PREVIEW: Batman #17

[Splatoz]

Did Snyder do personal interviews for every website on the internet?

[Seattle Freeze]

When did Snyder himself misdirect people in his words? In the interview I read, Snyder said he didn't plan to kill anyone because he knew it would be temporary. Sure he may have made people think that same as he made us think Lincoln March was Bruce's brother but he isn't behind the massive media build-up. The openning post says the major problem with the story is DC's marketting of it. Just as you can't judge a book by it's cover, you can't judge a book by the marketting campaign around it. That is my point.

[Seattle Freeze]

Based on the links in DC's facebook page article, I'd say 'yes'.

[RichSummers]

People are upset that DC marketed this as being a bigger deal than it was? That happens all the time....in just about every medium of entertainment from books, to tv, to movies, to wrestling. Of course they're going to tell you it's going to be epic....they want you to buy it. It's up to me as the reader to determine just how epic it is and whether the story and it's fall out justifies my dollars.

[godisawesome]

I'd say the biggest problem is how conditioned the comic book fan has become to the idea that a major character must "die" in order for an event to "count." I know that several people have legitimate complaints and I don't doubt that most of those who have a distaste for the book have a sincere dislike of the story, but it does come off as whining to me when the collective voice of parts of this board are trying to tear the book apart. It's not actually whining; I'm mature enough to understand that. But it really aggravates me how this book got a hatedom from some posters I deeply respect, or how some of you guys who I think are really sharp are convinced that we got cheated or deceived by somebody the last few months.

In universe, this tale did shatter the Bat family. For once, Bruce is being ostracized by his kids instead of shutting them out himself. In the wake of his highly successful reintegration of the family after his apparent death, including some kind of agreement with black sheep Jason, just at the point where it appears that Batman truly does value his family and desires their trust and faith and is even willing to make that effort, Joker waltzed in and just talked them into giving their father the cold shoulder. As a joke.

And I kind of think the hype that a lot of people were talking about was hype about the hype, from fans dissecting it and in some cases railing against it. But it worked. This is a Batman story that was highly successful and easily one of the best modern Joker centric tales of all time, in my opinion. I ranked this story an 8 in the poll, but that's because I just can't count any comic story as a 9 or a 10 in their regular medium, with very few exceptions, because to me the best Joker story has to involve Mark Hamill or Heath Ledger. I thought this story admirable demonstrated the Joker as a nasty, banal, and yet epically dangerous and frightening villain who really is an abyss of darkness in his soul. Ad I liked it better than Killing Joke because of tHat interpretation.

And I do wonder if, in regards to this arc, this board is less of a microcosm of Batman readers than usual. I used to be able to compare the DC Boards to this forum for a rough estimate of overall feelings on an issue, but with those shut down, I kind of wonder if there are enough different breeds of fans here to really capture everything.

[Rory426]

DC hype everything like it's going to be awesome. It's just nobody pays attention when it's about the culling in Teen Titans or whatever. I just read the books and see if I like 'em. I've been loving Batman so I'm happy :)

[JasonTodd428]

It's a pet peeve I have for writers to hype up how dangerous and villainous their take on the character it is by having the other characters crapping their pants and talking about how dangerous he is. In writing I like, there isn't a lot of that. If a writer I enjoy wants to get across how dangerous and threatening the villain is, they generally have the villain do dangerous and threatening things that show how dangerous they are now. What Snyder does is simply have the Bat-family tell the reader how bad and dangerous things are and expect the reader to just go "Oh man, if Batman is worried I better be to!"(or that is how it comes off to me). It's not about the character hyping another one, it's about the writer using the character to tell the reader how they should feel about the villain. Snyder wants us to believe his Joker is the most dangerous and threatening Joker that has ever walked the planet, so he has Batman tell us those things, rather then have Joker be surprisingly more dangerous and threatening. This conceit, paired with Batman's oafish and frankly(imo as always) stupid behavior enabling Joker's victories paints, to me, a conflicting view.

I don't think that Snyder was trying to tell the reader how to feel about the Joker because I would think long time readers would already know how they feel about the character without such intervention. Personally, I went into the story already believing that Joker is dangerous just from prior events that involved him so seeing characters within the story repeating something that I was already predisposed to feeling about the Joker beforehand, while a little heavy-handed, did not seem out of place or unusual to me. I would have been surprised if they hadn't said anything at all about him to be honest with you. The Joker is a crazy psychopath whose MO is fluid and a adversary who is very unpredictable. That is what makes him dangerous at the best of times. This coupled with the fact that he meticulously planned all of this makes him even more dangerous than usual as well as the fact that he was attacking not only Batman and Gordon but that he was coming after Batman's other allies directly, which is something he had never cared to do before. (Yes, he crippled Barbara and killed Jason but both of those attacks weren't about them, they were about getting to Gordon and Batman through them, which is a different thing altogether.) It's this that has caused Batman to be off his game in my own mind (just my opinion on this of course). As you say though YMMV on that.

By having Batman and co explain to us how dangerous Joker is, the writer is, imo, trying to get across a feeling of dread and terror and intrigue. However when it is just empty words telling us how to feel rather then the events of the story invoking those feelings within us naturally, to me it creates a cheap and hollow atmosphere. The danger isn't earned because we don't see it, it is merely conveyed to us by the characters and we are supposed to leave it at that. Batman says Joker is more dangerous and horrible then ever "Okay!" the reader is supposed to day. For me, I ask a question because the events of the story did not make me feel Joker was more dangerous then ever "Why?" I ask. What about him is so much more dangerous now? So I look at the story and I personally found nothing. So to me, that creates cheap and shallow stakes, the book relies completely on the reader feeling a sense of dread and terror that wasn't earned by the actions of the character, but instead is something we are told to feel by Batman.

I disagree. I felt completely the opposite about it but then again I didn't feel like anyone was telling me how to feel about Joker either. Joker always invokes a bit of dread in my simply because of all the mayhem and death he has caused in the past, particularly since he managed to kill one of Batman's allies, an action that has had a profound effect on Batman. I fail to see how anyone can go into a Joker story and not feel some sense of dread before even opening the book.

Your mileage may vary with that, but for me nothing in this story on the page had me going "WOW THIS IS UNLIKE ANYTHING I HAVE SEEN BEFORE IN JOKER". It was the same in court of owls where every character in Gotham is telling us how evil and powerful and dangerous the court is. But they literally do nothing but reveal themselves and lose. They have no depth, they take no actions to prove their might, they are simply built up by other characters and end up dying off panel because they are worthless(imo)

Again I disagree. If anything the fact that the Court was dangerous was something the needed to be stressed since they were a completely new thing. Again it was a bit overblown but a necessary thing though I do agree with you that they basically did nothing and proved not to be the threat they were said to be. I blame that on the fact that Talon was going to be a book that was going to concentrate on that aspect of the Court and maybe Snyder didn't want want to hurt that books chances by revealing to much. I think it might have worked out better if the two books had been in tandem with one another so that we could have actually seen how powerful and dangerous they were during some part of the CoO. It might have made the storyline a bit stronger.

As for the other characters, it's just a natural feeling I have that others may not share. When I see the other characters being involved and I see the events of one book start to spill into the others I naturally think "Oh this must be a big deal. If it weren't it would be dealt with in the Batman book by itself". And I fully believe/know that is the intention of involving those other characters is to show just how "big" and "important" things are. For me, I never felt like the story earned those feelings. Nothing about it was scaring me or blowing my mind or making me think "Wow this Joker means business now."

I don't necessarily feel that way myself about stories essentially spilling into other titles and with most crossovers I tend to only read the books I'm interested in reading. With Bat crossovers I read those books that are on my pull because it's pretty heavily Bat centric anyway but again I still don't read the books I'm not interested in. With CoO I felt having a lot of the books involved was pretty pointless. I can see involving Nightwing but none of the others made much sense to me and in a few cases I think it really disrupted the flow of the other books at the time. I feel the opposite about DotF.

As I said, your mileage may vary. But those are some of the problems I have with the story in relation to "hyping itself" within the pages.

Thanks for taking the time to respond and to explain your views. It's makes a nice change to not be immediately attacked by someone whose views are opposite to my own. I wish there could be more actual discussion instead of the usual snipping at each other that goes on in these posts.

[adkal]

The openning post says the major problem with the story is DC's marketting of it.

Yes, the opening post said that, but YOU said that Snyder couldn't 'control the hype generated by sources outside DC', and that is what I responded to.

Just as you can't judge a book by it's cover, you can't judge a book by the marketting campaign around it. That is my point.

Which, again, ignores the 'hype' put forward by the writer himself. Now, if you've only read one interview of his then you may not be aware of it, which is fine, but when there are a number of posters who have been saying that they're going to avoid his interviews because of his 'hype', then surely a small part of you at least has to consider that there is probably a basis for them saying that...

[Batman9]

I have just read it again, and I appreciate it even more. The ending to this exact issue is brilliant. I can feel the emotion

[Deason]

A lot of people are saying nothing changed. Partially true, no one was significantly wounded or shot or tortured or anything Killing Joke/DitF style. But the family's emotions and thoughts have changed, at least as we've seen so far. The coming issues will be the deciding factor. If they kiss and make up next issue, then yeah, I'd agree nothing changed at all. But say it takes through the Riddler arc to really be healed, and Family issues make things different and they choose not to be there for each other. If that's the case, then yes, this arc really did change the status quo.

An apparently endless stream of people have indeed been saying that "nothing changed". But it's mainstream superheo comics... nothing does change! At best there are temporary deviations from the status quo. (DC, when they killed Jason Todd, for a long time looked like they were going to break the mould and actually keep a change, but threw the opportunity away pointlessly by bringing him back)

Some few deviations last, or are remembered or referenced, for a couple of years, and a tiny handful may last a decade or more. But like a slightly stretched rubber band released from tension, the situation eventually snaps back. Always, always, always. Complaining about such a well-established convention is like complaining about movies that have music on their soundtracks, or unrealistically loud Foley sound effects for punches and kicks: it ignores the enormous inertia of reality.

So temporary deviations from the standard situation are the very best we can hope for. Anyone who's read comics long enough recognises that. That's the nature of the commercial serial beast. The product teases permanent change but never makes it. Only newbies are taken in, and their resentful sense of outraged betrayal when they discover their error can be palpable (and frankly, entertaining to watch :) )

That understood, there's no reason we can't have interesting, entertaining, well-crafted and surprising temporary deviations to enjoy. That's what it looks like we are being introduced to here: Batman being cut off by his family (rather than vice versa, which we have been shown many times before). This is indeed a significant change in the status quo. Is it temporary? Sure, but we have the opportunity to be entertained while it plays out over the next year or so.

Is it imaginary or inconsequential? No. It perhaps takes more imagination and emotional maturity to appreciate the implications of those "no one coming to tea" pages than some posters here may possess (I'd bet they resonate more with fathers than with childless youths), as is indicated by the plethora of overly literal, reductionistic summaries and complaints that "nothing happened", or that we have already returned to the status quo being posted.

[maxpower00044]

I have just read it again, and I appreciate it even more. The ending to this exact issue is brilliant. I can feel the emotion

I'm about to read the whole arc and all the cross-overs (except the RH & TT, Suicide Squad, and Catwoman issues. Wasn't a fan).

[Coal Tiger]

An apparently endless stream of people have indeed been saying that "nothing changed". But it's mainstream superheo comics... nothing does change! At best there are temporary deviations from the status quo. (DC, when they killed Jason Todd, for a long time looked like they were going to break the mould and actually keep a change, but threw the opportunity away pointlessly by bringing him back)

Some few deviations last, or are remembered or referenced, for a couple of years, and a tiny handful may last a decade or more. But like a slightly stretched rubber band released from tension, the situation eventually snaps back. Always, always, always. Complaining about such a well-established convention is like complaining about movies that have music on their soundtracks, or unrealistically loud Foley sound effects for punches and kicks: it ignores the enormous inertia of reality.

So temporary deviations from the standard situation are the very best we can hope for. Anyone who's read comics long enough recognises that. That's the nature of the commercial serial beast. The product teases permanent change but never makes it. Only newbies are taken in, and their resentful sense of outraged betrayal when they discover their error can be palpable (and frankly, entertaining to watch :) )

That understood, there's no reason we can't have interesting, entertaining, well-crafted and surprising temporary deviations to enjoy. That's what it looks like we are being introduced to here: Batman being cut off by his family (rather than vice versa, which we have been shown many times before). This is indeed a significant change in the status quo. Is it temporary? Sure, but we have the opportunity to be entertained while it plays out over the next year or so.

Is it imaginary or inconsequential? No. It perhaps takes more imagination and emotional maturity to appreciate the implications of those "no one coming to tea" pages than some posters here may possess (I'd bet they resonate more with fathers than with childless youths), as is indicated by the plethora of overly literal, reductionistic summaries and complaints that "nothing happened", or that we have already returned to the status quo being posted.

Where's the emotional maturity in an ending that is essentially the same as the ending to war games? I can see the need for imagination though, since whatever happened to turn the bat-family against Batman never actually happened in the book.

[maxpower00044]

I was under the impression that the things Joker said to The Family in the "dark" we're the cross-over issues.

[Coal Tiger]

I was under the impression that the things Joker said to The Family in the "dark" we're the cross-over issues.

Ugh, we were supposed to read those?

[Seattle Freeze]

Yes, the opening post said that, but YOU said that Snyder couldn't 'control the hype generated by sources outside DC', and that is what I responded to.



Which, again, ignores the 'hype' put forward by the writer himself. Now, if you've only read one interview of his then you may not be aware of it, which is fine, but when there are a number of posters who have been saying that they're going to avoid his interviews because of his 'hype', then surely a small part of you at least has to consider that there is probably a basis for them saying that...

I see people complaining about the high marks given the comic reviews saying how compelling and eventful issue #17 is. Snyder has no influence over how is product is reviewed or how great they say it is. He can allow himself to be interviewed or say he thinks he made a great product, but I've read more complains about the hype others have generated as opposed to the greatness Snyder himself has proclaimed.