December Wolves: Thoughts on Detective Comics #859

I said yesterday I was doing 15 posts in December, and here's the first of those 15. I've settled on the name December Wolves for the feature, because wolves roam in packs (there's a number of these updates coming down the pike) and also because one of the composers for d-beat overlords Trap Them, Brian Izzi, was previously in a band called December Wolves.

(Obviously, the Trap Them reference came to my mind first and I realized it was perfect, but probably needed further justification.) Since this is a detail oriented post, there's obvious spoilers, so if you're planning on being surprised by this Detective Comics run, you may want to move along now.




It's the details in Detective Comics #859 that make the issue sing.

This arc focuses on the path of Kate Kane to Batwoman. The first scene is set in West Point, where Kate is acquitting herself well and digging into the surroundings. She's the brigade XO and at the head of her class. She also happens to be kissing girls.

The West Point part showcases Kate's backbone, so you know how this going to end. And you'd be right. She gets kicked out of West Point. But how Rucka takes the reader there is not what you'd expect. I should have noticed it the first ten times I read the issue, but I wasn't focusing on the masthead. It lists another name, aside from the people in DC working on the comic. There's a special consultant on the issue. Daniel Choi.

That name should be vaguely familiar.

It's familiar because he's a discharged Arab linguist and Iraq War combat veteran for, yes, being gay. The masthead reads "Special Thanks to 1LT Daniel Choi (USMA 2003) For His Generous Assistance In Research For This Issue". And when viewed through this lens, the West Point portion comes into focus.

Every person granted a speaking role in West Point is viewed sympathetically. The commanding officer is trying to do Kate a solid. He's offering her an out, by taking her under his protection (by virtue of her exemplary service and his fondness for her parents) and using his fiat to kill the investigation. The other woman is never heard from again. There's no "this is why the poilcy is wrong" scene. There isn't preaching. The closest it comes is the look of disappointment on Kate's face when she does what she has to do.

(Also, I think Lt. Choi just joined the DCU, since the cadet that tells Kate the commanding officer wants to see her has a last name of Choi and Kate refers to him as Dan. I will see if I can get Rucka to confirm this.)

In her reply, she shows the backbone and purpose that will serve her as Batwoman, but also how much she truly believes in the community she's about to be kicked out of unceremoniously. Her reply is that if she said it was a joke or a misunderstanding, she'd be lying and cadets are trained not to do that or allow is to happen around them, so she refuses to say it.

She then goes the step further, saying directly to her superior officer that she's gay. She refuses the offer to hide under her CO's auspices, however well meaning and self-sacrificing it was and quits the service, just before graduation.

She wasn't just measuring up to the Army here, Rucka was showing us her measurements to wear a bat-symbol on her chest. Okay, she has the conviction.

But that only gets her so far, and as her proud father notes, that's not real far.

She is restless and has sex with the woman who would be the Question. (Note to Overkill readers: Mantle-passing is all part of the superhero genre. The previous Question died of lung cancer.)

Most stunning is her transformative experience with Batman. Or, perhaps not so transformative. He simply picks her up after she successfully fends off a mugger, yelling "Don't you know? I'm not a victim. I'm a soldier, god damn it!" What's worth mentioning is that Batman doesn't save her from shit. Bruce simply offers his hand after he surprises her so much that she loses her balance.

He just offers his hand. It's that act of kindness, but not much more. Batman doesn't even set the wheels in motion, he just kicks the machine to get it working. It's not so much an empowerment story via Batman, but just that Batman is a catalyst. That's what makes the story special. Batman didn't train her. There's no taking her under his wing. She's been trained. She knows what to do. She knows how to organize herself and she's doing it herself.

Next, I'll talk about the art, briefly, because it's pretty silly I think, to spend a lot of space describing what's going on when you can just look at it. I'll point a few things out and have that be the end of it.

J.H. Williams' III art leaps off the page, but again, it's the details. The panels on top of the page (below) are of the overarching story, but they're also done as Batman symbols, which is cool. But what takes it from cool to "I never thought of it, that's awesome" is the breaks between panels, starting off in red and ending up in purple, starting straight and veering off course, reacting to to the story it (literally!) delineates.























The rest of the issue is done in a muted, but warm tone which fits the backward looking nature of the run well, but isn't as interesting, since it's set in straight forward panel stuff. It's not as visually compelling. In these pages reproduced here, there's a lot visually going on, but it can immediately be made sense of.

The final touch is this: Batman, when he's shown in the flashback, is done in the modern style. I would say it's a hint at what's to come, but the character's name is Batwoman, so you know what's going to happen.

It's a great single issue not just because all the pieces themselves are good, but when they're put together, the attention to detail, both on the art and story side stand out. True, Rucka could just turn in the narrative equivalent of narrating Mr. Williams' pretty pictures, but Batwoman here is having her character defined as something textured, layered, distinct and very different from Bruce Wayne.

Batman with tits, she is not.

The art's fresh and the writing's fantastic. Last time I checked, this is why people buy comic books.

Secret Cartography: Simile, you just Metaphor. OR The Author is Still Feverish Hooray!

Tragedy tonight, gentle readers. A man with serious problems has enacted a most terrible scenario; we extend our sympathies.


Onward.

Hi! I am just recovering from four or so days of bed rest and fever dreams. There was one where I was a pokemon trainer, and more than a few where I was the Aragorn-like savior of the world, gearing up for some conflict that I envisioned only as a conflict between bright orange and a sort of sea blue shade, surging against each other. A vision that I realized shortly after looked more and more like a map. I'm no prophet, and I realized that this was because I was hunched over (like a sick kitten!) during lunch the day before, figuring out a 50 States puzzle from my youth.

So I've at least had cartography on the mind, and if not of the secret kind, then the insane dream-logic kind. And that's just as good! I mean, cartography itself is mostly a function of metaphor, as we base our understanding of the world upon relating two things that are not very similar. The whole idea of Red and Blue states is entirely fictive, a sickening reduction of thousands of human lives into a single simplified concept, but still an effective way of communicating the idea of difference. The strange part with the dream of Blue vs. Orange, then, was that they didn't really relate to anything - they were just some damn colors. But I still sensed conflict, so it's entirely possible they were just a metaphor for their own action. Does that make sense? It doesn't have to! Hooray for being sick!

Similar to dreams, language and thought processes are extensions of metaphor. On this Valentine's day, consider the choruses of people claiming that two people in love are travelers, or, Lockhorn like, one is a Ball and Chain on the other. They also say (Who says this? God, what's going on? Who are you people?) the limit of a man's world is his vocabulary, with obvious reason; as a person learns more ways to express themselves, they see that few things are cut and dry. Their map of the world suddenly grows new colors that they didn't even know existed. For example, they can recognize Schadenfreude in Amy Winehouse or Britney Spears or even whenever anti-war activists vote for John McCain. Previously, these sensations were just kinda funny! There's a whole new high-falutin' world out there of words (many of them German) to express guilty enjoyment. Red and Blue and Orange are allowed to expand in our understanding into Purple and Burnt Sienna and Off-White and Blue Green - there are now a million ways to reduce individuals to blank representations. Again, the symbols that we use to understand things soon become more and more accurate, akin to creating a map so large and accurate that it's a faithful physical reconstruction of that which it depicts.

Speaking of that. It can be argued that maps are artificial impositions, but doesn't the world, after all, only really exist as long as we agree upon it? The foundation of knowledge is the communication of facts, and understanding these facts relies upon metaphor, the application of what we already know to what we don't. Minnesota is not an absolute truth, after all. So it is with the internet philistines - their world is shrunken, and I come off sounding like I'm speaking a justifiably foreign language when I say something like "I thought their representation was unique" instead of "lol" and then nothing for five minutes (presumably because I was rolling around on the floor). Therein lies the dark side of this understanding - the above mentioned Red vs. Blue struggle, where one side opposes it's opposite so completely they cannot tolerate each other due to an inability to even talk to each other, as each side ends up sounding like an alien to the other. Each side of an argument may know objectively what the words Gun and Control mean in relation to each other, but the term together carries so much baggage with it depending upon your red or blue experience that good communication is impossible. The meaningless quibbles of our time (Obama vs. Hilary, Evil White Guy 1 vs. Evil White Guy 2, Creationism vs. Science as a whole... wait, maybe not so pointless, that last one) are more a function of our enthusiasm towards understanding things in simplistic terms - a sort of Go Fight Win Ra Ra Ra for whatever cause is closest to our hearts, setting it up in a simple adversarial opposition with, well, whatever it is not. Who cares that we can't talk, let's fight about it!

Finally, there's no way to approach the issue with right or wrong, true or false, because these, too, are just metaphors. You can't escape an issue by relying upon it (like what I'm doing now!) to provide it's own end, even though you can eventually hope that a representation of Object A slowly becomes so accurate that is almost becomes Object A in itself. So it is with maps - the physicality of places is secondary to the thoughts that we have about them in our understanding, and the only things that can really be mapped out are enthusiasm and fandom and the strange motivation that lies in the logic of dreams and language, because these, ultimately, are the only things that we can hope to give a flying fuck about. Seriously, fuck that hill, let's get into a fight about it.

(OMG RAMBLING D-)

Edit: Am I encouraging XKCD-ish happy nihilism? You make the call!