Re: RARA-AVIS: Da nah nah ne nah ne nah....BATMAN!

Mari Hall (found.dead.in.texas@airmail.net)
Mon, 20 Apr 1998 17:21:27 -0500 Anthony Smith wrote:
>
> > By the way, anyone expecting the cheesy, gimmicky cornball antics of the
> > sixties TV series will be blown away by the various Batman comics
> > available these days. Many recent storylines could be called hardboiled,
> > and some almost noirish, by almost any definition of those words. Not
> > bad for a comic featuring a guy dressed as a flying rat.
>
> Well, I'll agree with you here. Batman is a surprisingly great detective
> read when the writers put away the crossover gimmicks, Robin, and the
> silly, high tech, destroy the world villains. The newest artwork from
> Kelly Jones is magnificently dark, moody, impressionistic.
>
> Of course, there's always Frank Miller's Dark Knight, a really literary
> piece of comic work, a classic. Miller has gone on to greater noir heights
> with Sin City (even more hardboiled than Spillane and Ellroy).
>
> Personally, I can't see reading a Batman story without the art. Just
> doesn't work as well for me there. I like to see how the artist interprets
> the story in those.
>
> A. Smith
> #

Vachss's BATMAN was about of course "child abuse" and why--his mother
made him do it--BATMAN fought child abuse. Vachss basically used the
character for a story-line, which in MHO was pretty good. I thought it
gave a different take on the life of BATMAN

-- 
whose DOROTHYL nom is Kate Warne the ex-Pinkerton in
The Woman With the Rose Tattoo by Mari Hall
See y'all at Bouchercon 29 in Philly Oct.1-4
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