ending. I guess I'm just destined to gravitate to different things than others do, because Temperance is my favorite.

Temperance is the ending where, while stuck in Mikoshi, V discovers that no matter what they do, they'll only get six more months of life if they go back to their body. Only Johnny could stay in it and live a life of any normal length. The neurons are just too damaged, too warped in favor of Johnny. Rocked with grief, V makes peace with the coming end, which in itself is a bitter but fitting end for the character after wrestling with that end all game. Johnny, however, does not want to accept it and in a rare moment of honesty, even says outright that he's scared for V. If you press on, V goes with Alt into the net, itself a metaphorical afterlife in this game, and Johnny is left alone in V's body.

What follows is an epilogue where you realize pretty quickly that Johnny wasn't blowing smoke about wanting to change. Over the course of twenty minutes, it becomes clear that he understands the weight of the second chance he's been given. Sometimes talks to himself as if V were still with him. He's mellowed out, given up vices and distanced himself from the crusades he'd spent his first life on. He spends a little time with a young man for whom he acts as something of a mentor, buys a guitar and visits V's grave. In the end, he leaves the guitar with the young boy, boards a bus and leaves Night City behind. 

A constant metaphor in the game is that Night City drains you until there's nothing left. It's consistent across a good chunk of the games sidequests and side gigs, where you meet or deal with people who the city has sucked dry. That's why the only endings that are even remotely positive are the endings in which you leave it behind. It's the same for Johnny. Night City took everything from his first life. For his second, he's leaving on a bus to the unknown.

It's a cap to everything that happened with Johnny Silverhand, whether you believe the construct really is his soul or just data, and in many ways is something of the happiest ending if you believe at all in redemption. Even the nastiest rocker in the world found the will to become something different. Bittersweet, of course, with V still dead, but honestly V's a walking corpse no matter what ending you pick. Even The Star, with a small ray of hope, is at best a stay of execution. Temperence gives us a Johnny that has another shot at life, to do something. So he leaves. Much like The Star, the where and the what don't matter as much, it's all possibility beyond the city limits.

The further Johnny starts from where he ends, the more the transformation means. We're with him the entire game. For all his faults, by the end he's V's ride or die. The rough edges were needed.

At the time of this writing, there have been some other controversies over similar topics. Netflix just dropped a live action adaptation of Avatar: The Last Airbender. As tends to happen with Netflix adaptations, the story got cut to the bone to fit into the eye rolling streaming standard of eight episode seasons. One thing that got changed caused a bit of an uproar, and it was the sexism Sokka had ingrained in him from the Water Tribes culture. In the original show, he's forced to grapple with this when a group of warrior women hand his ass to him, training and learning alongside them and casting aside hid old prejudices. It's a character flaw, one the show makes a point to show him grow from as a part of his journey. The live action changes it entirely, removing the sexism, sanding the rough edges away. That trait that Sokka has to grow from? Gone. He's shallower because of it.

Another character I'd get no end of shit about is Tifa Lockheart of Final Fantasy VII, appropriate because the second game in the remake/sequel trilogy, Rebirth, just came out. At times I feel like I've watched through actual decades as fandom seemed to almost warp her character, to not understand it. Or maybe it's more accurate to say that they seem almost unwilling to engage with her flaws or even be honest about them. 

There's a tweet I saw the other day where a games journalist mused on Tifa being emotionally intelligent, among other platitudes. When I saw that, I thought about the scene from Remake where, next to a man who had just lost his friends and was actively grieving after the drop of the Sector 7 plate, she remarks that maybe they deserved this. In the most recent game, she repeats some of the actions she'd done from the original, keeping secrets and generally keeping distance from truths she doesn't want to deal with. Emotionally intelligent is not the phrase I'd use. Seriously, I've felt like I've been gaslit by other people for twenty seven years in regards to this character. I don't see the path where the Tifa presented in any of the games reaches the Tifa that exists in peoples heads.

This is somehow a controversial take, but Tifa is a deeply flawed person. She's got an absolute inability to confront things she's uncomfortable with to the point of avoidance, prone to keeping secrets no one asked her to and honestly rather selfish. That last one usually raises an eyebrow or two, but I genuinely wonder if anyone confused by that take paid attention to the lifestream event near the end of the original game at all. It's entirely about her confronting her actions up to that point, outright admitting that she kept from addressing that Clouds memories were not lining up with reality. She doesn't even address it when a friend dies. She only admits to it when Sephiroth forced her to while Cloud was in the midst of a mental breakdown. The reason? She was afraid the truth would take Cloud away from her

It also forces her to come to terms with the lies she's been telling herself the whole game, specifically about how close she and Cloud were as kids. When you actually look at it, Tifa is a deconstruction of the childhood friend trope so popular in Japan. It was lost on a lot of us back in the day, given Final Fantasy VII came out around when anime was really just taking root here in America. We hadn't been exposed enough to be overly familiar with Japanese tropes. But these days it feels almost painfully obvious. 

They lived in the same town, sure, and a teenage Cloud had a crush on her, but that was as deep as it went. Cloud was ostracized in their hometown in large part because the townspeople blamed him for Tifa getting herself hurt by her own grief fueled actions. The water tower, the basis for Tifas fantasies of the two being childhood friends, is the first time they had any real connection at all and that scene itself has both of them on different wavelengths. He's trying to impress her by leaving to become a SOLDIER, while in response she wishes him to become a hero who could rescue her, an image he twists in knots to try to live up to even when teenage infatuation fades.

In the lifestream, Tifa comes to terms with different parts of herself and wants to be better, but if you go by the way fandom talks about it and numerous other scenes you sure as shit wouldn't know it. I'm not fond of Tifa. She has elements of characters I love, one of which is the fact that she's a strong punch lady representing the usual monk class of the series job system. Obviously she's hot. But that I don't like her personality doesn't necessarily mean I think she's a terrible character. Most of her actual depth comes from those numerous flaws. It's quite literally her entire character arc in the original game. If you take all that away she's just kind of there, pining over Cloud despite not really understanding him and eventually slap fighting Scarlett on top of the Junon canon.

By the way, I know this is a digression just for me to bitch, but can I take a minute to talk about that? About how Tifa, a martial artist, gets into a slap fight with an executive on top of a canon above a large ass drop to oblivion? Said executive having no real reason to go out there or think she'd win in a hand to hand fight with a punch chick? She'd more likely take pot shots with a gun for safety. Why would Tifa get into a slap fight? One right hook to the head and Scarlett's plummeting to her death without much fuss. Was someone on the dev team horny when they came up with that catfight and no one said no? Always been the stupidest moment of the original game and one I sincerely hope does not make it into whatever is done with the third of the new trilogy. It never made either of them look good.

Sorry, I know, this is overlong as it is, that whole scene always annoyed me. Even as a teenager going through puberty I wondered why the hell Tifa didn't roundhouse Scarlett into the abyss. If she'd done that I'd probably be one of her millions of stans.

Anyway, yeah, fanfiction is where I saw a lot of the off interpretations take hold back when I read a ton of FFVII fanfic back in the aughts. Hell, that's it's own conversation. The way that a lot of fanfiction writers will often absorb ideas from other fanfiction which eventually evolves into a kind of shared headcanon. Sometimes if you read enough you can forget what was actually in the source material and what was fanon. I saw this happen a fair bit with Dragonball Z and Teen Titans fanfiction in the aughts. It's an interesting phenomenon to think about, but I've digressed too much already.

So yeah, over the years I've seen a lot of people in fandom circles say all the time that they want more complex characters, for negative traits to grow from. But it always feels like the second you give them, people start trying to find ways around them. Why? It's harder to love a character, I guess, if they think or do gross shit, even if they grow out of it. Easier to explain it away or just not deal with it. It's strange behavior, really. When you think about it, overcoming those flaws is a part of what made them into the characters people love in the first place.

People really need to get it in their head that no character is, or should be, perfect. I see a lot of nonsense opinions about Superman all the time, he's too perfect, you can't relate to him. Never mind that Superman has flaws as well and I'd argue a vast majority of stories with him, especially the best ones, test his morals and ideals, not his powers. Even Superman has flaws.

Maybe everyone just wants some trash main characters who are never wrong about something. You see it a lot in a bunch of semi-popular manga. I kind of get it. I enjoy trash sometimes. Sometimes you're just in the mood for trash, shit that you know isn't good but dammit, it hits some kind of sweet spot. Om nom, delicious trash.

But for fucks sake, I wish people would stop trying to make every character that, whether it be through gaslighting in discussions, arguments or through fanfiction. Conflict and the growth that comes from it is what makes most stories interesting. I need a lot of the good shit in addition to the trash, I need a well balanced quality diet, stop trying to make everything trash!

Does The Rock Still Remember How To Act Human?

So we're a couple months out from WrestleMania and The Rock is somehow in the mix of it all. That's been quite the surprise, largely because Dwayne Johnson's never had much time for wrestling or its fans these last twenty years. After his last brief full time stint back in 2003, he popped up for one match at WrestleMania the next year and then spent the next seven years distancing himself from the industry as he threw himself full time into Hollywood. He came back in 2011, basically walking in and taking some main event spots, which should sound familiar if you're paying attention to current angles, then after a total of five matches and maybe a dozen TV appearances fucked back off, going years at a time between appearances.

At the time of writing we're about a week removed from his insertion into the road to WrestleMania. Last Friday, he'd seemed to just walk in and take a main event spot from a regular worker, which CM Punk was sure to note looked a lot like what happened a decade ago. Last night saw a swerve, with Cody demanding his rightful title match as the winner of the Royal Rumble, while Rock seemed to lean heel for the first time in twenty years, since as far back as the Hollywood Rock character that closed his full time association with the ring.

Some friends in a wrestling discord I'm in disagreed with me, but overall I wasn't impressed. I'm not all that sure Rock still knows how to be the kind of heel he used to be. As I said to others, okay just doesn't cut it when you're discussing someone frequently described as one of the best talkers the business has ever seen.

Maybe I'm poisoned. The nostalgia for the Rock had worn off me a while ago and I finally got sick of him last Friday. But while the nostalgia doesn't have the hold it did on me anymore, I remember how he used to be. It's not a flattering comparison.

Rock was an important part of my formative years as a wrestling fan, debuting the very same year I first got into the hobby as a nine year old. To tell the truth, by the year 2000 he'd even eclipsed Stone Cold Steve Austin as my favorite wrestler. Back then, he was cool personified. Unflappable, endlessly confident and with perhaps the quickest wit in the game, he'd give promos so engaging and filled with energy it was worth it to tune in just for the talking. Expensive shirts, sunglasses and boundless drive. He could, and did, cut momentum out from under more than one superstar with a single promo.

Then he left and at some point seemed to forget what wit looked like.

We can go on all day about Rocks time in Hollywood and it would not be a conversation that was overly kind to him. Bluntly stated, his filmography is a dogs ass, the few worthwhile portions being as part of a franchise he isn't the star of and ten minutes at the start of a Will Ferrel movie satirizing the only sort of character he plays these days, the cool tough guy. Somehow John Cena, The Enemy of smart wrestling fans a decade ago, and Dave Batista racked up better filmographies than Dwayne ever had in a fraction of the time. No amount of box office receipts can change that. But worse still, looking at those films, you realize something that carries over to any return he's made to wrestling.

He's over-relied on his natural charisma and connection to fans. In some ways, abused it even.

When Rock first came back in 2011, it seemed fresh and exciting. He'd been away a long time and his first promo back had seemed electric. The prodigal son coming home. But much like a bad sequel can sometimes color the prior films, everything that came after wasn't kind to that promo. If you were paying attention, it was like Rock was reading from a template, a script. Fitting, I guess. It started with Kung Pao Bitch and sort of became a trend with him, every promo needed some kind of new catchphrase, usually one or two adjectives or noun followed by the word bitch. Some dumb new call and response with the crowd. Pointing at his arm to show goosebumps, which he did so often it feels like his version of John Cena talking to the cameraman on his way to the ring.

Then it became obvious when the dueling promos happened. Something was wrong. In the old days, The Rock never lost on the mic. But boy oh boy, was it clear it wasn't the old days anymore and his new schtick wasn't cutting it. The man was getting smoked out there. Miz got more than a few good digs in, which Rock made easy for him by phoning in half his "appearances" by satellite. Then the feud with Cena started in earnest.

One night, face to face on the road to WrestleMania, they had a war of words. The Rock lost, pretty badly. Near the end of the faceoff, John pointed out that Rock had written notes on his forearm for his promo. He might as well have won the feud right there. Rock never used to use promo notes like that, relying on his quick wit and ad libbing. Now he needed the equivalent of a teleprompter. Who's the last guy reading off a teleprompter you thought was cool? It shot some of the credibility he held as a talker and you could see the result right in front of you. Rock was shook. Scripted? Ad libbed? No one can say for sure, but the man looked genuinely annoyed, rattled, and his subsequent lost rhythm suggests it wasn't entirely planned. He stuttered briefly on the mic, trying to get some momentum back, and hit his "if you smell what the Rock is cooking" to try and bring it home. 

I hadn't seen it happen before or since. I've seen a ton of Rocks movies. He's not that great an actor. The Rock has been leaking cool ever since that night.

Then he stuck around a little longer and had a feud with CM Punk on the way to a rematch with Cena. If the stuff with Cena was bad, the Punk promo battles didn't go much better. Rock couldn't hang with Philly Phil at all really. It was kind of sad to watch. One night, Punk hit Rock with "your arms are just too short to box with god". Rocks response? Some witty riposte? Observation? Turning the line back on him? Nah. "Let me tell you something, you're not god."

Thanks for coming, Dwayne, good talk. The man we once thought was the coolest guy in the world, ladies and gentlemen.

I'm not sure when it happened, but Dwayne Johnson got complacent with regards to his skill at talking and never really tried again. It was a lot of the same sort of trite pablum whether on screen or on his instagram or wherever else he could drop a video. And he was always shilling something. If it wasn't a movie it's some new venture of his, like his latest, a line of whiskey. Thanks Dwayne, you want to sell me gold, next? Jeff Jarrett's already tried that one but maybe you'll have better luck. If he wasn't shilling, he was pandering.

Even last night, I didn't feel any of the old magic despite Rock leaning heel for the first time in twenty years. His big catchphrase or insult of the night was "Cody Crybabies" for the fans who were incredibly upset he'd walked in and seemingly took another mans main event spot. I guess the Rock is five now. Or maybe he always was. He hit the "it doesn't matter if you like it or not". Pretty rote stuff.

The big moment where he finally leaned into it a bit came much later. Cody came out and asserted his right to the title match. Rocks cousin, Roman Reigns, brought up Cody's father Dusty Rhodes, because it seems like everyone's got Dustys name in their mouth, and Cody fired back with a comment about their family. So Dwayne puffed up and did some "you don't talk about my family" shit, then slapped Cody. It was the most intimidating he'd looked in a long time.

It was also just him playing Luke Hobbs again, a character that's the most Rock that ever Rocked. The facial expression, the quiet glower and puff up. I recognized it immediately. All that he missed was to flex out of a cast. He just slipped into tough guy mode, because that's the only place he can go now. It used to be he would have just ethered the other guy with words, but that Rock was eroded over twenty years and this is just what we're left with. A big, sweaty wall of meat surrounding a Terminator endoskeleton, programmed to pander and shill and sometimes puff up and act like a big tough strong man. The sort you see blabber on in the UFC. You know, utterly unimaginative, lame individuals who can't dream up a semi-intelligent way to insult someone. If Rock started calling people betas he'd complete the transformation.

I won't get into his ego plays or any of the other stuff that soured me on him. I don't think it matters. But maybe it's time for us all to admit the Rock isn't cool anymore. He hasn't been in twenty years. After last night, I'm not sure there's much of the old Rock left in him. There's something sad about that, about him becoming a Machine Organism Designed Only for Shilling.

But maybe that makes for a good chance to be done with Dwayne Johnson, as a wrestler or otherwise. What's even left to hold on to? It's not like we'll miss out on any great films, that's for damn sure.

 

Batman - One Bad Day: Riddler (Review)

 

Writer: Tom King

Artist: Mitch Gerards

Original Graphic Novel

To my surprise, this is the first time I've reviewed a comic or graphic novel written by Tom King. A strange omission, really, given I've read several of his comics. So I might as well get this out of the way first.

I've liked some of Tom Kings work but whenever the man is on something related to Batman he just absolutely loses me.

I didn't review it, partly because it slipped my mind during the years long span I'd been away from this blog, but I had read roughly half of his time on the mainline Batman book during the Rebirth relaunch/rebrand. First arc was shaky but not bad, but he lost me with the second, I Am Suicide. His thesis statement for Batman, at least that early in the run, seemed to be that the very identity of Batman was meant as a form of slow burn suicide in the wake of his parents death. 

I'm not going to go into all the problems I have with that because this review is not about that run, but at least a part of my problem with it lies in what an utterly dour, cynical, selfish slant this places on the entire being of Bruce Wayne and Batman. It removes anything heroic about the crusade and, in some ways, makes him a monster. It colors everything differently. Robin and the Bat family suddenly become less about found family and trauma bonding, instead becoming about a psychotic broken manchild dragging a bunch of kids into something that he intends to kill him someday. It's less about justice and more like a slow form of slitting his wrists.

Suffice to say, I didn't finish the run. I made it farther than you might think, all the way to the wedding-that-wasn't, before I called it. It was around when Catwoman decided Batman couldn't be effective if he was happy. Maybe that was editorial, who knows, but it fit too well with what King was doing even if he didn't originally intend it. I was looking for some kind of refutation of this thesis, but somewhere around fifty issues in it didn't seem to be coming and it was, frankly, a little too late even if that actually was the endgame. The run kind of ruined Batman and Catwoman together for me, to the point I don't really want to read it anymore, and when I saw the next arc was going to be super dark Batdickery like we were still in the 90's, I dipped. Out of like fifty issues I enjoyed the double date two parter and that was pretty much it. Kite-Mans reinvention was great, but it happened amidst an overlong and weirdly bad take on a war between two rogues.

This graphic novel has the benefit of being out of continuity, I assume, and boy is that ever a good thing.

Most of this overlong preamble has been spent complaining about Kings take on Batman, so this is a good enough spot to break that a bit and talk about what works. Tom King is a talented writer. That's obvious even in the things I don't like. He has a nice rhythm and storytelling sensibility that combines to feel very him, if that makes any sense at all. I can dislike a story he writes, but it's less an issue with the mechanics or flow than it is with what the story is about, themes and the like. The mechanics are the aspects of the bookending sequences that I like, even as I don't much care for the ending itself. We'll point of view through a bystander as they set off home from work, texting his wife, then bam, cut to black. We get several black panels for the rest of the page, signifying death, before flipping to the next where confirmation comes with CCT footage of the mans last moments.

It's the trick The Sopranos famously pulled in the very last scene of the show, only this graphic novel knew to set up and explain it beforehand so no one is confused at the final reprise.

Mitch Gerards is one of Kings better collaborators. Which is not a diss on the others, Tom King seems to attract good artists, Mitch is just that good. There's a moodiness to everything, a dreariness, that colors every scene without being dark or grimy. Shadows are heavy, but the other colors contrast through brightness. Slim shafts of white for rain, a near constant in any outdoor scene. Deep in the book, Gerards hands us one of the loveliest scene transitions in comics through use of a basketball court. The change in time period signified by color, the past using the haze of orange that's been part of every flashback breaking into the thick shadows and dark greens hanging over the present day sequences. Top shelf work.

Too bad about the actual story.

I'll preface here by giving a big old SPOILER WARNING. I'm going to talk about the entire plot. Blogger doesn't exactly have spoiler tags, so this is the best I can do. If you somehow made it to my site, I assume you want my opinion and to give that, well, I gotta talk about the story. Otherwise, you might as well cut here and rest assured I didn't like it. I think I'm done with giving arbitrary grades, so there's nothing like that to look for. I'll also note these are all my opinions, so you may feel differently, and also that this is not intended for continuity so it's more or less harmless.

All that now out of the way, One Bad Day: Riddler as a story is essentially bad fanfiction.

Strong statement? Depends on how you mean it. I have a fairly positive view of fanfiction. It's essentially free, democratized writing. Anyone can write whatever they want and put it out for their peers to read. It isn't making any money, so burgeoning writers can play with characters and settings they would otherwise never be allowed to. You know, since capitalism and our copyright laws are an utter joke. 

Most people like to say that "most fanfiction is bad". So? Have you taken a look at a lot of things that have actually been published? Eragon and Harry Potter were once wildly popular despite the actual writing being somewhat pedestrian, at times bad. 50 Shades of Grey made a load of money and that started out as actual fanfiction. You can get enjoyment or like characters even in bad work. That's the entire concept of "good bad" media.

Also, to be blunt, most of todays most popular media are basically corporate approved fanfiction. Stan Lee hasn't exactly written Spider-Man or Iron Man since the 60's. Bill Finger and Bob Kane have been dead a long time, but Batman lives on. We place too much stress and negative feeling on the word simply because it's unofficial or because random people are allowed to put whatever they want out.

When I think of bad fanfiction, I think less in writing quality and more of a bunch of tired tropes or lazy ideas. Things that have been overdone. Possibly pretentious. Often rooted in a misunderstanding of characters and theme. Or maybe they just make everything really gritty and dark and depressing because that's real, man.

Unrelated to the previous sentence, I joke, the Riddler is a murderer in this comic and the smartest bestest man in the world.

Murderin' Riddler is not a take I like, but whatever, I can deal with it. The Batman had him as a killer and that worked. But that film was also trying to tell a story about class inequality that tied into what Riddler was doing. He, along with Catwoman and Batman himself, was a third of a trio that spoke to three different walks of life, status and privilege. It played to the theme of the film and that's why I accepted it.

In One Bad Day: Riddler, the Riddler decides to just start offing civilians because all the riddles prior to this were just one big game to him. Now he's tired of the game and wants to send a message to Batman that old Eddie is his better. Interspersed with all this are flashbacks to Edwards childhood as the son to the dean of a prestigious school. Said father demands perfection or he breaks out the corporal punishment. One of Edwards teachers likes to encourage outside the box thinking so he puts one riddle at the end of tests. Edward cannot think outside the box and gets frustrated so he cheats. He's caught, but the teacher gently chastises Edward. However, when the teacher mentions he'll have to tell Edwards father and hopes at least it'll be a learning experience, Edward coldly murders him on the basketball court, slamming the teachers face into the pavement until it's crushed. 

That is his "One Bad Day".

It's rather groan inducing, really, when you get to the end of the comic and realize everything has just been a pretentious "the gloves are off, the silly villain everyone laughed at is a grim, dark, gritty killer" story. Hell, it's groan inducing even before you get to that point. In order to make this all work, Edward Nygma is given a competency and cognitive ability that borders on superhuman. But really, it's just kind of stupid.

Eddie always knew who Batman was, you see, along with all of Bruces kids. He's been able to sneak in and out of the Manor a lot over the years, get into safes, even found The Pearls. Seen everyone sleeping. He knows who every cop and guard is, who their family is. There's a confusing sequence late in the book where he seems to be able to lay down on the ground, his words causing the guards to shoot and kill each other. He convinces Film Freak to slit his throat after Nygma bests Film Freak in a film trivia game. He knows about Jim Gordons marriage failing, what happened to Sarah Essen, a bunch of personal events he should never be able to find out because how would he have been there. He was apparently the one who gave Joker the plans that led to the famous apartment shooting in Killing Joke.

You see what I'm getting at here? I didn't even get everything. Written out plain, it's absolutely ludicrous. How hard is it to hit that point in a DC Universe story? Where I accept a man who can fly and shoot heat beams. Where a guy dresses like a Bat to fight crime without being crippled by year three. Where a ring powers up and creates things out of green light. It's sudden over competence, reminding me of some fanfiction I've read in the past where a fan of a minor character is upset at how said character is treated in universe so they're going to make them a real threat.

All in service of an ending you know is coming. I sighed halfway through. The threat in the last confrontation is that Riddler knows everything, he's changed and if Batman ever hits him again he'll kill someone, so Batman has to leave him alone. Then a couple page sequence of everyone being scared stupid by him, where mob bosses and bank heads all decide if the Riddler shows up you give him whatever he wants. Everyone laughed at him but now he's scary. No one can stop him, everyone is too afraid.

Did you guess how it ends?

Batman tells the Riddler that he can change too. That Riddler has been abusing his weakness for mercy. We point of view with Riddler. In the mirror he finally notices Batman behind him. Cut to black. Four whole panels of it.

What can I say but "fuck off".

It's definitely non continuity. I don't think I have to explain why at this point. So you can take it or leave it as a what if. But for my money, it's a comic that is unintentionally sillier than any gimmick scheme Riddler's ever done. The book never tells us that Batman killing the Riddler is the only way, only implying it through a seemingly extreme no win scenario. You'll often see some people excuse storytelling beats like this, where a character who kills is suddenly forced to cross that line because they were "left with no choice". The film Man of Steel is a good example with its climax of Superman being forced to execute Zod to save a family, a hollow sequence that occurs after the two practically level Metropolis amidst their fight and likely kill tens of thousands. But there's always a choice.

After all, everything is as it was written to be.

Vaya Con Dios, Castle

Maybe it always had to end this way.

When I was a kid up until my late twenties, I actually really liked the Punisher. At his core, he's more or less a serial murderer, so that probably seems an odd statement. Of criminals, sure, and usually of the worst variety, not often some schmo who holds up the local 7-11, but still a wonton murderer whose general solution to problems is "shoot first, shoot later, shoot some more and then when everyone is dead, double tap the bodies to be sure". But as a fictional character he offered a catharsis of sorts, a fantasy even to those who didn't much care for the idea of guns or violence in real life. Frank Castle was the guy who took out the untouchable, the corrupt. He spoke to a part of most of us that occasionally comes out deep in the recesses of our mind and soul, the part that wonders, just for a minute, what it would be like if the most rotten people in the world got what was coming to them.

Even today, well, take a look around and you might see how that could be appealing. Billionaires who flaunt their wealth and make life harder for all of us. Arrogant assholes who buy up the things we like and erode what made them special before our eyes because they don't have to listen to us. Businessmen who grind the working class to dust, leave everyone struggling to live, paying rent that's tripled over a long stretch of time while wages stayed flat. Shadowy figures who subvert truth, buy up forms of media for the sole purpose of controlling the narrative, controlling us. Politicians who actively subvert the will of the people and do everything in their power to stop us from sending them packing.

Suddenly, the idea of a guy who goes and takes out the people actively making life worse doesn't sound so bad, for fiction. It scratches an itch, one you know can never really be. Fantasy.

Unfortunately, it turns out he's also appealing to some of the worst people you can imagine, the kind who prefer it not be a fantasy, whose targets are quite different. You know the sort of people I'm talking about. Corrupt cops, neo nazis, far right wingers who think the best option to being outnumbered and fading in relevance is to shoot everyone they don't like and be done with it. Never mind the fact that the Punisher has, on numerous occasions, killed corrupt cops by the precinct full. Never mind he'd probably love to kill some Nazis. Co-option of figures and symbols doesn't rely on the truth. It relies on warping that until what you insist upon becomes the truth.

It's not super surprising the Punisher could have ended up a target for co-option by the right. He's a creation of the eighties, born out of a mold of vigilante hero with their own roots in political fallout of the time. Frank Castle has a lot in common with numerous protagonists played by Clint Eastwood, including but not limited to Dirty Harry. He comes from the same primordial ooze that spawned Paul Kersey, Charles Bronsons character from 1970's schlock film Death Wish. They come from a time period of right wing anxiety of the "softening" of police, that the cops just couldn't get the job done anymore so it was up to real men to take the law into their own hands and get some real killing done. All because cops got caught doing things they shouldn't and had to abide by some rules.

Middle America's easily scared and pretty easy to fool, history seems to show.

With all that in mind, suddenly it makes a lot more sense that the more violent of us might decide to take the symbol of the Punisher, the skull, and crowd around it. None of them have ever read a comic, I'm sure. The few that have probably aren't great at reading comprehension, or maybe they're willfully twisting it. But the character serves their purposes. Especially the cops. 

Little more than jack booted thugs these days, if the police were ever anything else, they struggle with a populace who has become increasingly aware of their crimes, of the human rights violations and abuses they used to get away with regularly. The times changes, technology caught up and we all became a bit more aware. So the people trained to react to any threat with lethal force growled back. The skull is a warning. Don't fuck with me because I'm the one with the power here and I'll take you out if need be. They do it, too. Take a look at the news headlines today, you'll probably find something about another black kid murdered for existing while black. It is, after all, a day ending in the letter y.

As this all happened, it was easy to see the Punisher losing any real relevance to any well adjusted person. I threw away my Punisher shirts around when the Fox News talking head of the time started wearing a Punisher skull pin. I didn't feel comfortable wearing them outside. Rather than a cool symbol from a comic I liked, it became tied up in things I didn't agree with, with death and murder and people who would prefer minorities stop existing. I still have my old Punisher comics in a box somewhere, but I'm not sure I'll ever read them again. It's hard to square away stories I enjoyed with the effect the character has had.

Disney, of course, noticed. This hadn't been as much of an issue back in 2009, when they purchased Marvel Comics. But you could tell they got incredibly nervous around when the skull started being associated with proto-facists, moreso when those same people dropped the proto. Merch for the character started dwindling, comics starring the character, once plentiful, started slowing to a trickle. Creative direction for the character visibly seemed to shift, showing a company increasingly uncomfortable with the character they owned.

If you hadn't noticed all that, the unease was made plain within the pages of the thirteenth issue of the then current volume of his ongoing, back in 2019. The character, accosted by adoring cops, came face to face with a representation of his real life influence and didn't like what he saw. A meta blend of reality and fiction, making what had happened in the real world part of said fiction in order to force him to deal with it in some way. The confrontation saw him tear the skull decal off their car, rip it to shreds, and blatantly threaten them in a way you'd expect from Frank Castle. "If you want a role model, Captain America would be happy to have you. If I catch you doing what I do, I'll come for you next."

A game attempt. But it didn't do a whole lot. How could it, really? Comics are, these days, a niche hobby. Certainly not one most of the cops proudly displaying the skull have ever been into, so they were unlikely to encounter the message. Even if they did, they'd likely refuse to absorb it.

So what to do? It's an issue for Disney, for sure. Famously considered a family friendly company, they never much like anything that could tarnish their brand. It's why they often don't do much with any R-rated properties they acquire when they decide to buy up the competition. They don't care about social issues so much as how much it affects their bottom line. It's the root of their current-as-of-writing spat with Floridas sentient turd of a Governor, Ron DeSantis. They make a lot of money off LGBTQ in numerous fashions while Ron is a fascist who would love to wipe them off the face of the Earth. If LGBTQ acceptance hadn't reached where it has socially, I guarantee you Disney would not have given two shits about all of the anti-gay bills that passed through Florida legislature.

Really, there were only two options. They could make like Matt Furie, creator of Pepe the Frog, whose dismay at the far right co-opting his creation led him on a crusade against those types wherever possible. There's merit in the approach. After all, the Punisher made money and a corporation cares for little other than their bottom line. Disney's famously litigious as it is. But culturally, there's little chance of ever wrenching the character back from the mud the fascists had dragged him through.

So that leaves the second option. Tear it down and salt the Earth. Be done with it.

Marvel seemed to settle on the latter. It started with a trademark for a new symbol. The famous skull was going away. Then they hired Jason Aaron, a well known Punisher scribe, for a new direction. Suddenly, he was involved in the Hand and falling down a path he couldn't come back from. One where it seemed like death was probably the end game.

It wouldn't be the first time Jason Aaron had killed a version of the character. He'd once been the one chosen to follow Garth Ennis and close out the Punisher MAX version of the character. That series ended the only way the Punishers story ever really could, with him succumbing to his injuries, to the war, after a brutal confrontation with the Kingpin. If anyone was going to do it a second time, it would probably be him.

The run broke down the war, the modus operendi, in a very real way. The Punisher had, from the aughts on, occasionally played with the idea that the loss of Franks family was nothing but an excuse for his war. Maybe he did love them but he'd turned their memory into something terrible. This was the thesis statement of Ennis first arc of MAX, delivered by former comrade Microchip, and the series dabbled in it ever since. The most recent run just made it explicit, going so far as to resurrect Frank Castles wife just to have her come face to face with what her husband had done in her name.

In the 80's, the reaction would probably have been one of justification. Given the way Death Wish was written, the way it takes Paul Kerseys side, would it have been strange if his wife and daughter had approved of his actions? For a movie back then, written as it was, probably not. Probably the same for Frank Castle in the 80's. But times change, sensibilities change and the characters have to change with them. Marvel characters are, after all, forever un-aging. They use a sliding timescale to keep things current. When you slide the time, the context of a characters life will change with the new environment their past slid into. For example, Frank Castle, known for most of his history as a Vietnam veteran, is suddenly a veteran of the Gulf War.

In more modern times, when we look at things like the Punisher with a more critical eye, when those old low rent films are derided and picked apart, wouldn't it make sense for his wife to be horrified by the mass murder made in her name? Doesn't it make sense that the darkness was always in Franks heart, that she saw it and was about to ask for divorce before a freak happening saw her gunned down? What does it look like when someone finds that their family name is now associated with the most successful serial killer in human history?

So she shoots him.

He didn't die, in the end. Comic book shenanigans happen and Frank is saved from death. It wouldn't have guaranteed permanence if he had died anyway. Wouldn't have been the first time Frank Castle died in main continuity, after all, or even the second. Remember Angel Punisher? But it left him at the mercy of its coda, where his peers and his soon to be ex wife broke down his ethos, his way of life, his war. It feels like something of a breakdown of the very concept, intending to put a bow on it. He's shunted off to another dimension, far away from the main Marvel universe, where he's shown protecting a group of orphans in a weird land. Even if Frank Castle lives, the intent seems to be that maybe the concept of the Punisher cannot. Much like when the Samuel L Jackson version of Nick Fury became the mainline Nick Fury, with the old version shunted off into limbo. He doesn't have a place anymore.

Nothing stops them, of course, from reversing course later. This is fiction, after all, and if things died down enough that Disney and Marvel thought they could get some money out of bringing the character back to the old status quo without getting raked over the coals for it you can bet your last dime they'll do it. But for now, it feels like a sendoff, like a last look at a character, at a concept, that just doesn't work in the modern day, divorced from the era when it seemed less horrifying, when real life hadn't taken inspiration. The character outlived his usefulness and his relevance, becoming something pop culturally that he'd never been in the text of his stories. 

It makes sense that could happen. That's one of the tools of the fascist, one of their favorites even. Sometimes you can't stop them from co-opting things, you can only let go and move on.

Maybe it always had to end this way.

Gotham By Midnight: We Do Not Sleep (comics)

Writer: Ray Fawkes
Artist: Ben Templesmith
Collects: Gotham By Midnight #1-5

Gotham's a freaky place at best, built like a shrine to art deco, clad in stone gargoyles and replete with any number of psychotic criminals on any given night. Would anyone really be surprised to find that things go bump in the night around that city? I mean, hell, Slaughter Swamp is a stones throw away. Solomon Grundy pulled his dead ass out of that muck. Gotham and the supernatural have a long standing relationship. But Batman doesn't deal with that kind of thing, unless he can't help it. It's not his wheelhouse.

Good thing Gotham has a task force just for that, then. Well, good for the citizens. Not so much for the poor saps assigned there, even as weird as they are. Meet the Midnight Shift;  Detective Jim Corrigan - you might know him as the host of the Spectre - Doctor Tarr, Sister Justine, Detective Lisa Drake and Lieutenant Weaver. They're the ones protecting Gotham from the spooky, the biblical, the downright demonic. We're gonna be riding with them for a bit.

So, I've been slowly making my way through Rebirth and a quick glance at the past couple months of reviews will show I've loved it thus far. But if I have any qualms about it at all, it's that it plays things a little too safe. Every single title they put out was guaranteed to appeal to some kind of audience and likely hold down an okay readership. The downside is that there isn't a single risk in the bunch. It's pretty firm in its use of classic superheroes and longstanding properties, to the point that continuing Gotham Academy for another series is the closest it flirts with something different. That's great for the health of the line, I'm sure, and judging by the legs it has and that it went over a year without a cancellation, it's worked, but it's the safest the entire line has felt in a decade.

The New 52 is maligned for its visual masturbation to the nineties and uneven quality - and let's be honest, there were as many crap books as there were good, including a largely dismal five years of Superman comics and a controversial five years of Wonder Woman - but one thing it did well is cater to things outside of straight superheroics. I'm not convinced anything like I, Vampire or Xombi would get past the pitch stage right now, they still haven't done anything with Swamp Thing or Animal Man since their acclaimed New 52 runs and I kind of doubt Gotham Academy would have enjoyed a second series if it hadn't already established itself in the previous era.

I can't imagine we'll see anything like Gotham By Midnight again for a while yet, either.

Essentially a horror comic, Gotham By Midnight does well differentiating itself even among all of the other Gotham centric books. Most of them would choose the parts of Gotham that are more immediately familiar to readers. This book centers itself around spooky happenings surrounding Slaughter Swamp. How many people here even remember that's a part of Gotham City? It has its roots deep in the macabre, with nasty, demonic creatures terrorizing families and taxing the squad. The root cause of the disturbance ends up being the psychic remnants of genocide, of the people of settlements that were wiped out to make way for the founding of Gotham. That's crazy dark, in a good way.

But beyond the spooky imagery and ugly revelations lies heart. Jim Corrigan is the only cast member you're going to recognize, but that doesn't mean you won't get to like the rest of them by the end. Each has their quirks and backstory. Each is pretty likable in their own way. I'm not a religious sort of person and I don't much trust the people involved with organized religion, as I find many of them can't even seem to hold to the virtues they preach, but Sister Justine ends up a pristine reminder of the best of them. Late in the book, as Gotham faces judgement and the rest of the cast, scattered across Gotham and struggling to converge, freak out, she casts her gaze to heaven and prays, defending the people of Gotham through her words and asking for mercy, to take her instead. Whether her prayers are answered, I'll leave to you to find out, but it did make me a little misty eyed.

That said, the spooky imagery is still pretty important. I'm pretty familiar with Ben Templesmiths work, as I imagine a good number of people are. Most were probably introduced to it in 30 Days of Night. My first exposure came in the Dead Space comics he did art for. At the time, I have to admit I hated it. I don't know if that's because it's so far outside the norm I just instinctively recoiled or what, but it kind of repulsed me. Over time, I grew to appreciate it and realized that's kind of the point, given how well the style fits with horror. Everything he draws is vaguely ugly and wild, but the oddities grow on you after a while until you just get used to how he draws people.

Where it really works are the monsters. They look nasty without resorting to things like copious amounts of blood or spilled guts. That's the part that made me appreciate his work. A lot of artists would rely on that, while Templesmith can do wonders with simple use of a hue of red washed over everything, heavy inks or simple deformation of a monster. That takes skill.

Unfortunately, there are only two volumes of the book. Despite a lead-in by Batman Eternal and a really strong start, Gotham By Midnight only lasted a year. I guess I should be thankful for the fact that DC likes to give more rope to series, rather than just canceling them at five issues and making something a miniseries when pre-orders aren't amazing, but having now read and enjoyed it, it's still upsetting this book didn't last longer.

I don't know, maybe DC has the right idea after all with Rebirth. Apparently really good books like this that stray from immediate convention just don't sell. See also, the failure of the DC You initiative, which had a dumb name but carried some gems. I can't help being a little bitter about that.

Still, I recommend rolling with the Midnight Shift for a bit. It's a fun ride.

My Opinion: Read It

Nightwing: Better Than Batman (comics)

Writer: Tim Seeley
Artists: Javier Fernandez, Yanick Paquette
Collects: Nightwing Rebirth #1, Nightwing (2016) #1-4, 7-8

I don't really care about Nightwing.

Dick Grayson as a character is fine, serves an important role in the DCU and can fit wherever you need him, but his solo always made me roll my eyes. For all the bitching he's done over decades of comics about how he didn't want to be Batman, he was pretty content to be the Diet version ever since Chuck Dixon first brought him into his own ongoing. He had his own Gotham - which, at times, writers hilariously tried to sell as "worse than Gotham", as if that made Dick look good or something - went on the exact same type of adventures, took the same type of cases and fought the same kind of villains, though his were half as interesting and rarely stuck. Tim Drake has the exact same problem, arguably worse. What Dick had going for him was a slick costume and his character. Admittedly, that's probably more than enough for most people.

So, I wasn't exactly excited about the Rebirth series. It's basically reverting him to his "classic" role when, frankly, it wasn't that interesting to start with. Especially coming on the heels of a reinvention that seemed to suit him, namely as the DCU's James Bond. By the time I'd been looking to check Grayson out, this was on its way. Go figure. But DC won me over with just about everything it's put out under the Rebirth banner thus far, so Nightwing got a chance too.

It impressed me enough to continue, but it admittedly had a low bar to clear and I'm not sure just how much of that relates to hold-overs from Grayson.

The Rebirth issue is a good primer for the series. It catches us up nicely with where Dick is in his life, what happened in the last series and details what he has to deal with now. What it's supposed to do, basically. I haven't read a lick of Dick Graysons adventures in the New 52 era and felt like I knew more than enough to go on by the end, so I'd say it did its job well. I'm not wild about the way it seemingly dispatches a villain, but whatever; it's the cool thing to kill off minor guys these days and he's a member of a group whose whole deal is coming back to life anyway, so it's fine.

From there, the show is put on the road. The gist is that, near the end of Grayson, a global off-shoot of the Court of Owls - the Parliament of Owls - blackmailed Dick through his brother, Damian Wayne. They planted a bomb in his head, basically, and if Dick didn't do what they wanted, brain matter went flying. But Dick has flipped the script without their knowledge and is working to take them down from the inside. He's paired up with a new ally, Raptor, and made to do their bidding. Only Raptor likes the Owls exactly as much as Dick does and wants to take them down too.

There's no way this guy isn't trustworthy, right? This will end well.

The volume is as much about Raptor as it is Dick, setting up common ground, saving some personal revelations for the big moments and positioning him up as a top villain for Nightwing going forward, possibly the first good one he's had. The connection between the two is as convenient as all get out - nothing makes things personal as easily as involving parents - but that sort of reveal is a thing because it tends to work. They've also got a direct clash of ideals and methods stemming from their upbringing; Raptor believes Batman made Dick soft, while Dick has a far better perspective and outlook on the Bat taking him in.

Speaking of the relationship between Batman and Nightwing, it's as natural as its ever been. One of the things I've never liked about Dick Grayson since he became Nightwing is exactly how up his own ass he became about being his own man. While the child becoming resentful of their parents is a thing that does happen in real life, with these two it went to extremes. There were times he'd blame Batman for things that were outside of his control or seem almost bitter about being tied to Gotham in any way. Batman, for his part, seemed mostly supportive even during the dreaded 90's, when he was a raging asshole, leaving Dick to his own devices and trying to keep from dragging his ward back into Gotham as best he could.

Here, they're far warmer to each other and the dynamic feels real. Batman does his very best to let Dick do things his way, but even if they aren't related by blood, they're father and son, and it's never quite that easy. He messes up and Dick is agitated at Bruce saying one thing, but still not completely trusting him to make the right choice. Even that exchange doesn't feel overblown, despite Dick having some harsh words for Bruce. Later, there's a short conversation with Alfred right before he's kidnapped where Bruce laments the fact that for all his attempts, he still ended up blaming Dick for how hard it was to let him go. The words and his general demeanor suggest disappointment and regret. It feels very real, very honest, and far more impactful than most of the tension I've seen in countless Nightwing comics. Batman reacted as you might expect a father to and it created a small rift between them. But when push came to shove, Dick comes for his father figure, values the lessons taught and values Bruce.

It's a hell of a lot better than the pissing matches or angry "I don't want to be him" monologues.

If there's a downside to all this, it's that the book seems like it really wants to put the whole "Parliament of Owls" thing to bed. It started in Grayson, a book that is obviously over, but it's an interesting state of affairs and could easily have held up a full twelve issues worth of comics in Nightwing. Instead, it's mostly wrapped by the end of this first arc. I don't think for a moment that the Owls won't show up again, in Batman or even here, but still, it feels shuffled off too soon. They're not even the main antagonists by the close.

Yanick Paquette does the art for the Rebirth issue, but sadly it's kind of a guest star thing, because he's not the ongoing artist. I say sadly mainly because I could always go for more of his artwork. Javier Fernandez, however, is more than capable, and puts in some fine work, capably illustrating everything from fights to quieter moments. I really enjoyed how he showed Bruce Waynes subtle displeasure in the aforementioned scene, looking the slightest bit forlorn in the panel he put voice to his worries.

So far, Nightwings Rebirth era is a winner. But we'll see how well it holds, because most of the holdover from Grayson has probably been spent here. The next volume has him transition back to Bludhaven, so there's an unfortunate chance we're headed back into territory I've never particularly liked to begin with. I'll give it a chance, as Seeley and Fernandez earned that much with this volume, but it might be hard to keep me.

My Opinion: Read It

Heartwarming Batman Moments: There are a couple, mainly related to him acting as a father. He does his best to let Dick off the leash, but can't help but be concerned when Dick does something he wouldn't, which leaves things a bit tense. He's actually a bit dismayed at it even. At the end, when things look dire for him, Bruce seemingly falls towards his death, which Nightwing naturally saves him from. When Nightwing tries to beat himself up about it and apologize, Bruce explains that he didn't fall, he jumped, because he believed in Dick and knew Dick would be there to catch him.

The Unbelievable Gwenpool: Believe It

Writer: Christopher Hastings
Artists: Gurihiru, Danilo Beyruth
Collects: Gwenpool Special #1, The Unbelievable Gwenpool #0-4

To say that Gwenpool is the stupidest idea I've ever heard in my life would be hyperbolic to an extreme, but I feel safe in saying that it's in the top thirty.

Let's examine it for a moment. The base equation is Gwen Stacy plus Deadpool equals profit. The question is why? They're two characters that do not go together, from completely different wheelhouses, and frankly we do not need a fiftieth Deadpool knockoff running through the Marvel universe. We have enough. At one point, there was a team of them.

From what I gather, the idea started as a variant cover, got a special, then some back-ups in Howard the Duck - reprinted as Gwenpool #0, included in this collection - on to a full series. I never understood why and kind of took a pass on the whole thing for a long while. What was it about this seemingly moronic idea that shot it to prominence?

Well, turns out that part of the appeal past the variant cover stage is that it's actually kind of amazingly funny.

Plot is a little sparse at times, but not nearly as much as I expected. The re-purposed Howard the Duck back-ups are just their own thing, as is the Gwenpool special. But the ongoing itself has Gwen looking to become a top shelf assassin, despite having no powers - don't let the name fool you, she doesn't have Deadpools healing factor or even any of her Spider counterparts abilities - no training and nothing going for her but a lifetime of reading Marvel comics. As such, she kind of bumbles her way through, eventually ending up a henchwoman by circumstance for MODOK.

I don't think I've laughed out loud as much as I have with this book in a while. Even comics that strive to be funny don't always hit the mark. After all, you need to understand visual comedy as well as witty dialogue, meaning a necessary synergy between writer and artist, even more than usual. Christopher Hastings and Gurihiru have that, apparently, because between the two, they've put out a book that's better than half the Deadpool material I've read.

But it isn't all about the laughs. There are bits of pathos to be found among the comedy. I quite enjoyed that her knowledge of everything Marvel wasn't just mined for jokes, but for self reflection as well. She knows, just by being in the Marvel universe, that she's probably in comic books now, and at first assumes she's naturally the star by the point the ongoing starts. But her knowledge isn't quite on the level of fourth wall breaking, either, so after MODOK kentucky fries her first friend because she laughed at him, she starts having moments of doubt.

After all, what if she isn't even in her own series? Maybe she's just in back-ups. Or a guest role in another ongoing, like Thors. At that point, she could die at any time, with no real plot armor. She doesn't even know what she's doing with a gun. There's even a serious discussion with Batroc ze Leaper about the nature of stories and fairy tales. Later, she even shows some self loathing, thinking she's better off if her parents from her home dimension forget her. It's compelling.

I also appreciate that the influence of Gwen Stacy and Deadpool begin and end at her costume and the name. She does not have the personality of any Gwen Stacy I've ever read, or even the last name. As for Deadpool, her fourth wall breaking isn't really on the same level as the original - he actively knows and reacts to contemporary stuff from our reality, while she just knows Marvel heroes and suspects she's in a comic because she's read them - and she has none of his abilities, meaning she lucks her way through mercenary work without any of his advantages. Frankly, they could have just switched the costume and altered the name, but they didn't, so eh.

Best of all, the artwork and coloring ticks all of my boxes. Clean linework, a lack of thick lines, plenty of detail without going overboard and, perhaps the part I love the most, a bright color palette. It all fits the fun vibe of the book perfectly. The art for the back-ups and prologue is jarringly different and not near as much to my liking, but it's still technically good. It just doesn't fit. A bit too "Alex Maleev" for the material, if you get what I mean. But it does make me appreciate Gurihiru more.

The concept is still dumb as hell, but its the funniest comics I've read in years and has more heart than I expected. I'll be continuing with it for sure. Highly recommended.

My Opinion: Buy It