ON THE SUBJECT OF DC COMIC MADNESS. (Stanza)

Batman & Robin #5 came out today, and I'm really not happy. Btw, SPOILERS IN THIS POST. FOR PEOPLE WHO CARE.

Now, I'm gonna say right off the bat that I haven't read the whole issue yet, and I probably won't at this point, because what little I've seen of it pisses me off so much that I can't even look at the scans_daily entry again.

I get home this afternoon and I'm reminded by Sarah that not only did Batman Annual come out, but so did Batman & Robin #5. I haven't been following the series since about #3, not least because I found Frank Quitely's art quite jarring and painful to look at, but because I'm still really Not Okay with the Dick Grayson as Batman deal. I won't get into my reactions to Final Crisis and the bat-death followup in Battle for the Cowl, because then I would be here for hours, but suffice to say that I'm one of the people who is counting the days till Bruce Wayne comes back from limbo/the past/the future/wherever he is right now. I understand that change is good, theoretically, but I love Batman as Bruce Wayne, and Dick doesn't even want the job, dammit. I just want to pretend that this is an AU fanfiction and I can pretend it doesn't exist.

Anyway, I go to scans_daily on insanejournal to try and find a couple of pages from it, because I'm curious as to whether or not Jason Todd is really the new Red Hood, and I kind of want it not to be because as far as I'm concerned, with the way his character has been treated over the past few years, I just want him to be dead again. I love Jason Todd, I really do, but I just can't get over the complete misuse of his character and the lack of creativity in his development. You'd think a guy who used to be Robin would be valued conceptually as more than just a plot device, but I that's really not the case. But whatever, that's not my point here.

...WHAT THE HELL IS UP WITH THE ART IN THIS ISSUE. I MEAN, REALLY.

See, that dude with the R on his shirt who looks like a constipated old man? That's Damien, Bruce Wayne's TEN YEAR-OLD KID.
He's TEN. *TEN*. Or twelve, or whatever, I can't really remember because I hate this damn kid but OH MY GOD WHY DOES HE LOOK LIKE THIS?! It drives me nuts how so many pencillers draw people looking way older than they are canonically, from ten year-olds like poor Damien here to older characters like Bruce, who, despite being canonically in his thirties, often just looks MAD OLD.

And the thing is, Philip Tan isn't a bad artist. He's just okay, sure, but usually his stuff doesn't make me want to hang myself because of it. I feel really bad now about arguing with this guy at the comic book store about whether or not Frank Quitely is better suited to this book than Tan, because by this page's standards, Frank Quitely might as well be BRILLIANT.

I swear, it's not just this page either. Later on, in the big WHO IS THE RED HOOD reveal, where Jason takes off his helmet, he looks SO CREEPY. Like, I get that Grant Morrison is trying to make changes and whatever with this freaky-ass look for Jason Todd but, as one poster on S_D said, he looks like Rorschach. JASON TODD SHOULD NOT LOOK LIKE RORSCHACH WITH JUST A CHANGE IN HAIR COLOR. At least try and make him recognizable as Jason. His face doesn't even LOOK similar to recent versions of him in which he's been pretty much recognizable as WHO HE IS. It's absurd. If you want Jason too be looking like crap and all dirty and depressed or screwed up, sure, that's one thing. But I swear to god, he looks like he's thirty plus, and Jason Todd's chronological age is only around twenty years old. YES, I CALCULATED.

...And I'm not even going to get into the whole red hair balding business because it's not worth my time, and LALALA GRANT MORRISON IS CLEARLY SMOKING CRACK, WHATEVER, I'M JUST GONNA REPRESS AND NOT READ THIS BOOK ANYMORE. Because that's the wonderful thing about comics, you have a vast wealth of other, better stuff to read when certain titles are really pissing you off.

Anyway, that's pretty much it. I feel better for venting. >:D

~Stanza