BATMAN: YEAR 100

Paul Pope

Pedro Moura

There is an optical phenomenon that is very simple to understand, related to the basic principles of light refraction and gravity: sometimes we perceive a body of light in a point in space, but we can learn that such a point is actually an error, an illusion: the body of light is elsewhere but its light is spread out and swerved so it makes us think that its on its visible (for us) spot. Or to put it another way, you think it belongs to territory x but it actually belongs to territory y. Or team. Or whatever you want to call it. Apparently, Paul Pope belongs to the group of North-American alternative comics artists, a distinction that does make sense in the United States but not, for instance, in Portugal (does it in Finland?). That is to say, you would group him next to an Adrian Tomine or a Seth or a Julie Doucet (I know they re Canadian, but it s North America too). But this is a false perspective. Paul Pope, as it happens with one too many authors (even Marko Turunen, a little, I guess, and you can include me as well), an unconditional fan of the mainstream and dreamed to engage it, to participate in it as soon as possible, but that for some reason, to kick-start their careers, made a few small progresses in the small press , thus finding the possible associations with an audience that had the same interests. So, here being alternative has nothing to do with an idiosyncratic expression or intrinsic inclinations, but is rather reduced to a mere set of production and distribution strategies. Therefore, Pope is closer to another set of artists such as Ed Brubaker, Kevin Smith, Brian Michael Bendis, David Lapham, among many others (and we could also mention Alan Moore, Grant Morrison, and Warren Ellis, but these have changed from one mainstream  the smaller, British one  to another  the far more visible American side). On the other hand, where drawing style is concerned, Pope is the artist who has reached the most balanced of integrations of a strong influence from the most banal, visible strand of Japanese comics (the preconceived notion that the inattentive reader or the unthoughtful fan will put forward immediately) in order to construct his very personal traits. If he has reached such a state or not, depends on many factors, but independently on a judgment of taste, or value, the influences that I am referring to are quite visible: in his characters  figuration, the clear lines for the faces and its accumulation to give the idea of movement; the structuring of the pages, simple and legible, in contrast with the information surge when he represents inner spaces, filled up with objects and inside jokes, mecha (the technological paraphernalia that is so typical of a certain imaginary of Japanese science fiction); a continuous choice to represent young, jail-bait  style girls that are extremely sexy and cool (ye, we re talking about barely legal porn  kind of girls); the plasticity of his onomatopoeias, the way they are formed, behave and fill the panels; and so on and so forth. Moreover, Pope even turn these influences and his experiences in Japan into an essay in the anthology Manga Surprise!.

All these factors reveal a will and an inclination of a certain sort that prevent me from considering Pope a real alternative  artist. Quite the contrary, his concern is to create cool stuff , something into which a given lot of elements can converge and that only falsely seem to point out to an adult narrative world, as one can check with his The Ballad of Doctor Richardson, just a few points above the most trite teenager s rambling about how horrible it is to grow and all its implied losses… Quite rapidly Pope would flee from that tone into his territory of choice, with his book with an unpronounceable and unwritable title (an influence by the Prince?), published by Dark Horse in 2003 and afterwards with Heavy Liquid.

Pope is not the only one following such a route. Jim Mahfood, Mike Allred, Jay Stephens do the same thing in different manners, by converging their popish culture with a certain contemporary conscience on what is in in the (U.S. and elsewhere) contemporary art market, a sprinkle of urban attitudes, but everything dissipated by a shallow result and false poeticism. Which leads us to this Batman.

I think that the exploration of the personality of a character that is not more than a trademark  with all the limitations this implies cannot by any means be consolidated by one author only (even if that author is a multiple one, and I will give just one example: Dupuy and Berberian). But in fact, even such a situation is an interesting one, which can lead to some degree of creative multiplicity throughout the years, as it happens in the modes of production of DC Comics (and Marvel, & etc.). In any case, though, Batman is perhaps the most interesting character ever created within the American superhero mainstream. Independently of the very well-put analysis by Dave McKean that he s just a rich boy who dresses up to beat up poor people , there is a structural basis to his story (or should I say backstory? We all know, being revisited over and over again ad nauseam, about his traumatizing childhood witnessing…) that allows for further revisiting and the most interesting refurbishing of its field: by artists such as Adams and O Neill, Moore, Morrison and, above all these, Frank Miller however, I d like to say that more than The Dark Knight Returns, with its macho-fascistic tones, it is with Batman: Year One, brilliantly drawn by David Mazzucchelli, that Miller will give continuity to his excellent pulpy, high-octane crime writing (which he had experimented with superbly with Daredevil) and through which he reconstructs Bruce Wayne s persona, from bottom up. Actually, Batman: Year 100 is a direct answer/homage/spin-off to this Miller/ Mazzucchelli book… So the question that we must ask ourselves is, what has Pope to add to batman s mythos and pathos? Not much. Coolness , action, and the most lame-assed excuse to humanize  the hero by the visibility of his organic physicality (his tiredness, his panting breathing, the sweat, spit and blood), that little or nothing contributes in order to change the perception of a being that is  always, constantly so  super , that is, indestructible (even is it s only his ego). Granted, Pope is not the only one falling into this structural failure. Grant Morrison, for instances, his following now a much more funny and interesting path with his Superman All-Star series (with Frank Quitely), but, quite to the contrary, his work in Batman is feeble, bland, if not ridiculous  which is odd if one considers the remarkable yet frightening Arkham Asylum. Do the authors that write Batman think that only by outdoing The Dark Knight Returns (already unsurpassable for its hyperbolic nature, and whose Miller s second bout only amounted to a mindless, trashy pop thing) they can do some exploring of the character? If they do, they re bound to lose.

This is one of those cases in which the cliché equal to himself  (or something like that) works. To be self-epigonic is inevitable to a certain degree, but here it should stand for an absolute linearity of course, a changeless continuum. In Pope s case, it translate as a lot of style, but no substance. Much ado about nothing, indeed.