Roscoe's Public Notes

ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER #10, written by Frank Miller, drawn by Jim Lee, with a cover by Jim Lee and Scott Williams, and carrying an August 2008 publication date from DC Comics, is an extremely powerful book.

The book’s summary found at the publisher’s website:

Batgirl, Catwoman, Black Canary, and even Detective Gordon’s better half give Gotham a headache so big it’ll split the city in two!

… makes reference to a big headache. The action and its presentation here are so intense that not only Gotham City, but the poor reader could easily develop a headache.

In the best review of this issue I’ve found, at The Secret of Wednesday’s Haul, Scott rightly refers to “the train wreck quality of this book.” And he proceeds:

“It’s almost like the book and characters are out of the creators’ control and, like us, they’re relegated to watching what unfolds from the sidelines. … the real wreck still hasn’t happened yet but I want to be there when it does.”

The closest analogy I can come up with to the experience of reading this book is listening to the avant-garde jazz that John Coltrane was producing in the 1960′s. My first exposure to that music left me dazed and confused, overwhelmed and almost driven away. However, I was given some excellent advice by a musician with whom I was then living. He told me to focus my attention on what was being played by just one instrument or one musical theme, and let the rest of the sound produced by the ensemble form a background against which that one instrument played or a context within which that one theme moved.

Miller and Lee provide us with something similar.

In a panel on the book’s second page, as Jim Gordon walks through the fog, we see a raggedy-dressed old bum shuffling along reading from his Bible. The bum has no place in the plot, he’s just… there. Against the filth and pain of the City he’s holding onto what source of comfort and healing he can.

The Bible

Washed clean of all sin. Washed clean. Washed clean.

A few pages later we see the same old bum, doing the same old thing. Only this time he’s replaced his Bible with a bottle of booze.

The Bottle

Washed clean.

Washed clean.

Moving deeper into the book, we find a full-page graphic of Catwoman, beaten nearly to death by the Joker, and Batman holding onto each other.

The Batman

Don’t talk, Baby. You’re safe.

Just as the bum we saw earlier was holding tightly to his Bible and his bottle, Catwoman and Batman hold onto each other, hoping for safety and survival against the pain and violence that surrounds them.

At least, that’s the way I see it.

ALL STAR BATMAN AND ROBIN, THE BOY WONDER #10 will get a solid 1.0 ASB rating, the highest rating a comic book can possibly achieve.