davramlocke's Reviews (777)

Well drawn and interestingly written. It's a Dark Knightlian version of Dickens' Christmas Carol. The narrator tells old Scrooge's story, for the most part, while Batman runs around Gotham doing things that mostly line up with the three spirits of Christmas that Scrooge deals with. It's well done, if forced, and a good read for the season or just as an alternative to the same tired story you've been reading about or watching for the last decade(s). The art style is very clean and realistic, though something about it bothers me, maybe just that's it's too comic bookish and my idea of Batman in comics is not the serial kind but rather the Frank Miller/Jeph Loeb inspired look that is less realistic and more artistic.

On the whole though, not bad.

I feel this book is misleading or dishonest or perhaps just unclear. I enjoyed reading through it, and the style is clear and interesting enough to look at, but it never really takes a stand on anything. It's a book that wants to impart some type of wisdom and then never makes it clear what that wisdom is.

At the center, it's a conflict a young man faces about whether to continue his dead father's dream that he become a doctor. He doesn't enjoy it. He enjoys playing video games, and is good enough that he could make a career of it and does for a short time (yes people get paid to play video games these days). At times it praises video games, and for many of the right reasons. At other times it damns them, and I can't figure out why. Even the damning parts praise the genre, despite the context in which they're damned, and I suppose that's why I couldn't really endorse this book in the end, as much as I liked its subject matter.

It feels strange to give Murakami anything less than five stars, but even he has said that his first two novels weren't his best by any means. I think I enjoyed Hear the Wind Sing more, but they're very similar, even featuring the same characters, mostly. I think the joy in reading the two comes more from reading lyrical prose, writing that's enjoyable in and of itself without any need for a story because neither of the books has any type of cohesive story. They have great moments and beautiful words, but nothing sticks together very well. That isn't to say that they aren't great books because even four stars is a great book. They just aren't as Murakami-level as his later stuff.

Still top notch.

The Batman Files reading spurred me on to read this interesting journey of Batman's supposed death and trip through time, and I'm left wondering what exactly these new writers have done to our beloved Batman. I'm pretty okay with multiple Robins and Batgirls and Batwomen and every other superhero that he seems to involve and invent, but Grant Morrison basically turned Batman's story into a science fiction that not only doesn't make sense, but doesn't make sense in terms of what and who Batman is. There was a thread in this collection about how Batman can and will survive anything, even a trip through time, and I could definitely appreciate that. I also liked seeing him in different incarnations. Cowboy Batman and 1950s gangster Batman were particularly fun. But the conclusion and even the original "death" of Bruce Wayne, an event that the entire DC Universe seemed to have been involved with, all felt very ridiculous.

I suppose the truth is that I like my Batman set apart from that universe. I like a Batman who sticks to Gotham City, who fights the Riddle and the Joker and Two-Face and doesn't join any Justice Leagues and doesn't have to deal with gods and super-superheroes. Batman is a man, and while even these deities seem to respect him and all he's accomplished (and he beats Superman's ass every time they clash), I still prefer him as a mortal being dressed in a costume dealing with psychopaths and criminals. The best Batman stories have been just that.

If we're going to throw Batman into space and make him a sci-fi channel mockery, we might as well just kill him off and be done with it. Let him die a hero and not live long enough to be his own villain.

Everything about this book, labeled as a comic strip narrative, is simple. The drawing is simple, the lines are simple, the story is simple, and the dialogue is simple in the extreme. However, beneath its simplicity lies a surprisingly intimate portrait of a man growing up in a dysfunctional way, and while many such stories will attempt to sugar coat such drama with a happy ending, Brown does no such thing, and his tale ends like it begins; with neutrality. The story is autobiographical, with names changed to protect the innocent, and it doesn't hide anything about the Chester Brown who writes it. That said, there is a quality of self-deprecation here that you wouldn't find from most authors. How Chester Brown sees himself is not necessarily how the world sees him, but he does a marvelous job of capturing that self-deprecation without ever showing off as an artist or author.

This is apparently one of the tamest Brown graphic novels, and I'm looking forward to obtaining the others to see just what dark paths these simply drawn characters wander down.