Based solely off the knowledge I had gained from that film, I expected the Batman comic to be fairly dark, featuring a brooding hero, and a city in constantly darkened by crime. Thus, imagine my surprise when I came across vampires and werewolves, among other magical elements.
In the film, Gotham felt like a real city, similar to say to Detroit or my home of Cleveland. The crimes, although seemingly never-ending, were believable. Yet, the Batman Chronicles appears to have a supernatural edge.
The issue that I find to be the most bizarre of the collection is issue number 34 of Detective Comics in which Batman stumbles across a faceless man. The faceless man alone left me puzzled, but then comes along a garden of talking flowers, the faces of attractive women imbedded in their petals.
What?
With his dark costume, Batman seems very out of place in a colorful garden, as if he had been thrown into the pages of Alice in Wonderland unexpectedly. Then to have the flowers speak with advice that sounds like it was pulled from a fortune cookie? I honestly began to wonder whether or not the writers had taken some kind of drug while brainstorming the plot for this particular Batman episode.
I'm curious to know when Batman transitioned from this kooky, fairy-tale like world to a comic with a darker and more realistic tone, and why that decision was made.
The image of batman driving his little red car on p. 19 also seemed a little outta sorts for modern day bats
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ReplyDeleteI admit that this entire issue is pretty strange- a man with no face, talking flower heads, but I'd like to disagree that this was entirely a kooky fairy-tale world. The scene with the faces on the flowers I felt was pretty dark, because despite the colorful flowers it reminded me of how one might depict an acid nightmare trip. While the story may be "campy" it was still quite dark- perhaps the Duc D'Orterre has kept specimens of all the faces he has stolen. I also am left wondering if this issue was making fun of France- the way he is drawn, the way he talks, the fact that he steals people's faces and keeps them in a flower garden... I also think that because Batman was one of the first noir comics, they couldn't jump straight into the realistic dark stuff- having these suggestive elements with the colorful tones and bright backgrounds helped introduce the audience to the style.
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