★★★★★ 5
Batman for the Sake of Art: A Great Collection
Format: Paperback
I enjoyed this very much. I also found it an adventure to read and view these Batman tales because they were different from what I've read so far. Mark Chairello wanted to create a Batman volume with different artists collaborating on it and he accomplished that. But what was most impressing to me and what I found so different from what I've ever read on the Batman is the impressionistic style of the artwork and perhaps, the absence of plots. The narratives that we find here are most likely to be vignettes, shorter than short stories. This narrative style accompanied by the impressionistic artwork where we see each artist's interpretation of the Batman defines the tone, mood, and characterization of this collection of stories.
Although each artist showed his own version of the Batman, the artwork of each had one thing in common: it stressed the Dark Knight persona of the Batman. The stories were less controlled by a sense of plot than a sense of atmosphere and characterization. These were darker than what I'm accustomed to read. Death permeates its pages. Batman fights crime but he can't prevent the bloodbath while he's doing so. The very first story, Perpetual Mourning, shows the detective seeking a clue for a murderer on a corpse in a morgue. While doing so, an interior monologue reveals the Batman's thoughts and his feelings toward the victim. Readers see their hero internalize the loss of this victim. McKeever intensifies this feeling by presenting a couple dancing: is this the woman while alive dancing with Batman? Was this someone Batman knew as Bruce Wayne? Other stories that I immediately classified as favorite are Joe Kubert's The Hunt; Good Evening, Midnight by Klaus Janson; a psychological drama, In Dreams, by Andrew Helfer and art by Liberatore; Heist, written and illustrated by a minimalist artist, Matt Wagner; Brian Bolland's An Innocent Guy is quite interesting because it summarizes Batman's life from the point of view of a person who plans on killing him; and Archie Goodwin's Heroes illustrated by Gary Gianni. This latter story is a WWII story where Batman deals with Nazis. Bruce Timm's Two of a Kind, is really a Two-Face story more than a Batman story. It has the traits of noirish films of the 40s where the attempts of criminal to reform are thwarted by fate. Two Face finally gets a human face, falls in love with the doctor who made it possible, but fate eventually gets in the way. There are some R-rated panels in this story. Walter Simonson gives us a futuristic story about the Batman, while veteran Dennis O'Neil shares a narrative that goes deep into Batman's psyche and a Christmas story that reminds us of some of his early works in the seventies. Batman pursues a strange serial killer in Howard Chaykin's Petty Crimes and Goodwin tells a haunting tale of a demonic trumpet, illustrated by Jose Munoz. Monster Maker by Jan Strnad was also quite haunting for it shoes the influence of gang violence on children. Illustrated by Richard Corbin, it is perhaps the most graphically violent of this collection. I notice that the title of this collection is accompanied by the name of Frank Miller, but he only makes one cover artwork contribution in this book.
Thus, do not expect plotted narratives in this tome. Just enjoy the artwork and short vignettes about who the Batman is and the world in which he lives. I was not disappointed by this purchase and enjoyed the reading very much.
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Reviewed in the United States on July 21, 2017
