Number 532



Ol' Metal Mouth is back


Iron Jaw was a great villain who kept coming back to plague Chuck Chandler, Crimebuster, Loover of the FBI, and even some crooks who got in his way. He was a take-no-prisoners kinda villain.

This comes from Boy Comics #13, December 1943. It's drawn by Norman Maurer, a staple of Charles Biro's comic book bullpen for several years. Maurer partnered up with Joe Kubert in the early 1950s. At St. John Publishing they unleashed 3-D comic books on the world.

Aside from the grisly splash panel Iron Jaw doesn't show up until late. The first part of the story is taken up by two low level criminals and their fence, Wart.

Try as I might I can't think of any other comic book of this era that had a villain yell "Damn you!" It's on page 15.


















Number 531



Clint Clobber's hectic day


DeWitt Clinton Clobber was a creation of animation director Gene Deitch for Terrytoons. Here's a 1957 model sheet Deitch did of the character.

"Clint Clobber's Day" is from Mighty Mouse Fun Club Magazine #5, 1958. It's funny, almost like a storyboard for an animated cartoon. Deitch, who relocated to Prague, Czechoslovakia in the late '50s, is considered a legend among animators. I find this artwork and style completely charming and evocative of that era of the 1950s when the cartoons were created.

Among his many other accomplishments Deitch had done a comic strip called Terr'ble Thompson for a short time in the '50s, then turned Terr'ble into the animated Tom Terrific, which I watched on the Captain Kangaroo TV show. Even in the late '50s I was too old to be watching a show which featured characters like Bunny Rabbit and Mr. Greenjeans. I just dug Tom and his dog, Mighty Manfred.

Deitch also has two sons, Kim and Simon, themselves legends amongst the comic community for their groundbreaking work in underground comix.






Must Batman be crazy? Superman uses his natural alien powers to protect Metropolis and finds time to marry Lois Lane in the process. Spider-Man swings across New York cracking wise as he goes. But Bruce Wayne dresses like a bat every single night without time off and makes it his utmost goal to strike fear in the hearts of his opponents -- and, as writer Grant Morrison posits, trains relentlessly to prepare himself for any eventuality he might ever face. For that kind of life to be believable in the comic book medium, must we also believe that Batman is inevitably insane?

In his much-acclaimed storyline Batman RIP, Grant Morrison sets as Batman's mind the battlefield for a war between Batman and his enemy the Black Glove. From the beginning of Morrison's run, the Glove has worked to drive Batman insane; in RIP, the Glove succeeds, but with the unforeseen consequence of pushing Batman to a hidden second persona. In this alternate guise, Batman recalls some of his strangest cases -- including Bat-Mite and the Batman of an alien world -- leading both Batman and the reader to wonder how Batman could have kept his sanity all this time.

It is at the point when Batman's newest paramour Jezebel Jet says she understands Bruce Wayne's pain that Batman suspects she's part of the Black Glove's trap; the implication is that Batman knows no one can ever truly understand him. Toward the middle of the book, Jezebel questions whether Bruce Wayne might be the Black Glove, challenging himself to a battle of wits, and indeed in this scene Batman does seem paranoid and self-destructive. Morrison succeeds in causing the reader to doubt Batman and making Batman seem insane, and now must either confirm this insinuation or refute it.

That Morrison reveals Batman has a long-time "scar on his consciousness" -- a post-hypnotic suggestion that may explain away his "grim and gritty" era -- only furthers the argument for insanity.

The arguments Morrison offers for Batman's sanity are varied and -- likely on purpose -- inconclusive. First, Morrison puts a great deal of pressure on Robin both in RIP and the "Last Rites" storyline included in the Batman RIP collection, as the force that's kept Batman sane all these years. Here, Robin is the yin to Batman's yang, the bright spot that keeps Batman's darkness from growing too great. There's also the sense that Robin speaks truths that Batman, captive to his own superheroic delusions, might not want to face, as when the young Robin Dick Grayson asks whether an apparent romance between Batman and Batwoman Kathy Kane might end the Dynamic Duo's partnership.

This is the same theory Jeph Loeb puts forth in Batman: Dark Victory, and it's sensible even as under heavy scrutiny it reflects poorly on Bruce Wayne himself.

Second, Morrison suggests -- as he did perhaps overmuch in his run on JLA -- that Batman always, invariably, one step ahead of his enemies, and therefore even his proposed insanity has a way of being sane. Morrison's characterization of Batman has always been as the uber-human, ever prepared; we learn in RIP that even Batman's craziest delusions, the impish Bat-Mite, have in their aspect a basis of reason. In one sequence, the Joker notes that whenever he escapes his prison box, Batman always manages to build another box around the first; in the fact that in RIP Batman even has a fail-safe personality for his enemies driving him insane, Morrison posits that what might seem like Batman's insanity to the reader is instead a super-sanity that neither we, Batman's allies, nor the Joker might ever truly comprehend.

This has the effect of making every Batman story that Morrison writes like an episode of Columbo, where the detective knows who committed the crime from the outset and it's incumbent upon the reader to catch up. As in Morrison's JLA: New World Order, Batman is never in as much real danger as the audience just thinks he is. The suspense of RIP comes in the reader's concern over Batman's state of mind, the hurt he might feel at the death of his loved ones or over a shocking betrayal, only for Morrison to reveal that Batman's been hip to the Glove's plan all along and that these things were never truly at stake.

It's these twists in the story's mystery that distinguishes it. At the outset the reader believes they're teamed with Batman (that is, we share the knowledge Batman has) against an unknown foe; when Morrison reveals that foe, it's a revelation that alters the reader's perception of the entirety of Morrison's Batman run, which is no small feat.

In the end, however, the reader learns that Batman's actually known the Glove's identity almost from the beginning. Whereas the reader thought we shared Batman's perspective solving the Glove's mystery, we actually only knew as much as the Glove solving Batman's mystery, and it's this turn that makes RIP a keeper. These aspects, which play with the reader's head as much as Batman or the Glove's, raise RIP above a story that, with Batman targeted by a mystery villain and condemned to Arkham Asylum, might otherwise feel "done before" to longtime Batman readers.

What also distinguishes Batman RIP is Grant Morrison's use of a number of Silver Age Batman stories (to be collected in a Batman: The Black Casebook trade paperback). "Robin Dies at Dawn" from Batman #156, "Batman -- The Superman of Planet X" from Batman #113, "The First Batman" from Detective Comics #235 and others are all out of continuity (or at least un-referenced) as of Crisis on Infinite Earths; Morrison's story brings them back, if even only as hallucinations in Batman's mind. I've greatly appreciated this post-Infinite Crisis trend in DC Comics to rejuvenate rather than sweep under the rug old stories of their characters (Brad Meltzer did this well in Justice League of America: The Tornado's Path as well), and these details are ultimately what make RIP a classic.

I don't believe Grant Morrison means for us to believe Batman is crazy, though ultimately I believe his arguments for insanity are stronger than his arguments against. The subconscious trigger with which Batman struggles in Batman RIP is "Zur En Arrh" or possibly, Morrison alludes in the end, "Zorro in Arkham." To be a hero in Gotham, Morrison suggests, perhaps you can't help but be a little nuts.

[Contains full covers, pages from DC Universe #0, sketchbook section.]

Next week kicks of Collected Editions' guest review month, featuring reviews of trade paperbacks and graphic novels from a variety of major and independent comics publishers, written by a great group of guest bloggers. Don't miss it!
Hello and welcome, Collected Editions readers! Thank you all for your continued feedback, comments, and support of the blog. We hit the four-year mark a couple months back, and we're still having a great time; none of it would be possible without our valued readers. I've especially enjoyed getting to talk with a number of readers and fellow comics bloggers lately via Twitter.

Couple things coming up on Collected Editions. First, tomorrow brings our review of Batman RIP. This is a book we've been eager to read for a while, and it's a review we're very proud of. Hope you enjoy and leave your own thoughts.

We're ending May big because starting next week is a new Collected Editions Guest Review month! All through the month of June we'll be featuring guest reviews from a bunch of great contributors, covering trade paperbacks and publishers you might not see as much on Collected Editions. All these reviewers worked very hard, so please reward them with your comments and links, and visit their own websites and blogs.

(If you'd like to write a guest review but missed the call for submissions, send an email to the address on the sidebar. We're always looking for posts!)

The main Collected Editions reviews will be back in July as we continue headlong toward our review of the Final Crisis hardcover. As always, thanks for reading!

Number 530


Kirby monsters


Jack Kirby worked for a time at DC in the late '50s before moving full-time to Marvel so he could completely reconfigure the comic book industry. He drew some terrific stories during his time at DC. For some reason he incurred their displeasure and his stay was short.

Jack came up with some wild-looking creatures in "The Creatures from Nowhere," originally published in House of Mystery #70, January, 1958. "The Stone Sentinels of Giant Island," from House of Mystery #85, April 1959, is a setting he had visited before. Even though this particular story doesn't take place on Easter Island, he chose its stone enigmas as a subject more than once.

The two stories are scanned from DC Special #11 from 1971.














Admittedly, I was predisposed to judge harshly Bruce Jones's Checkmate: Chimera, given the difficulties with his brief-but-disastrous stint on Nightwing. Indeed, in the end I think Checkmate fans might be better off thinking Checkmate ended with the previous volume, Fall of the Wall; there's nothing here quite so outlandish as Jones's tentacled mutant Jason Todd in Nightwing, but neither does the story rise to the bar set by writers Greg Rucka and Eric Trautman before.

Whereas much of Rucka and Trautman's Checkmate run focused on the Sasha Bordeaux, Mr. Terrific, and Amanda Waller (the Black Queen and the White King and Queen of Checkmate respectively), Jones centers his story on the Black King, and more specifically the Checkmate Pawns that function in the field. An explosive nearly kills military soldier Adam Sharp, and Checkmate recruits his body for their ultimate weapon program. Sharp, now called Chimera, is predictably unreliable and violent, and he fights armageddon brought inexplicably by the devil himself while Sharp's finance works to free him.

Given the previous focus on Checkmate royalty, I don't at all mind Jones turning instead to the Checkmate ground forces; my chief complaint is that there's little specificity here. The devil possesses one of the few named Pawns in the story early on, and the rest function like unnamed "red shirts" on Star Trek, there for collateral damage. This is a story told from the perspective of the Pawns, but it doesn't do much do show what the Pawns' lives are like.

Second, Chimera simply lacks the detailed politics of Rucka and Trautman's run. Jones introduces armageddon legends from a number of different cultures, but these seem incidental to the story; which monster attacks when doesn't turn the story as much as dealings between China and North Korea turned other Checkmate tales. Jones attempts some backroom dealings in the interaction between the Black King Taleb Beni Khalid and his Bishop the August General in Iron; while I enjoyed the spotlight on the August General, this basic interaction (they disagree; the General disobeys) missed the subtleties of what we saw before.

One bright spot in this story, I'd note, was the inclusion of the new Global Guardians. I've enjoyed how characters like the Guardians and the Great Ten have travelled from <52> to Green Lantern to Checkmate, and I'm glad Jones included them here. Of course, I could quibble that the Guardians are hardly fleshed out and sometimes their individual powers are confusing; also, while one strong part of Chimera are the devil's monsters as rendered by Manuel Garcia, often it was tough to tell one Global Guardian from another.

Checkmate had been one of my favorite new titles coming out of Infinite Crisis, and I'm sad that I can't recommend this last volume. It seems to be the case with Checkmate, Shadowpact, All-New Atom, Blue Beetle and more that a book will start strong, then DC Comics will replace the original creative team, then the book will shortly be cancelled. Don't get me wrong, sometimes the replacement teams do a good job, but I wish sometimes DC would pull the plug when the original team leaves (as with Gotham Central and Starman, for instance), rather than draw things out with mixed results.

[Contains full covers]

Coming soon ... a special announcement, and the Collected Editions review of Batman RIP!

Number 529


"...lately he's been overheard in Mayfair..."


You all know the song, don't you? "Werewolves of London" by the late Warren Zevon. I used to sing along when it came on the radio: "He's the hairy handed gent who ran amuck in Kent, lately he's been overheard in Mayfair.You better stay away from him, he'll rip your lungs out Jim. Huh! I'd like to meet his tailor. Aaaaahooooo, werewolves of London, aaaaahoooooooo..."

My friend Nix sent me these scans from the first Bentley of Scotland Yard in Pep Comics #1, January 1940. "Monster of Mayfair" is drawn by M. Gutwirth.

Thanks, Nix. Aaaahoooooo!