I really wish Lapham hadn’t had the constraints of telling a modern Batman story. His Robin is obviously Dick Grayson and the appearance of Commissioner Gordon really loses the edge with Gordon being retired and all.
Lapham’s story, City of Crime, ran twelve issues and half-way through, a few people online started wondering if DC was going to stop it short. They didn’t, but I can’t believe the story’s going to get the appreciation it deserves. It’s an astounding story. Maybe not a great Batman story, but it’s a great story. The most Lapham does for Batman is give him a real, tactile desire--the Office Space moment of “what would you if you could do anything?” Batman’s response is peculiar, but makes sense in Lapham’s construction of the character and is a witty play on words.
David Lapham is, of course, famous for his Stray Bullets series, which is rarely happy, often horrifying, and frequently funny. City of Crime is probably the most depressing look at Batman and his world I’ve ever read. If parents got ahold of this one... I think Warner Bros. would direct DC to burn the negatives. There’s nothing positive. The best thing you can do is not die. And it’s not the bullshit “not die” that frequently populates the paramilitary Batman comic dimwittedness, it’s not beat your son to death with a hot iron “not die.” It’s not pour boiling water over someone because his TV’s too loud. Lapham makes the tragedies real, something no other Batman comic book has done. Lapham takes something out of the Batman equation. I think it’s the hope.
Lapham’s Batman helps people suffer less. That’s all. By the fourth or fifth issue of City of Crime, the reader’s so immersed in the suffering, there’s no way out except forward--which Batman more or less says. Except there is no out, just an ebbing of wretchedness.
Good stuff.