We’re in to the second week of DC’s Zero Month, and thankfully that’s not all that’s on offer as far as new stories in comics go. Here’s the breakdown of those that have either something to offer, or something to steer clear of.
Despite the wide range of offerings from DC’s #0’s, the best of this week’s crop is well aligned with the theme of this column and realistic and diverse human storytelling that the folks at Geekquality are all about. It’s Stumptown Vol.2 #1 from Oni Press, the sequel to the original Eisner award winning series by Greg Rucka. Stumptown is a pure noir private detective story, following the exploits of Dex Parios, a female private detective with a mouth like a sailor and a gambling problem to boot. Each mini-series in this comic constitutes a new case in Dex’s career, and the current one is about the theft of a guitar. Dex’s client is the female lead guitarist for the band Tailhook, an interesting character in her own right. While the super hero genre has recently seen some positive steps forward for women, this book does so much more. These are real women, both savvy and tough and very, very dedicated to what they’ve chosen to do with their lives. They are accomplished and strong, never subject to the whims of men, and fully clothed at all times (which in comics is saying something). This book is intriguing, and Rucka is very clearly in love with the P.I. genre (there’s practically a treatise on it in the afterword), so keep an eye out for this one.
We’re going to give a quick shout to Dark Horse Comics The Creep #1, largely because it’s a series about a detective (noir P.I. stories are everywhere these days) suffering from a physical malady, a story we’ve reviewed in this space before, as it too began with an issue #0. Still, it continues to be solid in it’s official #1 issue, so stick with it.
And that brings us to this week’s cross section of the event of the month, DC Comics Zero month. Throughout September, prequel issues are offered up in every series in the company’s stable, after one full year of their New 52 reboot. There were no fewer than 14 No. 0 issues this month, with particular emphasis on the Bat family of titles, and a few with strong characters of color and powerful females in lead roles. The most in your face of these bad-ass ladies is Batgirl #0, a character I’ve had a bit of a problem with in the past. Batgirl is the classic example of a younger female subservient hero, filling in the shoes of a tent pole character, without her own fully realized superhero identity. Unlike Supergirl, Barbara Gordon’s Batgirl doesn’t choose to fight crime with her fully toned bare legs exposed to the elements, but she’s also never been Batman’s equal, and serves as more of a female junior partner in the same vein as Robin. Barbara Gordon took on a much more serious adult female role in the pre-52 DC Universe, after sustaining a serious spinal injury at the hands of The Joker, and thus becoming the paraplegic genius known as Oracle, a founding member of the Birds of Prey. In the condensed Bat-history that comes with the New 52, we’re led to believe she has somehow recovered from that injury and returned to her role as Batgirl, and here we get a retold origin of her first meeting with The Dark Knight, during a firefight inside the Gotham PD precinct where her father, Commissioner Gordon, holds court. Barbara is presented in this early incarnation as a young woman who was always told she could do or be anything she wanted by a tough father who thought the world of her. She continually describes herself in the terms he and others have used – “driven”, “intense”, “exceptional” – in a tone that makes you think perhaps she doesn’t fully believe them. When backed into a corner (that happens to contain parts of a discarded Bat suit from the Caped Crusaders early days in Gotham), she begins to truly believe these things about herself for the first time, and it’s a solid representation of the hero she will become. The single issue is almost not enough to cover Barbara’s story, but it’s worth the read for the final chilling reminder of the legendary The Killing Joke Batman graphic novel that so strongly shaped her character in the DC Universe.
There are two other Bat titles that draw attention this week, to varying degrees of success. The first, Batman #0, is a simple tale of a young Bruce Wayne’s misguided early attempts at vigilantism, his introduction to then Lieutenant Jim Gordon, and a rather ham-handed origin telling of the first three Robins in the overall continuity, none of whom were discarded or rebooted, and all of whom we’re meant to believe functioned as Batman’s partner in the space of 5 years. It does, however, address one of the most interesting dynamics and/or glaring flaws in the history of Batman’s character. The Batman and his city’s head of Police Detective’s have a great deal of mutual respect for one another, and neither thinks of the other as a rube. How, then, are we to believe that Jim Gordon, a cop respected by the Dark Knight Detective for his abilities, never deduced the identity of the Batman? The best part of this issue is a young Jim Gordon telling Bruce Wayne pretty explicitly that he knows just who he really is, and doesn’t care. This is likely the best statement of belief in The Batman’s mission we’ve seen in a long time from Gordon, and it saves the book.
Batman and Robin #0 deals with a more serious issue, and it’s nicely done in a book that’s been exploring one of the more interesting sides of Batman in a long time. The character has always been driven and dark to one degree or another; he’s also always been a mentor, most notably to Robin, but also to others, Batgirl included. He’s treated the “Bat Family” for years as soldiers, famously referring to them as such in Frank Miller’s seminal The Dark Knight Returns, among other stories. The new Robin is different, however, as he’s not just a boy the Batman trains and keeps as a partner: he’s Bruce Wayne’s own son. Granted, the boy was grown in a lab and trained by his very twisted mother Talia Al Ghul to be a deadly assassin and sociopath, but he’s got a lot of heart under all that 10 year old psychosis, and the Batman has been doing his best to get at it, discovering interesting sides to himself along the way. The journey of a man driven by the deaths of his parents to fight crime, all the while dealing with now being a parent himself, is one of the more deeply moving sagas in the New 52, made all the more harrowing by issue #0’s frighteningly brutal tale of Damian’s upbringing at his mother’s hands, and the lengths he went to just to be allowed to meet his father. This is the darkest Robin tale, of the darkest Robin in some time, so be warned.
Honorable mentions this week goes to Superboy #0 for the riveting historical perspective put on the Kyrptonian clone Kon-El, who’s donned the Big S to follow in his genetic progenitor’s footsteps. This does provide an interesting flaw in the usually revered Hero of all Heroes, as we learn he thinks of his clone as something vile, an abomination, and that even those regarded as the best among us can carry cultural prejudices. (Kryptonians have a societal prejudice against and fear of clones, who once waged war against their creators on Superman’s homeworld. The familiar part of Superboy’s name, “Kon” means “abomination” in Kryptonian.) Likewise, kudos go to Suicide Squad #0 for the origin story of Amanda Waller, the cut-throat, no nonsense government agent in charge of the band of Super-Villains forced to fight the good fight on missions they aren’t expected to survive. Amanda is a strong Black woman with a bitter outlook on life; she is no wallflower, but she’s so strong-willed she becomes unlikable, and her origin does little to convince us otherwise. On the other hand, she’s a female character we don’t often see, a more well rounded fully developed villain who isn’t motivated by something as petty as jealousy or lost love that we often see in the realm of comics.
Whew! Get all that? It was quite a week, and there’s more to come as the indie labels roll out new stories, and DC’s Zero Month marches on. Until next week, happy reading!
