Batman: Under the Red Hood

/ Alex Good / 19 Comments

Batman: Under the Red Hood

Batman has always had a Robin problem. He’s never been that popular a character, doesn’t fit well with the Dark Knight’s grim persona, and the relationship between Bruce Wayne and his young ward probably seemed creepy at the time and ever since has become the stuff of comedy sketches. Even Robin’s costume looks campy and ridiculous, with elven slippers and shiny green speedo briefs under a shirt that might be a minidress. Fans even voted to have the Joker kill him off in the 1988 storyline “A Death in the Family.”

That particular iteration of Robin was Jason Todd, who was the second lad to step into the role after the departure of Dick Grayson (who went on to become Nightwing). In this story, however, Jason is back as a new crime-fighting crusader who goes by the name of Red Hood. Even though it’s more of a helmet than a hood. But whatever.

How Jason was resurrected is a tale too complicated for me to relate or, if I’m being honest, understand. Suffice to say that Jason as Red Hood is now taking out Gotham’s crime syndicates, which are being run by Black Mask. This should mean he’s one of the good guys, but his methods are quite brutal, which doesn’t sit well with Batman. It seems that when Jason came back from the dead he brought with him a taste for vengeance and rough justice, whether because of how he died or due to some infection from taking a dip in R’as al Ghul’s Lazarus Pool isn’t clear. So there’s a lot of blood in these comics, and bodies are soon piling up all over the place.

I thought it was a strong story, with good character development and conflict between the two leads. Jason/Red Hood has a grudge to settle with Batman, not for letting the Joker kill him but for not killing the Joker in revenge. And he has a case.

Bruce, I forgive you for not saving me. But why . . . why on God’s earth – ??! Is he still alive!!?? . . . Ignoring what he’s done in the past. Blindly, stupidly, disregarding the entire graveyards he’s filled. The thousands who have suffered . . . the friends he’s crippled . . . I thought . . . I thought killing me – that I’d be the last person you’d ever let him hurt. If it had been you that he beat to a bloody mass. If it had been you that he left in agony. If he had taken you from this world . . . I would have done nothing but search the planet for this pathetic pile of evil, death-worshipping garbage . . . and sent him off to hell.

I think this is a question that a lot of Batman readers have probably asked over the years. But we just have to accept that the man has a code and that’s all there is to it.

The conflict between Bruce and Jason is the main one being explored throughout the series, and it culminates with lots of bone-crunching fisticuffs and blood splatter. There’s also some dark comedy, especially coming from Black Mask and his exasperation with his incompetent underlings. And I got a chuckle out of things like how the Batman symbol is printed on the soles of the Dark Knight’s combat boots.

Most of all, however, I think they finally made something out of Robin. I count myself as a die-hard Robin hater, and I’m not a fan of Nightwing either. Red Hood as the back-from-the-dead vigilante, however, is a character with some edge. There were a lot of improbabilities along the way and parts that I felt didn’t add up, but this was a solid comic all around.

Graphicalex

The Great Crash of 2026?

/ Alex Good / 13 Comments

I just posted a review of Andrew Ross Sorkin’s book 1929: Inside the Greatest Crash in Wall Street History — and How it Shattered a Nation over at Good Reports. I didn’t think it was very good, in large part because it didn’t address, directly or at any length, the causes of the crash and what lessons it might have for us in 2026. But on the plus side it did get me wondering.

While a stock market crash like 1929 might be unlikely today, I do think we’re in for rough weather. I went over some of the reasons for this in an earlier post about the collapse of the Canadian subprime lender goeasy, and my concerns have only grown. Two seemingly unstoppable forces are coming together in the U.S., the country that is still the world’s economic driver: (1) inflation brought on by Trump’s tariff regime, the closing of the Strait of Hormuz (which affects a lot more than oil, as if oil wasn’t enough), and the Fed’s easy money policy; and (2) the threat of higher interest rates — the raising of interest rates being the main tool in the toolkit of central banks for fighting inflation. The problem is that higher interest rates dampen economic growth, threaten a lot of bad loans (and there are a lot of bad loans out there, especially in the world of private credit), and make government borrowing vastly more expensive (at a time when the U.S. national debt is hanging around $39 trillion). And so the end of last week saw the reporting of better-than-expected jobs numbers being met with a big stock market dip because of fear that lower unemployment might lead to a rate hike.

On top of all this is the question of whether we are witnessing a bubble in A.I. spending. A.I. has been the sole force driving growth in the American economy for the past year or so and there is some suspicion that it is a bet that is never going to pay off, at least to the point where it will justify the money invested in it. Not to mention the fact that while there will be some A.I. winners, there will be more losers, and those losers are going to make a lot of money disappear.

I have no idea what’s coming next. Contraction? Correction? A dip? A crash? A recession? Stagflation? One thing I do feel confident about is that the market at least as a whole isn’t going to keep rocketing up to the degree it has over the last decade. I do a bit of investing myself and I find nearly everything in the stock market to be overpriced right now. On the other hand, I don’t think people are going to start taking their money out and sticking it under their mattresses anytime soon either. With so much money being passively invested (that is, just buying an index) a lot of inertia builds up in the system. It will take quite a shock to upset all that, but it feels like we’re primed for a shock now and I don’t think it will be easy to ignore when it arrives.

Holmes: The Curious Affair of the Italian Art Dealer

/ Alex Good / 7 Comments

A curious affair indeed, as this is a story that goes in a couple of directions I didn’t anticipate. We begin traditionally enough, with Watson describing Holmes in one of his drug-soaked longueurs between cases. But then one of Watson’s calls – to attend upon a visiting American who has been beaten up during the theft of a painting, presumed a Titian, he had brought to London for verification – turns into one of Holmes’s clients. And from there we take several twists and turns before a revelation at the end not of who was behind the theft of the painting (though that’s included) but of the dual investigation that was going on all this time.

You see, this isn’t primarily a Sherlock Holmes mystery but one starring the American detective Miss Butterworth, the creation of Anna Katherine Green. Something very alert readers (not me!) will have twigged to in the name of the hotel manager being Gryce, since Ebenezer Gryce was the main detective created by Green. (Inspector Whicher gets name-dropped too, but that’s just a throwaway.) Anyway, it’s Miss Butterworth who really solves the case and then has to explain it all to Holmes. This puts him out to the point where he is said to be furious at her condescension, but she tells him he shouldn’t sulk because nobody’s perfect. I have to say though in Holmes’s defence that he has no reason to feel one-upped because Miss Butterworth had been investigating the case for months before he got involved, and she had far more personal information about what was going on.

Sara Paretsky, the creator of V. I. Warshawski, is obviously making a feminist point here, but it’s not one that I found took anything away from the story, which was enjoyable all the way through and stands well enough on its own.

Holmes index

Bookmarked! #147: Lulu the Giraffe

/ Alex Good / 10 Comments

Every now and then I leave a bookmark in its packaging. This is a good example. I think Lulu would look a bit naked, and a lot skinnier without it.

Not sure who I know brought me this back from Africa. But it’s part of my “Around the World” display now.

Book: Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse by Luke Kemp

Bookmarked Bookmarks

Batman: One Bad Day: Clayface

/ Alex Good / 20 Comments

Batman: One Bad Day: Clayface

This is one of eight single-issue comics in the Batman: One Bad Day series, each by different writers and artists and each focusing on the tortured psyche of a famous Batman villain. Now in the case of One Bad Day: Clayface what we get isn’t an origin story so much as a reboot, since there have been a whole lot of Clayfaces over the years, which is what you might expect from such a Protean figure. What’s happened in this one is that Clayface, an actor named Basil Karlo, has left Gotham and is now working as a waiter in Hollywood, where he’s trying to break into the movie business. Things don’t go well, however, and soon “Clay” (his adopted name) is demonstrating that even if he’s not quite willing to die for his art he’s absolutely on board with killing for it. Which means literally working his way up the Hollywood food chain from fellow struggling actors to agents to directors to producers. They all get the mud bath treatment when they don’t share Clay’s creative vision.

I loved pretty much all of this. The story by Collin Kelly and Jackson Lanzing (the Hivemind) is solidly constructed, even though initially a bit disorienting as we get introduced to all of Clay’s co-workers. Things keep escalating as Clayface works his way through the usual gang of movie-business jerks. And the punchline ending is both grim and funny. I don’t know if I’m a big fan of the art of Xermánico normally, but he really does a great job with Clayface here, giving pathos to his sad, pupil-less eyes. And finally I’ll call out the lettering by Tom Napolitano. Usually I rail against the speech of characters being presented in stylized ways where it’s distracting and not required. But here I thought it very effective. I liked how when Clay reverts to his Clayface form the speech bubbles become swirling, puddly forms and the lettering liquefies. I also thought the business of providing emphasis through the use of what looks like yellow highlighter was a gamble that paid off. It works with the way they present the text for the scene settings in screenplay format throughout (“Int./Ext. Sunset Chateau. Day.”)

Batman does show up at the end to put an end to Clayface’s theater of blood, or mud, which is done in a perfunctory way with a Ghostbusters-style trap and a quick moral lesson about truth and lies in the dream factory. But Clayface not only gets the last word, he’s also a far more complicated and compelling character. Sure he’s deluded about Hollywood, but he has the conviction of the true psycho, while also being sympathetic. I mean, who hasn’t wanted to throw mud at movie stars at some point? It’s just that Clayface is mud with teeth.

Graphicalex

A visit to the cat house

/ Alex Good / 13 Comments

So my neighbours are catsitting until their daughter’s house sells. I went over to visit their new boarders.

This is Millie. And I can’t say her name without calling her Millie Vanilli.

And this is Bonnie. Slightly shyer than Millie, and fatter because she eats Millie’s food.

All I’ve got for you today. But  cat pictures are what built the Internet so  . . .

Wimsey: The Unprincipled Affair of the Practical Joker

/ Alex Good / 5 Comments

It’s curious the way the Lord Peter Wimsey stories by Dorothy Sayers are so different in tone from the novels. To be sure the novels have a comic spirit to them, but the stories, at least in the early going, dial this way up. You can tell as much just from the titles, which seem intent on wearing their silliness as a badge. They can also be clever too though, as in this story and “The Entertaining Episode of the Article in Question,” where there’s a pun that you’re not expecting.

This is also not a true mystery story. A society woman approaches Lord Peter and asks him if he can retrieve some stolen jewelry. But she knows who stole it, and Lord P doesn’t doubt her, so all that happens is that Lord P has to figure out a way to trick the thief into giving the jewels back. You may think of stories like “The Purloined Letter” or “A Scandal in Bohemia,” but in those cases Dupin and Holmes respectively have to find out where the item in question is. That takes some detection skills. Here Lord Peter just has to find a way to blackmail the blackmailer, and that turns more on sleight of hand than ratiocination.

Another thing that got me wondering here is the way Sayers presents Lord Peter as not just a toff and a dandy but effeminate. This despite the fact that he served with distinction on the Western front in the Great War, has a love of motor cars, and can manage himself in a fist fight with local roughs. But his first appearance in this story is that of “a young man, attired in a mauve dressing-gown of great splendour, from beneath the hem of which peeped coyly a pair of primrose silk pyjamas.” I think the pyjamas go with his “sleek, straw-coloured hair.” In any event, if an author described a character in this manner today you would immediately catch the implication that he was gay, and that might have been true in the 1920s as well. But Lord Peter isn’t gay, he’s just eccentric. I’m not sure what Sayers was about in drawing him this way. Perhaps it was to show why people so often underestimate him, which is something he frequently turns to his advantage. But then are the silk pyjamas only meant to be a disguise?

Wimsey index

Feeling hungry?

/ Alex Good / 9 Comments

While reading Richard Seymour’s Disaster Nationalism I came across an account of contemporary conspiracy thinking, and how such ideas as that of George Soros as evil puppet-master “could never have taken root if multiple economic and social crises, not to mention the unpunished ruling class crime wave preceding the financial crash, hadn’t established the orectic conditions for their uptake.” In other words, people had to be first primed to believe things that there was little evidence for. They had to want to believe, which is what “orectic” refers to.  The dictionary definition is “relating to appetite or desire.” It’s not a word I’d encountered before, but comes from the Latin for stimulating appetite and the Greek for desire.

I didn’t know “orectic,” but it made me think of an obscure word that I do use occasionally for desire: esurient. This comes from the Latin esurire (to be hungry) and has the meaning of hungry or, more often, greedy. I remember first coming across it when reading Will Durant’s History of Civilization, in a description of greedy heirs waiting for the deaths of their parents as “esurient ghouls.” That’s always stuck in my head. But orectic, which has a similar meaning, was new to me. I don’t think either word is used much now, though spellcheck recognizes esurient while orectic is flagged.

Words, words, words

Something is Killing the Children Volume Two

/ Alex Good / 7 Comments

Something is Killing the Children Volume Two

Volume Two of this series, collecting issues #6-10, and . . . things aren’t getting better. In terms of the story that means that all the little baby demons of the mother demon that Erica killed at the end of Volume One are now getting hungry and killing more of the children of Archer’s Peak. But what I really mean is that I’m not liking this comic any better as it goes along.

James, the kid who survived an attack by the mother demon, is laid up in the hospital most of the time here. So instead it’s Erica teaming up (sort of) with another demon hunter named Aaron sent out from the Order of St. George with instructions to clean up Erica’s mess. And that means more than just killing the demons. But Aaron turns out to be pretty useless. As do the police. And Tom Mahoney, the only other adult gifted with the ability to see the demons, isn’t much help either.

So actually very little happens. There are more references to obscure monster lore like the fact that the baby demons are “oscuratypes” who only exist in a shadow form until they start eating. Which is just a bit of mumbo-jumbo that’s introduced to keep the plot moving along (in order to kill them, Erica will need some live bait, you see). Erica and the demon hunters know all this stuff, and they’re impatient with all the normies they have to deal with who just don’t understand. This makes Erica irritating, but she’s not the least likeable character. To be honest, I don’t think I cared for any of these people.

Nor am I a big fan of Werther Dell’Edera’s art (though I love that name). Erica’s cyclopean look is certainly striking, but I found her oversized green eye to be distracting and even repellent. Meanwhile, some of the secondary characters are hard to distinguish, at least to my eye.

Well, maybe I’ll give the series a bit more rope. But so far things aren’t looking good. I’ll be surprised if I make it to the end, if there even is an end yet.

Graphicalex