Written by Joshua Williamson,
Daniel Warren Johnson, Chip Zdarsky,
Terry Dodson, Becky Cloonan, Karl Kerschl
Art by Riley Rossmo, Daniel Warren Johnson,
Nick Bradshaw, Terry Dodson, Karl Kerschl,
Jen Bartel, Simone Di Meo
Published by DC Comics
Batman is ridiculous.
Yes, you can backfill the hero and his world with all kinds of psychological hoopla.
Yes, the suit, car and gadgets are cool. And the idea that you, too, could wage a one-man war on crime with enough will and resources remains appealing after 80 years.
But Batman, like all superhero comics, also is ridiculous.
It’s a man dressed as a bat, running around beating on criminals with his fists. He’s a scientist and a ninja and a detective and a master tactician! He has an English butler for a best friend! He drives a super-car around a major city but never runs into traffic!
And that’s not all. In our first story to open Batman Black and White #4, Batman also is the world’s greatest chiropterologist: someone who not only studies bats, but is a caretaker for them as well.
“A Night in the Life of a Bat in Gotham,” written by Joshua Williamson and illustrated by Riley Rossmo, sends the Darknight Detective into the seedy black market of contraband superhero merch. After all, whatever happens to all those batarangs, riddlesticks, caper-used Penguin umbrellas and crime-worn Joker tuxedos?
Rossmo draws this take with real pep and power, combining Sunday-strip zip with off-kilter panels that break apart images and collide with each other.
And then there’s Bruce in the cave with Dick, Barbara and Damian, delivering a homily about those flying foxes in the cave, whose colony appears to be everywhere in the Batcave.
All I could think of was, don’t the bats just poop on everything?
Of course, they don’t. It’s a comic book.
Ridiculous to think otherwise.
Another ridiculous thing about Batman is the idea that he’s the most dangerous man on Earth. In a multiverse of Kryptonians, shape-shifting telepaths, sorcerers, literal demons, world-conquering death gods, and so on, this dude with no powers – that’s the one.
Mark Waid famously said about Batman that, if you pit him against anyone else in a fight, Waid’s pick was always “Batman, given enough time.” Why? Because he’ll always learn the opponent and figure out a plan to take them down.
It’s ridiculous when you see a Justice League cartoon battle, and there’s Batman on his ziplines against superpowered alien armies.
Yet that premise also allowed Waid to write one of the best JL stories, “Tower of Babel,” in which Ra’s Al Ghul steals Batman’s dossiers to neutralize Earth’s mightiest heroes.
Daniel Warren Johnson’s story, “Checkmate,” hits on this theme. Batman is tied up and suspended from the rafters while some henchman beats him up. We know he’ll get out of this predicament; we’ve seen it a million times.
So has Two-Face, who comes storming in. His men are pleased with themselves that they caught the Bat, but Two-Face chews them out – “This man is only captured if he wants to be!”
This scene is intercut with Alfred and a child Bruce. Alfred introduces the boy to chess, in which mastery is achieved not by force, but by cataloguing the game’s many situations and learning one’s opponent in order to pull the right ripcord at the right time. Great lessons juxtaposed with Batman bashing Two-Face’s, well, face in.
Perhaps that all-encompassing mind and encyclopedic memory are Batman’s superpower. How else would he be able to prove the perfidy within Poison Ivy’s heartfelt proposal to seed her super-plant, fix the world, and fight at Batman’s side?
“The Green Deal,” written by Chip Zdarsky and illustrated by Nick Bradshaw, has some pretty classic Poison Ivy stuff in her modern iteration as a metahuman and ecoterrorist. And Bradshaw’s art looks like a second coming of Art Adams. The dynamic linework and intricate panels dare you to keep looking ever closer. You can feel the labor in every page of Bradshaw’s maximalist style.
On the other hand, Terry and Rachel Dodson show off their signature style that looks so richly effortless and evocative. “The Fool’s Journey” pairs the duo with writer Becky Cloonan as a young Batman investigates a death at Haly’s Circus. Yes, that Haly’s Circus, home of the Flying Graysons. As you’d expect, Cloonan feeds us characters with big emotions and hearts. Batman pieces together the mystery, showing how some answers may never be good enough.
That sense of tragedy also turns up in “Davenport House,” written and illustrated by Karl Kerschl. In what may be my favorite story in this run of Batman Black and White, Batman and Robin investigate a so-called haunted house and wind up in a murder mystery.
Cue that ridiculous part again, as Robin – this time an anime-influenced girl with a Karen O haircut and bubble goggles – leans out of the Batmobile’s open window in the first panel.
The dynamic duo witness an apparent ghost, even though Batman says there’s no such thing as ghosts. From there, the tables turn, and present and past collide. We drop the ridiculous, enter the occult, and find ourselves in something heartbreaking and painful.
This story is worth the cover price all by itself.
