Drunken Comics Rage

So I sorta randomly snagged Batman Gotham Knight.  Batman, animated, on DVD = good to go right?  I figured it was some movie-slash-extended-cartoon-episode of The Batman cartoon that I never really cared for, but heard good things from EvilArtist about as it developed.  Boy was I wrong about that.  I really didn’t care for this, largely due to the animation, but also because it was made up of six mostly unrelated stories/segments.  They even have their own titles and shit.

After a little digging this morning, it turns out that Gotham Knight is actually a DC monthly (??) comic book, with a scheme of different writers and artists for each (??) issue.  A little knowledge is a dangerous thing; while I now understand why the movie was put together like this, I still didn’t enjoy it, again primarily due to the animation.  And let me be clear: I didn't hate it, I think I was more apathetic with a dash of bored. 

Each episode thing had its own art style; I didn't like ANY of them.  The Wikipedia link I provide above talks about it being a Japanese animation style.  I get that description, but that seems too generic of a description and certainly doesn’t do the differences in animation within this collection justice.  But for me…some I nearly hated, most were at best distracting or even took away from my enjoyment, and only one qualified as 'just ok'. 

(Do I hate Japanese animation, whatever that means, as a whole?  No.  I tire of it in long viewings, and some of the borderline clichéd facial features and hairstyles and other such things are dull to me, but I don’t dismiss it out of hand.  Content and quality of story are key.)

Despite the art/animation differences from segment to segment, a common theme was reveling in ultra close-ups and weird angles, with dark palettes and dull colors, and creepy music.  I get it: Batman is dark and he wants to be scary.  That’s his thing.  But this…it was more like I was watching some abstract artsy versions of Batman episodes, where you can appreciate the work and skill in doing it, but not personally enjoy the gawddam thing.  At ALL.  Particularly the mildly effeminate, weak-voiced, hyper-pointy-nose Bruce Wayne who apparently never was introduced to a comb.  Seriously, that’s someone’s personal vision of Batman?

Anyway, the stories were vaguely linked…Russian mobsters vs. Gotham mobsters in a couple, ferexample, and a new Major Crimes Unit detective distrusting the Bat in an early segment but trusting him in a later one.  Even those common links were somewhat disjointed, raising more quality/focus questions for me than really adding anything to the overall “movie”.  That said, I did find two stories, one with Dead Shot and one with Bruce in India or somewhere getting training, to be decent.  But again…this didn't feel like something to be watched and enjoyed, but rather something to be vaguely appreciated as a work, and I wanted to enjoy it.

When I shut it off, and after shortly cursing about the hour and fifteen minutes of my life I would never get back, I asked myself whether I would have enjoyed it more had it simply been done just like the Batman animated series (not the recent one, but the one before)…and while I think I would have gotten some additional enjoyment via subtraction (of the animation), at the same time it would have perhaps starkly shined a light on the stories as being rather blah.  And maybe that's the gist of my 'meh' reaction to it: the stories seemed to be convenient vehicles for showing off the animation, and I essentially didn't like any of the animation.  Just give me a good Batman story already.

The one good thing?  I recognized Batman's voice from the cartoons, I believe, which was some comfort.  And a bit of irony…I didn’t get the ‘right’ voices in the Superman Doomsday movie that otherwise was at least mediocre, but I do get the right Bat-voice in the craptacular Gotham Knight.  Go figure.

Filed under: General Comics Rage