Daily Breakdowns 032 - Batman Confrodisiac

Batman Confidential #31-35
Written by Peter Milligan
Art by Andy Clarke
Published by DC Comics. $2.99 USD ea.

I suppose these days, those who want to read comics with Bruce Wayne as Batman will take 'em where they can get 'em. That was part of the reason I started reading this storyline, the other being the presence of Milligan. I remember kind of liking Clarke's style from some 2000 AD stories, too.

In this one, Batman travels to Moscow to take down the Tsar, a scarred but handsome, youngish crime lord who has control over all the kingpins who have sliced up the city like pie, and he keeps them in line through the use of the Bear, a huge and powerful, but childlike and trusting, furry young man. I think you can see where this is going: Batman will get to the Bear and make him realize what he's doing his bad and that the Tsar doesn't care about him, which will be revealed at a crucial moment when the Bear is going to either kill Batman or some innocents.

Not badly done, just very predictable and forgettable. Clarke makes a game effort and draws a nice Batman, but there's never anything in the art that looks like Moscow. Lots of the action takes place indoors or underground, and when it doesn't, it's on nondescript nighttime streets or there are no backgrounds at all. Seems like cheating. And Milligan is complicit as well, peppering his script with vodka and babushka and other Russian words any simpleton knows, but nothing authentic. There's never a feeling that Milligan has discovered any uniquely Russian characteristics or knowledge he's dying to convey. The story could just as easily taken place in San Antonio and given us Alamo and River Walk and Tex-Mex references. The only interesting aspect is early on, when Batman discovers the Moscow criminals don't fear him. As he works harder and figures out how to get to them, Milligan ironically works himself right out of the novel and into the mundane. For completists only.

Afrodisiac
By Jim Rugg and Brian Maruca
Published by AdHouse Books. $14.95 USD

Rugg's and Maruca's '70s blaxploitation spoof character has been around for several years, appearing here and there in anthologies, and now those pieces and a lot more have been jammed into this collection. Since pimps appear as Halloween costumes -- even for children -- we can assume most readers aren't going to be particularly offended by the hero of these tales being one, with a stable of pretty white women calling him Daddy.

When Afrodisiac, or "D" to his friends, isn't pimping, he's involved in all sorts of adventures, stopping aliens, cult leaders, Hercules and even Dracula, with either his fighting skills or his power to make women love him. It's a fun premise, though the stories themselves are without any complication or suspense. Mainly, they're just parodies of bad '60s and '70s comics. That's not such a bad thing, as there's much to admire about how Rugg gets close to the look of Dell, Gold Key, Charlton and Marvel Comics, and with the excellent AdHouse production, the colors are perfect, and not only do the covers look beat up and dated, one even has a child's marker scribbling on it, as if the issue in question was found at a garage sale or flea market. Fans of old comics will find all that's missing is the smell of decaying newsprint.

In fact, it's the process that gets the most attention, from the production touches to the minor fun of giving Afrodisiac different origins that remind readers of famous characters. It would maybe be counterproductive for Rugg and Maruca to try to make Afrodisiac more dimension, or make his stories more meaningful and layered. We're just supposed to chuckle at yet another blaxploitation parody because it's been mashed up with stupid old superhero comics. It is pretty amusing throughout, but it's hard to look at this lavishly produced trifle and not wish the creators would get working on something original and a little more meaty real soon.

Christopher Allen