Batman #663: It's hard to say if it's sad or if it's funny...

I finally got around to reading this thing last night:

It's four things:

1. Weird
2. Ugly
3. Gross
4. Confusing

The writing was...fine...but this was...not...what I like to read. It was lacking...a comic book.

I don't know how you felt about Arkham Asylum, but I did not like it. I guess I only like my Batman stories to be marginally disturbing and dream-like.

The real shame is that this "comic" seems to be chronicling an important event, but we don't get to see any of it. Instead we see this:

Which kind of looks like it's missing something. Like, say, this:

Grant Morrison is a great writer, and there are some good lines and interesting parts of this novella. I'm also impressed that he had time to pump out this much text considering how many books he's writing right now. I'm not against experimentation, but I am against...this. I think it's at least 80% artwork that makes me dislike this. But not entirely because I did find myself repeatedly flipping to see how many pages I had left to read.

Overall...didn't this whole thing just smack of the 90s? Anyone?

A Super Valentine for You!

One last Lois Lane post, because it's Valentine's Day. This one is kind of a grab bag.

First, despite the editor's previous assertions that a woman can't keep a secret, there was an imaginary story that had Lois marry Superman, with this very reasonable explanation of what made Superman change his mind:

So there you go. Everybody wins, and the Kents can now start a long and happy marriage in separate beds:

And Lois, of course, is now a full-time housewife. And Superman always takes the time to solve problems on the home front. Like when his wife burns dinner.

That panel where he's telling her to smile if she wants a Super Kiss creeps the hell out of me. Especially since I associate super kissing with memory erasing, thanks to Superman II.

Not everything is super kissing and eye-broiled burgers, though. Sometimes Lois gets jealous. Like when Superman has to give a plaque to a famous actress, and gets a hearty "thank-you."

Lois is HARDCORE.

I love it when they fight. Let's see a few panels of that (from Lois Lane #38):

This next one really cracks me up. I think it's a combination of Superman's pose and expression, the venetian blinds, and the fact that Lois is even trying to keep him out.

Or maybe it's what Superman's saying.

These next panels prove that Lois and Superman's fights are far more interesting than the ones I have with my boyfriend.

Hardly any of our fights include the line "I'm going to take you to that distant small planet and clear myself!" And only one of them ended with me being placed in a plastic bubble and carried into space, arms folded and pouting.

In conclusion, I want to share this random panel that proves that Superman is totally, totally creepy and weird:

Everybody Knows That No Woman Can Keep a Secret

Even more...

All I want to do lately is read old comic book letters pages.

This response is truly amazing:
Give this editor a raise! Clearly he's the right man for the job of overseeing a comic book for girls.

Thank God for girls like Margie Loughran of NYC. She is clearly rad and I would love to hang out with her:

Smoke it, DC. Smoke it hard.

This is for Ethel Guiness, Wherever You Are

Well, this just breaks my heart.

Here we have this clearly awesome young lady writing to DC Comics in 1959 with some adventure ideas for her hero, Lois Lane. She suggests some fun careers (since, y'know, anything goes in the wacky Silver Age).

Then we get this very depressing response:

Reach for the stars, little Ethel!

The worst part is that I'm pretty sure the writers did end up stealing all of Ethel's ideas in later issues.

Let's Get Ready to Tumble!

Er...did, um, "tumble" used to mean something else? In the fifties?

Cause otherwise the Comics Code Authority was a little looser than I thought.

Eyes of White

I was checking out the novelization of Infinite Crisis, which is I guess for people who like superheroes but hate looking at them. I would like to offer this passage, which has Superman meeting up with Batman:

A solitary figure waited for him on an elevated walkway at the centre of the ravaged nerve centre. A stark black cloak and cowl were draped over the man's equally black body armour, so that he blended in with the shadows thrown by the faint blue light. Opaque white lenses concealed his eyes.

So, the stand out line here is opaque white lenses concealed his eyes. My thought when reading it was really? Has that been decided, then? The eyes of Batman have always been a subject of debate. There are basically two schools of thought:

1. He wears a mask with white, opaque lenses to conceal and protect his eyes.

2. He wears a mask that does not have lenses, because that would obstruct his vision. His eyes are just whited out in comics for aesthetic reasons.

For the most part, Batman's eyes are white when he wears the cowl. But the same goes for, like, a million billion other superheroes. I doubt Green Arrow has lenses in that little mask. It just looks cool when the eyes are whited out, and it's easier to draw.

In all Batman movies, and in some comics, the eyes are visible (Lee Bermejo and Alex Ross both show the eyes in their art, for example). Batman Begins had some grease paint around the eyes, which I think would be a lot of effort for our hero. They were careful in that movie to never show Batman with the cowl pulled off because the paint around the eyes would look silly.

I have no problem believing that Batman would have the lenses, but the problem is that the cowl never has white eyes when he isn't wearing it.

There is another possibility: retractable lenses. Batman The Animated Series had him changing his lenses to red sometimes so he wouldn't be blinded by his own flash bombs. So maybe the white lenses are also retractable.

So...any thoughts? I think Batman's eyes have always been one of the great mysteries of comic books. I don't like a novelization (of a book) casually removing the ambiguity.