Midlife Crisis on Earth-DC?
Jun. 10th, 2015 06:52 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
sdelmonteSo as you may have heard, DC Comics has undertaken a soft reboot, relaunching some comics, launching others, reworking things in the rest. After two weeks I have bought eight in this line, and like all eight (with highest marks to Batman, Justice League, and Constantine). I know a lot of you are not big on DC now, but there is more energy around than in a while, and an impressive diversity of art style (see again Constantine and also Omega Men and Action Comics). And a crazy sense of fun in Harley Quinn and Starfire. But that's not what I am here to talk about. I'm here to talk about Batman.
The Batman books have undergone a huge status quo shift. Batman is apparently dead, lost in an epic fight with the Joker. But Gotham needs a Batman. So a local tech firm has created a mecha suit and recruited a new man to be inside the armor: Jim Gordon. I won't get into the details, aside from saying that I buy it so far and that no one at DC is pretending Bruce Wayne is really dead.
But there is one detail that struck me. In debating whether to accept the job, Jim tells Harvey Bullock that he's 46. Which is my age as well. Essentially, I am now the same age as Batman. Now I have been saying for a while that DC, without meaning to, was writing a lot of its books for me. I think this has never been more so by making a somewhat out of shape, decidedly unglamorous 46 year old into Batman. It is, at some level, mid-life crisis adolescent power fantasy writ large. Any day now, I too can and will be Batman. (For the record, the one flaw in an otherwise very smart book is the idea that Jim won't give himself a stroke, hi tech armor or not.)
So DC really is writing one book for me. On the down side, I am now officially old enough to be Barbara Gordon's dad.
The Batman books have undergone a huge status quo shift. Batman is apparently dead, lost in an epic fight with the Joker. But Gotham needs a Batman. So a local tech firm has created a mecha suit and recruited a new man to be inside the armor: Jim Gordon. I won't get into the details, aside from saying that I buy it so far and that no one at DC is pretending Bruce Wayne is really dead.
But there is one detail that struck me. In debating whether to accept the job, Jim tells Harvey Bullock that he's 46. Which is my age as well. Essentially, I am now the same age as Batman. Now I have been saying for a while that DC, without meaning to, was writing a lot of its books for me. I think this has never been more so by making a somewhat out of shape, decidedly unglamorous 46 year old into Batman. It is, at some level, mid-life crisis adolescent power fantasy writ large. Any day now, I too can and will be Batman. (For the record, the one flaw in an otherwise very smart book is the idea that Jim won't give himself a stroke, hi tech armor or not.)
So DC really is writing one book for me. On the down side, I am now officially old enough to be Barbara Gordon's dad.
