Batman: A Catalogue of Overlooked Gems #3

       As I wrote in the first of these, comics today seem hung up on 'important' stories, where the events will have a substantial effect on future stories involving the characters, but just because they're 'important' to to continuity, to legacy, to history (and most tellingly, to back-issue speculators looking to flip a 'hot, key issue' for big money), doesn't meant they're going to end up being important to the person who just wants to read a cracking good adventure story.

     So far, the last two of these have been from the 70's, one of the halcyon periods  for Batman readers, but for this next one, I'm going to be jumping forward several decades, to the final years of the 20th Century and a criminally underappreciated one-shot which appeared out of nowhere and vanished again just as quickly, seemingly into an undeserved oblivion.

    This is 'Batman: The Joker's Apprentice', a one-shot dated May, 1999, written by C.J. Henderson, with art by Trevor Von Eeden and inks by Joe Rubenstein.

(Cover Art by Trevor Von Eeden)

    This would have appeared to have begun as a project designed to commemorate the 60th Anniversary (in the year 20000) of the first appearance of The Joker, with several references to an Anniversary within the story. For whatever, that didn't happen, and the story was published with minimal fanfare as a double-sized single issue story in mid-1999. 

    The story starts in Arkham Asylum, with a criminal named Arthur Rankel bragging about the time he was captured by Batman and wishing, perhaps a little too loudly, for a second chance. He talks about how the Batman sandbagged him from behind and wishing he had a chance to confront him face-to-face. This attracts the attention of The Joker who decides, after a lengthy speech where he tells Rankel everything about him in an exchange which is one part Sherlock Holmes to one part 'Criminal Minds',  to take him on as a 'pet project'. 

    As I mentioned in my previous entry, there was a time when the Batman comics actually featured detective stories, and this is, in a way, something of a throwback to that, albeit in a way which owes more to the aforementioned 'Criminal Minds' or 'Silence of the Lambs' with its emphasis on psychological profiling and forensic examination rather than deduction. It's far more of a police procedural than it is a straightforward mystery.

   This is almost certainly due to the writer. C.J. Henderson had written a two-part 'Legends of the Dark Knight' story (#105-106), with the same art team as worked on 'The Joker's Apprentice' which had been published a year earlier, but other than that, he had not written anything else for DC Comics. He had done a handful of comics projects for a number of smaller companies, but was mainly known as a writer of Crime Fiction, most notably, the adventures of hard-boiled private eye, Jack Hagee and the Lovecraft-tinged occult investigator, Teddy London.

    The result is something a little more lurid and violent than I like in a Batman story - it does feature a great deal of violence against women, and it is heavily implied that several dogs are killed, so if that's a deal-breaker (and I fully understand that for many it is), forewarned is forearmed.

    Returning to the story, what follows is a magnificent, two-page training montage as the Joker equips Rankel with the knowledge and training he'll need to take his revenge. This is one of my favourite scenes in the book as the whole scene is presented with this wonderful mix of familiarity and admiration. While the Joker's well aware of all Batman's greatest tricks and tactics, he refuses to underestimate his prodigious prowess.

(I'd love to reproduce the whole page, but the first panel will have to do)

    This page really allows both writer and artist to showcase the best elements of their work, as Henderson presents some excellently-scripted dialogue and Von Eeden lays the page out in a way that guides the reader's eye effortlessly and communicates a ton of information in a stylish, efficient and effective way. Trevor Von Eeden's art isn't for everyone; it's loose and heavily stylized. Characters are presented as expressionistic grotesques with their features twisted to almost to the level of caricature, and a lot of his linework feels loose, rushed and angular. I can fully understand why his work may not suit certain readers' tastes, but two things make him ideal for this project: with so much emphasis on internal, psychological character, having an expressionistic approach makes for a good match with the narrative in a way that a more naturalistic approach may not be, and as much as his style may not be everyone's cup of tea, his grasp on panel and page composition is magnificent, resulting in work where the action, the emotional tone and the narrative purpose is always clear. Joe Rubenstein's tight, controlled inking only adds to this, focusing the looseness, energy and distortion of Von Eeden's pencils and layouts into absolute crystal clarity.

    Following this training sequence, Rankel 'graduates' from his course of study and discovers that the Joker has arranged, with a little help from Jonathan Crane (a.k.a. The Scarecrow) a little escape plan, so that Rankel may go forth and, now that he has the requisite training, to execute his plans to confront and defeat the Dark Knight.

    We begin a second training sequence as Rankel begins to educate the two henchmen the Joker has picked for him, a towering brute named Calvin Marshall and a squirrelly, Peter Lorre-esque fellow named Thomas DeGeorge. Again, we get the requisite profiles before the trio begin the meticulous process of putting their plan into action. 

    The trio's plan is to conduct a series of brutal murders of women, beginning in outer regions of Gotham, but gradually moving towards the city proper. In each case, they send a message to the police, taunting them, while 'seeding' the scene with a series of contradictory forensic evidence to misdirect and confuse the police so that Batman will be forced to investigate. 

 

    During a meeting with Commissioner Gordon, Gordon tells Batman that the intricacy of the crimes, the odd series of circumstances around each one and the fact that they're gradually moving towards the city makes him think that they've been deliberately engineered to target Batman. Batman takes this to heart, and throws himself, almost fanatically, into the investigation, possibly feeling that, as the killers are targeting him, he may be partially responsible. 

    We get a series of cameos here, as Batman repairs to the Batcave where he has a short conversation with Alfred, and consults Barbara Gordon (a.k.a. Oracle) who provides him with the missing key to unlock the case. After this, Batman hits the streets, and we get a brief appearance from Two-Face and a scene with underworld doctor, Professor Milo. This is all well-executed, but you can't help the impression that the writer really wanted to get as many back-up characters to show up for a scene as he could manage. 

    Having cracked the mystery, Batman then follows the clues to the location - an elaborate arena which Rankel and his henchmen have specifically prepared according to the Joker's training, to negate all of Batman's advantages and allow Rankel his final, fervently wished-for face-to-face confrontation with his perceived nemesis.

    What follows is a marvellously structured action sequence which takes full advantage of the location and all the set-up from the rest of the story. It's a wonderfully tense and beautifully constructed series of set-pieces where Batman evades a variety of perils before he's able to turn the tables on his would-be hunters, all leading to climatic face-to-face. 

    It's a great pay-off for an excellent build-up, and the brief denouement provides an entirely suitable final word to wrap it all up.

    With all that said, a couple of general observations. It's unusual for me to like a modern portrayal of The Joker. The version of the character I grew up with was always clever, and came up with brilliant plans which were always slightly askew enough to make him unpredictable. In many ways, I liken him to a cross between a criminal mastermind and an avant-guard performance artist. 

    Unfortunately, modern consensus seems to see him as a kind of theatrical 80's slasher villain, like Hannibal Lecter meets Freddy Krueger, and I can understand that. It's HARD to come up with ideas for plans that are intricate and meaningful while still being slightly bonkers, and it's much easier to just twist the dial marked 'atrocity' to 11. Unfortunately, atrocity has diminishing returns and once your villain's murdered and tortured all the supporting cast members and had his own face torn off and stapled back on... where do you go from there?
    This particular scheme is great. It plays to a checklist of all the Joker's standard quirks, while providing an inventive new spin on it. 
    The excessive bodycount from the apprentice hits a bit of a bum note for me (one of very few in this story), and I feel some scenes which were presented as slightly more lurid and exploitative than I'm comfortable with could have been better implied... but that's a minor quibble in what is, otherwise, an excellent story.

    As I said earlier, this is a really unjustly overlooked book. The story is beautifully put-together, with a great sense of pacing. The structure is outstanding, with elements set up and paid off beautifully. There are some nice incidental scenes which help to present the impression of a wider, fully-realized world. The dialogue is tight and evocative, while never-feeling overly bloated or rushed and as you'd expect from a Crime Writer, the procedural elements feel real, and add a great sense of weight to the story. 
    Meanwhile, the evocativeness of Von Eeden's art provides a perfect tone for the distorted and warped characters and their actions, while his exquisite layouts, ably abetted by some wonderfully tight inks from Joe Rubenstein, really keep the action moving in a way that's tremendously readable, and helps contribute to the aforementioned sense of pacing and narrative momentum. Top-notch stuff.

    Unfortunately, it doesn't appear to have been reprinted or collected anywhere, but back issues shouldn't be too pricy if you can find it.