Aw, screw it....
Batman #455
"Identity Crisis: Part One" (not the one you're probably thinking of
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writer: Alan Grant
pencils: Norm Breyfogle
inks: Steve Mitchell
colors: Adrienne Roy
letters: Todd Klein
asst. editor: Kelly Puckett (what happened to Dan Raspler?)
editor: Dennis O'Neil
creator: Bob Kane
art assist: Kevin Breyfogle (looks like his comic career never really took off)
grade: B
Well we've got to start this one by discussing Grant and Breyfogle's move this month to the core Batman title. After spending nearly three years as the red-headed stepchildren of the Bat Office, utterly ignored by O'Neil, this is a major step for them, taking over the core title at the height of the post-1989 Batman craze and just as Tim Drake is about to make his big leap into the role of Robin.
But I wouldn't get too excited for the pair. They'll still repeatedly get bumped from the title whenever O'Neil has a new team to bring in for a special three or four parter. They're just the dependable good soldiers O'Neil can count on to produce when he doesn't have someone else he'd rather feature.
And that's pretty much what's going on here.
It doesn't seem like a coincidence that Marv Wolfman left this title JUST as Tim Drake was about to transition into becoming Robin. I've speculated previously that Milligan's Dark Knight Dark City was a storyline intended for Legends of the Dark Knight, but thrown into the Batman title as last minute filler after Wolfman left, perhaps unexpectedly. So, really, this is the next round of filler -- and hey; while these guys are around, they might as well be the ones to finally make Tim into Robin.
But that brings us back to WHY I believe Wolfman has vanished from the title. Take a look at the following excerpt from an interview with Wolfman given last year, where he discusses his vision for Tim Drake:
“My idea was, first, it should be a character that liked being Robin, but didn't necessarily want to be Batman, who saw Dick Grayson at the circus performing these incredible acrobatics that really were phenomanal and really rooted in his head at a young age because [Grayson's] parents died. A nightmare scenario like that just got absolutely imprinted into Tim's head. The acrobatics that Dick Grayson did really stayed with him, so that when he saw Robin pull the same exact acrobatic maneuver, it connected back to his childhood nightmare of parents dying and seeing Dick Grayson do that. So he figured out that Dick Grayson was Robin and then figured out the rest, and he just loved Robin.
I wanted him to have a family, I didn't want him to be another ward of Batman...I just couldn't buy that that would be acceptable today. I wanted him to have his own family, I wanted him to have his own personality, and I wanted him to be exceptionally smart.”
That's how Tim Drake began in Lonely Place of Dying, but it eventually became evident that Warner was placing demands on O'Neil to make this new Robin as indistinguishable from the old as possible (as a refresher, Warner was furious at O'Neil when Jason Todd was killed off, believing Batman was more marketable with Robin). And thus, I think it's no coincidence that Wolfman left just in time to miss writing the storyline where Tim Drake's parents are conveniently killed/crippled, allowing him to become relatively indistinguishable from the previous Robins on paper. This was
not the character Wolfman had pitched to O'Neil.
And, sure enough, when Wolfman returns in a few months time, he returns to Detective, keeping Grant and Breyfogle here, on Batman, and I think it's because writing for Detective allows him to avoid using this new Tim Drake in his stories. You expect Robin in the core Batman title. Heck, fans had been waiting for over a year now for his arrival, but Detective hadn't featured a Robin in its pages (and had barely featured Tim Drake either) for nearly four years by this point.
So Wolfman gets to avoid writing a Tim Drake that he doesn't approve of, and Grant and Breyfogle get a sort of promotion.
At least that's my theory. What've you got?
The story, itself, has two missions: depict Tim's grief at what has happened to his parents (setting him up to become Robin in two months), and tell a story about mysterious killings perpetuated by otherwise normal citizens wearing skull masks. There's also a lot of symbolism regarding masks worked into the story (Grant seems to really enjoy playing with symbols post-"Shaman").
The first mission isn't much of a success. Over a year spent developing this character, and Tim Drake still lacks a personality -- grief isn't a substitute. His mourning feels somewhat generic somehow, even with some breath-takingly dark Breyfogle art. It's still somehow devoid of the kind of substance that would drive a young child to devote his life to the worship of justice or to place his trust in a dark figure guiding him to an uncertain new destiny. Tim simply lacks the emotional substance of a young Bruce Wayne or Dick Grayson (and we never really saw the Post-Crisis Jason Todd mourn). It all feels superficial; every bit as imposed as it really was by DC's parent company.
But the masked killer storyline, that's pretty intriguing. I'm curious to see where it goes (I honestly barely remember these stories from when I read them as a ten year old). The one thing I really didn't like about this story though was the return of Vickie Vale as a bumbling, thoroughly illogical investigative photographer. She follows the most impulsive of leads here, but you just know it's going to pay off anyway.
Important Details:
- Wolfman and Grant both agree that Batman has a heart deep down. Here, Grant depicts this in having Batman sit on Tim's bed, compassionately asking, "Are you all right?...Nightmare, I'd say. Want to tell me...?" They agree on a Batman who can be stubborn and full of rage, but who still has compassion beneath. This also aligns well with what Doug Moench is trying to do in Legends of the Dark Knight right now. For the moment, the consensus is that the Post-Crisis Batman isn't as much of a bad-ass "Batjerk" as both Miller and later writers following Miller will make him out to be.
Minor Details:
- The return of "Legs," last seen in Grant and Breyfogle's Detective Comics #609 and, prior to that, not since the Wagner/Grant/Breyfogle story told in Detective #587-589 (though, according to Grant, this was actually the first story they did without Wagner).
- Breyfogle depicts the road just outside of the secret entrance to the Batcave as being rainy and muddy. Surely, this road would have to be well paved in order to prevent such a thing. When Batman zooms off three pages later, is he really going to leave tire tracks in the mud, seemingly coming from out of the rock face?
plot synopsis in one sentence:
An epidemic of seemingly ordinary citizens going on killing rampages while wearing skull masks is plaguing the city, Vicki Vale attempts to do a story on the homeless population and, accidentally getting a picture of one of the murderers before he struck, ends up on a poorly directed mission to solve the mystery, Tim is attempting to deal with the grief of what has happened to his parents, Batman is concerned but not ready to let Tim become Robin yet, and the chapter concludes with Vickie about to be attacked by another masked murderer.
Not an amazing story. I've said it before -- Alan Grant just isn't a preferred writer of mine -- but Breyfogle's art continually keeps me engaged, and it's interesting watching the intricacies of Tim's transition into Robin.
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