Of all the Batman graphic novels I've read recently, my favorite to date is Paul Pope's
Batman: Year 100.
Really interesting, really beautiful, and certainly something that's given me a lot of food for thought. The graphic novel is set in 2039 - exactly 100 years after the original appearance of the Dark-knight Detective in “The Case of the Chemical Syndicate,” published in
Detective Comics #27 in May of 1939. A fact which has some significance with the storyline here. See what I have to say about it
here.
Of all the Batman graphic novels I've read recently, my favorite to date is Paul Pope's Batman: Year 100.
4 comments:
Hello,
Pardon me posting here and not on the actual blog your review resides on. I have to say that was really quite a good piece (along with both of your pieces on the Joker graphic novel and Lex Luthor Man of Steel). I have the good fortune of actually having read this when it came it out and I agree it is easily one of my favorite comics. Paul Pope really pulled out all the stops here and it's nice sometimes to leave a mystery hanging, especially in a comic like this as, inescapably, intertextual as it is.
And on another note I'll have to give both of the other books I mentioned a shot, esp. Lex Luthor. I have a soft spot for the old science-villain myself.
Hi Greg,
I enjoyed all three very much. I'd say the Luthor book is overall the best story, though right now I enjoyed the Batman more, because - it's Batman - and because I just read it yesterday. Joker was very interesting, and I am still mulling it over, even though it wasn't my Joker, if you know what I mean.
Yes, I do get what you're saying regarding the Joker, the character in the graphic novel does sound like quite a departure, but mainly because he isn't the Joker that comes to mind when you think of the character, your Ur-Joker if you'll forgive the term. Sometimes, though, such drastic departures are great food for thought, like the Doc Savage and Tarzan clones in Farmer's A Feast Unknown and its two sequels. I may not even like the characters but what he did and what he was saying still resonates in my mind. Even disagreeing with the interpretation doesn't invalidate it, as such, these characters can splinter, multiply, refract what have and still return to form.
I do love food for thought.
Exactly. Sometimes this sort of departure evolves the field. I think I would have liked it better if it's packaging and my anticipation didn't prepare me to regard it as "the next Killing Joke" (which it isn't) instead of an interesting aside (which it is). It's made to look like it ties in so directly with both current events and TDK, when this interpretation actually fits with neither.
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