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Batman and the superhero fairytale: deconstructing a revisionist Batman and the superhero fairytale: deconstructing a revisionist
crisis crisis
Travis John Landhuis
University of Northern Iowa
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Copyright by
TRAVIS JOHN LANDHUIS
2013
All Rights Reserved
BATMAN AND THE SUPERHERO FAIRYTALE:
DECONSTRUCTING A REVISIONIST CRISIS
An Abstract of a Thesis
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
Travis John Landhuis
University of Northern Iowa
December 2013
ABSTRACT
Contemporary superhero comics carry the burden of navigating historical
iterations and reiterations of canonical figures—Batman, Superman, Green Lantern et
al.—producing a tension unique to a genre that thrives on the reconstruction of previously
established narratives. This tension results in the complication of authorial and
interpretive negotiation of basic principles of narrative and structure as readers and
producers must seek to construct satisfactory identities for these icons. Similarly, the
post-modern experimentation of Robert Coover—in Briar Rose and Stepmother—argues
that we must no longer view contemporary fairytales as separate (cohesive) entities that
may exist apart from their source narratives. Instead, through strategies of Revision, we
might carve out processes of identity construction that embrace the inherently
fragmentary nature of canonical icons.
We might better approach the postmodern superhero—as exemplified by Grant
Morrison’s recent reconstruction of the Batman mythos—as an entreaty to reconsider the
identities of our superheroes as fragmented, non-cohesive concepts, bridging centuries of
diverse literary production. Current superheroes are little more than contemporary
enactments of the tension between current selves, past selves and potential future selves.
The illustration of superheroes as negotiators of indecipherable selves illuminates the
interactive dynamic between comics and comic readers who also participate in conscious
and unconscious dialogue with historical enactments of the self (this being the process of
growing up) and must also learn to construct identity via the accumulation and navigation
of fragmentary selves.
BATMAN AND THE SUPERHERO FAIRYTALE:
DECONSTRUCTING A REVISIONIST CRISIS
A Thesis
Submitted
in Partial Fulfillment
of the Requirements for the Degree
Master of Arts
Travis John Landhuis
University of Northern Iowa
December 2013
ii
This Study by: Travis John Landhuis
Entitled: Batman and the Superhero Fairytale: Deconstructing a Revisionist Crisis
has been approved as meeting the thesis requirement for the
Degree of Master of Arts
___________ _____________________________________________________
Date Dr. Jim O’Loughlin Chair, Thesis Committee
___________ _____________________________________________________
Date Dr. Grant Tracey, Thesis Committee Member
___________ _____________________________________________________
Date Dr. Jeremy Schraffenberger, Thesis Committee Member
___________ _____________________________________________________
Date Dr. Michael J. Licari, Dean, Graduate College
iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS
PAGE
CHAPTER 1. “HAVEN’T YOU SEEN IT BEFORE?”: POSTMODERN FAIRYTALES,
REVISION, AND BATMAN AS “NEW” FAIRYTALE ..................................................1
CHAPTER 2. ROBERT COOVER’S BRIAR ROSE, STEPMOTHER, AND THE
REVISIONIST MANIFESTO .............................................................................................9
CHAPTER 3. “I AM THE BATMAN. AND THIS IS HOW I CAME TO BE”: THE
SUPERHERO AS REVISIONIST CRITIC IN GRANT MORRISON’S BATMAN: THE
BLACK GLOVE AND BATMAN R.I.P. .............................................................................26
CHAPTER 4. GRANT MORRISON’S FLEX MENTALLO AND IDENTITY
CONSTRUCTION THROUGH REVISIONIST DIFFRACTION ...................................45
NOTES ...............................................................................................................................56
WORKS CITED ................................................................................................................61
1
CHAPTER 1
“HAVEN’T YOU SEEN IT BEFORE?”: POSTMODERN FAIRYTALES, REVISION,
AND BATMAN AS “NEW” FAIRYTALE
For too long, contemporary American superheroes have been dismissed by critics
as the Hollywood blockbuster of the comics industry while independent or otherwise-
deemed-literary comics have been favored as a richer source for critical treatment. And
while comics like Maus (1986), Persepolis (2000) and A Contract with God (1978) are
certainly valuable for their contributions to the comic medium, such a limited focus often
encourages critics to overlook the literary value of so-called blockbuster comics. Indeed,
the contemporary American superhero comic is laden with conventions of genre that
complicate authorial and interpretive negotiation of basic principles of narrative
(structure), and character. As we may find, by drawing comparison between
contemporary fairytales—whose treatment of cultural/literary icons must confront those
same “problems” of icon identity fragmentation at the hand of eternal histories—the
contemporary superhero may be reconceived as a participant in “postmodern fairytale,” a
genre strategy that forces character instances (current icon incarnations) to engage in
metatextual criticism of their own genre: a term I will come to (re)define as Revisionism.
An examination of contemporary illustrations of fairytale reconstruction—Robert
Coover’s Briar Rose and Stepmother—will reveal the thematic and structural links
between the composition of fairytales and of superhero narratives. Where Robert
2
Coover’s postmodern fairytales offer insight into the ways such strategies of Revision
utilize narrative strategies as commentary on genre construction, Grant Morrison’s
postmodern Batman: The Black Glove and R.I.P. employ the Revisionist strategy in
response to perceived genre convolution and stagnation arising from the inability of
comics production and criticism to recognize the literary framework of its crises.
The contemporary superhero experiences a perpetual identity crisis—the product
of a constructive history (like that of the fairytale) that denies assignation of cohesive
attributes to its icons, offering an ill-defined relationship between instances of the icon
and their historical predecessors, to which they owe their origins. Since Batman first
appeared in 1939’s Detective Comics #27, the character has been redrawn and rewritten
by hundreds of artists and writers (across centuries of diverse cultural, political and
literary history), and each time, the Batman character has been reproduced under this
illusion of consistency: the character functions because—regardless of dramatic, often
essential, differences in each year’s/author’s/artist’s Batman—the audience accepts that
each character is still, in essence, Batman. In his takeover of the Batman series, Grant
Morrison challenges many conventions of the superhero comic, offering a metatextual
criticism of the genre in his depiction of a Batman in direct (often literal) dialogue with
past and potential future incarnations of the Batman icon. Morrison’s Batman struggles
with his own history, illustrating the complications of the natural revisions (read:
modifications, adjustments, alterations) that occur in comics writing. Ultimately,
Morrison’s pointed resurrection of historical Batman instances overwhelms the
immediate, contemporary Batman, whose identity is composed of these historical
3
fragments of himself. The resulting identity crisis presents an argument for the necessary
re-conceptualization of the immediate icon-instance as an amalgamation of its previous
parts.
The DC universe in which Batman exists has long suffered at the hands of its own
convoluted continuity, crippled by industry efforts to dictate a fictional universe in
constant flux—shaped and reshaped by various creative teams, indebted to the creators
that have come before. Major characters like Batman, Superman and the Green Lantern
enact contemporary identities riddled with historical contradictions: the heroes possess
multiple, often conflicting origin stories; characters refuse to age while the world around
them does; and even superpowers are subject to modification throughout the years as
characters are shuffled around to different creative teams. In response to the rapid
multiplication of inborn contradiction, DC Comics invented a fictional “multiverse” to
account for the wildly different, incompatible depictions of each character (and the
histories of the fictional worlds they inhabited), so that character incongruence was
assigned to the imagined metaphysics of parallel universes—first introduced in 1961’s
The Flash #123: “Flash of Two Worlds.”
1
But the development of this theoretical
multiverse failed to resolve the general confusion of the critical audience who, in order to
understand the histories/powers/personalities of comic book heroes, would now be
required to monitor a multitude of parallel continuities.
Marv Wolfman’s 12-issue limited series Crisis on Infinite Earths (1985-86)
sought to relieve the tension by simply eliminating the multiverse in an inter-dimensional
4
metaphysical brawl. In his forward, Wolfman positions the miniseries as a direct response
to growing demands for cohesive continuity, explaining:
The problem began when comics changed. When heroes teamed with other
heroes. When a touch of reality found its way onto the four-color pages. We
strove to make our books seem more real by making our characters seem more
realistic…slowly, the idea of consistency became more and more important. (1)
The multiverse solution failed to satisfy demands on consistency, and Wolfman argues
that “DC continuity was so confusing no new reader could easily understand it while
older readers had to keep miles-long lists to set things straight.” Crisis on Infinite Earths
is offered as “a repair job. By series end DC will have a consistent and more easily
understandable universe to play with” (33). The goal was, to “repair many of the mistakes
we’ve made in the past, simplify our present structure, and still allow us to do wildly
experimental comics and not feel they have to conform to an established continuity”
(Crisis on Infinite Earths issue 2, 26). The “crisis” resulted in the fusion of the five most
popular parallel Earths into one Earth, which was expected to become the definitive Earth
of the post-crisis DC universe. However, this attempt to “clean up” the continuity
inevitably led to the destruction of an entire cast of characters whose histories simply
ceased to exist (and were, in DC’s hopes, never to be mentioned again). While Crisis on
Infinite Earths effectively reduced the convoluted multiverse to a more manageable
universe, the effort was not entirely well-received, particularly by those whose favorite
characters were deleted from continuity.
In his revival of the Animal Man series (1988-90), Grant Morrison directly
criticizes the attempt to simplify continuity by erasing entire portions of comics history
(and those characters contained within). Morrison rejects Wolfman’s authority to “erase”
5
DC history, depicting Psycho-Pirate—a key player in the crisis—as he struggles with an
anxiety agitated by his continued awareness of (the histories of) characters and
multiverses that no longer exist within the official, “fixed” DC canon. Psycho-Pirate,
locked in an asylum, cannot stem the tide of the repressed memories of “deleted” worlds,
lamenting, “Geography. History. Philosophy. All pushing at the poor walls of my skull.
Such a small room to hold so much. It’s neverending. All these worlds” (149). Morrison
rejects the solutions of Crisis and releases the erased characters back into the DC
Universe. Psycho-Pirate attempts to rally the newly resurrected to confront the true
perpetrators of their execution, exclaiming, “We can have revenge. You can have revenge
on the people who killed you. The people who wiped you out. They’re out there
watching. I know, I’ve seen them…This cage we’re in. They keep us here and make us
turn tricks for their cheap amusement. Haven’t you seen it before? Look!” (151). In
strikingly explicit metatextual criticism, Morrison’s Psycho-Pirate establishes the direct
relationship between cultural property (superheroes, here) and its production, inviting
established icons to participate in the discussion about them (and their place within the
superhero genre and comics medium). In “Deconstructing Crisis on Infinite Earths: Grant
Morrison’s Animal Man, JLA: Earth 2, and Flex Mentallo,” Michael Niederhausen
recognizes the significance of Morrison’s break from DC’s intended continuity fix,
acknowledging that Morrison “pays tribute to those characters that were removed from
continuity, like a memorial service,” in an attempt to illustrate that “the deletion of
superhero characters is an unnecessary activity” (217, 278). In his rejection of the official
DC policy—to simplify continuity incongruence through erasure—Morrison lays the
6
groundwork for his run on the Batman series (2007-10), the exploration of the
relationship between Batman’s fragile identity and his fractured history, offering
perspectives on icon Revision that refuse to disregard the figure’s incongruent past
simply because it presents challenges to a contemporary existence.
2
Whereas conventional critical treatments of the superhero genre might fail to fully
uncover the nature of these increasingly urgent identity crises, recent criticism of the
contemporary fairytale offers an effective analytical framework through which we might
approach Morrison’s Batman. The popular and literary appeal of the superhero genre
bears much in common with that of the fairytale, as noted by Stephen Benson in
Contemporary Fiction and the Fairy Tale: “the fairy tale is not only a key text in the
socialization of the child…but also an inarguably potent force in popular culture, a force
that stretches beyond inherited ideological limitations. The fairy tale is both deeply
suspect and provocatively attractive, and therein resides its proximity to postmodernism”
(13). Indeed, one could presumably argue that with the recent “renaissance” of the
superhero across preferred popular cultural mediums of film and television, the superhero
genre (extended far beyond its presence in contemporary comics) may have partially,
temporarily supplanted the fairytale in roles of socialization and cultural relevancy. In
The Hard Facts of the Grimms’ Fairy Tales, Maria Tatar further assigns the cultural role
of the fairytale, positioning contemporary acts of fairytale construction as enactments of
postmodernism:
Perpetually appropriated, adapted, revised and rescripted, they have become a
powerful form of cultural currency, widely recognized and constantly circulating
in ways that are sometimes obvious, sometimes obscure. Cutting across the
borderlines between high and low, oral tradition and print culture, the visual and
7
the verbal, they function as robust nomadic carriers of social practices and
cultural values. (xv)
Hence the import with which contemporary postmodern writers like Coover and
Morrison assign the metatextual criticism of the superhero and fairytale—such genres
contribute to the very fabric of our social experience and cultural meaning-making
strategies. Such cultural clout might also account for the widespread appeal of fairytale
icons as source material for “new” cultural productions—manifesting, for example, in the
popularity of films that participate in the fairytale genre (like the wide assortment of
Disney fairytale adaptations) and network television series like Grimm and Once Upon a
Time that offer contemporary enactments of fairytale mythos.
The Revisionist attitude toward the fairytale differs from those who might view
the genre as translational, something that writers may simply “update” for contemporary
audiences. In Theorizing Fairy-Tale Fiction: Reading Jeanette Winterson, Merja
Makinen argues that “Postmodern fiction cannot really be said to rewrite the fairy tale as
a previous, given, static text to be commented upon through parody. All it can do is re-
engage contemporaneously with an already multilayered polyphony, adding a further
critical layer to the plurality” (151). It is this postmodern preoccupation with “plurality”
that marks the crucial tie between contemporary fairytale and (at least Morrison’s)
superhero narrative strategies. Underlying Coover’s and Morrison’s texts is the insistence
that the icon—as represented immediately on the page—participates necessarily in
dialogue with its past; but whether that dialogue occurs publicly or internally (the
dialogue happens whether we hear it or not) remains to be determined by the writer in
each instance. The Revisionist chooses to publicize that dialogue.
8
It is into this discussion (the nature of the link between present and historical
icons) that Geoff Klock’s recent work on the revisionary nature of superhero narratives
offers a cross-medium theoretical link. Klock situates postmodern superhero comics in a
period of dawning awareness that heroes can no longer be produced without addressing
previous instances of construction, arguing that “superhero narratives of any worth that
follow The Dark Knight Returns can no longer ignore these determiners on the genre, but
must confront both comic book tradition and Miller’s influential handling of it” (50)—
precisely the argument that Coover seeks to maintain in his treatment of Briar Rose.
Klock argues that in Miller’s iconic reinvention of the Batman mythos, “Batman’s (and
Miller’s) struggle is not to control any villain but to master preceding visions of himself
and his tradition” (48). So too is Morrison’s text determined by its necessary grappling
with these “preceding visions,” a trademark of the Revisionist position that contemporary
narratives cannot (should not) claim independence from the fragmentary nature of their
production histories. So, by first establishing the Revisionist strategies illustrated (but not
named) in criticism and enactments of contemporary fairytales and then identifying the
same structures at play in the superhero genre—embracing its continuity failure rather
than criticizing it—we may reconceptualize Batman as postmodern fairytale,
participating in cross-genre metacriticism that seeks to redefine the ways in which
cultural consumers and literary critics treat the superhero.
9
CHAPTER 2
ROBERT COOVER’S BRIAR ROSE, STEPMOTHER AND THE
REVISIONIST MANIFESTO
To more fully examine the Revisionist strategy, we might turn to Robert Coover’s
work within the fairy-tale genre, paying particular attention to Stepmother (2004) and
Briar Rose (1996) as illustrations of cultural icons in dialogue with their past
incarnations. In redefining the fairy-tale “Urmythos,” Coover’s Stepmother offers
conceptions of a collective cultural authorship, providing inroads into the Revisionist
measures that populate Briar Rose. Stepmother reveals a principle preoccupation with the
role of the story-teller in shaping narrative, illustrating authorial self-awareness and
demanding critical examination of the relationship between text and cultural reception of
that text.
Like Morrison’s Batman, Coover’s Stepmother immediately introduces its
thematic strategy by admitting its concerns with the nature of narrative, rather than
allowing a naturalistic narrative to encourage reader suspension of disbelief.
3
The text is
comprised of variations on a theme: a stepmother (an ugly old crone, a good, wicked
stepfairy?) attempts to protect her step-daughter/princess from the clutches of the Reaper,
who—as it is his nature—intends to execute her. But rather than conventional narrative
progression consisting of causally linked events/encounters accompanied by mounting
tension to be ultimately resolved,
4
Coover opts for a narrative of inquiry into the nature of
10
its own construction. In The Late Fairy Tales of Robert Coover, Stephen Benson
identifies this metafictional tendency as one staple of the postmodern fairytale genre:
The authors have practiced a version of metafiction involving simultaneous
granting and withdrawing of the contract of imaginative writing—the game of the
suspension of disbelief, to put it very simply. The provocatively teasing nature of
this flaunting of the literary contract serves to give a critical edge to the aesthetic
pleasure, and it is on this edge, between seduction and critique, immersion and
resistance, that postmodern literature has intended to position itself . . . works that
can only ever be enjoyed knowingly. (13)
Kevin Paul Smith’s The Postmodern Fairytale even identifies metafictionality as one of
the eight defining characteristics of intertextual use of fairytales, occurring “when a
fairytale is commented upon, or when the fairytale is analysed in a critical way,” and
such metafictionality performs a “‘criticism in the text’…the type of intertextuality we
usually find between commentary or criticism and the text it comments upon” (45).
Indeed, Stepmother fluctuates between the invitation and denial of affective immersion,
demanding a knowing enjoyment comprised of reader participation in the textual
theorization of narrative. The text itself offers a primer for those less familiar with
Coover’s experimental narrative tactics; the stepmother summarizes both her in-text
experience and Coover’s strategy, elaborating, “It’s a kind of violent mourning, and so
they come down on us again and more daughters are caught up in what the Reaper calls
the noble toils of justice and thus we keep the cycle going” (2). In fact, this phrase—“and
thus we keep the cycle going”— might very well serve as the best summation of
Coover’s style of narrative as well as an illumination of a strategy central to the
Revisionist’s performance. Often in the Revisionist text, a singular event occurs (first)
and that event is then re-experienced, revised, re-illustrated from diverse perspectives,
11
questioned, disassembled, partially reconstructed, etc., etc., ad nauseam. Such a strategy
arises from the Revisionist argument that all cultural production (particularly genre
performance) is little more than participation in cyclical narrative play. Benson identifies
this cyclical embellishment as “the pregnant pause: that is, a text in which there is little or
no plot progression but rather an elaboration, a writing around, a moment (or series of
moments) in a plot (or series of plots) that is absent except by suggestion and
implication” (130). This cyclical model best represents Coover’s (and later Morrison’s)
conceptions of story-telling, and it is central to the execution of Revision. Coover’s
Stepmother provides a space in which his characters explore the confining cycle, offering
a meditation on the roles and practices of story-telling.
Our Reaper gradually reveals himself to be a literal and allegorical story-teller
whose exploits draw attention to the acts of narrative construction. The Reaper is not
interested in “issues of peace and mercy” but “with the methods being used and what
those methods might express and how to speak of this” (14). Here Coover and the Reaper
share the same fascination—not with thematic concerns, or even narrative action, but
with the methods through which we construct narrative. As Benson argues, “Coover has
pursued narrative fiction as a project of critical engagement with particular ways of
seeing,” and the text admits its preoccupation willingly, emphasizing a strategy grounded
in a discussion of its own construction (121). Through this tactic, the Reaper seeks “the
revelation of some kind of primeval and holy truth…the telltale echoes of ancestral
reminiscences. The Urmythos . . .” (14). Of course, this “spiritual” pursuit reeks of
romanticism—and as Benson points out, “It is of course precisely this sort of finality or
12
transcendence that is roundly stamped on by the Stepmother, as ‘moon-baked folly,’ yet
one more act of mystification” (134). Certainly, if the “Urmythos” were to be conceived
as an actual finality, we might share the Stepmother’s (and Benson’s) shrewd dismissal.
Indeed, were the “urmythos” to be cast as the “essential truth” of a mythic icon, this
would be yet one more example of that which the Revisionist rejects: the suggestion—by
self-contained, historically disengaged narrative construction—that cultural icons have a
cohesively structured identity. But the Reaper maintains that by examining the
constructive elements of narrative—by relying on story-telling that annotates its own
narrative thread—we might approach some kind of “holy truth,” a contribution to the
Urmythos. The Urmythos becomes a conceptual amalgamation of all cultural
contribution to the icon in question (in this case, the fairy-tale stepmother), and ultimately
offer a means by which new fairytales might alter the landscape of the genre’s history.
Hence, Coover’s text begs a re-conceptualization of the Urmythos not as The Myth, but
as the collective myth(s)—a collective defined by its conflict and incongruence. This
interaction with literary and cultural predecessors is central to the Reaper’s narrative
motivation (and an absolute necessity for Morrison’s execution of the Batman cycle).
Much of Stepmother’s narrative unfolds within “Reaper’s Woods”—a grim,
enchanted forest that harbors “witches, murderers, robbers, dwarves and giants, savage
beasts, elfin angels, fortune-seeking boys and terrified girls” (8)—and the space
possesses an aura of magical abstraction. The woods come to illustrate the landscape to
which our story-teller responds—“an eerie domain of profound uncertainties,” in which
“small things suddenly become large, large things shrink, all things of boundaries only
13
proximate” (9). Benson suggests that “the reader experiences this instability as the mess
of incident and detail that litters the text and that is calculated to exceed and so to
frustrate any attempt to fix allegorical or symbolic meaning” (134). Indeed, Coover’s
response to the fairytale tradition is to reject the suggestion that the “worth” of a fairytale
may be approached through allegorical assignation, instead arguing that the new fairytale
functions to subvert meaning-making strategies with which we may be tempted to
approach such texts, as is principally achieved through icon-manipulation. Coover
illustrates the nature of such a strategy, arguing that the revision of literary/cultural
property (such as the stepmother, or Batman) is an execution of boundary manipulation, a
process of readjusting the size and scope of familiar elements. But such a process
demands caution—the root of “profound uncertainties”—and the Reaper admits that the
revision of established iconography has its consequences: “Justice here is fierce and final.
Only a master wizard can reverse it, but rarely does so, for character is character and
subject to its proper punishment; tampering with endings can disturb the forest’s delicate
balance” (11). Coover acknowledges the difficulty of the re-interpretive task, “tampering
with endings,” reminding that there are those who might feel as if such a strategy
threatens some “delicate balance”—an untouchable essence of the communally owned
cultural property/icon.
5
But even more frightening than potential opposing forces to creative
reconstruction is the possibility that such fairy-tales (and other, perhaps dated cultural
icons) might diminish absolutely in relevance if Revisionists don’t tamper with endings.
The text contemplates the Reaper’s motivation for populating the forest with “other
14
master sorcerers of like power and persuasion,” suggesting that “perhaps, fascinated by
the forest but frightened by it, too, he brought them with him in his own self-defense,
familiar thaumaturges on whom he can count when dangerous thoughts and passions
threaten. When meaninglessness does. The Reaper’s greatest fear” (12). This fear of
meaninglessness impels the Reaper/writer, manifesting an anxiety that if the cultural
source of revision—Briar Rose, Cinderella, Batman, etc.—is not reconstructed in
dialogue with its past, then current/previous/all incarnations of the icon eventually fade
out of relevancy. There is something simultaneously fascinating and frightening in
approaching “sacred” cultural texts, intent on disassembling icons, dissecting cultural
attitudes toward those icons (and all this without the promise of putting them back
together again after it’s all over). Only those writers capable/willing to produce a
narrative that hinges on dissonance between current and historical interpretations of
character—those “sorcerers” of “power and persuasion”—may achieve a revision that
creates spaces for icons in contemporary literary and cultural environments.
The narrative goes on to cautiously laud its “heroes” (these sorcerer-writers)
while recognizing the apparent absurdity of the undertaken task. The text asks, why
would anyone want to climb a mountain, rescue a maiden, slay a dragon? Because,
“herein, nobility resides. The quest, being impossible, draws wave after wave of brave
seekers after love, honor, truth, and spiritual repose, thought to be attainable atop the
glass mountain, where one is offered, so it is said, a contemplative view of the whole
world and a life thereafter without cares”—an argument for the (rather wistful) hopes and
dreams of our heroes (47). And it isn’t that the Reaper accepts the suggestion that such
15
abstractions—love, honor, truth—can actually be achieved through story-telling, but he
suggests that through the “nobility” of the quest, learning occurs: “for those of a more
soulful bent, there is also a need for illumination and self-understanding, which is to say,
an understanding of the universe itself wherein for a short time one resides” (46). This
illumination arises from conflict, pursuit of the impossible (the view “atop the glass
mountain” is much less important than the experience acquired in pursuit of the peak),
and such is the true nature of the Reaper’s motivation.
While Coover’s Stepmother primarily participates in foregrounding concerns with
the methods of narrative construction—requiring its narrative to illuminate its
strategies—the text quietly participates in and discusses specifically Revisionist tactics.
The cast (“Reaper’s gang”) observes the Reaper warily from a distance, marking his
oddities with suspicion: “I can see the Reaper’s hand in this. He feeds on pattern” (50).
The Revisionist examination of cultural iconography as continuous processes of
construction is essentially a practice in pattern-making. When the Reaper authors stories,
his audience responds with skeptical awareness of his tendency for creative manipulation;
the text itself admits, “This at least is the Reaper’s version of the history, a favorite of his.
Others see it in another light or emphasize different details, for it happened long ago and
much has been forgotten or transformed by time’s own subtle poetic gestures” (80). Such
is the simultaneous nature of and necessity for Revision. Coover’s narrative demands
awareness of the means by which fluidity of perspective alters our interpretations of
history, reminding us that our stories are versions/visions arising from cultural and
literary values of time/place. Stepmother offers its Revisionist manifesto: “The Urmythos
16
is omnipresent, but it is not something fixed; one can shape it. And so, as one can, one
must” (31). When cultural property is revisited and new narratives constructed, the
Urmythos—the fluid compilation of all icons and cultural responses to those icons—is
necessarily re-shaped, consciously and un-consciously. The Revisionist does so
consciously: as one can, one must.
Where Stepmother initiates the Revisionist project, Briar Rose executes it
precisely, presenting a revised “Sleeping Beauty” in a narrative that fixates on conscious
disassembly of (enactments of) the icon—its own pointed contribution to the Urmythos.
Like Stepmother, Briar Rose executes the “pregnant pause,” offering cyclical re-iterations
of the Prince’s shifting internal attitudes and responses to his undertaken quest to forge
through the briar patch and rescue the princess. Briar Rose’s first execution of Revision
is to reveal its characters’ intimate awareness of their participation in their own literary
production history. The Prince recognizes his role in “Yet another inflated legend. He has
undertaken this great adventure, not for the supposed reward—what is another lonely
bedridden princess?—but in order to provoke a confrontation with the awful powers of
enchantment itself” (1). It is not only the “wicked” fairy who wields such powers of
enchantment, but the Revisionist whose language is the true enactment of that magic.
Coover’s enchantment—the employ of narrative as “critical engagement with particular
ways of seeing”—is executed in requiring character participation in metatextual dialogue.
Benson acknowledges that such strategy serves as:
[A] part of the metafictionality of the tales and of Coover’s writing in general.
Briar Rose does not represent characters in a state of desiring; rather, it offers an
account of what it means and what it is like to be in such a state…What
distinguishes Coover’s work is that subjective reflection, or self-reflection as
17
constitutive of subjectivity, tends to be static or repetitive rather than progressive.
(128-129)
Coover’s text consistently denies experiences of character and plot, instead offering
critical contemplation on such interpretations, executions, modifications of character and
plot. The prince reveals awareness that his immediate quest is but a facet of the greater
dialogue into which his creator (the powerful and persuasive wizard) has enlisted.
The princess, too, acknowledges her role as intertextual cultural icon, and
struggles to cope with the fragmentation of identity that arises from her own historical
awareness; the princess feels “abandonment and betrayal…the self gone astray from the
body” and her “longing for integrity is, in her spellbound innocence, all she knows of
rage and lust, but this longing is itself fragmented” (2). The princess’ pursuit of
integrity—the pursuit of internal and external (outside the immediate text)
continuity/cohesion—is itself necessarily fragmentary as a result of their knowing
participation in a literary tradition.
6
Benson summarizes the psychological nature of self-
identification in Coover’s postmodern fairytale:
The selfhood of the characters in Coover—their ruminative subjectivity, in the
modern sense—is broken off or stalled…Coover’s prince may be able to reflect
on his present predicament, but he has no idea of how he came to be where he
is…All the prince can do in the absence of such accumulated knowledge is repeat
himself—or rather, repeat to himself that the quest will be his making. (129)
Coover’s icons grapple with partial awareness of their iconic historical context; the prince
participates in the compulsory quest while incapable of ascertaining its origin, doomed to
“repeat himself.” Benson suggests the ultimate consequence for such characters: “the
prince and princess are literally trapped in themselves; while it was ever thus in the
fairytale, the difference now is the double-edged gift of depthless self-awareness” (130).
18
As such, the expression of internal motivation/desire/fear—deeply rooted in metatextual
self-awareness—serves not simply to inform or develop character (in an immediate
sense), but to challenge internalized cultural assumptions of and demands upon these
icons. Such pressure arises uniquely in Coover’s fairytales and Morrison’s Batman, as a
result of their participation in genres laden with heavily-ascribed convention, producing a
style “staunchly unsentimental and world-weary, heavy with the history of tradition”
(123).
Thus the princely struggle is not (firstly) one of conflict with the fantastic co-
inhabitants of the narrative, but it is a grappling with its own self-awareness (how does
the revised icon feel about that revision?), a desperate struggle for identity-construction
denied by its immediate environment but perhaps to be achieved—by readership, not
character—through exploration of historical context. Briar Rose’s narrator articulates the
core of the prince’s identity anxiety:
He, too, had no sequential memory, knew only that he was born, so they said, of
chaos, she of love, and thus they were cosmological cousins of a sort…so how
had they arrived at this moment of mortal encounter, which seemed more
theoretical in nature than practical? The prince, well-schooled, was interested in
this question, touching as it did on the sources of his heroic quest, about which he
too sometimes had his misgivings. (37)
Here we have personification of the intertextual icon (rather than the simple expression of
an immediate instance of that icon); the icon itself has no “sequential memory”—a
conflicted, partial awareness of its cultural history, to which Coover’s Prince and
Morrison’s Batman attempt, and ultimately fail to construct/maintain a cohesive identity.
Such attempts at cohesive identity construction mimic cultural treatment of heroes and
legends—the very strategy of which the Revisionist attempts to promote awareness so as
19
to challenge dominant perceptions on the very nature of established icons. This conflicted
identity construction—a trademark of the postmodern hero/superhero in dialogue with its
own historicity—produces perpetual narratives, another hallmark of the Revisionist
strategy. The tension between the good and wicked (parts of the) fairy illustrates the
genesis of this perpetuation, the eternal life of the icon (whether s/he wants it or not):
The good fairy’s boon to this child, newborn, was to arrange for her to expire
before suffering the misery of the ever-after part of the human span, the wicked
fairy in her, for the sake of her own entertainment, transforming that well-meant
gift to death in life and life in death without surcease. (80-81)
It might seem that one solution to the “problem” of the icon’s fragmentation (at the hands
of its own cultural history) is to simply kill the icon, but as the fairy discovers, to kill an
icon does not affect its existence, principally because the icon’s existence rests not in its
current participation in an immediate narrative, but in its comprehensive history of
narratives—its Urmythos. The Revisionist text argues that to kill an icon (in the present
of the narrative) does not end it, nor does it begin to resolve the conflict between its
current self and historio-cultural interpretations, enactments and manipulations of the
icon.
But of course, there are alternate perspectives on the treatment of shared
cultural/literary traditions and genres, some of which are acknowledged within Briar
Rose. Principally, the Fairy caretaker illustrates potential attitudes that value
“maintenance” of an icon rather than deconstruction, acknowledging the existence of
those entities who may wish to uphold the original condition of the cultural artifact.
Disgruntled with Briar Rose’s expressed desire to leave her castle (and apparently feeling
underappreciated), the fairy grumbles, “Has that smug sleeper paused to consider how
20
she will look and smell after a hundred years, lying comatose and untended in an
unchanged bed?”—suggesting a model of cultural maintenance that values “updated”
versions of its icons, a dusting of cobwebs, and little more (6). But the true danger in such
a tactic lies in its false claims to integrity (staying true to an original essence) in an
attempt to appear as if objectively (only) re-telling the same story as before.
7
In reality,
the “caretaker” does much more than maintain, rather craftily reconstructing and
redefining the icon on its own terms. The fairy begins by directly assigning Briar Rose a
wide range of cultural definitions:
You are all things dangerous and inviolate. You are she who has renounced the
natural functions, she who invades the dreams of the innocent, she who harbors
wild forces and so defines and provokes the heroic, and yet you are the magical
bride, of all good the bell and flower, she through whom all glory is to be on, love
known, the root out of which all need germinates. (13)
The fairy acknowledges that as a fluid icon, Briar Rose has inherited the potential for
multiple representational cultural functions—she is a patriarchal tool, a feminist model, a
cautionary tale, an incidental instrument, etc.—all depending upon authorial motivation.
The superficial maintenance strategy reveals its sinister dimension when Briar
Rose appeals to her fairy caretaker for assistance in coming to terms with her own
identity. When Briar Rose demands, desperately, “Who am I?” the fairy responds, “Calm
down child, let me tell you a story,” responding with a grotesque tale, concluded by the
royal wives’ decision to “slit [Beauty’s] throat and boil her in a kind of toad-and-viper
soup” (17, 20). Briar Rose responds understandably, “But it’s terrible! She would have
been better off not waking up at all!” to which the fairy slyly answers, “Well. Yes. I
suppose that’s true my dear” (20). The fairy executes story-telling as manipulation of
21
icon not so that we might deconstruct that icon, but as a means of threatening
8
so that
Briar Rose (and her cultural audience) may be convinced that it’s best “not waking up at
all,” parroting those who might suggest that the Revisionist approach threatens to disrupt
a delicate balance, deforming the essence of established character. Coover’s text depicts
the caretaker’s instilled stasis in opposition to Revision, whose goal is quite pointedly not
to maintain the icon.
Some critics suggest that current resurgences in fairytale intertexts mark renewed
interest in traditions and conventions of the fairytale genre, a renaissance that embraces
the style, content and moralistic strategies of its predecessor. But neither Stepmother nor
Briar Rose can be seen to simply pay homage to the fairytale. Benson argues that
participation in genre “need not predicate the breezy continuation of tradition, in the
manner of eternal present, but might involve instead a proper acknowledgment of the
historicity of generic materials, and so of the problems attendant on any act of generic
development” (126). Benson rightly identifies that Coover’s participation in the genre is
not one of continuation, but of disruption—the acknowledgement that even the
immediate act of fairytale narration cannot occur without its own recognition of the
“historicity of its generic materials.” Benson furthermore articulates that while Coover’s
postmodern fairytales enjoy certain conventional elements of the genre, “its particular
mode of traditionalism, or of conventionality, does not straightforwardly build on or
develop predecessor texts; it does not follow from the conventions of Coover’s narratives
that they are concerned with renewing or revivifying that tradition” (124). Certainly, the
Revisionist goal is not a “revivifying” of tradition (particularly a stale tradition, for
22
Morrison and Coover), but rather it is a strategy of critically addressing the inevitable
continuation of a tradition—be it fairytales or superhero comics—that has long outlived
its “natural” conclusion.
9
Of course, to be clear, the superhero/fairytale genres are most
certainly not entirely stale, nor should they be put out of their misery, so to speak. But,
the Revisionist text recognizes that certain styles/conventions of these genres have
crippled the creative strategies available (or at least popularly employed) and that, in
order to maintain artistic and cultural relevance, we must break from the conventions that
originally defined these genres.
Still others participate in a non-Cooverian “re-vision” strategy that generates
contemporary fairytales in reaction to the perceived “problems” of previous fairytale
incarnations. In Fairy Tale as Myth: Myth as Fairy Tale, Jack Zipes argues that “the
purpose of producing a revised fairytale is to create something new that incorporates the
critical and creative thinking of the producer and corresponds to changed demands and
tastes of audiences” (9). This is an altogether different approach to revisiting fairytale
texts, one that identifies the fairytale as a means of articulating/changing literary or
cultural attitudes, and undertakes as its goal the supplanting of new, better (or at least
more current) perspectives. Kevin Paul Smith points to the “great spate of feminist re-
vision of fairytales by women during the 1970s . . . some of these re-workings were
meant to displace the patriarchal originals, others to criticize and subvert those originals
by putting women in a more active role” (36). Certainly the works of Angela Carter,
Margaret Atwood, and Jeanette Winterston most remarkably demonstrate the strategy in
action, but Benson’s acknowledgment that “even re-visions which have successfully
23
supplanted their hypotexts . . . are supplemental in nature” reveals the root of the
Revisionist fascination: the temporal influence of a genre’s past execution on its current
incarnation. The Revisionist text focuses on the overarching scope and structure of its
eternal genre structure and—rather than attempt to replace dated and “bad” cultural
implications—plot its own trajectory via self-contained criticism.
Again, the Revisionist strategy does not seek the end of a tradition but a
restructuring of our narrative priorities, our demands on the literary and cultural treatment
of our icons—namely, a recognition that current interpretations do not override historical
presences, nor can they exist apart from those presences. Coover’s Prince, even amidst
the desperate frustration of the unending briar patch, admits the uneasy, perplexing
appeal of the briars, enjoying the “snags”: “Sometimes…I feel the reason I never escaped
the briars was that, in the end, I loved them, or at least I needed them. Let’s say, he adds
with a curling smile, licking at the blood at the corners of his lips, they grew on me” (74).
The prince voices the attraction of the Revisionist to its source material; the Revisionist
text—as much as it expresses its longing to “break free” of its cultural predecessors—
nevertheless “loves” and “needs” them, and wouldn’t dream of “killing” its genre (were it
even possible to do so). While Benson suggests that Coover’s work seeks an “end” to the
fairytale genre, his recognition of Coover’s playfulness reveals a misrepresentation of the
contemporary fairytale “death wish,” when he argues, “it is out of this condition of
lateness that springs their energy, their mischievousness, and the sheer delight of their
invention: all the death-defying forces of longevity, that is” (139). Benson’s sentiment
neatly bookends the fairy’s anxiety over participation in the icon’s eternalness,
24
suggesting that the “well-meant gift” of the Revisionist does nothing to address the
anxiety—and identity confusion—that accompanies eternal life of the generic icon. But
of course, the Revisionist text embraces such anxieties, grounding them as the definitive
element of the contemporary superhero genre. Indeed, as Lance Olsen articulates in
Ellipse of Uncertainty:
The fantastic confounds and confuses reader response, generates a dialectic that
refuses synthesis, explores the unsaid and unseen, and rejects the definitive
version of ‘truth, ‘reality,’ and ‘meaning.’ Its function as a mode of discourse is to
surprise, question, put into doubt, produce anxiety, make active, disgust, repel,
rebel, subvert, pervert, make ambiguous, make discontinuous, deform, dislocate,
destabilize. (116)
This grocery list of tactical preferences reveals the precise root of Revisionist attraction
to historic literary icons as represented by/in the fairytale and superhero genres, source
material ripe for the postmodern demands of the Revisionist critique.
But our postmodern Revisionists would remind us not to take all of this too
seriously, and perhaps the best (briefest) summation of the Revisionist style may be
found in Benson’s quotation of Edward Said, who writes, “This is the prerogative of late
style: it has the power to render disenchantment and pleasure without resolving the
contradiction between them” (qtd. 139). Indeed, Coover’s postmodern fairytale embraces
the immediate tale as the battleground for its own genre history and characteristically
(gleefully) denies resolution, arguing instead that even the suggestion of resolution is
merely a narrative scheme to persuade a literary audience that such a thing as
“conclusions” and other endings may even exist—an impossibility in an eternal genre
that must be read in context with its generic history. It is into this (energetically) uneasy
25
recognition of the impossibility of genre resolution that Grant Morrison’s Batman logs
itself as an illustration of the Revisionist mode outside of the fairytale genre.
26
CHAPTER 3
“I AM THE BATMAN. AND THIS IS HOW I CAME TO BE”: THE SUPERHERO AS
REVISIONIST CRITIC IN GRANT MORRISON’S BATMAN: THE BLACK GLOVE
AND BATMAN R.I.P.
Where Coover’s Revisionist postmodern fairytales envision genre as source for
narrative production that illuminates the dissonance between historical and contemporary
instances of icons, Morrison’s work on the Batman oeuvre reveals a similar re-
conceptualization of the superhero instance indebted to its history of construction.
Indeed, this (incongruent) eternality of character becomes (for Morrison’s texts) the very
root of the crises that shape and re-shape the DC Universe—most noticeably in
Wolfman’s attempt to “fix it,” but also in the recent 2011 re-launch of the “New 52”—a
Wolfman-esque attempt to streamline comics continuity by revamping origin stories and
abandoning previous narratives in an appeal to new readers (and their wallets).
Morrison’s Batman challenges narrative trends in contemporary superhero comics that
encourage circumvention of the issues of genre/icon identification that define the
postmodern fairytale, instead pursuing—as does Coover—a singular preoccupation with
the role of the story-teller (and the story-telling culture) in shaping a narrative that
produces an icon in dialogue with its fractured historicity.
Morrison’s Batman: The Black Glove quickly draws attention to Batman’s history
as a source for narrative re-interpretation by reintroducing a handful of characters of “old
continuity” and installing them in a contemporary execution of the Batman mythos—the
27
international club of batmen is resurrected. These characters—first established in 1955
(Detective Comics #215)—represent a comics era (the Golden Age)
10
defined by its
campiness, bold colors, the easy distinction between good and evil, and textual hyper-
narration. The “Batmen of All Nations”—exactly as it sounds—includes: “The Knight
and the Squire” from England, the French “Musketeer,” “The Gaucho” from “distant
South America,” “The Legionary” from Rome, and the Australian “Ranger.”
The “International Club of Heroes” first appears in a formulaic mystery typical of
most stories from the earlier era: Batman follows a trail of clues and solves the case while
the other batmen try to be useful but ultimately contribute little. The text is littered with
such lines as: “Sorry to disappoint you—but I’m very much alive!” and “Silently, Batman
approaches a house of sinister peril…” (38, 36). The problem for contemporary readers
who encounter these stories is, of course, contemporary superhero comics have long since
moved beyond the stylistic trademarks of these earlier productions; this bright, smiling,
colorful Batman doesn’t remotely resemble the grim figure of contemporary Batman
comics. In his introduction to Frank Miller’s definitive Batman graphic novel, Batman:
The Dark Knight Returns, Alan Moore (Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Batman: The Killing
Joke) acknowledges the unique challenges of adapting a Golden Era superhero for a
postmodern readership:
The fictional heroes of the past, while still retaining all of their charm and power
and magic, have had some of their credibility stripped away forever as a result of
the new sophistication in their audience…So, unless we are to somehow do
without heroes altogether, how are the creators of fiction to go about redefining
their legends to suit the contemporary climate? (no pagination)
28
Moore’s reaction to the shifting literary and cultural demands of the superhero genre
echoes the sentiment of Coover’s Reaper, whose greatest fear—meaninglessness—
threatens to manifest if cultural icons, no longer relevant, are allowed to ignore their non-
cohesive historical identities. The challenge to contemporary comics writers is clear:
dramatic shifts in stylistic conventions produce an atmosphere in which contemporary
writers and audiences must either attempt to grapple with apparently incongruent
instances of the Batman icon (foregrounding that conflict immediately in contemporary
Batman comics) or simply ignore it altogether, construct a “new” Batman under the
implications that this Batman is (for now) the “correct” Batman.
Morrison’s narrative argues that the icon’s past incarnations must not be
ignored—but rather, such conflicted representations are central to the contemporary
figure—suggesting models for inclusion of previous Batman conceptualizations. In The
Black Glove the international batmen reconvene at the request of the club’s mysterious
benefactor and a murder mystery ensues. But the characters exhibit signs of variance
from their campy 1955 counterparts, slight modifications and adjustments, as the
narrative highlights dissonance in its confessional reintroductions of each character. The
Musketeer explains that he accidentally killed a villain and was sent to an asylum where
he wrote a memoir that made him ludicrously wealthy; he rejoices “I never have to fight
crime again” (12). “Man-of-Bats” (the Native American Batman) is an alcoholic. The
Legionary is morbidly obese. The depiction of “heroism” diverges sharply from that of
previous eras, offering—rather than a light-hearted, playful illustration of, perhaps
29
bungling, Batman variants—a dark committee of costumed neurotics who have failed to
maintain any sort of heroic integrity.
Morrison’s narrative works to reconstruct the characters in such a way as to make
a space for them in contemporary comics.
11
Current genre expectations disallow the
contemporary enactment of the flamboyant (cheerfully clichéd) batmen, so Morrison
offers alternative instances: he constructs a(n imaginary) past in which these batmen
gradually lose their functionality as crime-fighters—illustrating their lost utility to the
superhero genre. In How to Read Superhero Comics and Why, Geoff Klock identifies the
revisionist’s goal, drawing from Harold Bloom’s poetic theories: “[T]he revisionist
strives to see again, so as to esteem and estimate differently, so as to aim ‘correctively,’”
arguing that the Revisionist comics writer must conduct a critical “misreading” of the
character’s history so as to perform reinterpretation that might maintain an “original
relation to truth” (28, 16). Essentially, for Klock, the Revisionist attempts construction of
new narratives that account for incompatibilities within the character’s production
history. The Revisionist hopes to make sense of a character’s contemporary identity by
examining the fragmentation caused by its inconsistent historical enactments so as to find
a space within the current Batman (character/universe) for the diverse and contradictory
instances of that character. The ultimate Revisionist aim is to construct a character that
illustrates such fragmentation is an essential part of identity; the writer does not create it,
but simply reveals that it has always been there.
The Revisionist efforts explored in Klock’s book suggest a technique that might
be used within comics (by comics writers and critics) to confront and understand the
30
complexities posed by the incongruent histories of contemporary comic book
superheroes. Klock thoroughly articulates the complexities of the superhero’s diverse
authorship and production history, helpful to those less familiar with the conventions of
the medium:
The adventures of a superhero are published serially, and thus continuity is
established from episode to episode, as in television. Unlike television, however,
the serial adventures of individual superheroes have been running for decades,
and as fiction characters these heroes do not age. Batman, for example, has
remained a perennially young twenty-nine-year-old since his appearance in 1939,
even though the environment in which he fights has changed month by month to
remain contemporary. While certain writers and artists have had long runs with a
single character, each superhero has had a number of different writers and artists
over its run, crossing decades in American history. Since no single creator is
essential to the continuation of any given character across the run of a series,
many successful superhero titles are still in publication. Comic books are open-
ended and can never be definitively completed, as even canceled titles might be
revived and augmented by new creators. (27)
Such mechanics of production only add to the fragmentary nature of icon identity in
comics—the Revisionist’s source material. Klock upholds Frank Miller’s Batman: The
Dark Knight Returns as the first instance of an explicit Revisionist effort to manage a
character’s continuity in such a way as to acknowledge (rather than deny) the character’s
non-cohesive historical selves. First, Miller’s representation of Batman ages him
realistically (a first for the character), casting the icon’s production history as a
developmental history of one character, giving space to the images of Batman that have
come before (29). Klock suggests that Miller’s realism operates to reconstruct the
reader’s retroactive experience of the character’s history, citing, as an example, Miller’s
revelation of the metal shielding underneath Batman’s costume—“Why do you think I
wear a target on my chest—can’t armor my head”; Klock argues that with this revision,
31
“a thirty-year mystery dissolves as every reader runs mentally through previous stories,
understanding that plate as having always been there” (30). Klock concludes that such a
strong revision makes all other previous depictions of Batman “appear to have ‘fallen
away’ from the strongest version that is retroactively constituted as always true” (31).
Miller’s reconstruction of the Batman mythos introduces the techniques of the
Revisionist who seeks to account for an icon’s incongruent history rather than ignore it.
Such Revisionist strategies abound in Grant Morrison’s restructuring of the
Batman canon, and The Black Glove reveals its Revision as the driving force behind its
depiction of Batman’s interaction with his own incongruent history. The Batman instance
confronts long-forgotten elements of his past—the international batmen—who have been
revised in such a way as to comment on their own prolonged absence from Batman’s
universe. The Revisionist tactic enables construction of a Batman whose identity is
forced to take into account these disparate elements of his past, as is visually illustrated in
Batman’s entrance to the clubhouse where the international batmen await his arrival.
12
Artist J.H. Williams III depicts Batman’s massive form in the doorway. His torso and
lower body are partially obscured by six panels depicting the faces of the international
batmen, their bold colors in stark contrast to the Batman’s palette of faded grays and
blacks. Here is a visual representation of this Batman’s struggle: just as these images
literally interfere with our ability to see Batman, the historical presence of these
incompatible figures interferes with our ability to understand the Batman character apart
from the diverse historical identities he (still) possesses. Even Batman recognizes that, in
some way, these six figures of his past inform his own history, that his identity is partially
32
indebted to these individuals simply because they have played a role in his development
(as a textual icon and as a character).
The text suggests that to ignore the historical presence of the international batmen
only evades (and exacerbates) the complications of current Batman continuity—namely
the character’s self-contradictory production history. Contemporary Batman enactments
tend to ignore the dissonance between the current figure and the Batman of 1989 in Frank
Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns or the 1955 Golden Age Batman. And so Morrison’s
revisions attempt to make a place for that history by offering stories that account for each
character’s diverse personal history. The carefully executed self-reflexivity explores
tension between the voice of the Batman character within the text, and the voice of the
text itself (or its creators). Early on, Batman reveals this metatextual self-examination,
musing to Robin, “There’s something that’s always fascinated me. What do eccentric
men who have everything do when they get bored?” (9). While obviously ironic for
readers (Batman quite unknowingly describes himself, here), the line is delivered in
deadpan, and Morrison introduces a pattern that will dominate the rest of this book:
Batman’s voice serves to provide unconscious (or semi-conscious) commentary on the
text and on himself as an element of that text.
This double-voicing is most frequently used to examine the different revisions of
Batman’s textual history, and we gradually recognize his sensitivity and sympathy toward
the mistreatment of the international batmen. The contemporary readership’s attitude
toward these batmen might be understandably dismissive (simply because, as we’ve
already seen, the campiness of ’50s Batman comics no longer aligns with contemporary
33
genre conventions), and the international batmen seem to sense their irrelevance. The
Knight (England’s batman) sadly remarks, in reference to the original “International Club
of Heroes”: “No wonder it lasted all of half an hour” (13). But Batman rejects the
tendency for self-abasement, repeatedly defending the value of antiquated heroes. When
Robin refers to them as the “League of Losers,” Batman responds aggressively, “[Y]ou’re
being unfair. El Gaucho’s a well-respected crimefighter in Argentina. Even The
Legionary was great once” (38). In his defense of these superheroes, Batman not only
finds value in their current function (El Gaucho), but he also values their historical
function (The Legionary), suggesting that contemporary failure (irrelevance) does not
expunge a character’s historical contributions. Batman promotes Robin’s appreciation of
these superheroes and seeks contemporary space for them, arguing (hoping) that these
characters aren’t useless losers. The death scenes of the international batmen visually
illustrate this nostalgic recognition of historical value. Each violent death foregrounds
soft, hazy illuminations of the hero in his prime—muted illustrations of previous crime-
fighting successes overshadowed by the immediate depiction of death by stabbing,
hanging, etc.—providing striking contrast between the gruesome murder scene and the
character’s romanticized past. William’s illustrations amplify the dissonance between the
character’s depiction in 1955 and 2007 as Morrison cynically illustrates many writers’
typical response to incompatibilities within Batman’s history: simply kill whatever isn’t
working anymore.
Batman’s defense of the antiquated international batmen suggests that divorcing
the Batman character from incompatible or troubling aspects of his history fails to satisfy.
34
And Batman’s defensiveness arises primarily from the recognition of his potential role in
revoking their relevance with his very presence. When the massacre begins, cohesion
breaks down even further among the international batmen, even turning their suspicion
toward Batman, questioning, “How can we even be sure it’s the real Batman under the
mask…he could be the killer.” But Batman overhears, and responds coldly, “If I was,
you’d be dead” (40). Later, when Batman encounters John Mayhew—the creator of the
first club of heroes and our murderer—the accusations are made more explicit when
Mayhew exclaims, “I even tried to save the world with my own crimebusting team...But
it was your disdain that killed the enthusiasm of the club of heroes” (74).The text argues
that Batman’s very existence (the evolution of the icon over time) is precisely what
promotes the “irrelevance” and abandonment of the international batmen. They didn’t
change (they are eternally campy), but Batman did, warping into a tortured perpetrator of
a grotesque brand of justice. The creators (his artists/writers/editors) revised him,
restructuring his identity to align with an increasingly vexed morality, and rapid, dramatic
shifts in genre convention. It is this transformation that produces the tension between the
contemporary Batman and the seemingly incongruent batmen of his past—an
incongruence that has resulted in the abandonment of “irrelevant” characters like the
international batmen. Morrison’s Batman recognizes the role he has played in destroying
the international club of heroes, and his guilt over this unintentional erasure is
counteracted by his pursuit to re-establish the contemporary worth of this antiquated
team.
35
Batman’s effort to construct a contemporary identity by confronting historical
enactments of the self exemplifies a metatextual attempt to manage revisions that he
cannot control. Morrison’s Batman exhibits an uneasy tension between absolute (willed)
ignorance to his metatextual existence and full awareness, resulting in a barrage of
narrative elements that constantly threaten to overwhelm. The introduction of these
revised characters (and the resulting guilt) is one such element. The reunion triggers
Batman’s anxiety in the face of the Revisionist’s challenge for the character to maintain
cohesive identity in the face of a fragmented history. Even Morrison’s revisions (the
reintroduction and re-imagining of the international batmen) only partially resolve the
problem, since their presence has the unfortunate effect of reminding us that they ever
existed. While abandoning such incompatible elements of Batman’s history might allow
an “easy” ignorance, the text suggests that this approach promotes a superficial and
incomplete understanding of both the character and the medium, a false “unity” that
doesn’t really exist.
The Ranger (Australia’s batman) preemptively suggests the inevitable conclusion
of such metatextual tension when he exclaims, “Every time we get together it’s like a
bloody nervous breakdown”—of course, all in due time (36). Morrison’s narrative arc
goes on to examine Batman’s confrontation with the third of the “Three Ghosts of
Batman,” new batmen created through scientifically manipulated trauma at the hands of
the Gotham police department. The third “ghost batman” lays siege to the police
department in an attempt to bait Batman, hoping for confrontation. Initially shrouded in
mystery, at the very least it is clear that he is not our hero, that he can never replace our
36
hero; he is evil. He terrorizes Lieutenant Gordon, thrusting a gun into his mouth. He
threatens to kill, and there is no question of his capability and willingness. And with
Batman’s arrival, the ensuing confrontation reveals the disturbing relationship between
the two when Batman questions, in horror, “What did they do to you?” and the ghost
batman exclaims “What they did to me. Your fault!” (96). Batman identifies this figure as
the disturbing image of a potential future batman—a hypothetical result of perpetual
reconstruction of the Batman mythos.
After shooting Batman in the chest and restraining him in a basement dungeon,
the ghost batman reveals his origin, cementing his Revisionist function as a hypothetical
trajectory for the Batman icon. The ghost batman explains, “That’s how it all got started.
Somebody wondered what we’d all do if Batman died” (129). Doctor Hurt is introduced
as the mastermind behind the attempts to artificially manufacture a new Batman under
the recognition that “Trauma, shattering trauma is the driving force behind the enigma of
Batman” (139); three police officers were exposed to extreme trauma, dosed with
experimental chemicals, their families murdered, and so on, in the hopes that this might
create a new batman capable of usurping the current Batman’s function. Such a goal
directly reflects the production of the Batman series, echoing the frequent transmission of
the series to a new creative team under the recognition (assumption) that the “old”
Batman has “died”—is no longer relevant—and a new, freshly traumatized Batman is
needed to take his place. Only here, Batman directly confronts this aspect of his
production history. Just as Frank Miller’s grotesquely deranged Batman usurped the
“gentler,” more stable Silver Age Batman, Morrison’s Batman suddenly becomes aware
37
of potentially dangerous and violent literary descendants. Batman recognizes, with
horror, that as the direct textual predecessor, he must bear some responsibility for that
which is to follow. He fights frantically to resist this dark potential future (self).
This encounter initiates the narrative’s spiral into chaos, as Morrison tests the
limits of his Revisionist techniques. Just before the ghost batman illuminates his origin,
the narrative offers a jarring deflection with its bizarre interlude—“Joe Chill in Hell”—
depicting Batman’s lapses in and out of consciousness (just after being shot in the chest).
Time functions non-linearly in presentation of images and panels loosely organized
around Bruce Wayne/Batman’s significant life experiences. Batman revisits recent
mysteries, the death and funeral of (the second) Robin, the murder of his parents and the
discovery of the Bat-cave. Most significantly, however, Morrison introduces an element
of Revision central to the narrative arc: “Doctor Hurt” and the “Space Medicine”
experiment. Morrison lifts this plot-point directly out of a Silver Age comic (“Robin Dies
at Dawn,” Batman #156, 1963) in which Batman spends ten days in an isolation chamber
to benefit research in the field of “Space Medicine.” In the 1963 version, Batman
experiences vivid hallucinations (particularly, that he is responsible for the first Robin’s
death), before waking up to discover that it was all a dream and that Robin is still alive.
Morrison appropriates this story to serve his own Revisionist purposes.
The narrative reveals that this isolation experience (of 1963) has actually occurred
sometime within the last ten years of Batman’s life, but that it was actually an elaborate
psychological attack conceived by Doctor Hurt. We learn (although not until the climax
of Batman R.I.P.) that Doctor Hurt uses the experiment to locate Batman’s “breaking
38
point”—he soliloquizes, “One of man’s most primitive fears is loneliness. When a man is
isolated too long, the mind plays strange tricks”
13
—and, having discovered this, he
instills a verbal post-hypnotic trigger that when spoken to Batman, will deactivate
cognitive negotiation of his ego, reducing his intellectual functionality and threatening his
sanity (118). The appropriation of this Silver Age narrative is in itself an instance of
violent Revision, and it marks the crucial transition of Morrison’s arc: Batman is no
longer allowed to confront the resurrected historical instances of selfhood (to consciously
pursue definition of the self in relation to the previous and future instances of the Batman
persona), but he becomes fully victimized and overwhelmed by those revisions.
Morrison’s narrative explores the implications of this transition, fascinated by the
psychological trauma of a character that is semi-consciously aware of his presence within
a comic. In an interview for Publisher’s Weekly, Morrison illuminated his objectives for
his Batman project (which culminated in Batman R.I.P.):
The big breakthrough for me was when I decided to bring Batman’s entire history
into canon by declaring that ALL of these stories had happened in one man’s
incredible life. He’s lost two Robins, seen Batgirl crippled by the Joker, had his
back broken and devastated! What would the accumulated mental toll of all those
years do to even the strongest man? (no pagination)
It should come as no surprise that Morrison—who, in Animal Man, had criticized the
Crisis’ attempt to eliminate the histories of entire worlds—expresses desire to make a
space for Batman’s “entire history” in the canon, ambitions that echo Frank Miller’s
groundbreaking reconstruction of the Batman canon. But more importantly, Morrison
ponders the “accumulated mental toll of all those years”—a psychological query that
dominates the subtext of his Batman narrative. The text reveals its true Revisionist
39
trajectory: the examination of the psychological (metatextual) effects of Batman’s half-
awareness of his role within a complex fictional continuity defined by severe
incongruence.
The narrative illustrates these psychological effects within the “Joe Chill in Hell”
interlude in a depiction of Batman’s near-death experience. As Batman recalls flickers of
fractured memory, his internal dialogue reveals an attempt to place himself: “Where am
I? This is serious. I’m having a heart attack. Some kind of flash forward. Déjà vu. I have
to get out. How long have I been in this cave?” (106). As the frantic stream of scenes
accelerates, Batman responds: “Hearing voices is normal. Hallucinations from the past
and present are normal. Flashing lights and intimations of mortality are normal. All of
this is normal. This is my life now” (107-9). His reaction to the fractured visualizations
signifies the character’s gradual awareness of his presence within a comic book. Batman
attempts to discern his location as he “hears voices” (symbolizing an existence outside of
the comic book page), and recognizes that someone else manipulates his environment and
his experience of time. When the comic book writer depicts scenes of the character’s past
or future—something readers can easily understand through narrative conventions—
Batman experiences chaos; as the narrative shatters the organizing principles of his
reality (time, continuity, etc.), the character attempts to normalize his experience,
reframing it (perhaps unsuccessfully) as “hallucinations from the past and present” before
resorting simply to the mantra, “all of this is normal.” Morrison’s violent Revisions
disrupt Batman’s experience, shifting his reality as he suddenly becomes (more) aware
that his existence is in some way fictional. Even more so, Morrison’s Batman offers a
40
kind of pop-psychology self-help mantra here, for readers who (perhaps unknowingly)
suffer from a similarly (necessarily) fragmented sense of self. Postmodern perspectives
on human identity argue that it is essentially confused by the lingering presence of past
selves; how do we reconcile our current identities with our childhood memories, and how
do these past instances of self influence current emotional and cognitive processes?)
Morrison’s Batman offers an extreme enactment of these postmodern perspectives on
identity as a constant process of fragmentation and participation with those fragments.
And Batman’s immediate psychological disruption occurs because of the heightened
aggression of Morrison’s Revisionist tactics. The narrative begins to question the nature
of cultural license for icon-reconstruction, as Morrison’s treatment appears to no longer
assist Batman’s self-identification but to threaten his psychological health.
Batman slightly re-stabilizes when the third ghost revives him, and he reasserts
his confidence: “As Batman, I have to be prepared for all kinds of eventualities. Every
day I run through a thousand different scenarios...I imagine a thousand potential death
traps and plot my escapes” (143).
14
But Batman struggles to maintain confidence in the
face of this new danger—the manipulative writer—and anxiously ponders: “What if there
were an ultimate villain out there, unseen? An absolute mastermind closing in for the
kill? What if there existed an invisible implacable foe who’d calculated my every
weakness? Who had access to allies, weapons and tactics I couldn’t imagine?” (142-3).
Batman has come to conceptualize his comics writer as a foe, a villain with access to
unimaginable “allies, weapons and tactics,” and indeed, the writer holds ultimate
authorial power over the character; every trap, doomsday machine and super-villain that
41
Batman encounters is ultimately a weapon of the writer, and perhaps the Revisionist
tactic may be conceived as yet another of these dangerous weapons to be used against the
character. Morrison’s R.I.P. narrative arc pursues that same conspiratorial anxiety evoked
by Batman’s gradual awareness of the manipulative grasp of the revisionist writer. Early
on, Batman exclaims, “Someone’s hunting me. I can feel it,” and it is true—the “absolute
mastermind,” the “invisible” foe, Grant Morrison is on the hunt, pursuing a frantic pace
of revision that will ultimately cripple his character (DC Universe #0
15
). Morrison
reintroduces “Batmite”—first appearing in 1959’s “Batman Meets Bat-Mite,” Detective
Comics #267—originally an odd, mischievous Batman-esque “imp” who Morrison
recasts as Batman’s disembodied (hallucinated) “voice of reason.” Nightwing (previously
Robin) discovers Batman’s “Black Casebook”—a chronicle of the bizarre cases Batman
had encountered in the previous ten years.
16
This Black Casebook recounts Batman’s
first experience with the “international batmen,” his participation in the “space medicine”
experiment, and an assortment of other narratives lifted directly from Silver Age comics
(the character’s production history is given a literal space within the contemporary text).
Eventually, the wave of revisions proves too much. The post-hypnotic phrase is
triggered, and Batman “switches off.” It is no accident that the secret, psychologically
crippling trigger, is “Zur-en-Aarh”—a phrase directly lifted from a Silver Age story.
Here, the element of revision is executed as the ultimate weapon capable of destroying
the character’s mental health. He simply cannot cope with the historical instances of self
that Morrison thrusts relentlessly upon him,
17
and a complete disintegration of the
character ensues. Wandering the streets, homeless and high on heroin, Bruce seeks his
42
identity: “I have the accent of an educated, rich man, so how did I lose my money? I can’t
have been on the streets for long because my hair looks like it was cut recently. Who am
I?” (Batman #678). But the psychological defeat is neither absolute nor permanent, and,
in self-defense, Batman is eventually overtaken by an alternative personality “the Batman
of Zur-En-Aarh,” who survives only by silencing the rational portion of his brain; he
introduces himself, “See, I’m the Batman of Zur-en-arrh. I'm what you get when you take
Bruce out of the equation” (Batman #679). Only this enacted alter-ego—“Batman of Zur-
en-Aarh”—allows Bruce Wayne/Batman to survive Doctor Hurt’s exhaustive
psychological attacks and, later, the Joker’s brutal physical assault. Eventually, having
been buried alive yet again, Batman “switches on,” defeating his opponents for now.
“Zur-en-Aarh”—a phrase that signifies Revisionist resurrection of the past—reduces
Batman to a heroin-addicted homeless man, but by embracing that same phrase (as the
“Batman of Zur-en-Aarh”), Batman saves himself.
18
And so, the dual nature of the
Revisionist technique is fully unveiled: the Revisionist process of executing identity
fragmentation by embracing historical enactments is simultaneously self-destructive and
redemptive, or rather the strategy is productive through its deconstructive performance.
The narrative conclusions on the nature of the Revisionist strategy might be best
illustrated in the Batman of Zur-en-Aarh’s climactic confrontation with the Joker (who
has been hired to fight Batman while Doctor Hurt and his wealthy friends—the Black
Glove—observe). The Joker—having learned of Batman’s participation in the isolation
experiment as an attempt to approach insanity and thus understand the Joker’s demented
perspective—criticizes Batman, mocking him brutally:
43
they tell me you got yourself into this whole horrible mess because you wanted to
understand what it was like to be me
haha
you think it all breaks down into symbolism and structures and hints and clues
no, batman, that’s just wikipedia
you actually believed all it would take is a few chemicals, a couple of days of
drug-induced isolation and a cheap little nervous breakdown and you’d have me
all figured out? like there was some rabbit hole you could follow me down to
understanding?
19
(Batman #680)
And within the Joker’s frantic tirade is the real warning, the joke: rationality is doomed to
failure. The essential flaw of continuity—and the medium so heavily defined by it—is
that it seeks to construct a “false unity” where there is none (and where none is required).
Batman reminds readers that attempt to construct a cohesive identity rely upon strategies
that endorse such a false unity, whereas postmodern identity formation rejects the notion
of cohesion altogether, instead valuing strategies that explore the tensions that
accompany recognition of self-fragmentation. Where DC (headed by Wolfman) identifies
a source of generic tension within superhero comics (casting its continuity problems as a
critical weakness of a writing strategy and, maybe, the genre), Morrison’s Batman pushes
us to recognize that to pursue unification—especially through erasure—is to pursue that
which does not exist.
Of course, this is to some extent yet another evasion of the Crisis, but Morrison’s
strategy should not be interpreted as an attempt to “fix” it. Indeed, to even suggest that
identity fracturing should be fixed, is to completely misinterpret the consequence of the
Revisionist strategy (as we will see in Flex Mentallo). This enactment of the Revisionist
approach seeks rather to explore the scope and limits of such a technique by examining a
previously unexplored dimension: how does the reconstructed superhero feel about his
44
revisions? In its argument for the intimate metatextual relationship and interaction
between the textual character and reader, Morrison’s text reveals its sensitivity to its own
treatment and manipulation of its characters. The writer should not be above scrutiny, and
the characters themselves exhibit the psychological effects—whether providing greater
self-identification or psychologically crippling the fictional character—of the violent
revisions they experience.
We might ultimately look to Morrison’s Batman as a promotion of a technique
that, like Coover, utilizes Revisionist tactics without demanding psychological realism of
its characters, instead, offering a character that simultaneously inhabits the textual world
of the comic book and the actual reality of the reader, providing a Batman whose unique
ability is not simply to fight crime, but to offer commentary on the contemporary status
and potential of the serialized comic book narrative. Morrison’s Batman performs a
crucial examination of the ways in which serial chronology functions to gradually distort
the character over time by providing dramatically diverse, often dissonant, historical
enactments of identity assignation—a cumulative endeavor—and, like Coover,
Morrison’s Revision demands engagement of/with fragmentation so that we might re-
define contemporary instances as non-cohesive amalgamations of contradictory parts. It
is precisely this Revisionist engagement with historical literary and cultural production
that solidifies Morrison’s Batman as participant in postmodern fairytale—a genre
reconstruction that seeks its recapitulation through simultaneous critique and enactment
of convention.
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CHAPTER 4
GRANT MORRISON’S FLEX MENTALLO AND IDENTITY CONSTRUCTION
THROUGH REVISIONIST DIFFRACTION
Of course the conceptualization of Batman as fairytale (or more often myth) is not
an entirely new approach to inviting superheroes into the fold of literary criticism, but
Morrison’s Revision seeks more than a simple recognition of the similarities between
cultural production of postmodern fairytales and (postmodern) superhero comics. By
turning to Morrison’s 1996 Flex Mentallo miniseries, we may begin to identify the
potential for Revisionist extension beyond (or at least without regard to) genre. Morrison
offers the bulgingly masculine Flex Mentallo, “Man of Muscle Mystery,” sporting a
leopard-spotted loincloth in parody of famed bodybuilder Charles Atlas (DC won the
lawsuit), and the narrative consists of fluid, associative threads centered upon the text’s
interaction between the knowingly fictive Flex Mentallo and his writer, Wally Sage.
Throughout the course of its narrative, the text makes the crucial argument for the real
reality of its (and all other) comic book superheroes, offering a conclusive treatise on
Revision as model for approaching identity formation inside and outside of comics.
Whereas Morrison enacts Revision of the Batman icon via R.I.P.’s immediate
narrative, Flex Mentallo composes and concludes its Revisionist thesis in the introduction
to the collected “Deluxe Edition,” before the events of its narrative have begun.
Morrison—presumably, although the introduction is not signed or assigned—offers a
“fake” history of the Flex Mentallo mythos-production, beginning with his “debut in the
46
pages of Manly Comics’ Rasslin Men in February 1941,” accrediting the character’s
creation to Ashley Dubois, whose “tales of Greek love and hand-to-hand combat among
the gods and demigods were intended for his own pleasure and that of a small circle of
enthusiasts” (5). The introduction goes on to frame the Revisionist paradigm, articulating
the various cultural shifts that have led to character reconstruction, beginning with “The
Golden Age Flex”—“a simple character: his foes were mainly metal ants and so on” (5).
Flex’s fictional history continues:
The war years proved to be a boom time for Manly Comics, and the line was
expanded to include a number of newly-created patriotic heroes—who can forget
Lady Liberty, Jap-Smasher, Yankee Poodle Andy, the Fightin’ Skull, and the
many others who kept the fire of hatred burning throughout those dark days. (5)
The sharp critique apes (actual) historical trends in comic production, as Mila Bongco
iterates in Reading Comics: Language, Culture, and the Concept of the Superhero in
Comic Books:
World War II initiated a big push for patriotic heroes. It provided the superheroes
with a new set of enemies and supplied a complete working rationale for the
world view of a super-patriotic hero such as Captain America who epitomized
American values during World War II…In the summer of 1941, Nazi-bashing
superheroes began in earnest—with propaganda and slogans included in the pages
of the comicbooks. (97)
The Revisionist executes a keen awareness of these historical trends in pop-culture,
powerful forces in redefining the identifying features of its superheroes, and since Flex
doesn’t technically have a history (of/in Revision), Morrison makes certain to provide
one for him.
The introduction goes on to articulate other shifts in conventional tendencies of
the superhero genre, contributors to further fragmentation and reconstruction of Flex’s
47
collective identity, his Urmythos. When Flex’s popularity dovetails—a result of Dubois’
fatefully mistaken prediction of Nazi success
20
—the icon is cancelled, and “superhero
comics went through a bad time in the 1950s” before “somebody suggested we bring
back some of the old superheroes,” resulting in the “Silver Age of Superheroes…a time
of renaissance and creativity. New superheroes were being created almost at the speed of
thought to keep up with the incredible demand” (7). It wasn’t until 1990—the Flex
Mentallo introduction contends—that a “radical ‘postmodern’ or ‘Dark Age’ version of
Flex appeared in DC’s DOOM PATROL title. This Flex was used to challenge the
ontological categories of the hypothetical DC ‘universe’ and his success led to various
imitators here and in other lands” (7). Here, Morrison’s introduction has concluded its
Revisionist framing, illustrating the source of failure for cohesive superhero identity
construction before even giving his readers an actual glimpse of the hero.
21
His
introduction performs the foregrounding for the crisis Batman endures throughout the
course of Black Glove and R.I.P.
Beyond the introduction, Flex’s fractured narrative becomes distinctly
(purposefully) difficult to summarize, comprised primarily of the hero’s ill-defined quest:
solve the mystery, save the world…but from whom?—a decidedly Coover-esque quest at
that, reminiscent of the “princely struggle” of Briar Rose. The text frames its cyclical
narrative with depictions of Flex’s author/creator, Wally Sage who, having downed
several bottles of pharmaceuticals (or maybe just M&M’s), simply wants to talk about
comic books while he dies.
22
Where narrative threads fracture and disintegrate, plot
progression is bolstered primarily by strains of thematic association, namely Flex’s
48
existential crisis. Like Morrison’s Batman—tortured by historical resurrections of
previously enacted identities—Flex grapples existentially with his own history, and by
now we might come to recognize this as an inevitable staple of Morrison’s particular
brand of Revision. Early in the text, Flex finds himself seated on his sofa in a dark living
room, viewing television re-runs—highlights of his Golden Age years—and he bemoans,
“What happened to the good old days? The heroes and villains, the team-ups and dream-
ups? Seems to rain all the time these days. Never seems to get light. Maybe the
lieutenant is right; maybe it is the end of the world and there’s nothing left to do but play
with our old toys” (20). Just as Batman is forcibly confronted by the bright colors, the
“team-ups and dream-ups” of his past—all of which only serves to render the
contemporary setting all the more gloomy—Flex recognizes, even mourns that which has
been lost to time. And Wally sees it too, concluding “Now the superheroes are as fucked-
up as the fucking rejects who write about them and draw them and read about them. All
the heroes are in therapy and there’s no one left to care about us”—a criticism of the
post-Millar Batman (70). And in a line that could be pasted onto the Batman breakdown,
our Man of Muscle Mystery marvels, “Strange how I found myself questioning my own
sanity and trying to find rational explanations for past weird adventures” (71). Indeed,
Morrison’s Batman project is essentially defined by its attempts to rationalize the
irrational components of a fractured identity. Just as Batman’s survival depends upon
retreat into a repressed pre-programmed alternative identity (accompanied by a kind of
insanity), Morrison’s text yet again suggests insanity as the only available psychological
response to forced confrontation with incompatible selves.
49
But even while the comic distractedly pursues its Revisionist project, its
theorizing is marginal, second-hand—not at all like Batman, in which Revision is the
narrative force and conclusion. Gradually, Morrison’s text shifts its focus away from the
mechanics of its Revisionist crises—the factors of convoluted character construction, the
dangers of implied/demanded continuity—and sets its sights on the potential for the
Revisionist strategy to describe something other than its own generic genesis. Ironically
our most poignant flash of insight comes from the margins—a male prostitute, throwing
in the towel in a dingy subway bathroom, exclaims “I’m sick of the real thing. Dirt and
shit and going down on fat guys for a few dollars to buy a shitty hamburger, so you end
up as fat as they are” before injecting “krystal,” a new drug that “takes you right out of
this world and into this place where you see everything that has happened . . . is
happening, will happen, could happen, couldn’t happen . . . You see reality for what it
is . . . the imaginary story” (44). The text’s underlying preoccupations gradually shift into
focus, as Morrison begins to situate comics (and specifically the Revisionist comic) as a
model for addressing the ways in which we interpret and construct reality. Superheroes
play a definitive role—at least for Wally and, presumably, Morrison—in molding
individual perceptual inclinations, and Wally attempts to articulate this developmental
role:
They talk to you all the time when you’re little. They live in…I don’t know…it’s
like a factory where ideas are made. They escaped from ‘the Absolute’ but the
plan went wrong. Reality was flawed from the beginning. Haven’t you ever felt
like there’s something missing? …they bypassed the death of their reality by
becoming fictional in ours…the ultimate pathetic truth in pathetic existence. (95-
96)
50
Wally argues that “we made the comics because we knew. Somehow we knew something
was missing and we tried to fill the gap with stories about gods and superheroes…the
comics are just, like, crude attempts to remember the truth about reality” (96). Here
Morrison offers the argument for the value of the comic art form and, more specifically,
the superhero genre—its ability to offer narratives that “fill the gap,” an attempt (no
matter how hopeless) to confront basic truths of reality, to use fictional stories to examine
and critique real stories. The ultimate goal? “no more barriers between the real and the
imaginary” (100).
The text attempts to deconstruct that barrier, the implied dichotomy between the
real and the imaginary, offering Wally’s prototypical experience of the anxiety that
accompanies such an endeavor. Lying in a puddle of his own vomit, Wally freaks out:
“It’s the universe…it’s…ah… it’s moving in…I can’t describe it…like a soap bubble
collapsing…Are you there? I can seem them blurring in the corner of my eye…multiple
universes converging” (58). The visual representation of this convergence solidifies the
hypertextual pairing with Crisis on Infinite Earths, as the fictional crisis (refusing to “stay
put” in historical time and place) becomes once again quite real and immediate for Wally.
The boundaries continue to blur, this time between writer and character, when a confused
Wally claims, “I’m Flex Mentallo…no, no, he’s a superhero. I made him up when I was a
kid…No…I just feel sick and…umm…disorganized” (73). At another time, Wally—who
inhabits a seemingly psychologically realistic depiction of Earth—begins to internalize
metaphysics of the superhero genre, explaining “It doesn’t matter if I die here…well, I’ll
still be alive somewhere else. Endless parallel worlds. Infinite versions of me” (41). As a
51
result of his indulgence in the deconstruction of the imposed real/imaginary binary,
Wally begins to understand his own physical and psychological dimensions through his
interaction with generic superhero tropes. And Morrison invites us to do the same,
concluding the narrative with his direct appeal to the reader: “Welcome. You have been
inhabiting the first ultra-post-futuristic comic: characters are allowed full
synchrointeraction with readers at this level” (107). This interaction between characters
and readers might serve as the gateway to the elimination of preconceived barriers
between the real and the imaginary—an invitation for us to let the Crisis step outside the
comic (or, rather, acknowledge that the crisis has always been outside the comic).
But Morrison’s text offers more than a far-out pop-psychology treatise on the
mystical powers of metafiction (a tired exercise). The tie between all of this
philosophizing and the Revisionist critique of identity-construction lies in an examination
of the functional components of the comic book medium, the sequential manipulation of
two-dimensional space. In Reading Comics: How Graphic Novels Work and What they
Mean, Douglas Wolk argues:
Comics are sequences of images that are neither continuous (like the ‘complete
body’) nor simultaneous. They include spatial representations and temporal
abstractions of images, directed by the temporal representations and spatial
abstractions of language. They are, in short, an ideal medium for dividing the
reader’s consciousness in multiple subjectivities. (269-270)
Such is the nature of Revisionist attraction to the comics medium—an interest in
fractured cultural icons, grounded in its recognition of a division of consciousness, a play
of multiple subjectivities within the fictional figure (Batman, Prince Charming, Briar
Rose). Revision is important because it argues that the narrative fragmentation of
52
fictional consciousnesses (as an inevitable result of serial cultural production) represents
the dividing of consciousness demanded of its readers in order to achieve valid perceptual
vantage points. Batman’s crisis—an attempt to understand the self by pursuing multiple
subjectivities, exploring identity by embracing fragmentation rather than severing
incompatible elements—serves as a model for a holistic perceptual project. As Wolk
suggests, “What Morrison tells us, every chance he gets, is that a higher-dimensional
construct (like the complete version of the world in which we readers live) can be
correctly perceived only from a multiple perspective. Vision must be decentered to see
and understand complex constructs; standard stereoptic vision won’t do” (266). Indeed,
Morrison’s Batman and Coover’s Prince offer striking arguments for the necessity of
approaching “a complete version of the world” via perceptual fragmentation,
“decentering vision” by clashing with historical interpretations of the self. And, as Wolk
recognizes, this fracturing is valuable in itself, since “having an unstable definition of the
self, in Morrison’s cosmology, makes perception of the invisible more possible, since it
means the vantage point doesn’t have to be fixed” (267). The crises of fractured
characters are the crises of their readers, a demand that we stop running from threats to
cohesion, that we stop asking for continuity, and that we embrace historically fragmented
identities as a valuable model for developing perceptual growth through fragmentated
perspective.
And ultimately, the future of the postmodern superhero comic need not be as
dismal as some critics of the genre might wish to suggest, many of whom argue that the
53
genre itself has long-since lost most (if not all) of its literary merit. Take Richard
Reynolds, for example, who maintains in Superheroes: A Modern Mythology:
It may well be (as many critics are now arguing) that the superhero genre belongs
to the early days of the comic. The rules of continuity and the audience’s
expectations may mean that nothing further can be achieved. If that is the case—if
the development of comics carries their momentum away from the superhero—it
will be telling to observe what becomes of the key superheroes and their myths. It
is even possible that, released from the treadmill of monthly serial continuity, one
or two of the most effective superhero myths might ascend the cultural ladder and
become established as suitable vehicles for ‘high art.’ (118)
It is worth noting that Reynolds participates in a sort of essentialist criticism of our
heroes, ignoring many of the tensions identified as crucial by the Revisionist. Take, for
example, his reading of Batman:
What makes Batman so different from Superman is that his character is formed by
confronting a world which refuses to make sense. His experiences might have
taught him to be wholly cynical—yet he continues to risk life and limb in a one-
man war against crime…all Batman’s most effective scripters and artists have
understood that this madness is a part of Batman’s special identity, and that the
protagonist’s obsessive character links him with his enemies in a more personal
way than, say, Superman. (67)
Reynolds’ character sketch completely ignores the possibility that this “Batman essence”
might disintegrate if we were to hold two disparate visions of the icon in simultaneous
regard—a crucial oversight for the Revisionist.
Such pessimistic perspectives on the trajectory of the superhero genre only
underscore the extent to which the genre depends upon Revision as a means for retaining
relevance—a necessity for critics and readers alike. Wolk suggests that “for most people,
growing up means giving up the things of childhood—superheroes, say. Morrison,
though, has shown no interest at all in ditching the interests of his youth, especially
54
superheroes. Instead, he suggests, growing up means understanding them more fully or
using their pop mojo more wisely” and that “if superhero comics don’t speak to the
realities of their readers, that’s not a problem with the genre but a demand to improve its
execution” (277, 288). In order to “work through” the problems of the genre, we must
expand our critical approach, and Wolk makes the important distinction that “what
Morrison’s implying…isn’t just that superhero stories are exaggerated metaphors for
aspects of human experience, but that human experience is in fact the same thing as their
titanic conflicts, described in different terms but just as grand” (287). We must refuse to
exclusively view the superhero as thematic metaphor, so as to recognize that our
serialized heroes offer themselves as models for perceptual growth, and in this we may
come to understand Morrison’s texts not as an argument for the death of the superhero,
nor as genre renaissance—a return to conventional practices—but rather a construction of
a new space for superhero comics as literal human experience, inroads to strategies of
constructing reality, models of perceptive development. Because, ultimately, Revision is
a metaphysical entreaty on identity formation outside the comic. Human experience (of
the self, of time and so on) bears striking similarity to the Revisionist superhero’s
endeavors for identity construction. Life is an exercise in exploring contemporary selves
in dialogue with past selves—an inevitable dialogue that occurs in internal monologue,
repression, suppression, conscious and unconscious memory, etc.—and, as Morrison and
Coover suggest, we might do better than simply glossing over the tension, the
contradiction, all those tricky thorns that make us anxious. We are a composite of the
fairytales we’ve lived, the cultural fairytales told of us, the literary fairytales we’ve
55
absorbed. And, at least for Coover and Morrison, it’s time we abandon efforts of
cohesion and continuity, and embrace that fragmentation as an instrument of perceptual
decentering, a pursuit of multiple subjectivities and better vantage points.
56
NOTES
1
Each universe possesses a parallel earth inhabited by superheroes that share
continuity with each other, but not with the heroes of the other parallel earths. So, for
example, if a Superman comic seems to contradict the character’s accepted continuity
(origin, appearance, superpowers), DC can simply explain that this isn’t the “official”
superman (from Earth-2), but it is the communist Superman from Earth-30.
2
Interestingly, Morrison’s Animal Man narrative arc initially consisted of the author’s
attempt to promote vegetarianism and animal rights, but halfway through—as if unable to
avoid the issue any longer—he hijacks the narrative, shifting its trajectory toward his
ultimate discussion (and condemnation) of DC’s attempt to erase unwanted superhero
continuity in the crisis.
3
As is typical of Coover, the first quarter of text serves as its thesis and instruction
manual, the rest is its demonstration and riff.
4
Benson’s definition of narrative is particularly helpful for elucidation: “By narration
here I mean in particular the formal trajectory of plot, the progression through a series of
causally related events toward an ending that functions, in whatever manner, to resolve,
explain, and thereby make fixedly meaningful the events it serves to cap” (130).
5
This presumption might be one consequence of ill-perceived definitions of Urmythos
as “absolute essence”—an encouragement that fairytales/cultural icons possess a
cohesive self that we might try to adhere to” and, as such, were we to re-write a character
we must do so with accuracy (there is no such thing as accuracy for the Revisionist).
57
6
It is the Revisionist argument that continued production of literary icons results in a
necessary fragmentation rather than producing a chain of cohesive self-contained
enactments of one iconic entity. And the Revisionist pursues that fragmentation in the
text and in its characters (Coover’s Prince and Morrison’s Batman certainly suffer the
consequences of shattered identities/psyches).
7
Feminist critique is often particularly successful in revealing the ideologies propping
up such illusions.
8
The pattern plays out throughout the novella. For example: “The crone…is telling
her a story about a princess guarded by a fire-breathing dragon known for his ferocity and
his insatiable appetite for tender young maidens…” (66).
9
Certainly, there are those who view revision as an altogether different strategy, one
in which we might confront and correct mistreatment of minorities in dominant cultural
forms of story-telling (see Margaret Atwood and Angela Carter for enactments of this
strategy.)
10
Roughly the period of comics written from the late 1930s through the 40s, followed
by the Silver Age (~1956 to the early 70s).
11
This would be akin to Carter’s strategy of reconstructing fictions that address shifts
in cultural perceptions toward its thematic tones, constructing narratives that address
contemporary shifts in attitudes toward (super)heroism.
12
Morrison, as the text’s author, exerts significant creative control over the artist’s
illustrations, typically providing story-boards and detailed instructions for visual layouts,
58
which is why it is possible to read the comics artwork as an authorial extension of
Morrison’s ambitions for the project.
13
This is a direct quotation from “Robin Dies at Dawn” (Batman #156)—an
illustration of Morrison’s techniques of using revision to collapse the comic book’s
production history within the immediate text.
14
We might understand Batman’s neurotic preparation not simply as a character trait,
but as a metatextual consequence of his historical experience within his comics. As a
character, he has experienced years and years of death-traps, criminal plots—“a thousand
different scenarios”—and so (as an embodiment of that entire history of experience) this
Batman truly has had quite a bit of practice thanks to his comic book writers.
15
The pages of Batman R.I.P. are not numbered. For ease of use, I will cite the number
and title of the source issue as it was originally published in comic format before
collected and republished as the R.I.P. graphic novel.
16
In yet another metatextual wrinkle, DC Comics eventually published The Black
Casebook—a paperback collection of the stories used as a basis for Morrison’s Batman
run.
17
Of course, this Batman’s tentative metatextual awareness is crucial in providing the
semi-consciousness necessary for this mental collapse. It is only because Batman
possesses some level of awareness of his own production history (suspicious that his
existence is in somehow a fiction subject to manipulation at the hands of the “invisible
foe”) that the persistent return of revised historical narratives disturbs him to the point
where he must divorce himself from rational thought.
59
18
Indeed, the text yet again emphasizes the ways in which the character’s strength is
derived from his constant revision at the hands of his creators. Batman explains, “I
wanted to taste the flavor of death. I wanted to know that I had finally experienced every
eventuality. All it takes is time. Days. Months. Years, spent memorizing the finite ways
there are to hurt and break a man. Preparing for all of them. I’ve escaped from every
conceivable deathtrap. Ten times. A dozen times” (no pagination). Again Batman’s
“practice” is conceived as a fortunate consequence of his existence within the comic book
medium—a medium that demands he must be put through trial after trial, and so cannot
be killed because his preparation is simply too thorough.
19
The Joker’s dialogue is neither capitalized nor (fully) punctuated within the text.
20
“What happened was that, towards the end, Ashley became convinced that the Nazis
were going to win the war and he panicked a little…Shocking as ‘Jap-Smasher Joins a
Winning Team!’ was, it was soon to be eclipsed in infamy by Flex Mentallo #41 with its
‘feature-length action extravaganza,’ ‘Flex Hitler—President of Earth…a 22-page hymn
to evil and bigotry…‘We misjudged the mood of the readership at that time,’ admits
Chuck Fiasco…” (6).
21
Even offering an in-text nod to critics of the outcome, quoting “veteran artist”
Chuck Fiasco: “I don’t particularly like any of this new stuff, the very dark, menacing
sort of stuff. I didn’t like what they did to Flex, I’m sorry. There was no sense of childish
wonder like we had in the old days, it was all head crush this, snap that…there was no joy
in it, it was a cold joyless thing they created, a kind of abortion, I’d say…And who can
understand this stuff? This modern stuff? You’d have to be a modern Einstein or a
60
Stephen Hawking kind of character to understand what the hell’s going on in these
comics. Am I right? Is it just me?” (7).
22
Wally offers the best summary of the text’s motivating tension: “I mean I was
talking about I’ve just fucking taken all those pills and I’m going to fucking die and my
head’s exploding with this stuff comics all these comics and superheroes and it’s just
getting horrible now it just feels sick” (64).
61
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