Deconstructing Batman Odyssey

Though I'm not all that excited by his art, Neal Adams is recognized as one of the greatest comic artists of all time. He is credited with having rescued batman from the campy taint it picked up from the adam west television series.

He was recently contracted to write and illustrate a new 12 issue batman series. It turns out being good at illustrating comics doesn't mean you're a good writer.

Or sane.

So far he's released 6 of the 12 issue series and the plot is, uh, unique.

In issue 2 he beat up some bad guys while lecturing them on the benefits of a hydrogen economy.

In issue 4 a imposter manbat shows up and they fight while an unexplained paralled universe batman and robin (where batman is dressed like the huntress, and robin is a half dinosaur) stand by and watch.

Then a giant stingray jumps out of the ocean and stabs the fake manbat in the heart (ala Steve Irwin).

There is dialog, internal dialog boxes, and contridictory internal dialog boxes commenting on the other dialog boxes all fighting for space in each panel. I think there are at least three different plots but they all take place at different times, reference events we haven't been told about yet, and they are all told by a present day bruce who is naked and (this is not erotic at all) handling an ice-axe and eating a banana.

I think some of his stories are about times he told people stories and the internal monologue from all of these reference frames fight for control over the narritive.

Issue 6 ends with him interrupting a conversation to lay down and go to sleep on the batcave floor.

It took me 3 days to read through the first six issues of the series and the only thing that kept me going was this excellent deconstruction of the series so far.

The metafilter discussion has some people hoping this is a brilliant and elaborate example of Bruce Wayne's mental illness.

This is brilliant writing. What's the villian's name? MANIACO? And what do we see thus far? Batman losing his mind. Third-person omniscient contradicting third-person not-so-omniscient. He's playing with the story-telling medium. This is simply an extremely elaborate set-up, one of the best you-are-there moments of sitting inside a crazy-person's head that I've ever seen put to print. I might actually have to go against my comic embargo and pick up this series.

Check out the deconstruction of the series It's awesome.

posted by na on March 27, 2011 09:10