From the Long Box: Shadow of the Batman #1, Part 3

Note: Click on any of the images to make them larger.

Shadow of the Batman #1
(reprinted from Detective Comics #470)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Art: Walt Simonson & Al Milgrom

Will we finally figure it out? It's...

"The Master Plan of Dr. Phosphorus"

Behind the times? Refresh your memory. Last we read, the maniacal villain Dr. Phosphorus was using his glowing malevolence to coerce the Gotham City Council into "removing the Batman". Let's see if he was successful.

One of the redeeming qualities about Batman over the years is how much he cares about Gotham City. It may not be any of the things that R. Kelly sang about, but it's his home and he's going to take care of it the only way he knows how. Crime is his only enemy. Large or small, it doesn't matter. Sometimes that means he's stopping a terrorist attack that threatens to give everyone "smoking stool syndrome", but it can also mean that he's just handing a common thief over to the police.


As we pick the story up, the target of Batman's endless pursuit of justice this night is one Smiley Royal. Beyond having a ridiculous name, it's difficult to tell what exactly poor Smiley's crime is. When we first meet him, he's trying to get into... Well, I'm not sure what it is, but he's using an exacto knife to do it so it can't possibly be legal.

No sooner has Batman turned this nefarious criminal over to the authorities than he is served with a subpoena to appear before the Gotham Grand Jury.


For those of you who haven't been exposed to as much Law and Order as I have, a grand jury is a body that determines whether there is enough evidence for a trial. Given his line of work, it's entirely plausible that Batman is asked to appear in court to provide evidence against criminals all the time, but that's not what's happening here. Upon returning to the hospital to check on Commissioner Gordon and Alfred (both poisoned back in part 1), Dr. Bell tells him that Boss Thorne and the City Council is out to "close down" vigilantes like him. The grand jury is collecting evidence against Batman himself. Dr. Phosphorus's "master plan" begins to reveal itself -- remember that pressure he applied to Dr. Bell (also a City Council member) back in part 2?

Meanwhile, over in Sprang Memorial Arena another act of phosphorus-based terrorism is perpetrated, but this one goes unchecked. The joint is packed for an apparent Little Richard cover band ("Wop bop a lu bop a lop bam boom" being the only lyrics we get to see) when suddenly Dr. Phosphorus's skeletal visage is projected by the band's laser light show. It seems that he's sealed the arena and released his poisonous phosphorus fumes into the ventilation system.


No one comes to save the day. Hundreds die. Why? Just the next phase of Dr. Phosphorus's insane vendetta against the citizens of Gotham City.

Back in the Bat Cave (which I feel obligated to mention is in a half-finished subway station under downtown Gotham in this incarnation), Batman reflects upon the events of the past few days. Unfortunately, instead of enjoying any sort of detective element in this story we inadvertantly stumble upon a clue to advance the plot when the Geiger counter (everyone should have one) starts clicking when Batman comes near it. It's a bit like an early Hardy Boys mystery really, where the reader is one step ahead of the detectives the whole way and it's only dumb luck which cracks the case.


The beauty of this moment is that he's entirely unconcerned that he's been exposed to enough Beta radiation to burn him. The important fact here is that this means Dr. Phosphorus is radioactive in nature, and there's only one place in town where someone could be exposed to radioactivity.

This train of thoughts is interrupted by an urgent call from the police. It's not Commissioner Gordon, since he's still in the hospital. Police Chief O'Hara is on the other end of the line with a warning for our hero. Word has come down from the City Council that the police are not to cooperate with Batman anymore.


I'm by no means a Batman historian, but it seems like this conflict is an element of most good Batman stories. It plays heavily in the second half of "The Dark Knight", and it makes an appearance here. How do the law, government, and the public handle vigilantism? There's often a fine tightrope to be walked between cooperation and making sure the help doesn't break too many rules. (For a modern meditation on this theme, I highly recommend "Kick-Ass". If I'd been writing back in April, you would have heard more about it.) In this case, it's clear that the police still respect and want to help our hero, but their hands are tied by Boss Thorne's corrupt city government.

A quick jaunt in the Batboat takes us to the offshore nuclear plant that we saw in Dr. Phosphorus's origin story. There are two notable things about this: 1) The power plant is in remarkable shape for something that just had its core crack open in the recent past. So much for continuity. 2) The plant is swarming with mean-looking thugs with weapons. Batman, not spoiling for a fight, moves along.

Englehart reaches into the well-worn bag of tricks here and breaks out the Bruce Wayne, playboy persona. As cover for a closer investigation of the power plant, he throws a massive party on his private yacht. Per usual, Gotham's elite attend. Among the guests are Boss Thorne, Dr. Bell, and one Silver St. Cloud.


For those not in the know, to many Batman fans Silver is his Lois Lane: the one that he is fated to end up with. Congratulations, you've just witnessed her first appearance. I'm not entirely sure why everyone is such a fan, as I don't recall her being a particularly well-developed character the first time I read this a few years ago. Perhaps I'll feel differently this time around.

With an hour to investigate before dinner is served, Batman dons his Bat-Wetsuit and stealthily swims back out to the nuclear platform. To cut a long fight scene (3.5 pages) short, he goads Dr. Phosphorus out of hiding, they tussle, and the mad doctor falls to his apparent doom in the very reactor core that originally spawned him.


I know that if I were ever transformed into a supervillain by a horrific accident, I'd certainly use the place where it happened as my not-so-secret hideout. Especially since in this case the core breach has apparently been repaired and it's going to open for use sometime soon. Either that or the thugs there have no problem being dosed with the radiation emitting from the leaky core. Eh, maybe he's hoping lightning will strike twice and he'll be knocked another rung up the periodic table. "Beware! It is I, the insidiously stinky Dr. Sulfur! Mwa ha ha ha!" Let's just hope that's the last we see of that guy.

Our story wraps up with Bruce Wayne's return to the yacht. He runs into Silver again, they share an embrace (What a player!), and... Hmm, what does she suspect?


In our next installment, we'll take a brief side trek to enjoy the backup story (a short story used to fill out the page count in a comic) from this issue. All aboard! Next stop: "Hell Park".

From the Long Box: Shadow of the Batman #1, Part 2

Note: Click on any of the images to make them larger.

Shadow of the Batman #1
(reprinted from Detective Comics #469)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Art: Walt Simonson & Al Milgrom

Could it be? It's been long awaited...

"The Origin of Dr. Phosphorus"

If you're wondering what the heck any of this is about, you have some catching up to do. First of all, I need to do some catching up of my own. It turns out that last time around I forgot to introduce a character that plays a bigger part in this second installment, Dr. Bell of Gotham General Hospital. Here he is in a brief moment with Commissioner Gordon. A real mover and shaker, no?


Anyway, back to the story at hand. The night after Batman and Dr. Phosphorus fought to a standstill at the Gotham City Reservoir, we join the vengeful doctor as he bursts in on the private residence of Dr. Bell. Apparently before he became the walking, talking embodiment of living phosphorus, Dr. P was an old colleague of Bell's: Dr. Sartorius. The catch being that everyone thinks Sartorius is dead. I'm a little relieved to be honest. This keeps me from asking the question of where a glow-in-the-dark skeleton could possibly have obtained a doctorate.


Sartorius used to be a mover and shaker, too. He had a posh $200,000/year ($700,000/year in today's dollars) private practice, and he was a member of the powerful Tobacconists' Club. Not having lived through the 70s, I can't attest to the existence of clubs centered around the smoking of pipes and cigars. In today's increasingly smoke-free society, however, this concept is either unpopular or so underground that it doesn't surface on the Internet. Here it's presented as a place for powerful men to get together and broker back room deals with one another. I'm sure places like that still exist today.


The government apparently took a sizable chunk out of Sartorius' Park Ave lifestyle every year, so he went to one of Gotham's most powerful, City Council President "Boss" Rupert Thorne, to see what he could do about that. Thorne proposed that he sink his money into Gotham's proposed new nuclear power plant. It was going to be set up as a tax shelter, but only the insiders at the Tobacconists' Club knew about it so far. This was right in the middle of the nuclear plant building boom of the 1970s, so I'm sure it seemed like a wise investment.


But the people of Gotham protested, as people are wont to do, and a referendum was placed on the ballot. Despite some brutal electioneering by Thorne and his people, the proposal was approved and the nuclear consortium was forced to build their plant outside of Gotham City on an offshore platform three miles out in the Atlantic. Building the plant offshore with a new design requires more funding and higher costs lead to cutting corners. Never a good thing when it comes to playing with nuclear power. You can see where this is headed, right?


The night after the reactor core was installed, Dr. Sartorius was out at the plant inspecting his investment. I don't know what a medical doctor knows about generating nuclear power, but an investor needs to inspect what an investor needs to inspect apparently. Conveniently, he was out there alone during some kind of unmanned test fire of the reactor. This setup seems like the soirt of thing OSHA should be notified about. I don't think you'd find me skulking about a nuclear reactor that was still under construction. Heck, I probably wouldn't skulk about a fully operational nuclear reactor. As a result, he was the only one there when the core cracked open and the whole thing exploded.


In a futile effort to escape the blast, Sartorius dives behind a pile of sand bags for cover. When the reactor blows, the silicon in the sand is blasted up the periodic table one notch (gaining a proton and at least three neutrons) to become a radioactive isotope of phosphorus which is driven through his body creating his new ghastly, glowing skeleton. We'll overlook the facts that sand isn't made from pure silicon and atomic science doesn't actually work that way because hey, this is just a comic book and a goofy origin story at that. In truth, this is a cautionary tale about the dangers of nuclear power and the corrupting power of big business. For a 1977 story penned before the disasters at Three Mile Island and Chernobyl, it turns out that it was a rather prescient warning. Not that there are any walking, talking skeletons of living phosphorus out there as a result of those. Are there?


You see, Dr. Phosphorus just wants revenge against those that ruined his life and turned him into this monstrosity: the City Council for encouraging him to invest in the nuclear plant and the citizens of Gotham for forcing the plant to be built offshore. Not a big believer in personal responsibility, Phosphorus has added a new item to his agenda of revenge: Batman. I guess if you foil somebody's revenge plot you're likely to just get added to their list. And that's why Phosphorus has come to Dr. Bell. Being a member of the City Council with a way to contact "Boss" Thorne, Bell is just the sort of weak-minded individual who would help "remove the Batman" from Phosphorus' path. On that note, we're forced to wait until our next installment of Shadow of the Batman to see what's in store for our caped hero. Just how does Bell intend to remove the Batman? Tune in next time.

Watchmen Expectations

It's official. I just purchased tickets for tomorrow's 1:10 showing of Watchmen on the IMAX at the Minnesota Zoo. In preparation for the experience, I finally got around to reading the acclaimed Alan Moore (V for Vendetta, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, From Hell) comic that it's based on. It's every bit as good as all of the hype suggests. However, if you're going to see the movie and have only seen the various trailers and commercials, you're being misled.

Despite its appearances, Watchmen is not your typical slam-bang, action-packed superhero story. The movie is supposed to be pretty faithful to the source material, so let me issue some warnings now. At its heart, Watchmen is a whodunnit. You shouldn't know the who until sometime in the 2nd half, and you won't know the why until very close to the end. Most of the time the bad actors are well established going in (Look, it's Magneto! Hey, there's the Joker!), but that won't be the case here. Instead, you'll be presented with five heroes with very different world views. In the end, you'll have to decide which one you agree with most.

There are a lot of characters and an alternate timeline to deal with, so I thought I'd assist by giving a brief, spoiler-free primer. If you want to go in completely blind, feel free to skip this part. Needless to say, I'm looking forward to this movie.

Most of the timeline changes will be covered in a montage during the opening credits, but here are a couple high points:
- Masked heroes first appeared on the streets in the 1940s
- The US won the Vietnam War
- Masked heroes were outlawed by the Keene Act in 1977
- The year is 1985, it's the height of the Cold War, and Richard Nixon is still President

The story is likely to jump back in forth in time from present-day (1985) to various points in the past, but the main heroes fall into two main waves: the Minutemen from the 1940s and the Crime Busters (Watchmen in the movie) from the 1960s.

Minutemen:
- Hooded Justice: Identity unknown. The original masked vigilante, disappeared under mysterious circumstances during the McCarthy era.
- The Comedian: Identity unknown. Active employee of the US government; went to Vietnam.
- Nite Owl: Hollis Mason. Retired, owns a car repair shop. Wrote a memoir about life as a superhero.
- Silk Spectre: Sally Jupiter. Typical sexpot superheroine, very commercial.
- Captain Metropolis, Silhouette, Dollar Bill, Mothman - not important.

Watchmen:
- Dr. Manhattan: Dr. Jon Osterman. The one true superhero with powers. Due to an accident at a US government lab, he gained the ability to manipulate time and space at the subatomic level. Works for the US government; is the reason Vietnam was won and is a one-man nuclear deterrent in the Cold War.
- Ozymandias: Adrian Veidt. "Smartest Man Alive", he retired from the hero business before the Keene Act. Is now a successful businessman.
- Nite Owl: Dan Dreiberg. Inspired by the original Nite Owl, was forced into retirement by the Keene Act.
- Silk Spectre: Laurel Juspeczyk. Daughter of the original Silk Spectre, trained for the job at a very young age, forced into retirement by the Keene Act. Works for the government as Dr. Manhattan's "companion".
- Rorshach: Identity unknown. Still active despite the Keene Act, known for his brutal methods, former partner of Nite Owl.

I'll try to post again tomorrow after I've seen it with a brief review.

From the Long Box: Shadow of the Batman #1, Part 1

In the first of what is hopefully a long series of posts where I get off my butt and talk about some of my favorite (and not so favorite) comics from my collection, I'm going to pay homage to The Dark Knight (in theaters again on 1/23/09) by starting with a classic Batman tale from yesteryear. Shadow of the Batman is a 5-issue miniseries from 1985 that reprinted 10 late-70s issues of Detective Comics. When first published, these issues were dubbed by some as the "definitive Batman" and served as some of the inspiration for both Tim Burton's Batman and Batman: The Animated Series. Is it really all that good? Let's just say it takes a little while to get warmed up.

Note: Click on any of the images to make them larger.

Shadow of the Batman #1
(reprinted from Detective Comics #469)
Writer: Steve Englehart
Art: Walt Simonson & Al Milgrom

Before I get into the story and art specifically, I'd just like to take a second to talk about the writing style used by Englehart in these comics. There are a few schools of thought people use when writing a comic. Some writers prefer to use thought bubbles so you can see what each character is thinking and how they're reacting to events. Others find that approach lazy and assume that the combination of dialogue and art are enough to adequately explain what's going on. Still others insert a narrator to describe the action and set the tone of the story.

Trends have changed over the years. Thought bubbles were popular in the 80s and 90s, but have since become passé. As a result, you'll rarely find anything other than dialogue in modern comics. Back in the 70s and before? The narrator still reigned supreme. Englehart serves as an entertaining narrator here providing a lot of the action that drives us through the story. Some of the word choices end up dating it a bit, but they only add to the fun of the experience. You just can't get away with lines like "Don't judge him too quickly, amigo!" anymore. It's a good thing he's entertaining, too, because the story in this first issue is sadly lacking.

This reprint series is notable for its format which includes wraparound covers and absolutely no ads. That makes me slightly sad since part of what makes 80s comics so great are the ads for really ancient stuff. I'll try to share some of those when I get to other series in the future.


The cover is drawn by the great Marshall Rogers whose work we will see on the interiors, too, starting with Shadow of the Batman #2. A grim-faced Batman swings through the rooftops of Gotham City and out of the cover as a freaky glowing skeleton reaches out for him. Maybe we'll find out who all these folks on the back cover are inside.

"...By Death's Eerie Light!"


It's not often that trouble comes right to Batman's door, but this story starts with a bang as Batman's butler Alfred unexpectedly passes out while bringing him a refreshment. I love the jarring angle of Alfred's legs sticking up in the air in this picture. Whatever knocked him out must have been a doozy to make him take a fall that bad.

Unfortunately, no ambulances are available in Gotham City as an unknown epidemic is sweeping through the city. According to the New York Times, as of 1987 the real life New York City had a fleet of 170 ambulances. I don't know how many of those were typically in use at any given moment, but it at least gives an idea as to the scope of the outbreak. After delivering Alfred to the hospital as Bruce Wayne, Batman learns from the medical staff that in the last hour over 50 people have been admitted with a mysterious sickness that "sweeps through the body like wildfire". A quick chat with Commissioner Gordon reveals that the police have received this ominous note from somebody named Dr. Phosphorus:


I'll talk more about this Phosphorous character later when he actually shows up, but for now I'll just state that I hope I'm never so furious that I have to underline random words for emphasis when writing an angry note. Righteous wrath, indeed!

After some quick detective work, Batman comes to the realization that the sickness is spreading through the city's water system, but he's not quick enough to save Commissioner Gordon from slipping into a coma, too. If we stop for a moment to use our own deductive skills, we might come to the conclusion that someone's putting phosphorus into the water system. It's flammable, it glows green in the dark, and it's highly toxic when ingested. Anything involving the phrase "smoking stool syndrome" seems like a bad thing. Will Batman be able to save the residents of Gotham City in time? He rushes to the city reservoir to find...

Dr. Phosphorus
Yes, it's the freaky glowing skeleton we saw from the cover. Why writers feel the need to make up their own silly villains when they first take over a title I'll never know, but you see it all the time. I'm sure Englehart got the Batman assignment and thought, "Let's see... the Joker, Penguin, Riddler? Nah! I'll go with my own fantastic creation: Dr. Phosphorus!" There must be some egotistical need to feel like you've added something to the Batman mythos instead of just telling a good story with the tools you're given. Luckily, he strays back into more mainstream territory in future installments.

Since we're stuck with him for now, let's see what makes the good doctor tick. Body of "living phosphorus"? Check... whatever that's supposed to mean. Its main side effect is that he burns when exposed to air making hand to hand combat difficult for his opponents. It also means that he was able to poison the entire city in one fell swoop by soaking his toxic body in the reservoir. Why would he want to do that? It's not entirely clear. It seems that he's seeking vengeance for some unnamed act: "I am sworn to destroy it, as it has destroyed me!"

Batman brawls with him for awhile, burning his hands in the process until he realizes that wrapping his fists in his cape provides better protection. Apparently the cape is made of tougher stuff than the standard issue Bat-gloves. When Dr. Phosphorus comes to the realization that neither of them is going to win the fight, he runs away with the age-old excuse of not wanting to kill Batman in their first encounter claiming that it would ruin "the thrill of the game". Yeah, yeah, we've heard it all before. I guess there's probably not a lot you can do in a world where it's difficult to kill anyone permanently.

Our story concludes with Batman standing... defiantly? I'm not really sure what that stance is supposed to say, but for a story featuring such dynamic art it sure goes out with a whimper in the end. We're also left with some questions. Who is this Dr. Phosphorus guy and why does he want to destroy Gotham City? How the heck does Gotham plan on filtering all of that phosphorus out of the drinking supply? Will all the people (Alfred, Commissioner Gordon, etc.) who've fallen into a coma and suffered liver damage pull through? Do we really care? Eh...

All in all, it wasn't an auspicious debut. Englehart introduced a silly villain and told a straightforward action story. My definitive Batman has more subtlety than this, so we'll hope for better in future installments.

The Astounding Wolf-Man

It was Free Comic Book Day last Saturday, so I expect that all of you ran out to your local comic shop to pick up some free swag, right? Right. If you did, you may have picked up the first issue of Robert Kirkman's latest offering from Image Comics, "The Astounding Wolf-Man". For those of you not in the know, Kirkman is the guy who's written recent classics like Invincible, The Walking Dead, and Battle Pope. Yes, that last one is as silly (and sacrilegious) as it sounds.

There's not much to write home about, as it's your typical werewolf story: man gets bitten, man changes into wolf-man at the full moon, wolf-man gets trained by a vampire (wha?). Since it was free I thought I'd take a look, but I don't think there's anything here that's going to make me spend $3+ every month. I probably enjoyed the art more than the story. It has a bold, angular style and some nice monochromatic pallettes for the wolf-man pages. This one in particular makes me think of Ralph from Rampage scaling one of the many buildings.

I wish I had a scanner. If I did, I would show you that yesterday's prediction of a bunny being next came true. I couldn't help but laugh when the wolf-man bites the head off of some poor unsuspecting rabbit while roaming the countryside. You gotta love coincidences.

Anyway, my advice is to skip it. I'll try to talk about a better comic next time.