Another friendly reminder from Mike Barr and Jerry Bingham:
Batman is a Motherfucking Hardass.
Seriously, that guy is not in the mood for any of your crap, as evidenced by Barr and Bingham’s classic Son of the Demon, wherein he takes his shirt off, bangs Talia, and then kicks a guy so hard that he lands in another panel.
Batman knows no mercy!
That is some hard ass kicking.
And then he did a little jig through the melted face puddle.
hi. nice blog . thanks.
And you know he’s only giving 10% of his attention to this guy.
Mostly he’s thinking about what to have Alfred make for dinner.
ATTENTION ALL MELTYFACES: Don’t be giving Batman that look – he ain’t got no candy for you.
You really do have to wonder what the meltyfaced guy hoped by saying “God damn you!” to Batman. Did he think maybe it would cause Batman to have a change of heart and pay to have his melted face restored surgically? Or apologize?
Or, oh, I don’t know, maybe be Batman and say some cold cold shit?
HOLY SHIT. I think Morrison needs to have a hardass Batman moment in his run.
Then again, I think Batman was the most awesome character in his JLA next to Rayner.
And THIS is the story with Shirtless Batman as he bangs Talia? Status: NECESSARY PURCHASE.
well what do you know, I would have figured that batman have learned something from Joker, two-face, or white shark and not let people have horribly disfiguring accidents. guess I was wrong.
Is it just me or is the sign behind Batman really a hidden message about Batman himself? He’s toxic to criminals and always under pressure. How much pressure? Enough to melt your damn face!
I also agree with Jeff@8, this is now a must have.
This book is awesome. I believe that’s the scene where he’s taking out the kidnappers/terrorists, which is why they have the toxic materials.
Oh Batman. I’m addicted to you, but you know that you’re toxic.
“well what do you know, I would have figured that batman have learned something from Joker, two-face, or white shark and not let people have horribly disfiguring accidents. guess I was wrong.”
I would just bet that once Batman watches a criminal have his face all bitched up he pulls a wallet out of his utility belt and starts showing the guy all of his other facially disfigured rogues.
Thanks to Kyle Baker, I can never again read a phrase like “wherein he takes his shirt off” without hearing:
“There’s only one way to deal with you people —
SHIRTLESS FIGHTING!”
Thus we bear witness to the seeming ORIGIN on his being called; “the G**Damn Bat-Man”.
~P~
P-TOR
When this came out, just after DK and Y1 gave us Batman’s future and past but *before* the decision was made to try to make DK into Batman’s *present*, it really seemed like Son of the Demon completed a trilogy of Batman awesomeness. Killing Joke was creepy and unsettling– effective in its way, but certainly not what one wanted for an iconic Batman story. Ditto Arkham Asylum. But Son of the Demon felt to me like a really, truly iconic Batman-in-the-present story. He solves mysteries as well as kicking ass; he successfully saves the world but suffers apparent personal tragedy along the way; criminals are terrified of him but civilians aren’t; he works very hard to protect the innocent, and isn’t sadistic toward the guilty, but also sheds no tears when the guilty stupidly kill themselves with pressurized toxic waste by shooting guns when they should have surrendered. He’s driven but not nuts.
And he leaves Gotham for a long world-saving adventure without ever gruffing “I’m too busy with my city.” The two Miller series had made Batman exciting and affirmed that Batman should be a badass but they hadn’t yet turned into an excuse to deform him. It was really one of the best moments for the character.
It helps that Ra’s always calls him “Detective,” which over the course of the 90s Batman ceased to really be.
I don’t even blame Son of the Demon for the existence of Damian. That’s really Kingdom Come’s fault. In Son of the Demon the kid was cleanly written out in a way that provided emotional weight but meant we never expected to see him again.
(Which reminds me: how the hell old is Damian supposed to be? Post-OYL we must be up to Year 15 or 16, but I don’t see how Son of the Demon can be a Year 2 or 3 story.)
And it’s things like this that make him my hero.
Wow, this probably has Denny O’Neil spinning in his grave.
GOOD.
But Son of the Demon isn’t really the same story that leads to Batman and Son. I think it’s obvious that Grant Morrison was influenced by this story–especially when you consider the interview he gave that praised “bare-chested love god” Batman and how Morrison’s Batman shows a character that acts consistently with Mike W. Barr’s Batman in his woefully overlooked run on Detective–but there are obvious differences.
Damian’s not the product of Batman and Talia’s love (or whatever you’d like to call it), but rather a “eugenics experiment” on a drugged Batman by Ra’s al-Ghul and his own daughter, which goes pretty contrary to what happens in SotD. It just happens to be one of the luxuries of dealing with “New Earth” and a story that’s been out of continuity for fifteen years that he gets to cherry-pick what he wants.
So in a theology class I’m taking, we’re suppose to bring in an off-colored theological joke to class on Friday. Could I get a scan of the whole page?