The Youth Who Went Forth To Learn What Public Domain Was
It would be really funny if there was a comic about superhero comics called "Public Domain", but ah well
Haven't you heard? Bill Willingham put Fables into the public domain! No, not the comics. DC Comics still owns the rights to those, they're locked up in the agreement Bill signed with them. You can't do anything with those, or actually get one over on the evil empire on behalf of the many they defrauded by republishing the comics in your own collection. Nope. What you've just acquired, dearly beloved public, are the characters and the setting of Fables, unless DC can successfully argue to a court that, since they're a part of the comics that they do own, and Bill Willingham isn't disputing that they own the comics, it would follow that they own the whole lot.
But, for the sake of argument, let's say that, indeed, you and I and everyone else own the characters, the setting, and the concepts of Fables. What exactly does that get us? Well, as far as I can see, it gets us a bunch of furiously conservative fairytale characters, and a fictional neighborhood in New York, that might as well be any other fictional neighborhood. That's not much, is it? You could have made your polemic for free access to reproductive care and liberation for the people of Palestine featuring Bluebeard and the Little Red Riding Hood all along, and no one would have stopped you. Sure, there are specifics to Willingham's take, but are they really worth keeping? Do you need yourself tied down to what has been, to most people's admission, a pretty middling storybook setting, carried by the illustrations of some of the finest artists alive?
So, what's the point in making an offer that is so close to being entirely worthless? Well, it's a publicity stunt. Bill Willingham is using the cause of creators' rights in corporate comics to drum up support and goodwill against DC Comics' stewardship of Fables. Some of it is monetary, but a lot of it also comes down to creative decisions, including the work Telltale Games did when adapting his work for The Wolf Among Us. This is where the reality of Bill-o being a reactionary crank comes into play. This is where it becomes relevant that part of his casus belli against DC is that he's not dealing with people from the old boys' club of comic book industry executives anymore. Does that make him wrong? No, even Breitbart contributors deserve a fair deal. But it does add context.
And speaking of context: this isn't even the first time he's tried pulling that one off. A couple of years back, he attempted nearly exactly the same move, for nearly exactly the same reason, but this time with Elementals, a comic which I've heard is about fucking dolphins, a fact which I'm not even going to bother fact-checking because I don't give a shit. Considering the market didn't go hog-wild with Elementals sequels and derivative works, I wouldn't worry too much about this Fables announcement having any impact. But we laughed at the funny man shouting "SOVEREIGN CITIZEN!" and sometimes that's all that really matters.
Now let's turn the fond into gravy.
As ever with Chip Zdarsky's Batman, it takes one more issue than any sane person would have patience with to find out exactly what we are trying to achieve here. And thus: Batman #137, chapter two of The Gotham War, a blockbuster comic that delights on being frustrating. The big ideas in its setup feel deliberately flimsy, because they're just excuses from people who are obviously way too deep in their own feelings. The shortcut feels shaky, but the goal is to undo years of growth and self-reflection in order to get at the ancient, primal idea of Batman, the one that is vengeance, and the night, and the one who has sworn to fight all criminals, out in the open.
The result is a comic where Batman is so wrong he's alienating most of his family, and having breakdown after breakdown in the process. Which I understand is not everyone's idea of a good time, but I've always been a sucker for those types of stories, I'm still into Zdarsky's "Batman will eat itself" ethos, and the final reveal puts the subtext of the Old fighting the New into text in a way that I really enjoyed, looking back on it. Plus, well, it's Jimenez and Morey, and I am not about to call anything they do bad, because that's physically impossible.
We've said it before, but it is worth repeating: Danger Street is a comic trying to solve the mystery of itself. On the surface level, there's still three issues worth of thrills and intrigue to unpack, with twists and turns galore. On the deeper, more metaphysical level, however, I think we've gone and cracked it, and all it took was an issue as beautiful, earnest and true as Danger Street #9 to get us there.
What makes this all the stranger is that, in most ways that matter, it has very little to do with the rest of the series, ditching its tale of fantasy framing device, and keeping its focus on a single time, a single place, and a single action, leaving out most of the series' characters, as Manhunter and Codename: Assassin duel to the death. And this singular drive extends to the comic's form itself, which, for the whole of the issue keeps to a strict 8-panel grid, four strips of two panels each, even in size the whole way through, with the dialogue and the point of view alternating between each duelist every other panel like effect always following cause.
Our protagonists established as equals in every way, the clash of swords turns into a clash of words, and the clash of words turns philosophical. Two Socrates enter, but only one can leave, as the discussion drifts from the immediate matters of life and death to the nature of the clash itself, to death and what it leaves behind, to upbringings, to chance, to fate, to the nature of action comics, until one fighter falls. And over the course of all that violence, a question comes up, "What was it all for?", and its answer, implied more than it is said follows.
The point of Danger Street is the doing of the thing itself. It is about putting out cool pictures of preposterous men with swords out in the world, simply because it would be interesting to see what that would look like. Tom King's earlier works have been about the search for the story of our selves, this is the extension of that: our search for the stories of others, and the occasional moments of connection it entails. This is figurative, but it is also literal (there is much to be written, by better critics than I, about the few moments of intersection where one panel goes into the next). It is a superb comic, magnificently and carefully laid out by Jorge Fornés, and given a perfect mood of dusk in the city by Dave Stewart's colors. I love it completely and sincerely.
Happy belated Batman Day! There wasn't much I wanted to talk about last week besides Batman, and this late in the process, I can't think of anything about Daredevil that wouldn't be said better with a little bit more context. So here we are! It's Sunday night and I'm sorry! Travel Foreman absolutely killed it on The Incredible Hulk! The adventure continues apace everywhere else you can find me, whether that's on Cohost, on Bluesky, or on Tumblr! I'm reading old Stormwatch! Check that out! Study the past, and realize how little you are! Yes, always! HUMBLE YOURSELF BEFORE COMICS!