Though he’s uniformly recommended by comic fans (or maybe because he is), I approach Grant Morrison warily. I’ve only read three things he’s written (Seaguy, We3, and JLA Classified) and only one (We3) resonated--though I do love Seaguy for the Cameron Stewart art. However, I tend to like small animals, so We3 might not be the best gauge. But since Morrison’s taking over Batman, I thought I’d read some of his old work on the character and dug up Gothic, from Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight. Morrison opens each issue of Gothic with an epigraph from some classical work--the first issue’s is from Hamlet, and I suppose that practice told me everything I needed to know about Gothic. Opening a short story with an epigraph is bad enough, opening a comic book limited series... is probably a little bit better, but opening an issue with an epigraph is the equivalent of giving each portion of a TV show, between commercials, its own epigraph. The practice is beyond pretentious and, considering how standard Gothic turns out, quite funny.
Gothic does have things to offer a reader, unfortunately, they’re only things to identify and mock. Whether its Morrison’s mild reinvention of Batman’s parents’ murders or the revelation the Waynes sent their son off to a boarding school run by a Satanic, child-murdering headmaster, Gothic is somewhat absurdist. Except Morrison tries to mix real human horrors with Batman--the child-murdering headmaster is taken down in a scene from M, while Batman is off walking around in a monastery during the day. As a character, Batman offers two storytelling approaches--when he walked around in the daytime and when he didn’t--everything else stems from the writer’s answer to that question. Morrison wants it both ways. He wants Batman tough, but also the guy with the Bat-helicopter. Actually, those parts are more amusing than the rest--like when Alfred is acerbic. All of the characters in Gothic are flat and one dimensional, particularly Batman. Morrison structures the story--Batman’s scenes anyway--mostly from Batman’s perspective. Except Morrison’s established a Batman who not only saw his parents gunned down in front of him, he’s also got one who--as a ten-year old--saw his best friend’s decapitated head. Now, Batman never thinks about this experience--or about how he, at the time, realized the headmaster was Satanic--until the present action of this story. So either Batman’s apathetic or he’s damaged past the point of insanity. Morrison plays his point of view like it’s a Hostess fruit cake advertisement. It’s a comic book in every pejorative sense of the term.
However, what sets Gothic apart, what makes it so much worse than a bad comic book, is Klaus Janson’s art. Now, I’ve seen Janson’s work lately and I always think, “What happened to him, he used to be good and this is awful.” No, Janson’s gotten better. Anatomy, perspective... these things are not present in Janson’s work in Gothic. It’s astoundingly poorly drawn.
What bothers me the most about Gothic is its subtitle. It’s billed as “a romance.” Given Morrison’s pretentiousness, it might be in the medieval tale sense, meaning Batman is a chivalrous hero, which I suppose works. Still, if that definition’s the correct one, then Gothic’s just a bad romance.
