Stand Alone Complex: All Star Batman & Robin The Boy Wonder # 9

Hello Internet!

Eamon here, it has been a while since I have written about my one true love, comics, so I thought I would try to get back into the swing of things. For 'Stand Alone Complex' entries I'm going to write about a single issue of a comic that I like or find notable in some way. For the first entry, I thought I would tackle issue number 9 of the much maligned All Star Batman & Robin the Boy Wonder, written by Frank Miller with Art by Jim Lee, inks by Scott Williams, colors by Alex Sinclair and letters by Jared K. Fletcher.

As far as I am aware, the All Star comics line was started to give creators carte blanche to do whatever they wanted with DC characters without being held hostage by decades of continuity...and who better to tackle Batman than Frank Miller, one of the most important Batman scribes living! I never checked it out back in 2008, and have recently been picking up random issues.

 Page one of issue 9 makes it immediately apparent that this Bats isn't the one we're used to...from the pen of Frank Miller or anybody else. Batman is in Green Lantern's face, and, as conveyed by his narration in the captions, brags about how rich he is, relishes an opportunity to potentially beat the snot out of a fellow hero, proceeds to insult and belittle that same hero along with Superman, and describes how he would use Lantern's power ring...by sending some tidal waves to "Knock out a few enemy fleets" and bring "some real firepower to a nasty ground war or two." So yeah...not the Bats we are used to.

Oh, I forgot to mention, Batman is also painted yellow on the opening page. For those of you who don't know, the Green Lantern's only weakness is the color yellow. His power ring doesn't work against it. Comics, right?

The whole Batman painted yellow thing is really why I wanted to write about this issue, and share it with the 'net. I never expected any part of this series, which is pretty unanimously ridiculed, to be so funny. Batman has to meet with Green Lantern, who on behalf of the Justice League wants Batman to tone it down. To be on the safe side Batman has the meeting in one of his safe houses, and has Robin paint everything yellow. Everything. For well over half of this issue Batman and Robin are yellow, in a yellow room with yellow floors, walls, pipes and furniture.

Batman even has lemonade to drink, and Robin has some yellow ice cream. Batman smirks, sneers and leers as he drinks his Lemonade, "Refreshing" he says as he takes a sip. Green Lantern declines a glass.

Don't be a rude guest, Lantern!

In this panel both Green Lantern and the reader must wait for Batman to finish his lemonade.

Robin is also very entertaining in this scene, in the background eating his ice cream, ready to catch a falling glass of lemonade when Green Lantern decides that Batman needs a punch in the face, pouring Batman another glass for when he is ready for another sip. He is also reading The Yellow Kid comics, for you comics history buffs out there.

Please pay particular attention to Robin on this page. Spectacular storytelling. Very funny.

The focus on the Lemonade is bizarre and distracting. I also find it hilarious. I don't know if Robin's antics were called for in the script, or if Jim Lee decided to do that stuff on his own, but its a real hoot. Green Lantern is a real lunkhead in this series, who can't figure out that Robin is really Dick Grayson, a boy Batman kidnapped in an earlier issue, and seems to have a real temper problem...as does every character in this issue. After taking Lantern's ring, Robin does some flip kicks and karate chops Lantern's neck, almost killing him. This causes Batman to flip out and punch Robin, who is probably ten years old, really hard in the face, twice.

The rest of the book is moping, gloom and doom, but darn if the yellow Batman and Robin pages weren't fun. Definitely something I was not expecting. I would highly recommend checking this issue out. If there are any readers out there, are there any other issues this funny from this title? Let me know in the comments!

-Eamon

Comic Movie showdown: The Spirit, Punisher War Zone

I'm going to take a little detour and talk about two comic book movies I saw recently, those being The Spirit, based on the character created by comics legend Will Eisner, and The Punisher: War Zone, based on Marvel Comic's the Punisher...duh!

I am not very familiar with the Spirit strip. I followed the character in DC's recent revamp by Darwyn Cooke, but I have not read very much of Eisner's Original at all. The film, directed by Frank Miller, who I believe was friends with Eisner, marks his first solo directorial effort. The look of the film is very close to the look of Sin City (Frank Miller's comic series, and film he co-directed), lots of black, white and red going on. Sometimes characters will be shot in silhouette, sometimes a background will flash in an eye piercing graphic red. Visually, the movie is very pleasing. Miller's graphic sensibilities really shine here. There are also many great shots of the city that give it a beauty, and capture the feeling of a sprawling metropolis well. One of my favorite shots of the film is during The Spirit's closing monologue, of the side of an apartment building or tenement house, hundreds of windows and air conditioners. The camera lingers there for a minute, probably less, and it was just a great shot. The photography of "central city" in this film is another feather in Miller's cap.

The sad thing is, in my humble opinion, the fine visuals of this film are all the film has to offer really. The story is thin at best, the characters mostly forgettable and uninteresting. The dialogue is rambling, strange, and just kind of boring. The Octopus, the main villain, portrayed by Samuel L Jackson, has many monologues during the film...too many. They are all fairly boring, and the character continually talks about eggs, how he doesn't like egg on his face, rotten eggs, etc. I didn't understand the egg reference, or what they had to do with the Octopus, it was confusing, and not very funny. The Spirit himself is kind of bland too, and has one too many bits of dialogue talking about his city, personifying it, how it provides for him, how he loves it, and it him. It gets old.

The other focus of the film are all the femme fatales the Spirit has to tangle with. The ad campaign for the film focused heavily on the ladies, all portrayed by beautiful Hollywood actresses, like Scarlett Johansonn and Eva Mendes. They play their roles well, and they aren't as fetishized like the women in Sin City, but I still feel they should have been fleshed out a little more, considering how heavily the ad campaign focused on these characters. No one really stands out in this movie, the most memorable thing about this movie is the visuals, and considering Miller's background as a comic artist that makes perfect sense. Miller also tries to inject humor into the film, and lots of comic book type logic. The Spirit hops on telephone wires and runs across them on two feet like it was nothing, nimbly as a squirrel. I can appreciate this. While I like movies like Watchmen and the Dark Knight, they are very serious type movies. The don't have that comic bookish humor present in lots of classic comic books, that type of off the walls humor is almost frowned upon these days in comics, and I, for one, think that is a little sad. Miller's effort to inject humor into the overly serious comic movie genre is a definite failure, the Spirit being such a colossal flop. If anything check it out for the good visuals.

Punisher:War Zone is another critical and box office flop, but I think this is undeservedly so. Directed by Lexi Alexander, the Punisher War Zone pits the Punisher (played by Ray Stevenson) against his longtime villain Jigsaw (Portrayed by the Wire's great Dominic West). I have not seen the other Punisher films, but Stevenson LOOKS the part of the Punisher more than any other actor that was cast in the part. Stevenson looks very similar to the Punisher covers, and even how he was depicted in the Welcome Back Frank storyline. This movie has an extremely high body count, and the Punisher does most of the killin'. He uses all sorts of guns, knives, and his bare hands. He pushes a chair leg through a man's head, and even goes so far as to punch a hole through one thug's head. This movie is definitely campy, and has a bit of that comic book humor that is missing in many comic book movies made today. The two main villains are pretty hammy, and definitely seem like they are having fun playing these ridiculous characters.

The film looks great, all the sets are beautiful, all the on scene locations feel right. It's a very colorful film, each scene has a deliberate color palette. The Punisher's costume looks really authentic, like he could really go into battle and survive it. Stevenson has obviously had weapons training, he handles all of the weapons like an expert, and looks the part of the Punisher the whole movie through. The movie is stolen by Jigsaw and his brother and confederate in crime, Loony Bin Jim. They play the roles like true comic villains, over the top, flamboyant, and silly. The whole movie is pretty silly, a lot of the acting might not be considered the very best, and the writing can be less that brilliant, but the finished product is greater than the sum of it's parts. The action sequences were all excellent, the sets, props and weapons were great. This is an incredibly well made film, and strives with all it's might to stay true to the source material. This is a fun movie, and I think it should have been received more favorably than it was. I feel this film succeeds where The Spirit failed in bringing that comic book feeling to the screen.