Category: Books

Batman: House of Gotham

house of gotham

I’ve been a comics reader for about fifteen years now. I’m not hardcore about it. I’m not one of those people who reads single issues as they come out each month. I read the stories packaged into graphic novels or omnibuses. I’m fairly random at that too, just picking up one book here and there without paying much attention to where it falls within the greater continuity of the character.

My favorites are Batman and X-Men (although I also really love Saga, Chew, and Sandman, among others.) Those two favorites have been around for decades. They have a long list of writers. They have all sorts of spin-off characters (X-Factor, New Mutants, Nightwing, Catwoman, etc.) that get their own runs. And then there are all kinds of one-off stories and side stories, and to be honest, I don’t really understand it. I get lost in all the titles.

Shadows of the Bat ran from 1992-2000 and its focus was on side characters. Or at least that’s what the Wikis say. But while the cover of this graphic novel has “Shadows of the Bat” on it, the single issues were apparently released as part of the Batman Detective Comics line.  Like I said, I don’t understand all this stuff.

House of Gotham focuses on a boy whose family was killed by the Joker.  Batman tries to help him by putting him in a Wayne-funded orphanage and various other things, but he’s an awfully busy superhero, so the kid winds up slipping through the cracks.

He finds help in the strangest of places – some of Gotham’s most notorious villains take the boy under their wing. Clayface befriends him inside Arkham Asylum. Penguin gives him a job. It is true that these villains help the boy with ulterior motives, but at least they are truly present. Unlike Batman.

The story takes place over the course of about a decade. Some of Batman’s most notorious cases – Knightfall, where Bane breaks his back, and No Man’s Land, where an earthquake seals off Gotham from the world – serve as a backdrop to this story. We understand why Batman is so busy he can’t pay much attention to the boy, but also that this is still a failure of our hero.

The art by Fernando Blanco (Artist), Jordie Bellaire (Colorist) is excellent, and the writing by Matthew Rosenberg is good.  I love these kinds of stories where we get to know more about characters who would normally be in the background, who might normally get just a page or two, or a few lines to move the larger plot along.  I’m also a huge fan of stories that allow the more famous stories to be seen just in passing. 

I’ve been trying to read every Batman story ever written (a monumental task, I know).  I bought this one randomly because it was on sale for cheap. I’m glad I did because I really liked it.

The Running Man by Stephen King

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For a time in the late 1970s and 1980s, Stephen King published several books under the pen name Richard Bachman. His publishers didn’t think it was a good idea for King to release more than one book a year, and he is a prolific writer, so he came up with Bachman as a way to release more books.

The Bachman books tend to be grittier, more intense, and grim. Such is the case with The Running Man.  Set in the near future (2025!) America’s economy is in shambles and has become a totalitarian hellscape (!).  The gulf between the rich and the poor has never been wider (!!). To keep the poor from rioting, the government has created a Games Network that features a variety of violent game shows in which people can win loads of cash (if they don’t die in the process, which they usually do.)

The biggest game and the one you can win the biggest loot from is The Running Man, where a few folks are set loose into the world, given a small head start, and then hunted like animals. The longer they survive, the more money their surviving family will receive. 

Ben Richards is poor; his wife has turned to prostitution to make ends meet, and his young daughter is very sick. He becomes a Running Man. He learns he will do anything to survive – lie, cheat and even kill.  He also learns there is a whole underground movement trying to get the people to rise up against the government.

This is King at his most cynical and his grimiest. He breaks his story into tiny chapters (each one with a heading counting down to presumably Richard’s end). There is none of that usual King excess. As such, we barely get to know Richards or this world he’s living in. Still, it is a cool concept, and King is always good at keeping me turning the page.

It is nothing like the Arnold Schwarzenegger film from the 1980s. The more recent adaptation is much more faithful, but it loses a lot of the stories bleakness.

Compound Cinematics: Akira Kurosawa and I by Shinobu Hashimoto

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Originally posted on Cinema Sentries in 2015.

Akira Kurosawa is one of my favorite film directors.  Shinobu Hashimoto is one of the great Japanese screenwriters.  The two collaborated on some of the greatest films ever made, including The Seven Samurai, Rashomon, and Throne of Blood. This book, written by Hashimoto, details that collaboration, but dives into how he became a screenwriter and gives tips on how to write a script.  It’s pretty darn cool.  You can read all about it over at Cinema Sentries.

The Cocktail Waitress by James M. Cain

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Between 1934 and 1943, James M. Cain wrote The Postman Always Rings Twice, Mildred Pierce, and Double Indemnity, three stone-cold classics.  These made him one of the godfathers of the hard-boiled detective stories. They made three great movies off of those novels, which also makes him the godfather of film noir.  

He wrote several other books during this time. I’ve only read one of them, Serenade, and didn’t particularly care for it, but those big three are amazing. He wrote many more books after this period, too, and I only just realized he kept writing up until his death in 1977. In fact, he was writing The Cocktail Waitress when he died. 

I say writing it, but in fact he had mostly finished it. Or rather, he had finished it a few different times. Originally written in the third person, Cain became unsatisfied with this and rewrote it in the first person, changing the vernacular to fit his protagonist’s voice. He then sent a draft to his publisher, who demanded he change the ending. A final draft was never sent, and so the novel was shelved after Cain died. 

Many years later, the good people at Hard Case Crime publishing went digging for it and found several different drafts. They had to make some decisions on which parts of which drafts to use, but ultimately published what they consider the final book in 2012. But this isn’t a case where they hired some new writer  to complete an unfinished novel; they simply had to decide which parts of various finished drafts to edit into what we now have on our shelves.

The end result is pretty good. Like I said, I haven’t read any of the books Cain wrote after Double Indemnity in 1943, but my understanding is that his later books tackled other interests besides crime. The Cocktail Waitress was then an attempt to return to form, perhaps to stir up commercial interest that had waned.

Our narrator is Joan Medford, and her story begins with her husband’s end. He was a deadbeat and a drunk who used to beat her. He died in an automobile accident, leaving her with a young son, a house, and a pile of unpaid bills.  The accident was a little suspicious, but the cops couldn’t find enough evidence to book her for it, so they let her be.

Because she’s telling her story (into a tape recorder to get her side of every crime – there will be several – onto an official record), we’re never quite sure if what she’s telling is the truth. She is absolutely an unreliable narrator.

Because of the unpaid bills, she takes a job as a cocktail waitress. It’s one of those joints where she has to wear a skimpy outfit and accept the fact that her customers are going to hit on her, pinch her posterior, and sometimes ask for more.

She’ll meet two men at this job that will change her life. The first is Earl White, an elderly, very wealthy gentleman with a heart condition that makes it impossible for him to have sex with Joan or anyone else. This doesn’t keep him from making passes at her, but he tips extremely well, so she encourages him. So much that he eventually asks her to marry him. He promises he’ll behave, and anyway, if he doesn’t, he’ll literally die from trying, so what has she got to lose? 

That would certainly get her out of all her financial troubles, set her up for life, and allow her son to live a good life. Currently the boy is living with his dead husband’s sister, a woman Joan hates.  She suspects the woman wants to keep her boy permanently, but she knows she’s got to get something more financially permanent in her life in order to take him back, and Earl would be just the thing. 

The other man is Tom. He’s young, fiery, and handsome. Also broke. Also a bit of pig. The first time he meets him, he’s drunk as hell, and he slides his hands right up her skimpy waitress outfit and into places no man should go without asking first. She gives him her what-for for doing that, but it kind of turned her on. Or something. She’ll eventually let him take her out. For her trouble, he takes her to a place with curtains around the booths so that couples can do things people really shouldn’t do on a table where others might want to eat. She kind of likes it this time, but then remembers her deal with Earl and splits before things get too heavy.

And that’s the crux of the story. Earl will give her all the stability she craves, but she’s not attracted to him. Also, he just can’t help himself. Whether it will kill him or not, he’d really like to get it on with Joan.  Then there is Tom, who cannot help her financial situation out, and he’s kind of lecherous, but damn it if he doesn’t turn her on.

If you know anything about James M. Cain, you’ll know this story will have some deadly twists. I won’t spoil them, but let’s just say the law gets back on her trail, and it will be difficult for her to get out of it this time.

Cain’s stories were always a little bit sleazy. He liked writing about characters on the rough side of the tracks and never strayed away from sex in his stories. Lust is all over The Postman Rings Twice and Double Indemnity. He goes pretty hard in that direction in this story. I know it was written in the 1970s when those boundaries had been pushed farther by others at this point, but it did feel wild to read him going as far as he does in this story.

It also feels like an older man trying to keep up. Or a once great writer trying to relive his glory days.  And you can definitely feel some of the editing going on. I don’t ‘know that I could point you to a specific page where you can tell that the editor used an older draft or whatever, but overall it did feel a little disjointed.  But also, I rather enjoyed reading it.

I remember reading Mildred Pierce for the first time and stopping after several pages, my heart racing and a smile on my face.  I immediately told my wife she had to read it. I wanted to shout it to everyone that this was an amazing book. It was just that good. I did not have a moment like that while reading The Cocktail Waitress. But that doesn’t mean I’m unhappy I read the book either. I’m glad I did. I’d recommend it to anyone interested in Cain’s novels. I’m so glad they were able to put it together and give it to the world.

Batman: Killing Time

batman killing time

Batman is probably my favorite comic book character (I go back and forth between him and the X-Men – which I know is a group of characters, but you’ll just have to deal with that.) I love that he doesn’t have any true superpowers, I love that he’s often more detective than superhero, and he has a great Rogue’s Gallery of villains.

I realize I don’t talk about comics all that much in these pages, but I like the idea of writing more small reviews and telling personal stories. I want to make this old blog more of a blog.  Maybe. Tomorrow I’ll probably change my mind, but for now I’m talking about Batman.

Batman: Killing Time is a limited series written by Tom King and illustrated by David Marquez. It begins with three villains – The Penguin, The Riddler, and Catwoman, who pull off the heist of the century. But then they immediately begin double crossing one another. It is up to Batman to put the clues together and pick up the pieces.

King tells the story with an off-kilter timeline. He does this thing where he’ll start a page with the date and a specific time, and then on the next page he’ll tell us it is exactly 1 hour and fifteen minutes later or whatever. Back and forth, back and forth, each pages, sometimes multiple times a page the time changes.  Sometimes he’ll go back hundreds, thousands of years to tell us a little mythology. This mostly ties together in an interesting way by the conclusion, but it is also a little confusing. 

At some point a new villain, The Help, is introduced. He’s kind of like Alfred from the Pennyworth TV series (which I quite liked and recommend) in that he’s got an English butler vibe but with loads of combat training).  He’s an interesting character, but then he just kind of disappears.  That’s about the time a foul mouthed US agent shows up who’s ready to wipe everybody out if the secret, possibly magical MacGuffin gets into the wrong hands.  

The story is fine. It isn’t anything special, but it worked well enough for me. The mastermind of the whole thing is apparently some obscure villain that hasn’t been seen in the comics for a long time. I didn’t know him, but the character makes sense within the context of the story and I liked him. But I’d be hard pressed to give you the details of what happened now that I’ve finished it.

The artwork is excellent. One of the things I love about Batman comics is that the artwork often has a noir feel to it and that’s implemented here to great effect. 

Overall, a quite good comic. Not Batman’s best, but well worth the read.