Breaking The Rules

Okay so this is kind of timely. You'll recall my recent post - the law of change vs superman - highlighted the fallibility of mainstream superheroes in that they are immune to development. Each character has a seemingly infinite number of problems to solve in their geographic landscape. Flash always has another Gorilla or fellow Speedster to find. Green Lantern has a whole universe of aliens picking fights with him. Batman has his asylum of nutbags which, in a touch of pop psychology, are costumed reflections of the caped crusaders original sin of idealizing vigilante justice. Much like the characters found in syndicated sitcoms and children's stories, the development of mainstream heroes is, to retool some old jargin; fridged. A Batman who put away his cape and cowl, or dies, is of no use to the publishers who rely on him to give Two Face the old one-two. 

On that subject...

A few months ago, the writer & artist team of Gerardo Preciado and Daniel Bayliss produced in an original Batman comic and put it up on their blog entitled "The Deal." Here's a link. In the short story they utilized the Batman myoths to tell a unique spin on the Joker-Batman relationship. It's short, dark, exploitative and - most of all - memorable. At the time I thought to myself: "wow, what a great idea it was to tell such a simple yet powerful story and make a name for yourself." It's not like they were exploring uncovered ground, Frank Millar has been publicly postulating the "latent homosexual nightmare" that is the Batman-Joker relationship since The Dark Knight Returns. Darling, that would never make it into the on-going series. That would be like Family Guy going off and killing a beloved character just for the media attention. Oh wait.

So today these two came out with another comic and I think it's just as good...maybe even a little better despite its length. Check it out on BleedingCool with a little analysis here.  Now what is this? Is it art? Is it exploiting the myoths? Both probably, but regardless of your opinion, it's memorable and it goes to the heart of what is wrong at the core of mainstream comic book culture. The stories don't end. The heroes are on a never-ending loop of similar adventures. Some die, then they come back or are re-tooled, some hook-up, but nothing ever changes. The humanity, or reality, of these characters is never fully explored. Why? Because Superman fights bad guys who show up every week and so does the Justice League and the Avengers. That's just what they do... and the day that stops happening is the day emotionally subnormal fans everywhere loses their collective minds and start asking questions that are not in accordance with what is best for business. The fish bowl, if you will, has curved glass because that's just what's best for business.  The target audience defines the content and the publishers have stock holders to think of...nuff said.