Knightfall

One thousand, nine hundred and thirty-two pages later, I am done.  That is 1,932 pages.  I read every one of them.  Honesty compels me to admit: I am glad to be done with this task.  I am also glad to have done this, but truth be told, it was a long haul.  The pages sprawl over three volumes; unfortunately, the first volume had the best part of the story.  About two-thirds of the way through, it felt like an endurance test. I enjoyed it, but it isn’t the sort of thing I would recommend highly to anyone.

The book: Batman: Knightfall

I stumbled on the series; after the last film in the Christopher Nolan trilogy, I was curious about the storyline where Bane breaks Batman.  Much to my surprise, the volumes containing the storyline were shockingly cheap on a per page basis.  These are three massive volumes for a relatively low price in the comic-book world.  So, I picked them up, and they have sat on my shelf for quite some time.  You see—they look long.  I finally decided I would just do it.  It took many months.  And now it is done.

What did I learn (besides the fact that you probably don’t want to replicate my feat)?

1. I feel enormous pity for those who wanted to read this storyline as it was coming out.  In a collected volume, it is easy—all the parts are there.  But, in the original format, it sprawled all over the place.  The problem is that there is not just one comic book series named “Batman.”  Instead, you have 1) Batman, 2) Detective Comics, 3) Shadow of the Bat, and 4) Legends of the Dark Knight.  Then the story also moves through the spin-off titles 1) Catwoman and 2) Robin.  Toss in 1) Showcase ’93 and 2) Vengeance of Bane.  That is a mess.

2. The Bane story, which was, after all, the whole reason I was interested in this thing in the first place, was a mixed bag—the best part of the storyline, but a bizarre contradiction in what motivates Bane.  Bane fancies himself to be the Supervillain to End all Supervillains.  So, he decides he must take on the Greatest Hero.  He must Defeat Batman.  This diabolical Supervillain, who is freakishly strong and cunning and certain he could beat Batman in hand-to-hand combat, does not just head to Gotham and have a showdown.  First he causes a major breakout from Arkham Asylum.  That way Batman will be worn out recapturing the whole panoply of Batman-villains before Bane faces Batman.  Then Bane breaks an exhausted, worn-out, battered, tired, bloodied Batman.  Where is the thrill in that?  By the time Bane beats Batman, I think The Penguin could have taken him down mano-a-mano.

3. Bruce Wayne is thus out of the picture about a third of the way through this series.  But, Gotham needs a Batman.  So he appoints Jean-Paul Vallery (aka Azrael) to be Batman while Bruce recovers.  It takes all of about 10 minutes before Jean-Paul is totally unhinged, and the new Batman because a marauding, uber-violent vigilante.  This is the silly season of the storyline—everybody starts wondering what happened to Batman—the guy has a new costume, acts like a total freak and people are wondering if this is the same guy?  Please.

4. Bruce comes back and beats Jean-Paul to reclaim the Batman title.  Also silly.  All Bruce had to do was don his original costume and keep the raving lunatic from reentering the Batcave.  The final confrontation between Bruce and the Pseudo-Batman ends in a kum-ba-yahesque, imagine we all just get along moments.  Painful.

5.  Then we get a goofy, “Hey! Let’s have Dick Grayson be Batman for a bit” moment—no apparent reason for that sideshow.  Finally at the end of volume 3, Bruce dons his Batman duds, and the whole seemingly endless sage is over.

Now, at this point, The Patient Reader is wondering: if this whole thing is as tedious as it sounds, why did I read it?  Indeed, as the Patient Reader often asks, why does someone who has been known to read a Great Book or Two waste his time on comic books?

As I have mentioned here before, I am fascinated with the superhero genre.  Even something as long-winded as this story presents moral problems is sharp relief.  The writing in this series isn’t as good as the writing in the best of comic books.  The art isn’t as good either.  But the central issues lurk.  In some ways it is like reading genre fiction.  In other ways it is like reading second or third rate history or philosophy or whatever.  Man cannot live on a steady diet of Faulkner and Wright and Hesse.  Man certainly can’t live on Piketty (Compared to Piketty, Batman: Knightfall is pure poetry…and yet nobody ever asks why I read Piketty). 

I suppose comic books are a bit like Vanilla Fudge; sometimes they are great, sometimes they are pale imitations of the originals, but even at their worst, they are entertaining.