Two likes? Good enough for me! I want to Break This Comic Down because the art is stunning, and the story is really excellent.
Let's go. Unless otherwise noted, all pictures are from tec 574 illustrated by Alan Davis and Paul Neary with colors by Adrienne Roy and lettering by Starkings.
Some context on tec 574: Jason has just been shot several times by the Mad Hatter, and this features Batman rushing him to Dr. Leslie Thomkins to save him. While waiting to see if he'll pull through the night, Bruce and Leslie talk, and we are given the post-Crisis update of the Batman origin story.
Let's start with the cover. Look familiar to anybody?
Now, this isn't the first time we see this pose. This is the pose used for Jason's new origin in Batman 408 with Batman carrying an injured Dick Grayson, photos of which are featured in "Did Robin die tonight?" articles.
(Batman 408 by Max Allan Collins with art by Chris Warner and Mike DeCarlo, colors by Adrienne Roy)
But this is a much bigger focal point in the comic, and I would not be surprised at all if it was part of Jim Aparo's inspiration for the cover and interior moment in A Death In The Family, especially considering the parallels between seeing if Jason will make it, and him not making it.
On the cover itself, we see shadows take Batman's face entirely, a silhouette. Darkness and night. Rain bounces off of him and yet doesn't seem to soak in. Fire and rain. His world is burning. Again. It is the darkest night. Much like a past darkest night that we will hear about in the comic.
This is a lovely display of what has happened to Park Row. It has fallen into disrepair, from beauty and art and prestige (and metaphorically, a sense of beauty and safety for Bruce) to decrepit and crime-ridden and ugly. Let's look at the sky and the lighting here. The sun is setting as the sky goes from pink to navy. Keep in mind the colors of the sky; it will come up again. Darkness fell on Park Row. And, for Bruce, darkness fell on him too.
Now, let's poke at some of the details on this page. We have the movie theater, presumably the very one where the Waynes attended their final film.
Despite being unconscious for much of the story, this is a Jason story too. He's here in this page. Can you see him?
If you look at the final frame, Crime Alley, not Park Row, the green car on the far left has had its tires stolen. And Barr's narration reads in the second frame, "...But the dry rot of time set in. And the laughter stopped and the lights dimmed."
Jason, if you'll recall his post-crisis origin, met Bruce by stealing the tires of the Batmobile. And Bruce does something he hasn't done in Crime Alley for a long, long time.
(Batman 408 by Max Allan Collins with art by Chris Warner and Mike DeCarlo, colors by Adrienne Roy)
He laughs. The sun set and the darkness fell on Crime Alley (and Bruce) on night many years ago. And then Jason came, and the sun rose on Crime Alley (and Bruce). The light returned, and so did the laughter.
It's always great to see the impression Batman has on the random people of Gotham. Mike W. Barr is especially good about this, so it's a treat to see details like that. And I will ALWAYS love someone doing the finger ears. It's a great display of both the absurdity of Batman and the very real fear he inspires in Gotham.
And let's compare the rain here to the rain of the cover. These guys are soaking. The rain is fierce. It's a storm episode. All the emotions are coming and raging, and the weather is sympathetic.
Also kudos to Roy adding a hint of red in the one guy's eyes. That a great detail.
And now, introducing for the post-crisis, Dr. Leslie Thomkins! Immediately, she is a big presence, breaking the frame and wielding a bat. She doesn't look like a fighter per se, at least not in the combat sense, but she looks fierce. She looks like you could not knock her down easily. She'll stand her ground. And, well, a bat is a good pun, isn't it?
Every line of Batman screams in desperation. This unshakable force of Gotham has shaking edges. He's carried his boy across the city (remember, he was shot near Wayne Manor!) to the place of his parents' deaths. The rain is coming in with him, streetlights and wind and water pour into the dark clinic. Bruce's desperation is too big to fit in the frame, if you'll draw your eye to his shoe stepping out of the bounds.
"There is no hope in Crime Alley," Barr's narration reads. But remember, there is a car with no tires on the street. Because Batman was made in Crime Alley, but so was Jason.
Now, we begin to get into Bruce's backstory. First, I want you to look at this page as a whole. This story is within Bruce. He is not in a frame, and if you follow the lines, you can see the shadows along the edges following along with his silhouette. Emphasized below.
Now, I can start talking about the colors. GOD, THE COLORS. Adrienne Roy is always a master of yellows, and, for this flashback, she takes those yellows and de saturates just a little. A faded photograph. The sky is red. The world is rendered in yellows and reds and grays and blacks. None of Batman's blues nor Robin's greens nor even the bright yellows they both wear. It is such a distinct and unique way of doing a flashback, and it is gorgeous.
What do we see for this first memory of his parents? They're smiling! They're happy! And they are bloodstained. He cannot remember them happy without also remembering them dead.
This is also all very solidly from Bruce's pov, literal pov. We look up from his eyes. We see his hand held by Martha. We aren't looking at him; we're seeing what he saw. What he cannot unsee. What unmade and made him.
The bottom left panel shows us this view of his parents as shielding, protective silhouettes. Not unlike what Batman would become.
The speech bubbles shake and quiver at the edges, matching Batman's outline in the inner cover (My Beginning and My Probable End). Is this the shakiness of memory or simply whispers?
God, this scene is visceral from Bruce's pov. The bangs of the gun are too loud to be contained by the frames. The world is big and imposing. Bruce is reduced to a small hand, held, reaching, accusing.
Bruce's world, ended, changed, murdered, and he surrounded by lights and silhouettes, left behind, always left behind. The dialogue is riddled with snippets of impassivity. Just another day in Gotham. Nothing to be done about it. "We ain't got all night" "Send the meat wagon". Their lack of caring for something so monumental is what creates Batman as much as the death of his parents.
But he's not Batman yet. Now, he's small, too small even to appear in frame, let alone do anything. He cannot even follow the morgue truck; he can only reach out. The tangled red darkness surrounds him.
Back in the present, Bruce is trapped helplessly on the other side of the glass from Jason, who looks so small, doesn't he? We have switched to blues from the reds. With a viewpoint looking up at Batman, emphasizing how large he is now, how powerful, he says, "[He'll make it...] He's strong. He's a fighter." And Leslie, with the most taking-no-bullshit-from-you-Bruce face ever replies, "'A fighter'? Is that all you can say...?"
This is such a key conversation they have. The whole child soldier business wasn't unacknowledged. Bruce was helpless and turned himself into something powerful, something than can fight better than anyone else. Of course he would consider than the opposite of helpless. Leslie is able to call him on it. There's a really lot of great stuff in the dialogue, but I want to focus this meta on the art, so I won't be getting into all of it. But this is a comic you need to read to understand Bruce Wayne. It's fundamental.
Speaking of the art, let's take a look at my favorite page in terms of artwork in any Batman comic.
The angel memorial for his parents, so big and imposing in what it represents that it cannot be contained to its frame casts its shadow over a devastated and furious Bruce, and its shadow is that of a bat. He screams at an unforgiving world. The angel, his parents' deaths, the bat, his sadness, his anger; it's all one thing.
Ah, the Chez Gotham, as seen in the opening page of the comic. Recognize the striped awning?
This is Bruce's descent into darkness. His world is black and red and flat. The gun is massive in the frame. Will he become vengeance? Or protector? In that moment, anger is all he is, look at his face. The dead absence of his parents is massive and repeated thrice on this page.
This is an interesting frame. Bruce and Leslie take up so little of it. The darkness is encroaching and large. Even as powerful as he has become, Bruce is still small. It is a big world, and the darkness is so vast. Perhaps what he become was beyond his control, he says. A lot is beyond his control.
The colors in this shot are very grounded in the present, blue and green and cool brown. The blacks of the shadows are the same between present and past though.
Another shot that shows how small they are. And the darkness is bigger than they are.
I do enjoy that he's not Batman yet. That's not what Batman looks like. But the bones are there. The belt. The shadows. And I like his little smirk of satisfied success at sneaking around.
I'm trying to keep this focused mostly to the artwork, but MAN this is such great writing. It's what Bruce wants to believe vs what he actually does. It's what he has to do. It's feeling hopeless (there's no hope in Crime Alley) but needing to continue. Because someone has to do something. And it has to be him. And Leslie is the same!
Again, we see in the middle panel, the darkness is taking up half the frame! But in this moment of passion, Bruce takes up more of the shot than before. And, fist on the glass, it almost looks like they're looking out at the rainstorm and not the quiet, injured boy on the other side.
Another shot, this one in the past, of Bruce so small against the encroaching darkness.
In this moment of understanding between Bruce and Leslie, where they're able to acknowledge that Batman is needed if imperfect, they get to take up as much space as they need, filling half the page, surrounded by white and uncontained by a frame instead of the darkness.
And Jason's awake. And from his perspective, it looks for all the world like Bruce and Leslie are the ones out in the storm.
Jason's awake. He's pulled through the storm and the night. Bruce pulls back the cowl. It's been Bruce this whole time. There's no difference between him and Batman, not really. But nevertheless, he pulls back the mask when he tells Jason, "I won't force you to do this any--" because he does love Jason more than he needs a Robin.
And this is one of my favorite Jason lines ever, "are you kiddin', bruce? we've got work to do." Because Bruce hasn't forced him to do anything. He chose this.
And let's talk about the last panel. The whole motivation for this very long meta.
It's Crime Alley. It's Park Row. The storm has broken. The sun is coming up. Batman is formed in the night. Robin is the dawn. Batman and Robin, Bruce and Jason, that's the sunrise.
Dawn has come to Crime Alley.
Maybe there's hope there after all.
But there's still work to do. Night will always come, and dawn will always follow. That's Batman and Robin.
